Christmas in South Africa

Christmas morning with my parents for the first time in ten years. It is quite a remarkable thing. My mother and I would probably drink all day, but my dad doesn’t drink and is not always amused when we begin to get wasted. Outside it’s raining and warm. It’s beautiful. I am sitting at the garden table under shelter of the roof that my father built a few years ago. There is nothing more soothing, peaceful, and therapeutic than sitting here with a book with the rain falling all around.

A few days ago, I slipped and nearly broke my foot. It is bruised and painful, but I manage to hobble to the beach successfully where the sand and salty water seem to soothe it somewhat. I read for a while or gaze in a trance at the ocean as the sun flickers through the clouds like machine gun fire and begins to burn me. A child is flying a kite too close to me and I eventually gather my things and walk to the bar for a beer. Finding a seat outside in the crowded space I sit downwind from three women only to discover they are smoking, and their secondhand smoke is blowing directly into my face. There is nowhere else to move to, and they are close to finishing their cigarettes anyway. To my dismay, they instantly light up fresh cigarettes the moment their existing one burns out.

I accept my fate and sip my beer.




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