Neighbourliness

What makes a good neighbour?  Someone who treats your kitchen as hers? Whose kids spend more time in your house than their own?  What about the other extreme - you have no idea what your neighbours look like.  You may have seen them once, pulling out of their driveway and studiously turning their heads to avoid your tentative wave, but that's it.

I have a very good neighbour and our neighbourly relationship is perfect, although some may find it odd.  Both single women living alone, similar ages, we work in the same complex, belong to the same bookclub and usually see each other once a month.  At book club.  

"How is that possible?" you ask.  Surely we are an ideal match to have a kind of revolving door situation, doing many things together almost joined at the  hip?

Well, no.  We get on very well, have children similar ages, love the same books, have the same interests but we are both, individually, busy people.  It's proven quite difficult to fix dates to get together so now we grab the odd moments (loadshedding candle light drinks on my patio and a very relaxed Friday night swinging in her uber comfy 'egg' chairs after a delightful supper.)  Occasional messages checking that one or the other isn't the only person without water or power and a friendly chat when we pass in the street is pretty much it.

But here is why she's the very best of neighbours and we have such an excellent neighbourly marriage.  I'm out of the country for a while and got a message from her to ask about a strange car which has taken up residence in my driveway. Heart pounding, I ask her to give security a call to check it out, which she did immediately and kept me up to date with events as they unfolded. Nothing to worry about, just a cheeky neighbour taking advantage of additional parking but still, my fab neighbour noticed an oddity and went to the trouble to let me know, alerted security and followed through.

Now that's a wonderful human being and a special neighbour.  Close enough to notice and care, reserved enough to respect our mutual privacy.

Viva Sherreen at No 4!

The Orange Cake

Gotta love how easy it is to be connected across the globe today.  I’m old enough to remember airmail letters, those flimsy blue gummed sheets we used to fill with childish letters written to longed for grannies a world away.  The yucky tasting edges were licked and the missives sent on their way and in a few weeks, we’d have a reply.  This is how we kept in touch.  Phones were large,heavy, Bakelite instruments firmly placed on a special telephone table and never used – call rates were pricey and international calls absolutely out of the question!

A shrinking world has resulted in many moves, either ours or friends, to distant places and caused tears a’plenty.  However, digital cameras, wifi, social media, email, Skype, What’s App - all accessible when we are on the move or stuck at our desks keep us in strong contact and it’s a wonderful thing.  We share special moments, bad moments, tears, giggles, drama and the ordinary and when we finally meet up in person it feels as though we just have a week or so to catch up on, not a few years.  It also allows us to ‘introduce’ current friends with faraway ones so everyone is familiar when we’re all together again.

And so to this morning’s tale.  A dear friend moved to the opposite side of the country 5 months ago.  She’s a tad homesick and I miss her dreadfully, so we What’s App every so often to share an electronic hug, as it were.  It was fab to see her message arrive earlier and good to get caught up on the news, even though the distance at the moment is further than usual – she’s in Cape Town where she should be but I’m in Nairobi though of course, you wouldn’t know it from the amazing electronic miracle that we communicate by these days.

Listening with a heavy heart to her struggles in adapting from a very small town to big city, an image came to mind.  Her popular, has-the-neighbourhood-fighting-for-the-last-piece Orange cake.  Its famous in our ‘hood and much missed now she’s no longer here to take orders for it.  A rich, fresh crumbly cake, sunshine hued with strands of orange peeping through, melt in the mouth, leaving the zesty hint of orange and richness of cream to embrace the pleasure centres and dusted with icing sugar, it’s as gorgeous on the eye as it is in the tummy.

But it doesn’t start out that way.

In the beginning, her famous Orange cake is broken eggs, a sticky mess in a bowl which is thoroughly beaten before being poured into the baking pans.  Blasted by fierce heat it firms up and rises to it’s dazzling maturity.  Reaching out to be the best it can be, a shimmer of white sugar completes the perfect picture and perhaps an orange blossom or two is scattered playfully on top (well, we do live in the Lowveld, citrus country!)

Presented on a beautiful plate, it elicits oohs and ahs and is appreciated and savoured slowly and with absolute pleasure. 

Are we not like this striking work of art?  Sometimes we’re bashed and broken and at our lowest, the beating continues.  Then gets worse until we see no end in sight, the intensity of our troubles (emotional or physical) burning deep. 

But lo, something is happening.  Be it an unexpected, tiny something, a flicker of hope and light emerges and slowly, slowly, we emerge from our ‘oven’.  And in time, this ordeal has passed.  Whatever we feel about our troubles, there is no doubt that having survived them we are wiser as to our strength, our friends, our ability to cope. 

And that extra line etched into our foreheads, the lovely fold of flesh that has appeared at our waist, is a beautiful reminder that we are maturing into the best we can be.