Parallel Lives

Today is my day off. I am sitting at home waiting for my bath to draw, the water trickles slowly from a hosepipe attached to the hot tap in the kitchen. Over the past few days we have organised plumbers and electricians to carry out repairs at the Germiston City Hall but we haven’t got round to phoning someone to repair the geyser that serves our bathrooms at home. I have not bathed for one entire day and my daughter wouldn’t dream of stepping out of the house without having bathed. Everyone shouts, “Dad, phone the plumber!” Mark and I look at each other, but we daren’t say, “There are thousands of people who haven’t bathed for a week.”

I want a day of thoughtlessness, but that is a tall order. My mind churns with thoughts about home and the displaced at City Hall. I’m not sure if it’s possible to delineate the lives I’m living at the moment.

Mark cannot find where he placed his wedding ring last week. Every day he asks our housekeeper to look for it. Helen at City Hall is happy that we have organised a school for her children, but her brow is creased with concern that she hasn’t heard from her husband all day; someone else is answering his phone when she dials his cellphone number. It frustrates me that I cannot find resolutions for either of them. I’m the type of person who likes to gather up all the loose ends and tie them together so that there is no thread left dangling. At the moment there are lots of threads that don’t seem to stretch to a solution.

I go shopping, loading the trolley with supplies for a week. Our children have complained. “It’s all very well to see the rest of the country has food but we haven’t got a thing to eat,” they chorus. I load up meat, veges and fruit wondering if the little girl at City Hall with the white patches on her skin has a vitamin deficiency. I don’t buy biscuits. I’m eating antacids by the handful these days, so the lack of white sugar will be favourable to my health.

A young mother allows her two year old pink princess to buy a bag of jelly beans, but she doesn’t allow her to take the liquorice as well. I am so grateful to witness one affluent mother discouraging excess. It’s silly, I know, but I can’t help measuring everything we own against the humanitarian crisis at City Hall.