Part 1 The story of my Life

What follows in these tales from My life is a story I need to write. A story of life and drama that I long to write down. Not only for myself, but also as a reminder of things gone by. It is a story of forming and shaping and intrigue . But primarily it is a story about hope. If you choose to tread these pages with me, do so with reverence and kindness because one does not write these things lightly. If you are one who has the need to flirt a little with being nosy then perhaps you should pass by this story. For it is true and full. It needs not your judgement nor your advice. But if you want to read on, then read it as a novel should be read. For it is but just one story among many.

Part 1 – Oh to be Born when Man reached such Heights

It was a cold day in July 1969, when I was born. I was supposed to be a boy because according to granddad Finlay , “Finlays only had sons!”, and yet here I was. Small, beautiful and alive and very much a little girl. The fact that I was a girl, who should have been a boy, was a story that was retold me many times in my childhood.

I was born into very much a dysfunctional family with the polishing and gleam of what passed for functional and whole. I was born into a country that was ruled buy Apartheid and all the evils that knitted itself into the very fabric of each person. This larger reality was something that was to posses every one of us who lived in this beautiful land; no matter who we were and what our background.

The year I was born was the year that the first man walked on the moon. It was set to be a life full of exploration and adventure, if you believe in those kinds of signs.

My parents lived in a little cottage that my father had built. It was attached to my grandparent’s home with an interpleading door.  In a way we were tied to my grandparents by an invisible umbilical cord. Their thinking and life philosophy was to be one of the huge shaping influences in my young life and their lack of wisdom and realistic view of people was to be their shame and my near destruction.