I’m a minimalist.
Less clutter serves me well, because all you need to do is be. We tend to live a lot in the past and the future, and we don’t really honour the present as much as we should. For me, our biggest challenge in the world right now is to find contentment within ourselves, because there is just more and more on offer every day, and it taxes the mind. I think living more simply is very generational. My parents were post-war babies and it was a time of deprivation, so for them it was very important to be surrounded by whatever their perception of wealth or luxury was. We grew up with that mindset, thinking you must have a house, you must have a car and you must have a degree. Indirectly, we were socialised to believe that that was what gives you stature. And that’s what’s great for me about this cycle of my life: I can honour that and understand the sociology of it, but I know now that I can make my own choices.
magazines and read. The women I discovered there – Katharine Hepburn, Coco Chanel and Simone de Beauvoir – had this mystery about them. They always looked a certain way; they always had red lips. Is it a weapon, that crimson pout? Is it a swipe of assertion of the woman you are? I just think it’s something very alluring. It has certainly become my defence mechanism.
My dad was a farmer, so I went to a little farm school. We didn’t wear
uniforms, and on sunny days we’d walk in the veld instead of sitting in the classroom. For a long time, I felt that my circumstances growing up didn’t equip me well, but reflecting on it now, those authentic experiences that you don’t necessarily appreciate when you are there are the ones that shape your very existence. As a child, you never really pause to try to understand things, but it stays in your DNA and your frame of reference. My mother taught me simplicity and resourcefulness. She always
I never had a maternal instinct
‘
Deciding to age naturally is a difficult journey to take, because we are conditioned to judge the external.
practised some kind of craft, whether it was knitting or sewing or cooking. Looking back, I didn’t really value her skills then. It was the late ’50s – an era when women were kind of housebound – and I always associated her crafts with being a hausfrau. Over the years I’ve come to realise that she was actually very mindful in the way she did things, and she was a great creative. What stands out for me is the fact that she never discarded anything without understanding that it had something else to offer. And that she made the best of her situation – she was a young woman, married with children and living on a farm, and she created a beautiful world for us from what was available to her. Growing up I wasn’t really allowed to wear makeup.
In those days the library was the only place where I could explore the world, so I’d sit for hours and page through
28 Fairlady/December 2017
or a need to get married and have a house and a dog. It was very tough for a very long time, because of friends and family and society at large. There are times when you feel that maybe you should succumb to the pressure, but I’ve never been able to do something just for the sake of it, just because it’s the norm. And I’ve never had any regrets. Ever, ever, ever. But it was tough for a long time. My parents were distressed about my unconventional life choices.
‘Why do you have to be so different?’ is a refrain I heard a lot over the years. ‘Why can’t you just be like other people?’ That caused a lot of… not problems, really, but a feeling of being alone. Even when I was a little girl, I didn’t want to wear pink frilly dresses, because I didn’t like the fabric; I didn’t like the fact that it was the norm.
’
My partner Deon and I have been together for 29 years. We are complete opposites and two fiercely
independent human beings – that’s the attraction. We acknowledge each other’s individuality, and space is of the utmost importance in our relationship. I think that’s how we’ve been together for so long – we acknowledge that. Deon also calls me out on things. It hurts and it makes me angry, but I need that – somebody who knows me so well that they will not be kind and who knows that I can handle the truth.