This is a direct translation of an article in our newspaper today. It is written , trying to make light of the “blackouts”/ “loadshedding” we are experiencing at the moment because our principal power supplier, Escom, is going bankrupt.
Hope my translation does it justice….
SMALL, BUT POWERFUL DEEDS TO LIGHTEN THE “load”
Loadshedding is not such a terrible thing, says my friend.
Her face is shrouded in darkness, all I can see from the opposite side of the table, is the light from the full moon shining through her hair like a halo.
Our supper is savoury wafers and cheese. A preferred meal for many women over 50 and nowadays also known as the “Escom Special”
I add some half melted ice cubes to her drink , wondering if my cellphone battery will last long enough for us to listen to my playlist of songs to the end. I am so tired of half-finished things. It feels as if everything has to be plugged in to charge in the few hours we have power to our disposal.
She starts reminding me about times in the past – the road we have travelled together.
And when someone who knows both the sunny and the shady parts of your past speaks, you listen.
“There was the day I was admitted to hospital unexpectedly and you took over the mommy-role for my kids. And that day I was crying buckets about … what was it again? . And the night you came to tell me the horrible news about your son”, she says.
My deep thinking friend sighs when she sees I am not completely getting her point.
“Each one of us get a chance to recharge the other, from time to time, to take of the load.”
A proverbial light goes on for me, just like a generator kicking in , and a surge of memories of shared burdens and pleasures looms up from the darkness.
How can I forget about the time when she arrived that woeful Wednesday and made me laugh at her lame jokes after lugging my woebegone body out of the house and up the mountain trial? Or the time she saved me from impending death- by- routine- boredom with a surprise picnic under the Mango tree at three in the afternoon?
It turns into a “and do you remember the time…” game and invariably lots of other people get included. Her dear mother, whose cooking could dissolve any lump in the throat or knot in the stomach. A lady who always had the exact right and apt message to forward – to brighten up the bleakest day. A sister , sending you the most beautiful old picture of your sweet baby daughter, at the moment when you feel like wringing her teenage neck. Or a beloved, who not only replaced your car battery for you , but left you a full tank of gas.
Small, powerful deeds. Sometimes your time to receive and sometimes to give.
I don’t say it out loud to her, but I am left berating myself for all the times I let the chance go by without “lightening the load” for someone. Maybe she feels the same, because both of us are dead quiet , sitting there in the pitch darkness.