Heimwee

Abstract

Mom spends her last days in her room full of sky. High blue walls frame the windows that overlook the Indian Ocean. At this southerly juncture, the African continent digs a calloused heel into bleached sand. From the mixing bowl of the bay, salty pulses spill into this room crusting the windows with a permanent sticky rash Above my parents' be which faces the bay window that fronts onto the sea, a signed print of Sir Russell Flints fleshy nudes cavort in the silent waves, their pink curves now bleached blue after years of being caressed by sun-stroking days. On the desk in front of the window, is the old computer we brought for Dad one Christmas from our new home in New Zealand a decade ago. Our reluctant three small children once shared its leaden anatomy among our five suitcases. They would rather have carried their own treasures for a summer holiday to their homeland.The computer had been received with a mixture of pleasure and polite panic. My parents had smiled aghast at the modern artefact. But if it was not for this piece of modernity, my Dad and I may have lost each other across the watery divide that separated our continents: Antipodean and African.