Now that my departure is becoming more imminent, the boys become increasingly unsure about our separation. In some way or other we’ve been together for centuries. Of course, I’m also scared. The geographical divide between us will be vast: Atlanta to Cape Town isn’t a mere hop, skip and a jump. It could happen that we go through our whole lives never crossing paths, never meeting, always feeling a dull emptiness in some uninhabited region of our psyches.
Tonight we waltzed above the earth, an irresistible pas de trois. Three little angels we were, a hiss of white chiffon, lost in time and space, we leapt, Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube’ resounding through the atmosphere. We jetéed forty times, from raining cloud to raining cloud. Finally, we struck perfect arabesques for the birds and angels to see. Oh, I shall miss those two.
We’ve been conspiring about a way for them to join me in my new life in Cape Town. Mind you, I think Rahla and Jason might get rather a shock should I pop out accompanied by an entire kindergarten!
But we have this enchanted spell we’ve carried with us in our pas de trois across the centuries. I can’t imagine living an entire life without them.
Naturally we haven’t always been siblings. During the Spanish Inquisition we were lifelong friends. I was a Muslim silversmith, and the boys were a pair of Jewish craftsmen, all forced to flee Toledo. During the Russian Revolution we were aristocrats and had to flee again, this time from the Bolsheviks. During the gold rush I was their mother, and we had a circus travelling the country, but heavens, were they wayward sons! And there was I, a mother, a trapeze artist and fortune-teller with two wild boys to care for. Needless to say, we never did strike gold. But we had a fine old time.
I’ve got this yucky feeling that Rahla will have a natural birth. The last time I was born it was via Caesarean – so much simpler. I came out stress-free and as pretty as a peach. After a natural birth I’ll be as wrinkled as an ooold man. Then I’ll have half a lifetime to smooth and straighten out before starting to wrinkle up all over again. But whichever way I’m born, this will be my most enchanted lifetime. I’ve waited to live this particular life for a thousand years.