‘Write about something beautiful as if you have never seen it before.’ This time two weeks ago I was pondering the homework set in my writing class as I headed out for a run. As always, I was thinking about how to get more words down on ‘the Rietfontein project’ and so I stopped to look at the colour-washed black and white image of the farm hanging on the landing for inspiration. As you know, it is next to a group of family portraits. There is the one there of you, a black and white studio photograph. Your hair is neat and styled, your skin like porcelain, and your dark eyes are smiling with you. People always say you were beautiful Mom, really beautiful. It is true.  

Not that this ever mattered to you. You’ve never been one for appearances or keeping up with the Jones’. Of course, it is not that you do not see beauty. Before the sudden and unfair deterioration of your physical health, when you weren’t on your knees in the garden, you were busy at ‘the shop’, making beautiful bouquets for people through good times and bad. So beautiful was your work that you even won Best on Show at Chelsea in 1995, something that left you speechless in disbelief.

I contemplated writing about that beautiful photograph of you for homework but soon shelved the idea. Too cheesy, too sentimental, I thought, as I donned my running shoes and set off towards the Wandle. 

In Morden Hall Park that morning, there was a fine low mist slung across the wetland and the sun was rising into a watery blue sky that held the promise of a late summer’s day. 

It is already that time of year again when the webs of the Orb-Weaver spiders become most visible to the human eye, revealing their abstract shapes glittering with dewfall, as if by magic. Suspended between the sharp edges of a thistle and the elongated heads of the typhus bulrushes, the perfectly formed web only revealed itself once I had given up searching for the kingfisher. The shy bird, which I have only spotted on one other occasion on the Wandle, had disappeared into the rushes in a flash of iridescent blue. 

Mom, do you remember the kingfisher at Cecil Fisher Road? I forget which of the cats dragged him in but he stayed in the playroom for a day, maybe two, until we set him free. You said we were lucky to get so close to a kingfisher and we’d never forget it. You were right. 

Aside from expletives about the f***ing idiots who leave beer cans, cigarette butts and used condoms strewn across this urban treasure, the rest of my walk-run was uneventful. However, it did give me time to think about the homework and as the weekend wore on words began to appear on the page, as if by magic.  ‘It happens every year in September and October…the stuff of tall stories and old wives’ tales …a symbol of fate, destiny and infinity…life spun, death sudden… a flimsy presence in an unpredictable world’.

I never finished the piece about the simplicity of the spider’s web and the flash of the kingfisher blue because of the call from Molly on Wednesday afternoon last week. There had been another fall but this time you didn’t bounce. But I’m not going say anything more about that now because it makes me too angry, so angry that I’ve kicked a few things this week. I know what you would say if you could but don’t worry Molly did it for you. She said: ‘Don’t kick things Pam, you’ll break a toe. Please try to stay calm.’ 

It has been hard to stay calm but last night after writing in my journal I turned to the Poetry Pharmacy and, if by magic, it opened on page 100. 

Condition: Longing for Beauty. 

Prescription: Endymion by John Keats 

You may know the first line of the poem that begins A thing of beauty is a joy for ever…and continues.

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

As I lay in bed reading the words of William Sieghart, the author of this tonic of a book, a calm descended like the morning dew. 

‘However, gloomy and miserable your life might be,’ he writes, the beauty of the world is one thing you can rely upon…It can take you from despondency to hope.’

It is something I know you believe, and so I believe this too. 

The past week’s homework was to write about a memory and try to access the child’s voice. In all the turmoil, the only words have been able to find are ‘I want my Mom. I want my Mom.’  

It pains me that when I arrive in Durban (if the bloody fit-to-travel Covid test ever turns up this morning) on Sunday, I will not be able to cut fresh flowers and bring them in to cheer you up. It is spring in South Africa and I could probably find agapanthus, cornflowers, a tiger lily or two, some anenomes and maybe a few sprigs of lavender to help you relax.

I had planned to plant the bulbs I bought last Saturday at Morden Hall this week. When I bought them, I was thinking of something you have often said: ‘When you are troubled, my girl, dig your troubles into the soil.’  But I’ve run out time. I’m sure the boys will do it for me when it stops raining and they will be here in March for the spring, as the spiders’ webs are every year in September and October, as if by magic.  We will send you the photographs.