Reflections

The “blowout” as I like to think of it finally happened on a rainy Tuesday night in November. The miserable weather that night, I thought then, had in some way caused it. Our big fight which was when looked back upon, nothing more than a build-up of differences that either of us normally would have shrugged off without much effort.

It was amongst other things about Karren’s mother. A sixty-year-old early retired house wife who had too much time to dabble in other people’s lives, especially that of her daughter. To be honest before Rebecca I did not have the best of track records with mother in laws, or rather would be mother in laws. My record was poor as my previous two girlfriend’s mothers did not think much of me to put it lightly. I was expecting more of the same of Rebecca and I was not disappointed.

I worked as I freelance writer for a small-town newspaper, the Hartbeespoort Sun and Karren had just started her first year of teaching English at primary school. We had big dreams and cared little for any ideas that life might not be as easy as we imagined it to be. Sure, we were ready to admit that there would be hurdles in our paths, but we were all too blindly determent to see them as mere footnotes on our way to our goals. We wanted to buy a house first, in one of the most untouched parts of our beloved Hartbeespoort. Siting nestled roughly twenty minutes’ drive from Pretoria, Hartbeespoort was the place were me and Karren fell in love. It was also the place where we first became conscious of the truths of life, or at least we saw a glimpse of it. We hadn’t talked about children yet, but I think that it came up more and more in our minds as we grew together. Of course, it was thought going from the start, lord knows free-lance writing was the kind of work that could leave you all but penny less for months on end. Karren was the only one basically earning a steady income. This made me feel guilty more times than I could remember. Partly because the people we knew and the society we lived in still believed that the man should be the main provider of the house hold. But to be honest I still believed some of it myself and that was why I felt guilty. Karren was supportive of my dream to become a full-time writer, but the financial constraints did take its toll on our relationship, and for a while before the blowout I believed it would end our relationship.

It turns out it did not, like I said, it was just one off the main causes.