When I was a young teenager some people came to our school to give a talk about HIV and all sorts. There we all were, sitting in the great hall, ears open, eyes wide, the odd snigger from someone who probably wasn’t finding it funny but was overcome with embarrassment at the topics being discussed. If I was on a trajectory to behaving in a promiscuous manner, that session smacked me good and proper. Years later, people we know overseas who worked/lived close to a well-known clinic specialising in sexually transmitted diseases told us of the smart, beautiful, “they-must-have-perfect-lives” people they saw going in and out of that building. Some things are respectors of no man. To this day, there has only ever been one man for me, but whenever I have had pregnancy blood work done and it comes back with an HIV negative result, I think to myself, “Oh, that’s wonderful!” I have seen the eyes, the sores, the skin discolouration, the orphans, the weight loss, the mind games, the jobs lost, the lives cut short. I know that treatment drugs have come a long way, but is it worth it? The price to pay seems far too high.
We live in what must be one of the most outstanding climates in the whole world. Our summers are spent wearing minimal clothing and frolicking in pools and if our winters are ever severe, it is not long lived. We do not suffer from vitamin D deficiencies or Seasonal Affective Disorder, but we do get sunburnt. A sprinkling of freckles is charming but red skin, peeling, chapped lips and wrinkles a decade earlier than our peers in cooler lands get them are not exactly things to be proud of. My darling dad went off to the skin doctor not so long ago and came back looking like a wounded soldier. No word of a lie – all the suspect bumps and sun damaged areas of skin were cut out so that when he undid all the bandages, the quantity of stitches made us gasp. “Look at your grandfather!” I cried, informing my children with my eyes alone that when I tell them to put on a hat or a shirt or get out of the pool, it is for good reason, not because I want to spoil their fun. So much damage is done when we are young and feel invincible, and then we pay for it later. If only our older, wiser selves could live, too, in our young bodies. We could avoid many a scar.
A couple of days ago, our solar power was struggling with the amount of cloud cover and we needed to turn off the inverter to conserve some power for the night ahead. We ate dinner by candlelight and then I read an amusing section of Anne of Green Gables to us all using my head torch for light. In this chapter, Matthew was “covered with embarrassment” at finding a lady clerk behind the counter instead of the usual man and the lady’s bangles undid him in “one fell swoop.” He bought a rake and ten kilograms of brown sugar instead of what he went in for and we all chuckled, finding ourselves quite delighted by this man who we feel we know personally. I have been worried about the way our evenings are going. There are always so many things to attend to on an admin level it seems and the older children have screens, and although the content of what is holding our attention is good enough in and of itself, I see us going off into our different worlds. Instead of playing board games or talking or reading books beside one another companionably, we are disconnected from one another. This dark night gave us back something I have been missing. The children and their daddy snuggled onto the bed, under the mosquito net, and read aloud some more until most of them went to sleep. No light, no internet, no power and no distractions slowed us down and pulled us together. Anne Voskamp writes in her book, ‘Way Maker,’ that we are either in bondage or we are bonding. I went to a talk on addictions once, and they spoke of the power of connection in breaking addictions. What if we lived lives of intentionally connecting with others, rather than turning inwards and isolating? Rather than turning to tablets, eating, sex, alcohol, screens, relentless fitness pursuits, video games or continual career advances to dull the ache that begins to gnaw. If connection can begin to topple addictions, then I want my family looking at one another and talking to one another and doing fun things together a lot BEFORE any one of us turns to other things to find relief from any pain we might have experienced. The days are full, often genuinely busy, but they should always hold room for friends too. So often, in the discussions and sharing of ideas, the space to speak and be heard, we come to our own solutions; what seemed like an insurmountable mountain suddenly becomes insignificant. It’s also in this space that we see ourselves through the eyes of others and there is often truth there that we have overlooked or not understood. It’s in the gathering that we understand who we are in the bigger picture, and in that place we are not so vulnerable as when we are alone.
So please, don’t give your body away easily. What I wrote about in the first paragraph is just one of the areas you may need to find a cure for if you do. Enjoy the sun, but behave wisely and remember that “everything in moderation” is not bad advice. Lastly, if you are becoming a bit of a loner, shake yourself out of that comfortable place where you don’t have to answer to anyone. Find some good people who you admire, and do some life together. Living life connected to others is messy but in that place of accountability, team work and mutual respect, so many wounds are healed. The way we live today really does affect all our tomorrows. The virus never replicates, the sun only benefits and human traumas and troubles cannot bind us up when we live in such a way that there will be no need for a cure in time to come.
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