A convenient truth

My seven-year old, Abigail, lost another tooth this morning. It was hanging by a thread of connective tissue to her gum and caused her great discomfort all week. Worst of all, it prevented her from chewing gum, her favourite pastime.

She chased me round the house all morning with a soggy bit of tissue and finally I stooped to wrap my fingers around the offending chunk of enamel and pulled. A grimace, followed by a bloody spit, and it was all over, bar the excitement of putting the tooth under the pillow and waiting for the Tooth Fairy to arrive with R5 in exchange for the loot.

Now, I am one of those Montessorian mothers who does not encourage too many fairy tales.  I will not allow Santa Clause/Father Christmas/St Nicholas to do for me what I can do myself on Christmas Eve: put the present under the tree and eat the cookies. The Brothers Grimm are always mitigated after the final lie: "And they lived happily ever after." It goes like this:

"Did you enjoy that, Babsi?" I ask, using a well-placed term of endearment.

"Yep," she says, looking distracted. Mine is one of those little girls who prefers jumping up and down on the bed to a bed-time story.

"Of course, it's just make-believe. There's no such thing as a talking wolf or fairies, right?"

"Okay."

There is one exception, however, to all our reality checking. The Tooth Fairy. I did not introduce her/him to our home and consciousness. Abigail did. She found out about her/him from school and a movie featuring Dwayne Johnson. I tried my best to change her mind about her/his existance, but there was something about this that made it a convenient truth: the Tooth Fairy puts cash under your pillow.

Back to this morning. Abigail wraps the bloody tooth in toilet paper and places it next to me. I am on the phone. I acknowledge crumpled toilet paper with the part of my brain not focusing on language. I pick it up and throw it in the not-so-flushed toilet.

What followed can only be described as the joys of motherhood. Abigail was distraught and proceeded to put her hand, followed by her forearm, followed by her braided hair into the toilet to retrieve the tooth. I scream, she screams. I scrub her hands with soap and then apply a generous amount of hand sanitiser.

Ten minutes later the tooth is under her pillow, waiting for a New Year visit from the Tooth Fairy and an earning of R5. This will be spent on Dentyne Sugar Free Strawberry chewing gum, no doubt.

I have my own stash of convenient truths: one being that no matter how much I indulge over Christmas, it will all change on January 1st, when an overdose of discipline and will-power will undoubtedly kick in and I will start my healthiest, slimmest year ever.

Somehow, I know, that unless I make some inconvenient changes, the Tooth Fairy will win this round. She (wink) will definitely be making the rounds this New Year's eve.

Happy New Year everybody!

My Justin Bieber

My Justin Bieber was Trevor Rabin. If you know instantly who that is, I can assume a number of things about you: you are either a middle-aged South African with excellent taste in music or a middle-aged American with excellent taste in music.

Trevor was a rock star in every way. Tall and handsome with shoulder length hair and a ready smile, he had the voice of a cigarette-smoking angel and the ability to write songs that said exactly what I felt about everything, all the time. I loved him. I thought about him all the time, mouthed the words of his songs with precision (but struggled with memorizing the times-tables) and believed without doubt that he would one day be mine.

You see, I truly believed that my love for him would one day mysteriously draw him to me. I would be at his concert and our eyes would meet and he would know that we were destined to be together. There could be no other possibility and there was no alternative plan.

Rabbitt circa 1974 - Trevor second from the left

Trevor Rabin was the front-man for an awesome South African band called Rabbitt. This was the 70's so we only saw them on television and live concerts, if we were fortunate enough to have parents who allowed us to attend actual rock concerts. I was too young in the 70's and my parents were too strict, but i could not wait to be 18. This is when I would attend a live concert and I would make all Trevor's dreams come true, in an instant.

There was no twitterverse to notify us of his every move or a facebook fan page for Rabbitt. We were called, er, fans. Today perhaps, we'd be ... Bunnies? Not as catchy as Beliebers or Little Monsters, perhaps, but hey, neither Justin nor GaGa were conceived when we loved Rabbitt. This was a magical time when stars were just that. Stars. Untouchable, unreacheable and mysterious. The only thing you really knew about them was their music and their songs and whatever they chose to reveal in the occasional interview. 

But for all the mystery, my one true love, Trevor Rabin, would find me.

I don't really know when I stopped believing. A some point boys became young men, with clutching, clumsy hands and beer-breaths. They were better friends than boyfriends and soon even Rabbitt  was replaced by Michael Jackson, Bob Marley and Tears for Fears (the greatest 80's band, ever).

Rabbitt was never welcome on the world's stage because of sanctions so Trevor Rabin left South Africa and joined Yes, another great band with a famous number one single Owner of a Lonely Heart which oozed nostalgia every time it played on the radio. In 1984, Yes received a Grammy award for an instrumental piece called Cinema. In the same year, Trevor Rabin was severly injured and endured a splenectomy after a swimming accident. Unbelievably, a very large woman dive bombed him in a hotel pool and landed on his midsection, causing extreme injury to his abdomen.

Trevor Rabin circa 1984

Clearly we were never meant to be.

Trevor continues to be a prolific songwriter, writing a myriad of film scores and collaborating with many outstanding musicians. He has been married to the same woman for thirty years. I suspect she is a very thin person.

This week I attended the much anticipated Justin Bieber concert at the Cape Town Stadium. I took my beautiful daughters Abigail (7.5) and Simone (25.5). I made our t-shirts and braved parking nightmares and impossible crowds to watch him render his hits with all the talent and grace he has been blessed with. It was a squeaky-clean concert, professionally executed on almost all counts, and we had a lot of fun. I was glad to have given Abigail her first Big Concert experience. The scrawny guy is really very talented. But all I wanted to do was put my arms around him and give him a big hug, tell him it would all be OK in the end, sit his bony bum at my table and offer him a great big plate of spaghetti with Nonna's secret sauce and watch him eat till he was full and saucy in the face. And tell him, again, that it will be OK in the end.

I cannot imagine the pressure of being that young, that famous and that scrutinized  I knew what he'd had for supper the night before the show, just by standing in the queue at MacDonalds. But this is his dream and, like he said during his show, if you will just believe, anyone can go from singing in their single-mother's kitchen to doing whatever you dream of doing. I almost believe him. 

Trevor Rabin in a recent pic -
still a handsome dude

I still admire Mr Rabin. But I have no regrets about not becoming his missus. I have lead my own rock star life. My children think I am impossibly beautiful. I get hundreds of messages on Mothers Day, mostly from other people's offspring. One of my children believes I am a gifted chef (she says she has her own cookbook on speed-dial) and the other believes my singing is heavenly. I am living my dream (even though it is dream number 3). 

Abigail, your dreams will change. You may really want something and not get exactly what you want, or not even know you want something, and get it anyway. In the words of another rock-star, Bono, God always answers prayer. Sometimes, His answer is no. 

And as for me, I am still a Belieber Believer.