Carol’s Column

Matric blues and a new era

I HUNG the dainty ankle socks beside the short green skirt on the washing line and a tear trickled down the bag under my left eye.

Then came the well-worn, short-sleeved white shirt and the ghastly green knickers. Like memorial flags, they rustled in the light breeze.

It was a poignant moment, for soon these items of clothing would be abandoned, never again to be worn by my teenage daughter who was presently sitting in her bedroom chewing pencils and swotting up the influence of the knock-kneed Afrikaner ox on the Great Trek.

It was difficult to believe that my young dark-eyed daughter would no longer be setting off to school, satchel in hand, clutching sandwiches and a hockey stick. Mind you, the way the matric exams were going, it was possible that she might be setting off to school next year.

Each day, she’d return home from writing, her kneecaps drooping, her mouth curled.

“So, how did it go?” I’d ask.

“Hmm, hmm,” she’d reply and disappear in her room. The tension in her arches was palpable. And it was infectious.

Only yesterday morning I twitched 34 times while brushing my teeth with the new cordless toothbrush my husband brought back from Vietnam.

I was in such a state that I poured coffee over the plant and gave my spouse Nu-grow fertiliser to drink. Not that he noticed and I must admit, he did perk-up.

Silence has become platinum in this house. Lest we disturb The Learner. Nobody plays the piano, the guitar or the record player. And even the TV has been placed under a blanket ban.

“What are you doing?” said my daughter when she came into the lounge and saw us huddled together under a blanket with the TV.

“We’re watching the last episode of ‘Orkney Snork Nie’,” I muttered as I adjusted the blanket around my husband. “And we didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Ma, you’re being ridiculous,” said my daughter. “I’m the one writing matric. Just because I have to suffer, doesn’t mean that you and Dad have to stop living.”

I was incensed. “We want to suffer. Matric is a family affair. This is not a solitary battle you are going into alone. When you write history, Dad, Barry, Ralph, Jamie and I will be right there beside you.”

“They won’t let you in,” retorted my daughter, rolling her eyeballs heavenwards.

“I mean figuratively, not literally,” I said as I crept back under the blanket to watch the last moments of “Orkney”.

“Why is it,” I said to my good friend Betty the following day, “that kids leave everything to the last minute. I told Nicky to start swotting five years ago. Do you think she listened?”

Betty sighed. “Boys are worse,” she replied. “For David, five minutes is a long time.”

“Next year, they’ll be out in the great big world,” I said. “Who will make my little girl pickled cucumber sandwiches, bring her green peppers and iced water in the middle of the night and massage her back when she’s weary?”

“Probably her lover,” said Betty nonchalantly.

I choked on my uvula.

“Nicky’s 17!” I exclaimed in horror.

“Precisely,” said Betty.

Meanwhile, matric is coming to an end and there are only four exams left.

I know how F W de Klerk felt when he put on his elephant-skin velskoen and decided to plunge across the Rubicon. This is the beginning of a new era.

No more lift-schemes or last-minute cakes.

No longer will I get paralysis of the derriere sitting on a stand watching netball, hockey, swimming or athletics. And no longer will I have to invent notes about sore throats, gastric flu and bubonic plague.

I ironed Nicky’s school skirt and a tear rolled down my cheek and settled on my double chin.

It’s not easy leaving a lift scheme for ever.

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