by Lisa-Jo | Jul 14, 2011 | Daughters, Family, South Africa, Travel
The year after my mother died I couldn’t sleep. I would dread bedtime, dragging feet toward the inevitable. Empty hours stretched ahead of me and I couldn’t see my way toward the sunrise; the night was dark and dense and filled with loneliness. I hated to be the only...
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by Lisa-Jo | Jul 12, 2011 | Family, South Africa, Travel
She’s the last patient of the day at my father’s medical practice and she’s pregnant with her first child. She’s polite. She nods in our direction. And she’s about to leave when my dad says, “you have to meet my daughter, Lisa-Jo.” She stops on a dime and her...
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by Lisa-Jo | Jul 11, 2011 | Inbetween, Kids, South Africa, Travel
My dad bounces along with Jackson on the back of an open Land rover. We’ve spent the day with elephants, meerkats, cheetahs and an assortment of snakes. The wind blows our chapped cheeks in this dry winter sunshine and our hair will be hard to untangle tonight. We are...
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by Lisa-Jo | Jul 8, 2011 | Five Minute Friday, South Africa, Travel
I’m in South Africa. And sometimes I can barely catch my breath at the ache and the wonder of it. Sometimes it feels like I can barely capture it in words. But I keep trying, with every spare minute. Want to take five minutes with me and just write without...
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by Lisa-Jo | Jul 7, 2011 | Callings, Faith, South Africa, Travel
My nearly six-year-old has felt the strong tug of his South African roots these last three years. If my heart is buried beneath the purple bower of a Jacaranda tree in Pretoria, his must be blooming in the back yard of my father’s house where he first crawled, walked,...
by Lisa-Jo | Jul 4, 2011 | Callings, Faith, Family, Kids, South Africa, Travel
He’s wearing his red pajamas with the puppy print and chasing the dog from room to room as determinedly as the dog chases her own tail. As if by the sheer volume of his voice and desperate pitch of his pleading she will condescend to sit next to him for more than five...
