Today I was pondering how and when my love for language started. My mind went way back to when I was a little girl. I loved writing poems and plays and plays that were written in a rhyming form. Mostly my sweet younger brother had to help me perform the plays for the rest of our family. My parents tried to encourage each of our natural gifts and talents, so my Mutti enrolled us in a variety of Speech and Drama courses. These courses helped build self-confidence and creativity in me.
Now a little background to those who don't know much about me. I grew up in South Africa and both my parents were German speaking. We attended a German Lutheran church, a private German school, and even had a German scout group. We lived in a little German bubble that was in turn floating in a mix of Afrikaans, English, Southern Sotho, Zulu, and many other languages and cultures. So, from a young age we were able to speak German, English, and Afrikaans. My Mutti was fluent in Zulu as well, as she had grown up around Zulu people. As you can tell, speaking more than one language is not very unusual for most South Africans!
My poems and rhymes were written in whichever language I needed to communicate in. I loved sitting and writing poems about my feelings, my experiences, or things that moved me. Bringing humor into my poems in one form or another was always a goal I aimed for. Sometimes I even reverted to writing poetry to teachers to get out of trouble. I vividly remember writing a poem to my high school Science teacher Mrs. McNamara, after our whole class had caused trouble. I know it had something to do with Physics formulas and she chuckled when she read it.
Another time I wrote the whole Nativity story in poem form and even included fitting hymns to be sung in between the various verses of the poem play. Our visitors that Christmas enjoyed it (I don't recall if my family appreciated it much). Crafting with words and molding them around a theme was something that I truly enjoyed and still enjoy now. My favorite crossword puzzle clues are the ones that say "rhymes with", as I seem to have a knack with those.
In the Christmas season of 2021, I was working so many hours in my retail job, that I started disliking people! I was so exhausted from trying to push through the crowds, trying to get my job done, all while the madding crowds were milling about me. The other reason I felt so overwhelmed, was that I was also filling in for another person who had left her job. One day when I came home, I felt that if I didn't write down my frustration in poem form, I would just quit my job. I needed comic relief! Within a few hours the poem was written and I was laughing. So today I leave you with that poem:
God bless until next time,
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