To my husband: 19 March, 2015.
I was battling to find the right words to start this tribute. And then a dear friend – Fran Richardson, with whom I have been friends since we met on our second day at Rhodes University as 17-year-olds – wrote me a beautiful letter. In it were just the right words. She wrote:
“Your story is such a special one. The most unlikely couple who, for 32 years, showed the world how it could be done.”
She was right. We were the most unlikely couple – in every respect. He was 15 years older than me. He was Afrikaans and I was English. He was Christian and I was Jewish. He was a Bloemfontein boy with an army background; I was a liberal Jo’burg northern suburbs princess with an innate aversion to the army… and let’s face it, we looked like the odd couple. Even our daughters had a skewed view of how things are in the natural world. When we’d take them to the zoo, they’d point to the bigger animal and say that was the mommy, while the smaller animal was the daddy.
So many differences. But when it came down to it, it really didn’t matter.
Poen summed it all up best at our wedding reception. He got up to make the customary groom’s speech – you know the one, where the groom thanks everyone and says lots of nice things. Poen, being Poen, made a speech that was incredibly…I don’t know… it was incredibly Poen. He said: “There are people here tonight who don’t think this marriage is going to work. Well, leave us alone and we will show you that with our love and respect for each other’s cultures and beliefs, it will.” That was 32 years and one week ago, today.
I can still remember the first time I saw Poen… there, across the room. The Citizen’s newsroom. How unlikely was it that I’d fall in love, marry, have two beautiful daughters with that rather strange little man in a hideous, misshapen green jacket? But as I got to know him, I discovered that he wasn’t a little man at all. He was a big man with a huge heart; a man of enormous principle; a man who was gentle, and polite – in all the years we were together, I think I may have heard him curse or swear once, maybe twice. That from a man who ran a newsroom where the air frequently turned blue. He was a gentleman in the truest sense of the word. A mensch, as one of his former reporters said to me in a sympathy message I received last night.
Back in the Citizen’s newsroom, even before he became news editor, I would sit on his desk and pick his brain. Years later he said he thought I was flirting with him but I wasn’t. He just had so much knowledge and insight, and he was as generous in sharing it as he was generous in everything else.
It was this generosity that helped to shape the careers of so many of today’s prominent journalists. He certainly had an enormous impact on my development as a journalist, and as a writer and as a human being.
He was so proud when I finished my first novel. He even proof read it twice – even though I don’t think he had read more than a couple of novels in all our years together. A few weeks ago, I asked him to check the conversion of “A Beautiful Family” in its new format for a new ebook platform. He misunderstood and started to proofread my new novel, “When Time Fails”, which is still not quite ready for publication. When I got home from work, he had a long list of all the mistakes he had found and was really quite angry with the people who he thought had formatted the book for not picking up these errors. I explained that my new novel had never been checked by anyone, and that all the mistakes were mine. He just shook his head and said he would have to proofread it before it went into print… but now, that will not happen.
When it came to writing and the written word, Poen was a perfectionist and he gave of his expertise freely – literally. He edited his former biokineticist’s Master’s degree thesis free of charge, and only two weeks ago agreed to do the same for her PhD. He was also a perfectionist when it came to his clothes. After I managed to persuade him to get rid of that green jacket, his dress sense also improved although some of his old dressing habits – hangovers from his army days, I think – never changed – like putting on his socks and his shoes before putting on his pants, so as not to crease them. In the very early days of our marriage, I ironed a pair of his trousers. I never, ever did that again.
So, 32 years after Poen’s epic speech at our wedding I can look back and know that as unlikely a couple as we were, we were an almost perfect match. I say almost perfect because we didn’t live between the pages of a romantic novel. We had our ups and downs. We argued; we squabbled. We even went to bed angry with each other sometimes. But we always, always got over it – because he was as right for me as I believe I was right for him.
And he was right for our daughters. I truly believe that no children could have wished for a better father – a father who was totally and absolutely involved with them from the time they were born. He changed their nappies – this before the disposables-only era…provided I had folded them first. He went to their ballet concerts, their sports days, their netball matches, their swimming galas. He was on the PTAs and the Governing Bodies at their schools and on the Gauteng Synchronised Swimming Board when Laura did synchro. And just as so many journalists have noted on Facebook that he “protected” them , so he always protected his own daughters. Sometimes, possibly, over-protected. But that was only because he believed his daughters were precious, special individuals. He was right, of course. When the time came for them to choose husbands, he had set incredibly high standards. It took a while – no man could be good enough for his princesses but over the years, Poen came to love, respect and even to trust Marc and Joel. And Poen was exceptionally miserly with his trust. He and Joel got really close over the past few weeks while Joel was staying with us after Jess went to New Zealand. I could not have survived these past few days without Joel. To say he has been more than a son-in-law would be a huge understatement; he has been like a son – in fact, I don’t think many sons would have provided the love and support that Joel has given me. I am so grateful that we raised daughters smart enough to marry the men they did.
And, of course, Poen was totally besotted with his grandchildren. The highlight of his week was our skype video call to Laura and watching Chaya and Yehuda playing. He loved it when Chaya started to interact with us, insisting on showing her oupa what she had drawn or made at nursery school. And his absolute best was when Yehuda would copy him, making silly noises by banging his hand over his mouth.
I cannot begin to imagine what my life will be like without Poen. I cannot believe he won’t be there when I get home from work; I cannot imagine what it will be like to have to cook my own supper, every night; to go shopping for groceries; remember to pay the gardener or feed the street guards. We loved visiting Laura and Marc in Israel and exploring parts of that country together; we were hoping to go to New Zealand next year to visit Jess and Joel – now Poen will never get to New Zealand and my next trip to Israel will be on my own. I will have to get used to not asking him what he thinks about what Julius said, or whether the Proteas really could win the world cup (his money was actually on New Zealand); and I wonder whether I should continue to play his numbers in the Lotto – the same numbers he had played almost since the Lotto started.
But then I think back to all we have done together; all we have achieved together. And I thank God that He made Poen decline the job offer at The Mercury in Durban in January 1981 and join The Citizen instead so that I could share more than three amazing decades with a truly great man.
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