barefoot and breathing live to love _ love to live

It’s always warm down South. The heat digs its sharp claws into you and refuses to let go. People around here don’t seem to keep track of time much. They also don’t seem to move around more than they need to. It’s one breath per moment, one moment per thought. I’m off to meet ’Grandma’, a visit that’s long overdue.

She waits for me on her crumbling porch, with her hearty, gap toothed smile... giving the passion-gapped Kaapse Klopse a good run for their money. It’s the kind of smile that gives growing older a successful facelift. Her deep wrinkles offer only a sneak peak into past adventures, the hardships and the joys that come with being alive.

We take shelter under one of the many fruit trees that stand out vibrantly like smarties in the tender, green forest surroundings. Grandma looks unaffected by the heat in her brightly orange dyed silk dress that tightly embraces her curves. She starts to pick rambutans. Thick veins sprawl out like sprouting roots on her hands, tirelessly pumping the essential juice of life through them. I close my eyes and can almost already taste the poignantly sweet, white flesh of the fruit on the tip of my tongue. I practice the little Thai I’ve picked up so far. Grandma practices some English phrases she picked up on Thai TV soaps. Mostly we rely on simple body language. And on silence. Teenage boys head down to the chanting river in their phakaomas, which will serve as their towels and then be transformed into hammocks after bathing.

Grandma looks at me, smiling the lines on her face into place. “Yuu sleep wif mee?“. Not expecting a reply, her hands stretch out and take hold of the woven bamboo mats with their familiar musky smell. Her arms bear dark marks, like oil stains, proud to be there and determined to stay. She unrolls two mats on the ground for us, then lets gravity take hold of her body. Her voluptuous bosom whispers a poem of fertility... similar to the one that the fruit bearing trees around us are busy chanting loudly. I can hear the boys splashing around, plunging into and pulling their limbs out of the moving water.

Our bodies lie aligned and our dusty toes touch. We close our eyes and breathe together. She giggles. I smile. My senses melt away into a powerful unison of colours, the sweet smell of our sweat flirting with fleshy rambutan, adolescent laughter in the distance, the calming silence of Grandma, and the constant humidity pressing down on us. What conquers all is an intense appetite for life.