Define the word "real".

Some time ago, I was overhearing an argument taking place between my two children.  Usually, they get on.  They are, indeed, polar opposites of each other.  The one’s black is the other’s white.  The one’s yay is the other’s nay.  They agree on very little but they contrive to get on.  They are not biologically related, either to each other, or to me.

But this time it was blistering – the argument.  It was brought to a close when the younger one spat at the older these words - he said, “Anyway. You aren’t my real brother!”  The words stung his brother.  They certainly stung me.  I kept silent though.  I would wait my time to deal with it.

During the next week, I went searching through my photograph albums.  They are substantial in some areas, and exceedingly thin in others.  I was looking for, and found some pictures of my two brothers – the one 15 years older than me (and now dead), the other ten years older than me.

I waited a week and then called the family together.  I placed the pictures of my brothers on the coffee table and asked the children if they recognised any of the people in them.  They examined the old photographs carefully.  The one showed a youngish man swinging a cricket bat, the other showed a family of four siblings.  It had me as a baby, being held by my sister and with two brothers posing alongside her.

No, they didn’t recognise any of them, besides my sister.  These, I said, are my real brothers.  These are my blood brothers.  Have you met either of them, I asked?  They looked again at the pictures.  No, they didn’t think they had.  In fact, I said, they had met one of them very briefly, at my sister’s funeral last year.  Oh, they said, yes, they had. 

Had they ever heard these brothers of mine phone me about anything?  No, they hadn’t.  Did either of them call me on my birthday?  No, they didn’t.  For Christmas?  New Year? For any reason at all?  No, they said.  They were not aware of any contact.

Did they not think that was strange, I asked? Yes, they did think so.  I then went on to elaborate on the relationship.  My older brother had been kind to me when I was growing up – but we had lost contact early on and that connection was never re-established.  My younger brother seemed to want nothing to do with me from the start – whether it was because I was a rebel, or because he didn’t approve of my lifestyle, or my politics or my views, I did not know the reason.

But the upshot of it all was that my brothers had virtually nothing to do with me throughout my late adolescence, early adulthood and middle age.  Nothing!  They knew nothing of me.  They had made no effort to contact me.  When terrible and dramatic things had happened in my life, they were both sublimely uninvolved.  I dealt with exile, return, arrest, passport removal, divorce and a suicide entirely without them.  My relationships were unknown to them.  My triumphs and my tragedies, my joys and my sorrows – all passed them by.

These were my “real” brothers.  These were people who share significant elements of my DNA.  They are my blood relatives.  On the other hand, there is someone with whom I have grown up.  A friend – and we have been friends since the first year of High School.  We could not be more different.  We have very different views on things, very different positions.  We argue, when we want to, like hell.

But this man has been present in my life.  Every step, every fumble, every fall and every achievement.  I asked them if they recognised him?  Yes, they said, they did.  Does he call me ever?  Often, they said.  Have you met him?  Many times, they said.  This man is not related to me in any way.  He shares nothing of my DNA.  But this man is my real brother.  This is the man I can rely on, not to agree with me, but to support me – no matter what. Which of them, I asked my children, would they think I should consider to be my real brother?

My children were staring at me with wide eyes and open mouths.  I am sure this is not the last time we will have conversations around this matter – because I believe it is a hugely important one to have.  But I think they did get the salient point, that it is not how you are related, biologically, that matters at all. Rather, it is how you behave.

Christmas in Fairyland

Joshua - Xmas 2004

I have said often, that the world isn’t divided North and South; or Gay or Straight; or Black of White. The world is divided between those people who have children and those who do not. It is as simple and as straightforward as that. If you don’t have children, you simply cannot imagine what life is like with them around.

Let me start at the beginning. My partner of 12 years, Leon, was broody from the day I met him. And when your partner says they want children - achingly, desperately, completely – you either shake their hand firmly and wish them a nice life, or you get used to the idea. I had never considered children. (Well, I suppose I might have, briefly, when I was married to a woman – but the thought soon perished, along with the marriage.) And then suddenly, at the age of 45, I was faced with some extremely uncomfortable prospects: Nappies! Projectile vomit! Teething! It is, you will agree, rather strange, when most other Gay boys in Cape Town are driving around in cabriolet splendour and planning their next holiday on a little known Greek Isle with beautiful local waiters.

Indeed, when I see primped gay boys sitting at coffee shops around Cape Town, with the time to look delicious and lovely, I sometimes ask myself what is different between them and us as we are now? I was never the natty dresser. I was never the theatre diva or the intellectual guru. I have, mostly, just trundled on with my life, and been Gay as well.

But with children, all that calm and relaxed way of life changes in a flash. Because a baby doesn’t care whether you are Gay or not. They are not interested in whether or not you look your best or whether there is anyone out there to impress. Babies want nappies changed and food put in their mouths and sleep. So, Gay or Straight, Lesbian, Transgendered, Bi, whatever ... it really doesn’t matter at all to the child. All they need is love and care. And for that, they pass no judgement on you, just so long as it is there.

Take other things, like Christmas for instance. Pre-children, Christmas was a bit of a sentimental chore. You bought the statutory soap-on-a-rope and you wrapped it, gave it, chewed your way through the turkey and felt stuffed on the pudding. And that was that for another year.

Post-children, it is something else entirely. It starts with lies and threats about what Father Christmas will or won’t bring - round about June – and this rather fatuous attempt at bargaining continues, unrelenting, until the Christmas Eve. And it ends with very expensive plastic toys which seldom make it intact until the end of the day.

But in the middle there is a rediscovered world. A world of involvement and excitement and anticipation. A world before lies are exposed and half-truths suspected. A world where adults are trusted entirely for what they promise. It glitters. It gleams. It shines.

Every year, we have a ceremony, in our house. The Christmas Tree gets dressed. The lights are wound around it, the bells and the baubles and the glitter-encrusted stars are carefully hung on the tree by all of us. And the last thing we do, in this little ceremony of ours, is that the Angel is placed on the top of the tree, by our eldest child, Gabriel, his namesake. And then we all stand back, and we switch on the lights. They twinkle and pulsate. And the sheer magic of Christmas is there again.

Christmas had always seemed to me as a Gay man, to be a celebration of something I would forever be an onlooker to. It is, after all, about a woman giving birth to a child. And this was not something I was reasonably expecting in my life. So I was essentially a voyeur to the whole event. I experienced Christmas from the outside. It was nothing unhappy, but just strangely irrelevant to my life.

That is simply not the case any more. The scales have fallen from my eyes and I have been blessed with another glimpse into the purity of a child’s world. Oh, believe me, it isn’t always sweetness and joy - but for that moment, when we switch on the lights on the Christmas tree and they shine in the eyes of my children, I understand, fleetingly, momentarily, the joy of birth – the hope of the future. Could it be a glimpse of the divine?

Protecting our children

I grew up in suburbia in Johannesburg in the 1960s and '70s. Apartheid was at its height. White people were safe and black people were not. And black people didn't come to bother us much in the suburbs, because they had to live "elsewhere".

In this idyllic white world in which we lived, I can remember having freedom of the streets. At first, I was expected to walk to Nursery school and back home - on my own. It was four or five fairly decent sized blocks away. That would have made me 6years old, or so.

My mother didn't trust me entirely at that age, and I found her once, hiding, dressed in green, in a hedge opposite the road. It was most embarrassing - but her motives were pure. She wanted to see for herself that I looked left, looked right, looked left again before crossing the road. And when she was satisfied that I was doing that, I walked there and back on a daily basis, on my own.

As friends in the neighbourhood, we played on the streets, on our bikes. We had wars withe rival groups. We walked to primary school - most of the time alone. Later, I rode to primary school on a bicycle.

I remember this now, because my children are virtually incompetent on the roads. And. I have to say that we have made them to be like that through ensuring that there is an adult with them, every second of their day. They are taken to school, they are delivered home after school and the rest of the time, they are never left to their own devices.

I am not so certain that this is a good thing. Perhaps it may be a necessary thing in a world of child predators and human traffickers, but is it actually a good thing in the development of the child? The fact is, they are growing up in a world where they almost never have to take control of their own lives. They depend on adults all the time. And they simply expect that an adult will be there to deal with whatever potentially dangerous situation in which they may find themselves.

Of course, there is the other extreme. In setting up Public Viewing Areas for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, throughout the Western Cape Province, one of the things we have found (I have to say to my astonishment) is that parents simply come and dump children at the site, and then disappear, leaving the children there for the entire day, unaccompanied by any semblance of an adult. The risks of this are, of course, enormous, but it does not seem that the parents are in any way concerned. What is true, however, is that those children learn street savvy, fairly early on. Probably too early and probably far too much in too many areas. To compare them with my children would be chalk versus cheese. But, in my opinion, both are disadvantaged.