Wish you were here

When I was little my father would sometimes take me and my little brother to a place that the English speaking natives of Cape Town, South Africa referred to as The Gardens.  I liked wearing my sailor dress and sunhat and always remembered to bring a brown paper bag filled with breadcrumbs.  

Our first stop was usually the dinosaurs at the National History Museum, where I'd stand and stare with a mixture of horror and fascination at the huge beasts tearing at each other and leaving bloody wounds. Then we'd stroll through the rose gardens, inhaling the perfume of a thousand flowers.  Voices speaking languages I couldn't understand blended with the buzzing of bees. Table Mountain, with its tablecloth of white clouds, loomed against the brilliant blue sky and served as the perfect backdrop to the roses in their gaudy summer splendor. 

Next, we'd continue along shaded pathways to the aviary, which housed a few scruffy parrots that refused to talk to me. I got a much more enthusiastic response from the pigeons and never tired of chasing them around the fountain, flinging breadcrumbs into the air, while my father sat on a wooden bench reading the Sunday Times. When the church bells announced it was time for lunch we'd head for the shady, outdoor cafe, where we'd eat toasted chicken mayonnaise sandwiches and sip tall, frothy strawberry milkshakes under the stern gaze of a huge statue of Cecil John Rhodes.  

After lunch came the best part of all -- a visit to the hothouse. Inside this warm glass wonderland were hundreds of ferns, violets and orchids and all kinds of exotic plants, all growing and breathing together.  The air was thick and moist and sweet. Plants dripped from the ceiling and and sprang up between the pebbles on the ground.  My father would tell us that if we looked very, very carefully, we might be able to see a fairy. At night, he said, when the gates of the Gardens were closed and everyone had gone home, the fairies would come out from their hiding places and dance and play among the plants.  He would point to the delicate leaves of the ferns and velvety petals of the violets and explain how the fairies liked to curl up in them when they were tired of dancing. As hard as I looked I never saw one, but that didn't stop me from believing they were there. 

Years later and years ago, my husband and I took our six and four year old son and daughter to South Africa for a vacation and showed them where we'd spent our childhoods. I was surprised and delighted that the Gardens was just as I remembered it.  My son loved the dinosaurs and my daughter squealed with delight as she chased the pigeons around the fountain.  

Then I told everyone I was going to take them to a very special place -- the hothouse.  But when we reached the spot where it used to be there was only the outline of what had once been a magical glass dome. I felt a rush of disappointment, then for a few seconds I felt slightly dizzy and had to sit down on the grass.  I wondered what had become of the orchids, the ferns, and the violets. And of course, the fairies. 

Luckily the cafe wasn't changed at all. It was long before the age of cell phones and texting photos, but if they'd been around I'd have taken some photos of the kids eating toasted sandwiches and drinking frothy pink milkshakes and sent them to my dad.  Wish you were here, Dad, I'd have texted.  The Gardens is as beautiful as it always was.  We all love you so much.