cape flats' mothers and new year's eve

I called a friend of mine who like me has long since escaped the physical and other confines of the Cape Flats. What was she doing on New Year's Eve? Well before anything could be done the house had to be cleaned. A lesson from her mother - you can't greet the new year with last year's dirt. We laughed to how successful our mother's indoctrination had been. This was a lesson I had also learnt from my mother. And over the years I've always adhered in varying degrees to this once strictly enforced doctrine. So as I sit down to write my final blog post for 2013, my washing is drying in the hot summer sun and the vacuum cleaner is on the ready to suck up the last of 2013's dirt.

Next to my cup of tea, my beautifully annotated examination-copy thesis sits. I was determined to finish off 2013 properly - yes I've completed all the corrections and produced a cover sheet detailing how I attended to them. This will accompany the final, revised version of the thesis when I send it along to the Research School at the very start of 2014. So it's finally over; the PhD.

This holiday period felt so light, I felt so light without the worry of the PhD (save for the corrections of course). Thinking back to last year this time, I was in such a different emotional space - I could taste the heaviness that enveloped me. I'm grateful to be able to see things differently now and tell a different story about 2013 - the year I finished my PhD. Reflection involves confronting and acknowledging the happy and sad, the good and the bad - these two elements are always present, they just take up different amounts of space at different times. So my PhD and the year I finished it, has been beautifully fashioned by both the good and bad, happy and sad. And I'm very content with that realisation, outcome, narrative.

Part of my pre-2014 cleaning will involve clearing up all the now superfluous papers and notes that represented that final push before the viva. My study must be ready to embrace all that 2014 has to throw at it and I think my mother, if she could comprehend it all, would be particularly proud of my cleaning efforts on this hot and windy new year's eve.