A brown envelope inside a blue suitcase was the trigger for well-known Botrivier author Barbara Townsend to write her third book, The Colour of Flying: a childhood memoir.
On clearing out her mother’s belongings after her death she found a brown envelope containing her childhood drawings and some letters she had sent to her mother at the back of a cupboard. “I put the brown envelope inside the suitcase. I thought I couldn’t deal with it, but it was time. This as well as photos, artefacts and conversations I had with my brother when he was dying were all triggers, and once I started it just came pouring out.”
At the recent Botrivier launch of the book Townsend’s daughter Catherine asked her what it meant to write a childhood memoir as an adult. “What it means for me is going back to a time when the events I described here happened,” Townsend said, “and that was between the ages of 3½ and 10 years old. You can call them seminal, perhaps traumatic, perhaps exciting or momentous events and they shaped my life. That is why I wrote it, because I felt that in those years the things that happened made me who I am.
“I started in this kind of formal adult way of writing and all of a sudden there was this child’s voice that said, ‘Oh no. Listen to me. Write it from my point of view!’ Whenever I sat down to write, the child’s voice came, and that’s what I wrote down, possibly just as well, because it made it bearable to write about some things that were painful because children see things in eccentric, innocent humorous ways and so it was a very comfortable journey back into my life.”
Townsend read several extracts from the book, some of them very humorous, others very poignant.
Several women feature prominently throughout the memoir, Townsend’s mother, for instance. “My mother was a super-intelligent, driven and independent woman. She left to save herself. What a terrible price to pay.” There was Auntie B, an incredible, selfless woman who accepted and loved three clever, headstrong, independent children. An unnamed woman (Sister So and So) was not kind, but Townsend found refuge with beloved nanny Annie Khaje, who called her Missy B.
Townsend said she always stood outside her father’s office door, listening. “I was always listening. I was always waiting outside doors to hear news about my mother. If she changed her mind. If she was coming back. I was always waiting, always listening. I did a lot of eavesdropping.” In this way she also learnt wonderful words, many of them medical terms, as her father was a doctor. “My dad’s big thing was about educating us. He believed in good education and sound moral values about truth. He was a very good provider and we were safe, but he always reminded us that he was the captain of the ship.”
In the book Townsend recalls many of her childhood incidents with humour. “It is a kind of inherent humour as a survival tactic. It has never left me. “It is an intergenerational book. In the hands of a granny or a caring teacher it can be used to help a child in similar, or other, circumstances to find their voice.” Townsend still has contact with some of the childhood friends who feature in her book. One, a nursery-school friend, is now in Oxford, and Townsend plans to hand him a copy of the book.
The Colour of Flying was launched in Botrivier, Hermanus and Cape Town, with Napier, Swellendam, Greyton, Knysna, George and Montague planned for October. Buy one from Book Cottage in Hermanus, Liberty Books in Grabouw, Book Lounge and Clarke’s Bookshop in Cape Town or directly from Townsend on 083 315 9211.
