I often forget myself.

It happens to the best of us: life gets in the way. School years begin, traffic intensifies, work responsibilities pile up. I relax into the spaces I navigate within this stubbornly, unrepentantly unequal city. Take today for instance. I was at a sporting event at my son’s school. Low stakes enough event. I get up to capture pictures and then honour the tradition of parents everywhere and scream encouragement at him as he runs down the track. My son is a reluctant athlete, at best. So it’s a big deal that he’s at a school that acknowledges athletes of all levels, and it’s a big deal that he is leaning into this moment, even though he’d rather be at home, nose in WINGS OF FIRE.

An older white woman who I recognise as a grandparent of one of his classmates tells me, rudely, to sit down as she cannot see. I am confused – her grandchild already completed her race, in first position. I know this because I know her grandchild. Because this city is a neighbourhood wide and a couple streets deep, the grandchild went to a baby music class that my son also attended. I cherish this fact of my son’s embeddedness in this community. I moved around a lot as a child and I am maybe overly protective of the permanence and longevity of the community within which we are raising our kids. I am stunned by her remark. I rebound. I watch my son do the brave thing. Then I tell this woman: I am watching my son. I already saw you watch your grandchild, [NAME]. Congratulations. Afterwards I am so angry, I am shaking. It’s been a long, hot day, filled with traffic, and logistics and the effort of athletics day. My reward – all parents’ reward – is the few seconds my child is doing the very courageous thing and racing, throwing, jumping in front of his peers. And now this – this woman, her attitude – this is the memory.

I know what you’re thinking. It was but one moment. Let it go. I wish I could explain how I experience moments like these as a black woman in Cape Town. There’s the shock. Then the anger. Then the indignance – a RACIST in this place. Then, the second guessing – but is it racism? Was I impeding her view of the children who are definitely not her grandchild lining up for a race that was going to go right past her, giving her back the view I denied her?

I am a black woman in suburban Cape Town. I am raising black and multiracial children with my disabled white partner. No one in this little family unit knows what it feels like to exist in spaces without having to assert our ownership and our right to be within them. Even my children. Even though they do not know that they do not know it.

Reader, you know what’s wild? I used to attend the school my son now attends. I served on school bodies and have volunteered for years. I belong in all of the ways that matter. But this woman, with her tenuous link via her grandchild, felt an instant, unearned belonging. So much so that she could tell a total stranger off over something slight. (There I go again – it wasn’t slight, it was NOTHING. She missed nothing of consequence or involving her grandchild. I did NOTHING wrong.)

I am so tired. I want today to be about how I went to a thing at my child’s school. My child did a thing. We drank absurdly sugary drinks and ate ice cream and went home. I do not want it to be a reminder of the small, specific shapes into which one must fold themselves to be in space in this city.

I do not want to have to be good. I do not want to step into the role of Angry Black Woman or Professor Black Lady, chastising you about your tragically narrow world view. I just want to be a mom at an athletics event.

That’s what racism takes from us. The ability to, as Mary Oliver puts it, “let the soft animal of [our] body
love what it loves […] announcing its place in the family of things”.

EDIT: To be clear, my son’s school – my alma mater- is such a special place and that’s part of why I found that moment yesterday jarring. As a contrast, at drop off yesterday morning, I was flustered and ended up bumping into the car of another parent. They could not have been kinder and more understanding. The contrast between that – when I had done something wrong – and the sports day comment – when I was just doing what we were all doing – was what made it so jarring. 

Ironically, I think it’s a testament to the school’s spirit and genuine commitment to diversity and inclusion that moments like yesterday are rare.

All of this to say the school is doing everything right and I don’t hold yesterday against the school at all!