Carol’s Column

They call it high-flying living

SO WHAT did you do last Sunday?

Read the papers, relax, have a beer or three?

Braai around the pool? Talk rugby, referendum and sex?

Ja, so you had a typical all-South African Sunday.

Great.

Me, I spent a large part of my Sunday, half-naked up a tree at Zoo Lake.

Not possible, you say to yourself, swivelling your eyeballs as your head shakes from side to side.

Wrong. Anything is possible in this household.

An extraordinary thing happened last Sunday. For an hour I found myself totally alone.

With a husband lost in America, my oldest son swotting for exams, my second son boardsailing, Nicky out at a friend and Jamie playing somewhere far away with Peter Winslow — I was alone.

What bliss.

I quickly unpacked my body, poured it into a bikini, covered myself with cooking oil strained from the chips — my great grandmother always said never waste — spread myself star-fish-like on the grass and smiled hopefully at the sun.

I wanted a tan, you see.

I’d just started sizzling when I heard a cry of agony.

“Ma, come immediately, there’s an emergency.”

With Jamie Lazar, there’s always an emergency.

I’d heard that cry of agony when he caught his arm in the S-bend of the toilet.

I heard that cry when he jumped off the roof to see if he could fly. He couldn’t.

That particular sound chills my scarlet toe nails.

“So, what’s the emergency, Jamie?” I asked holding my breath while counting to 10 as psychiatrists say you should to avoid a coronary, nervous breakdown, tension migraine or piles.

“Ma, our kite’s caught on a telephone wire and a tree. We tried climbing the pole, but it’s too difficult.”

So, what do you do if you’re a good mother, who doesn’t want at the age of 21 that her son should turn around and say: “My mother didn’t love me or my kite. She abandoned us up a pole at Zoo Lake.”

You leap up, put the ladder, the swimming pool pole and Jamie into the rattletrap and shoot off to Zoo Lake and the kite that is being fiercely guarded by Peter Winslow.

Oh, Zoo Lake is a joy on a Sunday morning. Crowds throng the beautiful park — cricket, tennis, picnicking, archery, soccer, dancing, cuddling, feeding ducks, rowing — it’s all happening.

And, flying high above them all, was Jamie Lazar’s kite.

I saw it immediately as I rounded the bend. Soaring and swooping, it looked magnificent.

We stopped at the tallest tree and the highest telephone pole in Westwold Drive. Because those are the ones the boys had chosen to snag their kite upon.

Why settle for a low tree when a high one will do?

We set up the ladder and Peter scaled the tree while Jamie directed operations from below.

But, alack, although a longish lad, his 12-year-old arms were too short to reach the kite line.

A girl guide in my youth, I was up that tree in seconds, the green leaves rustling against the cooking oil.

In my hand I clutched the long pole.

“Don’t worry, Mrs Lazar,” said Peter from above, “I’ll catch you if you fall.” Such a polite fellow.

As I prodded and poked the pole, trying to free the line, the notes of Vivaldi’s Guitar Concerto floated up the tree. I looked down and there below us was a guitarist busking to the crowds who’d gathered to watch this kite rescuing spectacle.

A mossie screeched out of his nest, plopping on my head as he flew angrily away, while below, above the sounds of the guitar, the dogs and crowds, I heard Jamie shouting: “A little more to the left, Ma. Stretch, just up a bit.”

Good heavens, I thought as I peered down at my third son issuing orders like Attila the Hun. He’s definitely his father’s son.

Meanwhile, the fight with the telephone pole and wires had escalated into a full-scale battle. The kite line was firmly enmeshed around them all.

“Ma, do you know the fine for damaging post office equipment? You’ll get life imprisonment.”

I was past caring — besides, when you think of it, a peaceful, private cell is not an unattractive idea.

More than anything in the world, I longed for a helicopter with a handsome, curly-haired pilot to come and pluck me from this wretched tree and sweep me away.

However, it was not to be.

After an hour, I emerged from the undergrowth, kiteless and clad in cooking oil and last year’s bikini.

Such a thing shouldn’t happen to any mother.

The crowds cheered and someone shouted ‘Superman’. It was mortifying.

Meanwhile, that dratted kite is still flying high and free above the world.

You know what — I wish I was a kite.

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