When your planning for your child’s future includes choosing a guardian, there’s no better way to go about it than inviting potential candidates to join you in a great South African culinary tradition
My husband and I recently updated our wills. When I say recently, I’m including the six to eight months preceding the actual update, signing and safe storage. This included looking at our original choices of guardians and surreptitiously vetting them again.
In 2008, we were trying to match a milk-guzzling, toothless blob with the right guardians, but now we were dealing with a walking, talking, stroppy 9-year-old and not sure if we’d have any takers.
Back then I was operating on an intoxicating combo of new mommy hormones, zero sleep and incredible gratitude for the splendid gifts that were being delivered for the new baby and his parents. My husband was sleep deprived and freaked out about his new status as someone’s dad so we were not “of sound mind”. Not in the slightest.
Our shortlist included a laddish bachelor, crunchy vegan, really young siblings, super cool colleagues and the grandparents. See? I warned you, not of sound mind at all.
There was nothing written down, per se, it was more of a loose arrangement. But after my husband Elton was diagnosed with a rare disease, we were forced to write things down. This time around we’d had more sleep, the mommy hormones were long gone – ditto my cleavage and waistline – and Elton says he now can’t remember life before being a dad.
Now that we had way more life experience and more assets, we were not leaving our son and his tiny little trust fund to just anybody. We had to ensure that he wouldn’t end up in an Oliver Twist sort of set-up.
We booked an afternoon of grown up time, dropped tiny trust fund kid (TTFK) at a play date and revisited the list. I then came up with what I think was a genius idea: Invite everyone on the list to a braai and see if they still qualified as guardians!
Our friends and family don’t all “play together nicely”, so we had to have several braais. The day of the first braai arrived and while we were the most gracious hosts (all our guests were fed, watered and hors d’oeuvred) and Elton and I were watching them like hawks. Who didn’t wash their hands after using the loo? Who used their knives and forks like weapons instead of cutlery? Did we know the new partners of the singletons? Did we like them? Would they love our kid as much as their partners obviously did?
Then there were the married ones who are now divorced. Did the trauma break them? Are they still the people we got to know? (One went backpacking in South America and doesn’t look like they’re coming back, another is teaching English in Cambodia).
Next up were those who had more kids in the interim. Will our precious snowflake cope with going from ‘only kid’ to one of four or five kids? Will there be enough love to go around if you already have four of your own little ankle biters tormenting you on the daily?
Lastly, we had the families. By this time we were not as gracious in the hosting department. My family, your family is not a fun game. The grandparents are too old, thankfully. Also, these people raised us, we know their flaws.
Elton comes from a long line of emotional anorexics, so little snowflake will be shell-shocked when he gets his first “boys don’t cry, so man up speech”. And I come from a family who puts the fun in dysfunctional. They’re loud, messy and damaged. No ways my son walks out of there without being the subject of a dark Netflix original series, but it was fun having them over and just seeing once and for all why TTFK will most probably not end up with our families.
After all the braais were braaied and the gracious hosting was hosted, we settled on the finalists. We took TTFK to our local family restaurant and said we’d like to talk to him about something icky.
We chatted about daddy’s illness and the reality of what is in our future and how mommies and daddies sometimes die early. Once we had gingerly broached the day mommy and daddy are no longer around, we asked him to take some time and think of who he would like to live with if we’re no longer around.
Without skipping a beat, sweet TTFK blurted out his dad’s “fun” cousin’s name and oh dear, he wasn’t even on our list! Besides the panic of him not mentioning anyone on our list, we were quite gutted that he had obviously been thinking of his plan B and had a ready answer.
Once we’re over being so gutted, we’re going to have to invite the fun cousin over for another guardians at the braai vetting session.
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