One day I will be 80.
My fine lines will have given up hope and succumbed to old age, exhausted and drained from a lifelong battle with fancy skin care products.
I will be old but not gray, as my sister will use her walker to come over and colour my hair in brilliant shades of sunset rouge and cinnamon brown that will remind me of the wild rolling hills I saw in South Africa....as a dear friend and I drove from Joburg to Durban singing Bob Marley and The Pet Shop boys at the top of our lungs.
One day I will be 80.
And although my memory may not be what it once was, I will not forget the heart-wrenching poverty in Soweto, and the tears I shed at the Apartheid Museum, thinking about how different my life, and the life of my sisters would have been had we been raised in South Africa's unfortunate apartheid era.
One day I will be 80.
And although I may not have the strength to get out of bed, I'll recall the energy I felt while surrounded by 85,000 others, from every corner of the world who came to South Africa in soccer celebration. That is the energy that will carry me through my days.
But most of all, when I am 80, and I am sitting on my wrap around porch watching the sun set on the beach, I will think about South Africa's Cape Town. The 12 apostles that sit perched on the surface of the ocean, the phenomenal view of a city on the sea from the top of Table Mountain and, of course, the rolling R's of the Capetonian accent.
South Africa.
I came, I saw, I batted a few eyelashes, and I left.
Until the next great trip abroad,
I remain,
Priscilla
