Waverley Church bought a house on a 5 acre property in Linbro Park and started one of the first multi-racial Christian schools in South Africa; The King’s School.  It had started in a double garage in Lombardy West with Ryan and Leigh and a few of their little friends.

We were given half the house to live in.  It was beautiful.  Asha took her first step when she was 8 ½ months old and within a month she was tottering around on the huge lawn outside our house.   We loved having people around and enjoyed the constant sound of the kids next door.

I had some good friends from church and made some more at the baby clinic where I took Asha for her weigh-ins.  Those times always upset me.  She was tiny.  On a scale of 1-10 (1 being the lowest) she was a 1.  I was told she was undernourished and Wilf even suggested she might have Kwashiorkor.  I stopped going and I stopped listening.  She was happy, she slept well and she did eat, just not huge amounts.    She had a passion for babies and we would have to stop whenever she saw one.   She was obsessed.

Leonie was one of my best friends.  Her and Terry were struggling to fall pregnant.   They had been trying for four years and her gynae told her it wasn’t going to happen.  She had lost a baby and was starting to wonder if she was ever going to have one.

Asha- 1 years old in Linbro Park

Ash had just turned a year and I started to feel really sick.  I thought I was dying.  I suffered in silence and misery for a while and then it occurred to me that I might be pregnant.   I weed on the stick that never lies.  We were so excited.  We were going to have another baby!  I was so happy but  didn’t know how to tell Leonie.  I felt so awful that I had two babies and she couldn’t have one, but she was really happy for us.  She had faith that God was going to answer her prayers.

I really wanted it to be a girl.  I loved having Sue as my sister and friend.  I wanted Ash to have one too.  Tony was convinced it was a boy and he already had a name for him; Jordan.  I wasn’t convinced and I was secretly hoping I was right.

We had been in Linbro for a year and the school was growing.  They needed the house we were in to make more classrooms, so we had to move out.   We moved in with Hillary who had run Little Lambs pre-school where  the Kings School had started.  We stayed in a tiny room; just enough space for a bed and a cot.   It was quite an adjustment after living on 5 acres.

Three months after I fell pregnant, Leonie fell pregnant.  Her Jewish gynae made a comment something like “ The Man upstairs really wants you to have a baby.”  It was a miracle and we were SO happy.  Our babies were going to be friends.

I was addicted to ruby grapefruit and I went through bags of them.  I also got chronic migraines for the first time in my life.  It would start with numbness and tingling on one side of my face, little lights in my eye, blindness on that same side; Then a massive headache.  I would spend three days in a dark room trying to get over it.    It was awful.  I wondered if it had anything to do with the grapefruit but I kept eating them.

One day as the numbness started in my nose, I went to Tony and told him it was coming.  I was so fed up with them and I knew I was going to be wiped out for days.  We were both so angry at the whole thing and we let the approaching migraine have it.  We prayed and told it to go and not come back.  It listened.  It went and never came back.  That was my last migraine.