A Tale of Two Continents

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Preface....................................................ixChapter 1 Saying Goodbye...................................1Chapter 2 In The Spotlight.................................7Chapter 3 Heading Off Death................................17Chapter 4 Starting Over In America.........................29Chapter 5 The Big Decision.................................43Chapter 6 Crisscrossing the Continents.....................55Chapter 7 Devastated.......................................67Chapter 8 A New Life.......................................81Epilogue Postpartum Delight................................95

Chapter One

A youngster who not long ago was on all fours is coaxing my old piano, an upright, out of retirement. The irony is striking, even if the harmony is muddled.

The little one is my daughter. She's been giving the Hoffman keyboard quite a workout since graduating from the crawling level to the curiosity stage.

That piano, situated in the living room of my home in Boca Raton, Florida, has come a long way, baby—and the baby, now a toddler, has come just as far. Both the keyboard and my precious little daughter paradoxically symbolize a break from, and connection with, the past.

Not that it was a bad past. To convert literal distance into the metaphorical: far from it. I was born Dec. 19, 1962, in the Republic of South Africa. Bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west and the Indian Ocean on the east, it is the southernmost country on the continent. South Africa is blessed with the most pleasant climate imaginable a wonderfully variegated landscape that ranges from grassland to lush subtropical to mountainous. Leaving it was enormously difficult—likely the hardest thing I've ever done, for two reasons.

First was a fear of the unknown that loomed on the other side of the world. It was akin to facing death. That prospect was perhaps mitigated by a previous encounter I'd had with the real Great Beyond as a young woman (more on that later). Even more emotionally wrenching—the part that broke my heart—was saying goodbye to my dear friends and the homeland that I loved.

Nonetheless, there were issues that drove home the realization I could no longer stay. My vision of a bright future in America proved prescient, because that move gave me a new lease on life. Actually, forget the lease. It gave me a new life—literally. Her name is Shaelah.

The path to her birth was strewn with more obstacles than a mountain road after an avalanche. That was partly because, in the interest of having the baby, I never completely severed the umbilical cord linking me with my beloved South Africa. Yet, despite the anguishing complications caused by that lingering connection, it turned out for the best. Shaelah's debut on planet Earth is a tale of two continents. She has roots in both, and was a world traveler before she was even born.

I made the decision to move to America in 1997. On August 9 of that year, my two best friends, Margit Pilz and Tommy Schmidt, both of whom I'd worked with many years in the travel industry, picked me up and drove me to Johannesburg International Airport. On the way, I cried my eyes out, because I never had imagined that I'd live anywhere else. I felt as though my world were coming to an end. It was like a nightmare in which I was outside my body.

I boarded a flight for Miami, and it's a good thing I didn't make the trip on an ocean liner, because my tears would have sunk it. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch. But I must have used up half the plane's supply of Kleenex. I was crying so much that the crew gave me tea bags for my eyes. From Miami, I drove to Boca Raton to join my mother, who had settled in the upscale South Florida city after leaving Johannesburg three years earlier. She, too, had spent all of her life there.

Chapter Two

Johannesburg is a bustling, cosmopolitan city the size of, say, San Francisco, or Memphis. Like South Africa in general, it is socially progressive, ethnically diverse and culturally vibrant. The family I grew up in took full advantage of that culture.

I was raised by my mother, Heather, and my maternal grandparents, Jack and Phyllis Smith, and had a wonderful childhood. My mother and father divorced when I was eighteen months old, at a time when it was unheard of in South Africa to get divorced. That willingness to flout convention took a lot of courage for her. I think she passed that independent streak on to me, because in having my baby, I also chose an unorthodox route.

Jack and Phyllis cared for me while my mother worked as an accountant. We had a great life together. The whole family was so vibrant. We weren't poor, but we weren't rich. My mother cherishes the memories, as do I, and loves to tell about one of her fondest:

"My father became Arnelle's father figure. She was crazy about him, and every night she used to stand on the apartment balcony waiting for him to come home from work. But she was too short to see over the balcony, so she would stand on a little doll stool and lean on the balcony. As soon as he would pull up, she would scream, `Jackie boy! What did you bring me?' And he loved it. All the neighbors loved it, too. Because she was this little thing, about three years old."

Among my most precious memories as a little girl were the Saturdays when my mother and her mother's side of the family would go to the horse races. They were all involved in horseracing—as breeders, jockeys and trainers. My uncle and aunt owned stables, and they would look after me as they tended the horses and I walked around the stables with them, until my mother would pick me up at the end of the day. So I was brought up in this horseracing fraternity, and yet I never learned to ride. It's hard to believe.

My grandfather was a skilled craftsman and had a flair for mathematics. My grandmother was quite a good amateur singer and entertainer, and had a passion for the arts and theater. My mother was steeped in dance. They passed those genes onto me, and I used them to forge an early, professional career on the stage and as a model. I learned a lot from all three of them.

My aspiration early on was to dance. My mother had me dancing when I was three. I started in ballet, then went on to American jazz, and eventually became schooled in tap and Spanish—flamenco. At age 13, I turned professional in dancing. But I was also active in the theater department at my school, winning lots of acting and singing awards, and I decided this was the way to go—to make a career in the theater.

That beautiful walnut piano, probably about seventy years old, in my home played a key (pun unintended) role in the development of my talents. It belonged to my grandparents, and my grandmother left it to me when she died of Alzheimer's disease. She would accompany me on it when I sang and danced in preparation for auditions to perform in shows. After a full day of school, I would perform in the shows at night. I was in my early teens, and lied about my age to get the jobs because South African law forbade children from working before age seventeen. My earliest show-biz experience was working in the Circus Osler, a children's circus.

Probably the highlight of those wonderful...