Laurel Jane Mitchinson – Part II – The Story of the Name.

The Story of How and Why I chose the name “Laurel Jane” for our Daughter.

Dedicated to my family no longer with us :  James, Daphne, Susan, Allan and Andrew.

When I was young, I was very fortunate to be able to have lived a crazy life.  They say your child hood dictates your life and I know that for me this was true.  I was born in Canada, but I grew up in South Africa.  My Mom is South African and My Dad is British.  When I was only a few months old we moved to South Africa and I spent the better part of my first ten years of life, with a big, colourful and loving family.

Our Sundays were the ones dreams were made of, we as a large family all living in Johannesburg had a tradition then of spending every Sunday with each other.  We would always have a massive braai and each week we would alternate which home it would be held at.  I had cousins, uncles, aunts, a brother and a sister, and amongst it all I had the two most loving grand parents any child could ever want.  No one in this world is close to perfect, we all have our eccentric natures, our faults and our strengths.  In a way that is what makes us beautiful creatures, and makes us so interesting and loveable.  My Grandparents were just that.

When I was 8 we moved back to Canada, Im glad now that I spent my teen years there, but I never wanted to move to Canada, and I made it clear on a daily basis, that I was a South African and that is where I belonged.  For some reason in Canada I tried very hard to fit in, and having a South African English accent then, I stuck out in school.  I tried very hard to fit in and I started sporting a fake Canadian accent.  I was unaware that I was doing it, and it was only brought to my attention when my friends would visit our home and I would speak to my Mother in my natural tongue.

When I was 12, we made our annual pilgrimage to South Africa for Christmas, the one time a year we would relive our family tradition.  My cousin Lauren’s family had a house in Plettenberg Bay, and we would spend our Christmas there.  It was the most awesome time, and I just loved the ocean, and explorations to “the cave”, the braais, being a soldier in the bush with Andrew, and the weather and the culture and the place to me was were I belonged and where I came from.  It was my home.  That holiday, I was able to convince my Mom, with the help my Aunt Susan and My Granny Daphne that I would stay in SA and attend high school at Jeppe Boys.  Lots of people in my family attended Jeppe Boys or Jeppe Girls, and that year I stayed behind and was enrolled at Jeppe as an Oribi House border.  On the weekends I spent my time with my Gran and Grandpa, or with my Aunt and Uncle (Susan and Allan).

My Granny always told me that I was her favourite.  I think that is what Grannies do.  I believed it to be true.  At that time at Jeppe I was on the rugby team (I even made it to the A team for our year).  My coach was Jake White!!! Can you believe it?  Anyway, Saturdays at Jeppe was Rugby time and my Gran and Grandpa were my biggest fans and supporters.  They were real South Africans, they loved the Springboks and knew every player, watched every game and skinnered daily about everything else South African.  They supported me in every way anyone could.

Times were tough though, as it isnt easy for a 12 year old to be going to boarding school on the other side of the world from your parents.  And at this time I now was the kid with a Canadian accent.  My name was now “Canada” at Jeppe (in stark to contrast to my latter name when I played provisional Rugby in Canada which was then “Naas” after Naas Botha – I have spent my whole life a foreigner no matter where I have lived)

One Sunday afternoon driving back to boarding school, I was all upset – My marks weren’t up to scratch and I didn’t want to go back, I was happy to just stay with my Gran.  I thought I couldn’t make it at Jeppe, it was too hard.  My Gran my biggest supporter gave me some advise that day.  She said to me : “Ian, it doesn’t matter what your marks are at school – In life, all that matters most, is that you do your best”.

Later in life I worked a few years in the corporate industry and I spent 3 years in India at one stage working for Dell computers.  I was fortunate at that job as every 6 months I got a ticket home for a month.  Dell luckily agreed that South Africa was my home and at that time Daphne and Jimmy lived in Plettenberg Bay full time.  I would spend my holidays with them.  I was an adult at this time, and I was very fortunate to be able to also help them out with a few things they needed then.  Anyway, my Grandparents had become my friends, my best and most cherished friends.  I brought my Grandmother pearls on one of those holidays, from Hyderabad.  She wore those pearls every day from then on end, until her death recently.  I have those pearls on my wall in front of my computer and I look at them every day.

My Grandfather passed away a few years ago, and I was not able to be there when it happened.  It was very hard, obviously – I moved one year later to South Africa, I decided to come back home and to restart my career as a photographer, in my dream location, Cape Town.   I was so lucky to be able to spend time with My Grandmother in her last years.  My Granny never got old in spirit, and always told me the dirty joke of the day when I would visit  and she lived well in to her 80′s.

As you may know, Celeste and I now have our own daughter.  My Granny never got to meet her, but she was still with us when Celeste fell pregnant.  We were going to call Laurel, Zoe.  In June, on the day I was flying to Ireland to shoot a wedding I got a call from my Mom saying that My Gran Daphne was not well and had stopped eating.  I was flying that day from Cape Town with a stop over in Joburg for exactly one hour before my flight to Dublin.  My aunty Almarie in Joburg also called me and told me “Ian, you need to come and see your Gran, its going to be your last chance”.  But I couldn’t! As soon I landed in Joburg I had to go to my next flight and the hospital my Gran was in was about 30KM away from OR Thambo Airport.  I landed in Joburg, and I punched in the address to the hospital on my phones GPS system and it said it would take me 30 minutes to get there.  I just decided right there and then, that I was going to go and see her and make it back for my flight. I went to a taxi driver and I told him I would give a R1000 if he could get me to the hospital and back within an hour.  He told me “this is Joburg in rush hour are you crazy”  I told him I would give R2000 then….and he said “get in”.  As any South African will know, rush hour in Johannesburg is one of the most congested traffic jams in the world and driving 30KM can take hours.  This taxi driver must have been sent to me from God however, as he just didnt seem to care about the traffic and he just drove on any surface possible at top speed, on the side of the highway, across a field; it didn’t matter, and we hit a hundred robots (traffic lights) and everyone of them somehow was green.  I made it to my gran in about 20 minutes.  I rushed into the hospital and demanded to see her.  The nurse was all lazy and didn’t seem to appreciate my desperation and wanted me to sign in and all that, and I just said to her “Take me to Daphne Right Now!” I guess she clued in and immediately rushed me to her.

Seeing my once so full of life Grand Mother lying so frail on a bed in that dark small room, in what I knew was her last of days on this earth, just took everything away from me and I just broke down completely.  My Gran asked me why I was so sad, and asked me to turn the light on so she could see me.  My Gran at that time was in and out of reality, but for about a minute or two she was as clear and with it as ever.  She told me that she loved me and again told me that I was her favourite, and I told her that in my life she had been my biggest influence and the person in life that I wanted to please above all else.  That is when she reminded me as she always did about her pearls.  She loved her pearls and would play with them and she did right there and then. I hugged my Grandmothers frail body and told her that I would always love her and always use her words of wisdom that had shaped my life.  She asked me what those words were?  and I reminded her.  Gran you told me that “It didn’t matter if I had good marks, it only matters how hard I try”.  Well she became more alive with it, and told me “I never said  you didn’t need to do well in school” and I thought that was funny, how much energy she had put into telling me something different.  But it is what she said, and I remember it more clearly than anything 21 years after her telling me.

I made it back to the airport almost to the exact minute, and I pulled out the money for the driver, and he said.  The fare is only R700, I’m happy I helped you.  I gave him a R1000 and rushed off to my flight.  I made it.  The gates had already closed, but they let me on, and the passengers gave me the normal looks you get for holding them up, and I must have looked in a right state (I kinda always look in a state, so imagine me now!), cameras, Ipad, a bloodshot face, hair everywhere…but I had made it, and I had realized I had just said bye to my best friend,  My only Gran.

My Grandmother passed away a few days later while I was still in Ireland.  I was able to make it back in time for her funeral, and Celeste (who had never met any of my family before) and I were there to say goodbye as a family.

Everyone asked me what we were going to name our baby girl to be.  And I decided to name her after my Grandparents.

My Grans name was Daphne.  Daphne is a greek word for the Laurel Tree, and My Grandpa was James.   Jane is the feminine form of James, and my Aunt Susan who also has passed, had the second name Jane.  So we agreed and told our family that day that our daughter would be called Laurel Jane.