Right now it is freezing cold in Johannesburg, and unseasonally grey and miserable. Our winters are usually bright and sunny, so these last few days prompted me to post this piece that I wrote as a warning against sun worship.
The sunshine had always lifted her spirits. She questioned why she’d been born in the northern hemisphere. She preferred to imagine herself a native of a sun-soaked island in the Caribbean where the weather never changed. She was convinced she had Seasonal Affective Disorder – as her moods swung from euphoric highs down into despondency with the fluctuating weather of her grey northern home town.
At school, she defied the headmistress who told the girls that only ‘mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun’, sitting out on the field during lunchtime. Her grandmother – from the same generation as the school principal – told her that a lady was always ‘ pale and interesting’ but she saw nothing attractive about being white and insipid.
Back in the day she had slathered herself with pure coconut oil on the beach, in the garden – wherever she was when the weak British sun poked out from behind the clouds. She would move around, following the trajectory of the sun, and like a sunflower tilt her head in the direction of its rays.
When sunbeds were a thing, she was a regular visitor to the salon, her only concession to the harmful UV rays a special pair of goggles. She loved the tan, her skin glowed and she felt more alive.
But what had enlivened her was now taking her life from her. Cancer had pocked her face, arms and legs and would kill her in a matter of months.
