Blade Runner (12 page)

Most of all, I think of my mother. I know that she is
watching over me, and although she died before I began
sprinting and was not alive to witness my success or my gold
medals, I know that she takes great pride in me. I consider
myself fortunate to have had such a special and wonderful
mother and shared the happy times we had together; just
thinking about my mother gives me courage and peace of
mind.

There is one thing that is very special to me indeed. It is
the recording that my mother made during a radio interview
about me that was aired in 1999 when I was fourteen years
old. I listen to it so often that I can recite practically all of it
off by heart, and it never fails to give me that warm fuzzy
feeling and make me smile.

'Oscar is a dynamic and sporting child; he is even-natured
with a delightful, bubbly sense of humour. He loves to joke
around and laugh and is always positive. I hope that my
words can give hope and encouragement to those listeners
who have also experienced trauma and suffering.'

It is my wish that my mother's message of hope should live
on in this book.

Dear Oscar,

As a family we have always shared everything. Our
parents led by example and always included us in their
discussions, however delicate, and you and I have been
close confidants for as long as each of us can remember.
Even so, there are a few things that I have held back,
within myself, perhaps because of a gauche sense of
modesty mixed with prudishness, perhaps because until
now the time has not been right, or there has simply not
been enough time to say them properly. Here goes, let
me tell you about yourself from the beginning, as I
remember it. I hope my letter will bring a smile to your
heart and be useful for your biography.

When I sit back and watch the family films that I store
in my memory, I treasure a particular image of our
mother holding you in her arms. I think you must be
about nine months old and I am three. I see us clearly; in
fact I think this is my first conscious memory of our life.

I remember our mother on the first floor of our
Johannesburg house as she tells me about your feet. I
was tiny but it was the first time that I understood that
there was something different about you. Mum let me
touch your feet, gently of course, and stroke your toes.
You still had feet and toes then. I realised then that your
feet were unlike mine, and that you were special.
Everything about you was special to me.

It is astounding how transparent this memory is for
me. Mum and I are sitting side by side on the sofa and
she is holding you in her arms. Gently she lifts the
blanket that is covering you and lets me hold your little
feet. I don't think that she explained in great detail what
was different about your feet, nor that you were going to
have an operation, but in her subtle style she made me
aware of your presence and your needs. I have never
really thought about it until now, but I think I can say
that it was the first moment in which you became part of
my life, up until then you had only existed on the
periphery.

I remember our mother walking up the stairs with you
in her arms, while I was climbing alongside her on her
right. I was still so small that I had to climb up each
stair and could not be said to walk up them! I think she
had friends round for tea.

You see, Oz, my first memory of myself is also my first
memory of you.

My next memory is your first pair of prostheses. They
were carbon fibre tubes with a flat bottom but without
feet that were supposed to alleviate the build-up of
pressure on the bone. You learnt to walk with those
prostheses. I can remember Mum putting your
prostheses on in your bedroom in our Johannesburg
house and then bringing you through to the corridor
where you would practise walking down the passage. It
is incredible to me how crystal clear this memory of you
is, you must have been about one and a half and I would
have been four. After a while I was allowed to help you
put the prostheses on. I remember Mum carefully
explaining to me how to attach them and where I had to
remove the Velcro strap so as to remove the pressure
from the stump. She showed me where the bone had
been amputated and how it forms a sort of a bump. I
remember being very curious about that bump and
desperately wanting to understand why it formed where
it did and how it had happened.

These are beautiful memories for me, full of tenderness
and affection because that is how it was when we were
small. To begin with we fussed over you but pretty
quickly you lost your position on that special pedestal
and had to get on with things by yourself. And that was
pretty much when we started to really play together.

In the beginning we were bicycle mad. I used to attach
your little blue and white plastic bicycle with a rope to
my saddle and then tow you around behind me, up and
down the stairs, inside, outside, regardless. I taught you
everything I knew! We also enjoyed playing with cars
and you were often willing to swap your newer cars
against my more trashed vehicles, all I had to do was
convince you that mine were in fact better which was
really very easy as you put blind faith in whatever it was
that came out of my mouth! Those were the days. Only
joking! You wised up to my tricks very quickly.

Oz, I think you are a remarkably trusting guy, and
you are never judgemental, you are very open-minded
and intelligent in your approach to understanding the
situations life has thrown at you. Sometimes I think
people misinterpret you because you are friendly, kind
and polite to a fault with everyone. But of course, as
you know, and I know, there is a huge difference
between sharing experiences and information and really
opening yourself up to someone and allowing them to
become part of the very small circle of people that you
trust absolutely. In fact I think you are a far more
reserved person than the initial impression you give
people.

I think it is also a legacy of our childhood. Dad has
always taught us to be friendly with all but to need no
one, to be strong and self-sufficient. He was quite a
disciplinarian and often told us that he was not
interested in spoilt or rude children, we could be
naughty and mischievous but we had to take care we
never stepped over the mark. It was always a mark of
honour for both of us to impress our father.

In fact Dad was very strict with us, particularly before
the divorce. Whenever we came to him in tears and
looking for reassurance after having got into some fix,
he would reprimand us and tell us that crying was only
for weaklings and sissies. He hated our whining and
made a point of teaching us to solve our own problems
and clean up after ourselves the hard way. He was a
loving father but also a hard man who expected the best
from us and whose standards were always very high. He
always spurred us on, pushed us forward to be
courageous, to try new things, to want to improve
ourselves. He brought us up to believe that we could
achieve whatever it was that we wanted to achieve.

Do you remember that go-kart my godfather made for
me? It was without brakes and we used to literally fly
down the hill leading up to our house, in fact we used
your prostheses to come to a halt and burnt through
countless soles on your shoes in the process. By the time
we finally came to a halt, your blind terror at our speed
would have reduced you to a gibbering wreck but you
were always immediately ready to walk back up and
start all over again.

And do you remember that time we decided to climb
up that brick wall, pretending to be rock climbers, but
attached with a hosepipe. I remember asking you if the
hosepipe was safe and resisting the strain, you answering
yes and then of course the hosepipe snapped and I fell
the four or so metres down to the ground. I broke my
arm, but you were the one who was crying and
distraught. I think you felt terribly guilty and so in the
end I was the one that consoled you.

Then came the age of rollerblades. You were good at
blading, much better than I was. You spent all your time
blading, in fact to this day I remain convinced that it is
the rollerblading that was instrumental in developing the
muscles that you now use to run. I remember how
complicated it was for you to get them on and off again
as rollerblades have a reinforced ankle section but as
you don't have an ankle there was no joint to flex to
help your foot in and then out. A nightmare. You were a
wonderful blader who invented some incredible tricks.
In particular I remember you picking up speed and then
leaping forward and landing dramatically onto your
knees and then sliding forward like a music/film star.
Once you realised that the fibreglass that protected your
knees also prevented you from hurting yourself, there
was no stopping you. You were fearless.

When you were growing up your legs were replaced
often but never often enough, as you were so active and
rough on your legs the prostheses suffered a lot of wear
and tear. Every three months or so we would have to go
back to the technicians to have the fibreglass readjusted
because inevitably you would splinter or actually break
it. In addition Mum used to take your clothes to a
special tailor to have your trousers reinforced with
particularly resistant patches so that you would not hole
them quite so easily. If she did not do this you would
tear your trousers within an hour of having put them on.
This all required preparation and time and so on those
occasions that you required a more elegant wardrobe
Mum had to plan in advance. I remember going to a
wedding with you, Mum had given you a brand new
pair of trousers but you ruined them pretty much
immediately as you were climbing all the trees, sliding
and then falling out of them, not to mention the friction
caused by the fibreglass and the prostheses rubbing
against the fabric.

Whenever possible we could be found climbing up
whatever was available. In my opinion this was how you
developed your incredible sense of balance. And do you
remember how heavy your first prostheses were? I think
it must have been unbelievably onerous for such a small
child to carry such a heavy dead weight all the time; it
was like a permanent workout for you. You wore those
prostheses until you turned twelve or thirteen and as you
grew older so your limbs became bigger and heavier too,
which explains how you came to develop your athlete's
butt.

At the time we slept in a bunk bed and every night we
fought as to which of us was going to sleep on top. I
remember Dad obliging us to take turns. We hardly ever
used the ladder; the test was to put our hands on the side
and to use the strength in our torso muscles, shoulders
and arms to pull ourselves up onto the top bed. You
were really strong. I remember you sitting on the kitchen
floor and then pulling yourself up onto the counter with
the strength in your upper body alone. It was around
this time that Dad made your prostheses two rather
oddly shaped artificial socks made of sheepskin; the idea
was to protect your limbs as the fibreglass tended to
crack when it became too cold.

Our Honeydew house was fantastic, paradise for
children like us, there was no end of space for us to cycle
in, or trees for us to climb. We were very lucky to have a
father who worked very hard to provide for us
materially (and who made the Honeydew house
possible) and a mother who took such loving care of us.
Admittedly it was only the first part of our lives but then
again people do say that the early years are the most
important ones. You and I were allies.

Of course with time things change. The age difference
that separates us, one year and eight months, is now
irrelevant but as a child, and particularly in the period
following our parents' divorce, I felt and took my
responsibilities as the eldest child and the older sibling very
seriously. I felt very protective towards you and Aimée but
also of our family equilibrium. It was important to me that
you and Aimée got on well and did not bicker.

Do you remember that I was awarded a scholarship,
which I then refused as I was worried about leaving you
and Aimée alone? When I started boarding school I
worried incessantly that I would not be there for you
should you need it and I was relieved when it was your
turn to come to boarding school. Your starting boarding
school coincided with Mum becoming engaged and I
was happy and more relaxed as I believed things were
finally settling down and there would be more space for
me to let loose and express myself.

But then suddenly the bottom fell out of our world. It
was 2002; our mother had remarried in November of
that year and it was our first Christmas without our
parents in the company of our school friends and
grandparents. It had been a brilliant summer even
though I had managed to catch hepatitis and had been
very ill indeed. When Mum returned from her holidays
she told me she had not been at all well over the month
of December and it seemed that her symptoms were the
same I had suffered before being diagnosed with
hepatitis. My having had hepatitis convinced her doctors
that she had hepatitis and so two further weeks went by
with her being tested for hepatitis on three separate
occasions. During this period she continued taking her
medication, but unfortunately it was only later that we
discovered that she had developed an allergy to it. Her
condition kept worsening but I comforted her and told
her that I too had been terribly unwell with hepatitis and
that she would improve. By the time her doctors realised
what was wrong and had her admitted to the hospital it
was too late.