The Nomad Found Home

 

The Nomad Found Home

It is four o'clock in the morning.

Willem is coughing beside me, so I quietly slip out of bed and make us both a cup of tea with honey. The house is still. The world hasn't woken up yet. Those are my favourite moments, when thoughts have room to wander.

And somehow, my thoughts wandered back to Nomadic Grandmother.

I started that blog because I had become a nomad. Not because I wanted to tick countries off a bucket list, but because life had folded in on itself, and the road became my place of healing.

But perhaps it wasn't the caravan that made me nomadic.

Perhaps it was life itself.

Looking back now, it's almost like seeing my life from an aeroplane. The roads, the bends, the storms, and the unexpected places where I stopped to catch my breath.

I was the last child, the laatlammetjie. The wild one. Fearless. The one my mother always called her strong support pillar. She often said she wasn't afraid because I wasn't even scared of the devil. Whether that was wisdom or youthful stubbornness, I'm still not sure.

My brother, ten years older than me, became my protector, my biggest supporter, and my soulmate. He taught me what unconditional love looked like long before I understood the words.

At nineteen I became pregnant. Life didn't quite follow the fairy tale. I became engaged, only to be left standing before the wedding could happen. Ten years later, he lost his own battle, and I carried the sadness of what might have been. Life has a way of leaving questions that never find answers.

But from that chapter came one of the greatest gifts of my life—my beautiful daughter.

Four years later I married the man who would remain my husband for thirty-three years. If I could rewrite history, I might choose differently. Yet even that difficult road gave me two more wonderful children. They remain among the greatest blessings of those years.

Then came one of my favourite titles.

Grandmother.

I wasn't the kind who sat quietly in a rocking chair. I was the young, energetic ouma who got down on the floor, laughed loudly, chased little feet, and collected precious memories. Four grandchildren arrived over time, each carving out their own permanent place in my heart.

Life, however, wasn't finished teaching me.

Divorce arrived. It hurt. It broke pieces of me I didn't know could break. But sometimes endings quietly prepare us for beginnings we never dared imagine.

That was when the caravan rolled into my life.

Those months on the road, especially with my precious mother, became more than travelling. They became healing. They taught me that home isn't always four walls. Sometimes home is courage. Sometimes it's a sunrise beside your caravan. Sometimes it's simply waking up and believing tomorrow might be kinder.

The Nomadic Grandmother was born.

Today, my grandchildren are growing up. Fourteen. Thirteen—my precious angel who now watches from Heaven. Eleven. Eleven. And now a beautiful little eight-month-old grandson who reminds us that life never stops beginning again.

Somewhere along the way another unexpected gift arrived.

Love.

Not the kind that asks me to become someone else.

The kind that lets me simply be me.

Willem and I had been friends for sixteen years before love quietly found us. Today I proudly ride pillion behind him. Around the motorcycle club I'm known as the Old Lady—the First Lady, some lovingly joke—and every time I hear it, I smile.

Not because of the title.

Because of what it represents.

Belonging.

After years of searching, surviving, grieving, rebuilding and travelling...

I belong.

I am loved by my family.

I am loved by my friends.

I am loved by a good man.

And perhaps for the first time in my life, I truly feel at home inside my own heart.

Maybe that's why I've neglected this blog for the past six months.

I wasn't running away.

I was living.

Collecting new stories instead of writing them.

So where does that leave Nomadic Grandmother?

Maybe the name still fits.

Because being nomadic was never really about the caravan.

It was about the journey.

And every journey changes us.

I was the wild one.

I became a mother.

I became a grandmother.

I became divorced.

I became nomadic.

I became free.

I found love.

I became Willem's Old Lady.

And somewhere along the road...

I became myself.

Perhaps that's the greatest journey any of us will ever take.

If there's one thing these fifty-six years have taught me, it's this: life doesn't travel in a straight line. It twists, it breaks your heart, it surprises you, and every now and then it gives you more than you ever dared hope for.

If you're on a difficult stretch of road today, keep going.

The next bend may just lead you home.

Because that's what happened to me.

The nomad found home.

Not because the road ended.

But because she finally discovered she had been carrying home within her all along.