Three Times Alive

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live." (Joan Didion)

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."

Mae West said that - bold, brazen Mae, born in Brooklyn in 1893. She lived a long life, it seems, remembered by many as a sex symbol, but what intrigues me more is her fearless wit and sharp tongue. Double entendress are often a sign of intelligence - a woman who knew how to say more by saying less. Maybe she did it right, and once was more than enough for her.

To Joan Didion storytelling was a way to make sense of chaos - to string meaning through the mess of our days, like pearls on a frayed thread.

It was Confucius who reminded us,
"You have two lives. The second one begins when you realize you only have one."

Yes. That truth thunders through the soul, doesn’t it? We live carelessly until something cracks - a diagnosis, a death, a sudden goodbye - and suddenly life becomes sharp, precious, awake. That’s when the second life begins: not as a redo, but as a remembering of what really matters.

Some say the first life is for learning, and the second is for living what you’ve learned. And me? Well, I think I might be on to something, like me third?

Because something happened - was it yesterday? Or maybe Sunday?
I found myself yearning - no, aching - for the days of my childhood in the most spectacular place on Earth: Cape Agulhas. And as I sit with those memories, I don’t just remember - I relive them. They rise like mist off the sea, and for a few golden moments, I am back there.

Anaïs Nin once said, “We write to taste life twice - in the moment and in retrospect.”
If that’s true, then I am the luckiest soul alive, because not only did I live those moments, not only do I remember them - I write them.
Does that give me three lives?

Is that selfish? Or is it sacred?
Is it nostalgia? Or is it grace?

Because truly, what would life be without memory?
What would it mean to live just once, with no echo, no reflection, no sharing?
To live, remember, and tell - that is the trinity I hold dear.

So here I am, entering August Alchemy. I don’t know yet what this month will bring, or how it will shape me. Maybe this remembering is more than nostalgia. Maybe it’s a calling - a gentle urgency nudging me to write down the threads of my life, not just for me, but for my grandchildren. To let them know their Ouma lived many lives within this one.

That some of those years were wild and wondrous, and others were hard and hollow.
But she made it through. And still she sings her song.

It’s not only the heart and mind that remember - the body does too.
The body holds every scent, every sound, every bruise and burst of joy.

Take Sparletta Cream Soda. One whiff, and I’m back in Pretoria, a little girl again, slurping Cream Soda floats my mom made.
Or the smell of ripe banana, which I’ve never liked. Only now do I trace that discomfort back to childhood, after school, a place where we used to wait for my mom to fetch us after work.

And so I sit with this strange longing - this desire to remember not just for comfort, but for connection.
My mind wants to reclaim the things I held sacred before I knew they were sacred. My heart wants to tuck them back into the folds of my days, like small, glittering stones.

And perhaps - just perhaps - this is how I’ll spend the rest of my years:
Mining the magic from the life I’ve lived, and threading it into the life I still get to live.

So here we are: August Alchemy begins.
May we live long enough to remember the gold in our days - and lucky enough to live them again.

And as Paulo Coelho wrote in The Alchemist:

"Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time."