The Day My Mother Chased My Father’s Naked Lover Down the Road

The exploits of my parents were something to be behold. I thought it was normal.

My late father, Werner Ludwig Schlesinger, man about town. He would have been quite the catch.

My mother came home from the business one day and told us to pack because we were going to the farm. The farm was located in the Little Karoo, a large semi-barren area in South Africa. My maternal grandparents were farmers.

My late mother, Eve Schlesinger. The first one was probably after the war in Cape Town. The one with the cats would have been after she married my father and before I was born. The last one was taken in 1957 aboard a Union Castle liner en route to Europe. Not a bad body for some who had had three children by then! She would have been in her early 30s.

It was in the early 60s. South Africa was regarded as the richest countries in the world, and my parents weren’t exactly poor. We had three servants, one of them an ex-cook from a hotel chain, and she made the most marvelous food. I was the eldest of three siblings, and it was quite normal for us to be told we were going to go somewhere, pack, and be off.

A photo my late father took of my mother while they were out picnicking. The lady in the background would have been the full time servant employed. Circa 1950.

In this particular case, what wasn’t normal, though, was that it was late afternoon, and if we were going to pack the van — a Volkswagen combi — it normally took place at one or two in the morning which was when we normally started traveling.