“Not only did my grandmother have a powerful conviction that everything works out in the end, but she was also able, paradoxically, to get into how terrible a thing was. It made her delightfully relatable. When I explained the details of some problematic situation, she would narrow down her gaze in concentration, as if peering over the top of her glasses at an especially troublesome insect on a table, and then click her tongue three times right before saying, ‘Oh, that is terrible,’ with stress on the word terrible … Then, at the end of the conversation, she would wrap everything up with the familiar words, ‘It will all work out in the end.’ It felt so good when she commiserated with us. It was like medicine to a traumatized soul.” — Edward Viljoen in “Ordinary Goodness”
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