1981 - Emil, Solly, Bo, Chriss, me, Ngaire.
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Lawrence the First and Second
I went to the Temple this weekend, which necessitated me driving via the stretch of road between Broadwood and Mangamuka Bridge Settlement. There is a specific corner on that road, in the small gorge just before the Settlement, where uncle Laurie died in 1959. I always turn the sounds off at that point and give my uncle a thought. He was only 28 when he died.
I really have very few unfiltered memories of uncle, other than those of crying over his coffin and of seeing my father cry for the first time – one of the few times I saw it. He and Laurie were close. I have two photos of uncle, and he looks a lot like Dad with the big gap in his teeth, but (even given Dad's hellraising reputation as a young man) uncle's photos give the impression of a man with an additional edge to him. And everything I grew up hearing about him kind of confirms that he was what Dougie would call "a shit disturber." A charming one. I think he and Dougie would have recognised each other.
Uncle Laurie was the sixth child born to Nanna Alma and Grandpa Ray Herbert. Being a twin (the other baby died during their birthing) and premature he was small, so his nickname was Skin. Actually nanna Alma had three sets of twins. Uncle Don was the sole survivor of the first, uncle Laurie of the second, and neither of the third set made it. Growing up, uncle was haututu to the max. He'd start trouble then laugh gleefully to see his three older brothers wade in to save his hide. But he could handle himself in a scrap and was always willing to wade in himself on behalf of family and friends.
Although he never married, uncle may or may not have had children. He certainly never had any shortage of willing lady friends. I always harbour the secret hope, for single men who die in their prime, that there may be a child somewhere. Not the way the Church would have it I know, but to me it would be sad if they'd lived and died without issue.
Anyway, Mum was pregnant at the time Laurie died which is why Bo's first name is actually Laurence. His second name, Andrew, is in honour of Mum's father and he does have the ahua of the Rollo's, but his nature follows more after uncle Laurie than grandpa Andrew.
Now, how did Laurence Andrew become Bo? Although not actually black, he has always been the darkest of us all – so his first nickname, given by our younger aunts and older cousins when he was barely a year old, was Nigger. But he was still a pre-schooler when Mum put her foot down. Deeply moved by the race riots and rights news coming out of the US, she was not happy to have her son known by the "N" word. Being inveterate nick-namers, Dad’s family then saw a link between Laurence (as Mum still called him) and a cartoon character called Bobo the Monkey. So he became Bobo, which, over time, was shortened to Bo.
Most of my childhood memories of Bo are associated with fighting and / or blood, and it’s odd what can trigger those memories. On the way to church this morning we were talking about putting in the spring garden and Dougie asked me to look out for a genuine good quality rake. "Not a grass rake," he said, which I already knew but didn't stop him enlarging on - "A solid metal rake with a fine comb." And immediately I remembered the time exactly such a rake fell off the palm of my hand and landed right in the crown of Bo's head.
No – for once we weren’t fighting, quite the contrary. We were playing very happily, although separately – Bo running around and around the house and I balancing the rake on my hand. At some point the rake left my hand (whether by design or by accident, I can’t say now) and went into Bo’s head, eliciting a fountain of blood and blood-curdling screams from him. It must have hurt like blazes, but he was a tough little nut and not given to getting others in trouble. So I’m sure it was as much fright at the blood as the pain that made him cry. It sure gave me a fright so, of course, I scarpered. It seemed the wisest thing to do. Especially when Dad noticed the hullabaloo and started running towards us. Hunger eventually drove me home where I got the kick up the backside I knew was waiting for me. I felt I’d gotten off lightly.
But by far the two bloodiest incidents in his childhood resulted from Bo’s own actions. The first was when, aged 2 years, he cut 8 month old John’s neck open with the butcher knife while he was sleeping in his cot. Luckily he was sleeping face down because the cuts were deep and the scars remain to this day. I have no idea why Bo did it. The second event was when, aged 3 years, he crashed the tractor. Dad had worked on it earlier in the day putting the mower blade on, and had left it on a hillside with just the handbrake to hold it. He was going down to get the mail when he heard the distinctive squeal of the tractor wheels turning. He turned in time to see it hurtling down the road and Bo leaping off before it flew over the bank and crumpled on the ground 10 feet below. There was the slightest of scrapes on Bo’s back where the mower blade had touched. That was all. I don’t think anyone knows why he did it. Just haututu I suppose.
Both these events were so big that no punishment was awardable. They were the kind of thing that leaves parents weak with gratitude that their children have survived. But often as not Bo found himself on the receiving end of Dad’s swift boot, and it seemed he was always in some kind of trouble. In fact he and I were both the main recipients of Dad’s punishments, as well as the chief rivals for his approval. I didn’t like him much back then, and the evidence is that he felt the same way about me. But we developed the closeness of outlaws, which meant we would sometimes hang together rather than hang separately. Also, our childish dislike of each other was tempered by the fact that we did have some things in common. Like - neither of us would ever nark, we believed vengeance was ours to take, and violence was OK with us both.
There is no doubt in my mind that all us kids loved each other. But, for Bo and I, even love could tip over into dangerous places if either of us felt challenged by the other. Hence we both jumped off the roof one day in the half-belief / half-hope that we could fly further than the other. Another time we climbed to and dropped from ever higher and higher branches of a tree onto our knees to see who would stop first. And whenever Mum and Dad went to town or to a meeting, leaving me in charge, then our rivalry reached new lows. One time I locked him out of the house (there were no keys, so the lockout was achieved with a stout knife in the doorjamb) and Bo spent all day hurling everything he could find at that door – gumboots, dirt, rocks off the road, even the pumpkins Dad had drying on the tankstand. Every now and then I’d lose all patience, open the door and rush through the hail of objects he was throwing to thrash him, then leave him bruised and crying on the ground. As the day wore on he got in some good shots, but it was always going to end one way. I was stronger than he and, whatever Dad had done to me in my last hiding, well – I did that to Bo.
It sounds brutal, and it was. But we never ever told on each other. Nor did we ever seek to get each other in trouble. I respected that even while I kept a close eye on him.
On a more wholesome note we both loved playing and meeting challenges head on. For example, when Dad went through his fitness routines (jogging, push-ups, etc) it was a matter of pride to us both to either keep up with him or at least to complete everything he did. And when we were playing as a family, if there was a goal we’d set that needed someone game enough to risk life and limb – well, Bo was always game. Like the time we decided, against Dad’s strict instructions, to cross the slip - an eroding hillside which had been moving for years at erratic rates. The winter before this incident we’d heard the crack and snap of fully mature kauri and totara trees splitting as the hill shifted out from under them and turned into wet slurry. So Dad was very clear in his warnings to us – “Don’t play in the slip or you’ll get it.” On the day that we went into the slip we had no collective intention of doing so, and I’m not sure, even now, that we were actually playing in it. It seems to me that we were just skirting its edges on our way home because it was quicker than going round that whole hillside. Katarina and I were at the front keeping a rough eye on the little ones. Bo was at the back, closest to the actual slip, and I think that’s how and why he went into it. He must have struggled silently for a bit because, by the time he called out to us, we were quite a way away and when we got to him the mud was over his knees. No one has ever pointed something out to me and announced, “That’s quicksand.” But I know what it is. On that day as the five of us struggled to get Bo out of the sucking ground, with his tear and fear-stained face looking at us, and our own terror turning our muscles and bones as weak as water, I knew that was quicksand and I have never been so frightened in my life. When Bo came free (minus his boots and jeans) we all lay crying and panting on the ground. I looked up at the huge sky and I have never loved him so strongly. When our crying was spent we all went up to the dam between our and the Kohe Rd farms, cleaned ourselves, put together a story about the loss of his boots and jeans, then went home. I don’t recall if there was any punishment for the lost clothing, but I do know none of us ever told Dad where we’d been that day.
So, you see, not all our time was taken up fighting. In fact much of our childhood was about parallel experiences and events but, this being my memoir, I can only give my view of these.
No memoir of Bo’s childhood and youth is complete without talking about his sporting prowess and how he overcame (temporarily) it to achieve academically. By the time he was 8, I was away to Boarding School and we were never under the same roof as children again. Still I was aware as he grew that he was cleaning up older youth and even adults in swimming, athletics, rugby and chopping. Later he also got into judo, tennis and basketball. But these all paled into insignificance when, in his 7th form year, he gave away all sports to concentrate on getting his Bursary. He got it too, the only one of us to do so. And that brings me to the earlier change that came into his life when he discovered “The Lord of The Rings.” Before that book, school was a place to play sport and eat lunch for him. After it, school became a multi-dimensional place where reading was a magic carpet between dimensions. In fact he introduced Tolkien into the family because even Mum had not read him before Bo.
Another important change happened in my and Katarina’s last year at school. We were living in Jay and Elaine Matthews home, which had a high porch with no rails on it. One morning before the school bus came, he and I were arguing. By that stage in our life (I was 17 he was 13) it was unusual for us to fight. Anyway in mid-argument he turned his back on me and I took the chance to put my foot in his back and push him off the porch. He was still eating his porridge so he fell awkwardly, but when he sprang to his feet and came flying up the steps shouting that I was going to get it, I knew – I was going to get it. Then I figured, Oh well, I’m on top of these stairs and I may as well get in one good kick or punch before I get it. Then he stopped. “Come on!” I taunted, “What are you waiting for?” I remember how thoughtfully Bo looked at me before he said, “I don’t hit girls.” Then turned and walked away. I felt yay small – and very, very grateful. Bo’s relationship with all us sisters changed from that day on.
And that brings me to his relationship with John. I have always supposed that the story of Bo’s young years must be very intertwined with that of John because they were “The Boys” of our family, even though they were so different from each other. John was small and squeaky and not at all into physical confrontation if it could be avoided, while Bo was muscular and gruff and may as well have had a sign on his head saying "Punch me before I punch you." Maybe that's a bit extreme, but it's a fact that John would talk his way out of a paper bag, while Bo would punch. So it seemed to me that, more often than not, they hung together out of gender loyalty as much as brotherly love. But given that I was very self-centred at the time, I didn’t really register much about their relationship back then. What I do remember is that they argued a lot and, every now and then, Dad would have a gutsful and give them both a hiding over the top of their "He did it / No, he did it" objections. And when that happened I'd just laugh nastily. Like the time one of them accidentally filled Dad's boots with fresh cowshit, thinking it was the other's boots. (I must ask them at our next get-together which one it was who did it. Wonder if they'll tell?) I thought it was a big laugh when Dad put his feet in the boots. He was wild but controlled enough to take the time to go up the shed and cut a piece of polythene hose to give them a hiding with. I had no sympathy for them. In fact I felt they had no idea what a "real" hiding was. Cruel eh?
Anyway, in 1977 they both went to boarding school at Hato Petera while I was still nursing at the North Shore Hospital, just down the road from them. Their world was vastly removed from mine in many ways, but I kept an older sisterly eye on them both. If they needed money, I was generally good for it and if I needed an escort, they were useful substitutes for my boyfriend. But neither of them were hamu. They never asked for anything. Sure, if they needed money they took what I offered, but if they didn’t – then they didn’t take it. Their boarding school experience was a lot more liberal than mine had been. E.g. I went to the Poenamo (a local pub) one night, to find them already there and well on the way.
While the boys were in their first year at Hato Petera Mum got pregnant with Aaron. When they came home for their next holidays Mum, in her usual roundabout way broke the news to them by saying, “This time next year we’ll hear the pitter-patter of little feet around this house.” They both looked up from their comics and Bo asked if Katarina was pregnant. I happened to be home on that day as well and, when Mum said no, they both turned and looked at me calculatingly. When Mum finally spelt it out that it was her who was pregnant they both just stared at her then ducked back into their comics without another word. I’m sure they weren’t taking in a word of what they were reading. Regardless of how gobsmacked the boys may have been at his conception, I know Aaron's birth left them as bowled over as the rest of us with awe and delight. I wonder if Bo had any inkling then that within 5 short years he would be a father himself? In fact Conan’s birthday is just two weeks before Aaron’s.
It’s hard now to recognise the elemental creature that Bo was as a kid. His competitiveness is undiminished but he's no longer the wildly elemental entity that would rage all day over some slight - real or imagined, and we no longer compete for Dad's attention. Maybe any competition was only ever in my own mind. Anyway, Dad has lived long enough for us all to grow up and get over any urge to compete over him - and that is a gift for which we can all be grateful.
Yes, Bo’s life definitely sped towards fatherhood after he left school at 18. He was married at 21 and became a father at 22 - that was Conan. Two and a half years later came Chase, and two and a half years after that came Sean. Being a Dad was great for him. In fact he seemed made for it. But of course it was only made possible by his sweetheart, Chriss.
I don't really recall much about the day Katarina and I first met Chriss in 1980. It was the annual Tuatua Netball Competition in Kaitaia and she was playing in one of the visiting Auckland teams - I think it was Reckitt & Colmans where she and Bo both worked. Anyway, I was in the heyday of my vanity (no glasses), poverty (no contacts) and delinquency (frequently tipsy), so you could say I was blind drunk. Whatever - I don't remember meeting her, but Katarina does. She reckons that Bo introduced Chriss to her as the woman he was going to marry, and he did just that on 26th Septmber 1981. By then we'd all come to know and love the short, pretty and fiery Cook Island, town-girl very much and I was honoured to be one of their bridesmaids.
Bo and Chriss were married for just under 20 years and then she died, leaving us all in total shock and grief. In the Temple we do work related to the eternal family and this weekend I’ve been reminded that death can’t break a family. It’s an eternal thing and what we call death is only a temporary separation, not a permanent break. We all have faith that this is true, but I tell you - as a family we've never experienced anything like the wound of her death. We don't fear death - we just miss Chriss. Hers was the first death in our generation of the family and with it, as happened with the birth of the first of our children, so we began to move into another life era - that of dying. Bo said to us all not long after Chriss died, "Treasure every moment of your life together." I add to that my own advice - live life to make you worthy of being reunited forever with the ones you love and take nothing for granted. Love can come again, with all its baggage - both gory and glorious, but it should never ever be taken for granted.
Uncle Laurie was the first death-separation I remember and Bo never knew him in this life. Will they recognise each other when they meet? I’m sure they will. Our Chriss left us on July 7th 2001 and joined uncle Laurie. I wonder if he and she talk about his namesake? I’m sure they do. In the meantime it falls to Bo to live the life he has as best he can. Does he have what it takes to live it well until it is done? I know he does.
Elton John once wrote a song that has the lines,
"Who lived here?
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot,
Who weeded out the tares and grew a good crop,
And we are so amazed,
We're crippled and we're dazed,
A gardener like that one,
No-one can replace."
The fruit of Bo and Chriss "garden" is in their three sons. It's a good fruit brother. And that reminds me - I must remember to get that metal rake for Dougie.
I really have very few unfiltered memories of uncle, other than those of crying over his coffin and of seeing my father cry for the first time – one of the few times I saw it. He and Laurie were close. I have two photos of uncle, and he looks a lot like Dad with the big gap in his teeth, but (even given Dad's hellraising reputation as a young man) uncle's photos give the impression of a man with an additional edge to him. And everything I grew up hearing about him kind of confirms that he was what Dougie would call "a shit disturber." A charming one. I think he and Dougie would have recognised each other.
Uncle Laurie was the sixth child born to Nanna Alma and Grandpa Ray Herbert. Being a twin (the other baby died during their birthing) and premature he was small, so his nickname was Skin. Actually nanna Alma had three sets of twins. Uncle Don was the sole survivor of the first, uncle Laurie of the second, and neither of the third set made it. Growing up, uncle was haututu to the max. He'd start trouble then laugh gleefully to see his three older brothers wade in to save his hide. But he could handle himself in a scrap and was always willing to wade in himself on behalf of family and friends.
Although he never married, uncle may or may not have had children. He certainly never had any shortage of willing lady friends. I always harbour the secret hope, for single men who die in their prime, that there may be a child somewhere. Not the way the Church would have it I know, but to me it would be sad if they'd lived and died without issue.
Anyway, Mum was pregnant at the time Laurie died which is why Bo's first name is actually Laurence. His second name, Andrew, is in honour of Mum's father and he does have the ahua of the Rollo's, but his nature follows more after uncle Laurie than grandpa Andrew.
Now, how did Laurence Andrew become Bo? Although not actually black, he has always been the darkest of us all – so his first nickname, given by our younger aunts and older cousins when he was barely a year old, was Nigger. But he was still a pre-schooler when Mum put her foot down. Deeply moved by the race riots and rights news coming out of the US, she was not happy to have her son known by the "N" word. Being inveterate nick-namers, Dad’s family then saw a link between Laurence (as Mum still called him) and a cartoon character called Bobo the Monkey. So he became Bobo, which, over time, was shortened to Bo.
Most of my childhood memories of Bo are associated with fighting and / or blood, and it’s odd what can trigger those memories. On the way to church this morning we were talking about putting in the spring garden and Dougie asked me to look out for a genuine good quality rake. "Not a grass rake," he said, which I already knew but didn't stop him enlarging on - "A solid metal rake with a fine comb." And immediately I remembered the time exactly such a rake fell off the palm of my hand and landed right in the crown of Bo's head.
No – for once we weren’t fighting, quite the contrary. We were playing very happily, although separately – Bo running around and around the house and I balancing the rake on my hand. At some point the rake left my hand (whether by design or by accident, I can’t say now) and went into Bo’s head, eliciting a fountain of blood and blood-curdling screams from him. It must have hurt like blazes, but he was a tough little nut and not given to getting others in trouble. So I’m sure it was as much fright at the blood as the pain that made him cry. It sure gave me a fright so, of course, I scarpered. It seemed the wisest thing to do. Especially when Dad noticed the hullabaloo and started running towards us. Hunger eventually drove me home where I got the kick up the backside I knew was waiting for me. I felt I’d gotten off lightly.
But by far the two bloodiest incidents in his childhood resulted from Bo’s own actions. The first was when, aged 2 years, he cut 8 month old John’s neck open with the butcher knife while he was sleeping in his cot. Luckily he was sleeping face down because the cuts were deep and the scars remain to this day. I have no idea why Bo did it. The second event was when, aged 3 years, he crashed the tractor. Dad had worked on it earlier in the day putting the mower blade on, and had left it on a hillside with just the handbrake to hold it. He was going down to get the mail when he heard the distinctive squeal of the tractor wheels turning. He turned in time to see it hurtling down the road and Bo leaping off before it flew over the bank and crumpled on the ground 10 feet below. There was the slightest of scrapes on Bo’s back where the mower blade had touched. That was all. I don’t think anyone knows why he did it. Just haututu I suppose.
Both these events were so big that no punishment was awardable. They were the kind of thing that leaves parents weak with gratitude that their children have survived. But often as not Bo found himself on the receiving end of Dad’s swift boot, and it seemed he was always in some kind of trouble. In fact he and I were both the main recipients of Dad’s punishments, as well as the chief rivals for his approval. I didn’t like him much back then, and the evidence is that he felt the same way about me. But we developed the closeness of outlaws, which meant we would sometimes hang together rather than hang separately. Also, our childish dislike of each other was tempered by the fact that we did have some things in common. Like - neither of us would ever nark, we believed vengeance was ours to take, and violence was OK with us both.
There is no doubt in my mind that all us kids loved each other. But, for Bo and I, even love could tip over into dangerous places if either of us felt challenged by the other. Hence we both jumped off the roof one day in the half-belief / half-hope that we could fly further than the other. Another time we climbed to and dropped from ever higher and higher branches of a tree onto our knees to see who would stop first. And whenever Mum and Dad went to town or to a meeting, leaving me in charge, then our rivalry reached new lows. One time I locked him out of the house (there were no keys, so the lockout was achieved with a stout knife in the doorjamb) and Bo spent all day hurling everything he could find at that door – gumboots, dirt, rocks off the road, even the pumpkins Dad had drying on the tankstand. Every now and then I’d lose all patience, open the door and rush through the hail of objects he was throwing to thrash him, then leave him bruised and crying on the ground. As the day wore on he got in some good shots, but it was always going to end one way. I was stronger than he and, whatever Dad had done to me in my last hiding, well – I did that to Bo.
It sounds brutal, and it was. But we never ever told on each other. Nor did we ever seek to get each other in trouble. I respected that even while I kept a close eye on him.
On a more wholesome note we both loved playing and meeting challenges head on. For example, when Dad went through his fitness routines (jogging, push-ups, etc) it was a matter of pride to us both to either keep up with him or at least to complete everything he did. And when we were playing as a family, if there was a goal we’d set that needed someone game enough to risk life and limb – well, Bo was always game. Like the time we decided, against Dad’s strict instructions, to cross the slip - an eroding hillside which had been moving for years at erratic rates. The winter before this incident we’d heard the crack and snap of fully mature kauri and totara trees splitting as the hill shifted out from under them and turned into wet slurry. So Dad was very clear in his warnings to us – “Don’t play in the slip or you’ll get it.” On the day that we went into the slip we had no collective intention of doing so, and I’m not sure, even now, that we were actually playing in it. It seems to me that we were just skirting its edges on our way home because it was quicker than going round that whole hillside. Katarina and I were at the front keeping a rough eye on the little ones. Bo was at the back, closest to the actual slip, and I think that’s how and why he went into it. He must have struggled silently for a bit because, by the time he called out to us, we were quite a way away and when we got to him the mud was over his knees. No one has ever pointed something out to me and announced, “That’s quicksand.” But I know what it is. On that day as the five of us struggled to get Bo out of the sucking ground, with his tear and fear-stained face looking at us, and our own terror turning our muscles and bones as weak as water, I knew that was quicksand and I have never been so frightened in my life. When Bo came free (minus his boots and jeans) we all lay crying and panting on the ground. I looked up at the huge sky and I have never loved him so strongly. When our crying was spent we all went up to the dam between our and the Kohe Rd farms, cleaned ourselves, put together a story about the loss of his boots and jeans, then went home. I don’t recall if there was any punishment for the lost clothing, but I do know none of us ever told Dad where we’d been that day.
So, you see, not all our time was taken up fighting. In fact much of our childhood was about parallel experiences and events but, this being my memoir, I can only give my view of these.
No memoir of Bo’s childhood and youth is complete without talking about his sporting prowess and how he overcame (temporarily) it to achieve academically. By the time he was 8, I was away to Boarding School and we were never under the same roof as children again. Still I was aware as he grew that he was cleaning up older youth and even adults in swimming, athletics, rugby and chopping. Later he also got into judo, tennis and basketball. But these all paled into insignificance when, in his 7th form year, he gave away all sports to concentrate on getting his Bursary. He got it too, the only one of us to do so. And that brings me to the earlier change that came into his life when he discovered “The Lord of The Rings.” Before that book, school was a place to play sport and eat lunch for him. After it, school became a multi-dimensional place where reading was a magic carpet between dimensions. In fact he introduced Tolkien into the family because even Mum had not read him before Bo.
Another important change happened in my and Katarina’s last year at school. We were living in Jay and Elaine Matthews home, which had a high porch with no rails on it. One morning before the school bus came, he and I were arguing. By that stage in our life (I was 17 he was 13) it was unusual for us to fight. Anyway in mid-argument he turned his back on me and I took the chance to put my foot in his back and push him off the porch. He was still eating his porridge so he fell awkwardly, but when he sprang to his feet and came flying up the steps shouting that I was going to get it, I knew – I was going to get it. Then I figured, Oh well, I’m on top of these stairs and I may as well get in one good kick or punch before I get it. Then he stopped. “Come on!” I taunted, “What are you waiting for?” I remember how thoughtfully Bo looked at me before he said, “I don’t hit girls.” Then turned and walked away. I felt yay small – and very, very grateful. Bo’s relationship with all us sisters changed from that day on.
And that brings me to his relationship with John. I have always supposed that the story of Bo’s young years must be very intertwined with that of John because they were “The Boys” of our family, even though they were so different from each other. John was small and squeaky and not at all into physical confrontation if it could be avoided, while Bo was muscular and gruff and may as well have had a sign on his head saying "Punch me before I punch you." Maybe that's a bit extreme, but it's a fact that John would talk his way out of a paper bag, while Bo would punch. So it seemed to me that, more often than not, they hung together out of gender loyalty as much as brotherly love. But given that I was very self-centred at the time, I didn’t really register much about their relationship back then. What I do remember is that they argued a lot and, every now and then, Dad would have a gutsful and give them both a hiding over the top of their "He did it / No, he did it" objections. And when that happened I'd just laugh nastily. Like the time one of them accidentally filled Dad's boots with fresh cowshit, thinking it was the other's boots. (I must ask them at our next get-together which one it was who did it. Wonder if they'll tell?) I thought it was a big laugh when Dad put his feet in the boots. He was wild but controlled enough to take the time to go up the shed and cut a piece of polythene hose to give them a hiding with. I had no sympathy for them. In fact I felt they had no idea what a "real" hiding was. Cruel eh?
Anyway, in 1977 they both went to boarding school at Hato Petera while I was still nursing at the North Shore Hospital, just down the road from them. Their world was vastly removed from mine in many ways, but I kept an older sisterly eye on them both. If they needed money, I was generally good for it and if I needed an escort, they were useful substitutes for my boyfriend. But neither of them were hamu. They never asked for anything. Sure, if they needed money they took what I offered, but if they didn’t – then they didn’t take it. Their boarding school experience was a lot more liberal than mine had been. E.g. I went to the Poenamo (a local pub) one night, to find them already there and well on the way.
While the boys were in their first year at Hato Petera Mum got pregnant with Aaron. When they came home for their next holidays Mum, in her usual roundabout way broke the news to them by saying, “This time next year we’ll hear the pitter-patter of little feet around this house.” They both looked up from their comics and Bo asked if Katarina was pregnant. I happened to be home on that day as well and, when Mum said no, they both turned and looked at me calculatingly. When Mum finally spelt it out that it was her who was pregnant they both just stared at her then ducked back into their comics without another word. I’m sure they weren’t taking in a word of what they were reading. Regardless of how gobsmacked the boys may have been at his conception, I know Aaron's birth left them as bowled over as the rest of us with awe and delight. I wonder if Bo had any inkling then that within 5 short years he would be a father himself? In fact Conan’s birthday is just two weeks before Aaron’s.
It’s hard now to recognise the elemental creature that Bo was as a kid. His competitiveness is undiminished but he's no longer the wildly elemental entity that would rage all day over some slight - real or imagined, and we no longer compete for Dad's attention. Maybe any competition was only ever in my own mind. Anyway, Dad has lived long enough for us all to grow up and get over any urge to compete over him - and that is a gift for which we can all be grateful.
Yes, Bo’s life definitely sped towards fatherhood after he left school at 18. He was married at 21 and became a father at 22 - that was Conan. Two and a half years later came Chase, and two and a half years after that came Sean. Being a Dad was great for him. In fact he seemed made for it. But of course it was only made possible by his sweetheart, Chriss.
I don't really recall much about the day Katarina and I first met Chriss in 1980. It was the annual Tuatua Netball Competition in Kaitaia and she was playing in one of the visiting Auckland teams - I think it was Reckitt & Colmans where she and Bo both worked. Anyway, I was in the heyday of my vanity (no glasses), poverty (no contacts) and delinquency (frequently tipsy), so you could say I was blind drunk. Whatever - I don't remember meeting her, but Katarina does. She reckons that Bo introduced Chriss to her as the woman he was going to marry, and he did just that on 26th Septmber 1981. By then we'd all come to know and love the short, pretty and fiery Cook Island, town-girl very much and I was honoured to be one of their bridesmaids.
Bo and Chriss were married for just under 20 years and then she died, leaving us all in total shock and grief. In the Temple we do work related to the eternal family and this weekend I’ve been reminded that death can’t break a family. It’s an eternal thing and what we call death is only a temporary separation, not a permanent break. We all have faith that this is true, but I tell you - as a family we've never experienced anything like the wound of her death. We don't fear death - we just miss Chriss. Hers was the first death in our generation of the family and with it, as happened with the birth of the first of our children, so we began to move into another life era - that of dying. Bo said to us all not long after Chriss died, "Treasure every moment of your life together." I add to that my own advice - live life to make you worthy of being reunited forever with the ones you love and take nothing for granted. Love can come again, with all its baggage - both gory and glorious, but it should never ever be taken for granted.
Uncle Laurie was the first death-separation I remember and Bo never knew him in this life. Will they recognise each other when they meet? I’m sure they will. Our Chriss left us on July 7th 2001 and joined uncle Laurie. I wonder if he and she talk about his namesake? I’m sure they do. In the meantime it falls to Bo to live the life he has as best he can. Does he have what it takes to live it well until it is done? I know he does.
Elton John once wrote a song that has the lines,
"Who lived here?
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot,
Who weeded out the tares and grew a good crop,
And we are so amazed,
We're crippled and we're dazed,
A gardener like that one,
No-one can replace."
The fruit of Bo and Chriss "garden" is in their three sons. It's a good fruit brother. And that reminds me - I must remember to get that metal rake for Dougie.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Katarina - Lessons from Childhood
My Sunday afternoons generally are solo affairs with Dougie conked out under his current book. Once I've put on the dinner I'm free to work on Family History, catch up on family emails or - at a pinch - add to this blog. Today is not much different - I've been writing to our mates from the Nursing Class of 1974 about our 30th reunion which is happening next year.
This reunion was an idea that I and Katarina had talked about making happen for years, and it finally got it's blast-off via the Old Friends New Zealand website. There were 17 women ranging in age from 16 to 36 in the Kaitaia Hospital Januaray intake for 1974. Whenever I revisit my albums & diaries of that period they reinforce the bonds forged in me with all those women. We were special. It may be that time & ego have skewed my perspective, but I don't think so. From challenging our tutors, to challenging our seniors on the wards about the way they treated patients - we changed the way things were done in Kaitaia hospital on a whole bunch of things. And in the process we marked and changed each other. But of them all there is only one who has stayed close to me through all the years since, and that is my sister Katarina.
I'm starting my memories of Katarina with how she got her name. When we were growing up she was known as Cathy because Mum had originally intended her to be called Catherine Mary. But we were a Pawarenga Catholic family which meant that Father Zangerl was "The Law." When it came to the moment of baptism he asked Mum for the name, and then completely ignored her answer, imposing instead the Maori transliteration "Katarina Maria," and Mum, in a fit of subservience, registered her as that.
All this came out decades later when Cathy applied for a passport and the Births Deaths & Marriages Registry could not find her birth certificate. It was a real mystery until Mum remembered that, legally, she didn't have a child called Catherine Mary Herbert. It says a lot about the times that not many Maori parents actually gave their kids Maori names in the 1950s. In any event it took another decade or so before Katarina took to actually using her legal name, and there are still scads of people who call her Cathy. But Katarina she is now.
My earliest memory of her was as a small, very blonde and skinny kid. In fact for a little while she was nick-named Blondie. Later she was called "Skitter" because Dad said she was like one of the skinny calves who had the skitters. At another time Mum called her the "I don't care girl" because that was her catch-cry whenever she was being told off or told something she didn't want to hear. And when she really did not want to hear or do something she'd just take off running to get as far away as quickly as she could from whatever or whoever it was. She was fast too. I remember the first time we saw a train. Dad was taking me for my annual checkup with the plastic surgeon who'd repaired my cleft palate and Katarina came with us. We went by bus to the railhead in Okaihau. But when the train came into the station she and I took one look at this puffing monster, screamed, and took off - in different directions. Dad was grateful for a pakeha chap who said, "You grab that one, I'll get the other." Katarina got a lot further than me. She was a real Speedy Gonzales. But I remember one time when she wasn't quite fast enough.
She and Bo had been fighting on and off through the day over something and she'd dealt to him a couple of times. She'd have been about 8 or 9 at the time which would have made him 5 or 6. Anyway by that night we'd all kind of forgotten their earlier battles and had settled into listening to some radio show. Katarina was standing on her head on the sofa with her feet against the wall and her face towards the radio, when Bo came through the door. He looked at her, we looked at him and there weren't nothing we could do to stop him. Katarina tried to get her feet down but it was too late becuase, as the Newcastle Song said, "...don't you ever let a chance go by oh Lord, don't you ever let a chance go by."
Katarina wore a shiner for a day or so and Bo got a hell of hiding from both her and me. But I'm pretty sure he felt it was worth it to have scored a hit on one of his older sisters, because we were always giving him his beans at that time. But he asked for it.
Another time the clash was between her and I. Again I can't remember what triggered it, but I think it was probably over kai because she was holding a boning knife at the time and, at some point in the argument, she threatened to throw it at me. I dared her to do just that and she started making throwing motions with it but not letting it go. It was just one of those brinkmanship things that kids get into, so you could have knocked us both down with a feather when the blade came out of the handle, flew across the room and stuck in my cheek as neat as a dart in a bullseye. Katarina was standing there with the handle still in her hand and her jaw on the ground. Actually it happened so quick and clean that it didn't hurt a bit but, like Bo, I wasn't going to let a chance go by, so I instantly fell flat on my back screaming blue bloody murder. Mum and Dad came rushing in and took one look then went for Katarina, but she was already gone. I can't remember if she got a hiding for that, but I remember feeling smug that for once it wasn't me in trouble.
On the other side of things, as much as we fought as kids, Katarina and I lead our siblings and worked together in all sorts of ways. And Mum and Dad came to rely on that. From a quite young age (about 9 or 10) they trusted us "big ones" (me, Katarina and, to a lesser extent, Patsy) to take the "little ones" (Bo, John and Jenni) swimming or roaming. We three older girls made the lunches and beds - although in truth Katarina was always more consientious and industrious than me in those kinds of tasks because I was basically lazy. I suppose that together we were sometimes unkind to the little ones, but they never liked going roaming without us. In fact even when they got to be old enough to take themselves swimming, they wouldn't go without one of us, which was a pain. But we always gave in - eventually - and ended up having huge fun every time. In everything we were unselfconsciously close to each other. At home, school, church or JMB we'd walk around holding hands, and when we were in new situations we always made sure each other was OK. We even lied and covered for each other - except when we were angry with each other. And, most telling of all, we lived our secret children's lives together. By that I mean the rituals Katarina and I made up that the adults knew nothing of. Like our annual pilgrimage to pay tribute to the fairies that lived in a particular cabbage tree stump (we'd make sure each of the little ones had some gift to leave - a posy of buttercup flowers, a stone, etc). Or the imaginery city we built, defended and clambered through in the huge privet hedge that grew out of a gully below the cow shed. That hedge must have stood 25 feet at its highest and it was on the side of a steep bank that dropped off another 6 feet or so. It completely encircled a stand of Taraire and Karaka trees that had Rata vines hanging out of them. One minute we'd be Kings and Queens in the high castles of the city, the next we were Jane and Tarzan swinging through the jungle. We'd get scratched to hell from the thorns but, as long as we had our gumboots on, we seemed able to hack the pain. We lost a bunch of boots in that hedge though and, in those days of relative poverty, that was a crime punishable with a kick up the backside. I remember a time when one of Katarina's gumboots got stuck. She was trying to release it her when foot suddenly popped free and she somersaulted right out of the hedge onto the ground some 30 feet below. We didn't notice she'd gone till we heard her crying minutes later. She'd been badly winded and it took her that long to get enough air in her lungs to cry out loud. Nothing was brokens because, I suppose, she was so skinny and light. Lucky - because we'd all have got a hiding. Anyway, we made sure to get her boot out of the hedge before we went home.
So, sure we fought, but we were always together.
In the early sixties Mum and Dad fell out with Father Zangerl and he refused to give them Communion. I'm not sure if he refused to let them go to Church as well, but they did stop going. They still sent us and that was an interesting experience. As Catholics there was an expectation that we'd go to the local Convent, but we never did. Mum and Dad never saw the sense in sending us past a school that was right next door to a school 5 miles away. Specially when there was no bus. Rotokakahi is now an accepted part of Pawarenga, but back then it was a very distinct valley community in itself. It wasn't even on the same telephone exchange. All this meant we weren't tight with our Catholic peers at Church who, I guess must have absorbed some adult prejudices, because our Sundays were one long battle both going in and coming out. Katarina and Pat had long hair which was plaited every Sunday while I always had short hair because I was a paru, untidy kid. But I didn't envy my sisters their lovely long plaited tresses which were handles for some serious yanking by the Convent boys we fought with every Sunday. Those same boys were to become our devoted slaves in our teen years. They never stood a chance, except for Hepa who took our side when he was around. We held our own pretty well anyway, with Katarina and I doing the damage, and Bo and Jenni were always usefully aggressive and willing. But Pat was a complete washout and John was sickly and often not with us. Mum and Dad never knew. I don't know why we didn't tell. I do know I loved the singing in Church, I liked it when the Legion of Mary visited to say the Rosary, and I felt protected by our daily family prayers. But the rest of the Catholic experience was just a bun-fight for me.
Anyway, when the Rotokakahi Maori School closed in 1967 we moved to Broadwood District High and a whole new world opened to us. We went from a school of 12 kids aged 5 years to 13 years (5 of us, 5 of our cousins and the schoolteacher's 2) to a school of over 100 aged 5 - 18, most of them a bunch of strangers. At first we carried on much as we had at Rotokakahi - holding hands, talking about "Mummy" and "Daddy" and looking after each other. But we got teased about those things. And then we were put in separate class rooms. Imperceptibly we began to let go some of the things that had bound us together and we inevitably grew apart. Katarina was a sociable pixie and made friends easily. She was popular and I think she got her first boyfriend not long after we started at Broadwood. Three years later, in 1970, I left for Boarding School. When I came back for my last year at school in 1973, Katarina had moved into the role of the oldest at home and the rest of the kids had grown beyond my control.
There is one more thing I need to put down here from our shared childhood. That is the perspective Katarina had of the intermittent warfare between Dad and I. I'm grateful for her honest recounting to me of the trauma of it. I know she has never required anything of me, and I understand that in telling me she gave up an unnecessary burden that she'd been carrying. Nevertheless I say it here as I did to her when she told me - I'm sorry for it.
Our teenage years were quite different to our childhood. I had less status, there were very few clashes, a lot more distance, family prayers petered out and our adventures were not so innocent. Having been in an all-girls school, and not being naturally sociable, I was way behind the dinner compared to Katarina and Pat in the boys department. Later, though I had my moments and I was no angel, I was always crystal clear about my desirability ranking compared to that of my sisters. Most boys lusted after them but respected me. One thing remained unchanged though - we still covered for each other like mad. Poor Mum had the 3 of us triple-teaming her at times. But we never dared try any tricks with Dad. One time I woke up and there was someone shaking my foot and hoarsely whispering "Cathy! Cathy!" All four of us girls slept in the same room in 2 sets of bunks, and our parents' room was just down and across the corridor from us. Both the boy shaking my foot and I got huge shocks to discover each other's identity and he high-tailed it out of there straight away. I could have just gone back to sleep and not said anything, but I knew that Dad had this uncanny way of finding out things. So I woke Katarina up and she agreed that I should go wake and tell him what had happened. Better for him to be angry because of a truth rather than a lie we figured. He was, but at least he didn't give me a hiding, which he would have if I hadn't told him and he'd found out later from someone else.
Another thing that I was behind on when I came back from boarding school was that I'd never smoked. But all the kids (even Jenni and John, but not Bo) were sneaking them from Mum and Dad. So, being a dummy at that time, I got into it too and before long I was more hooked than any of them. One night, after everyone else was asleep and the lights were out, Katarina and I were sharing a sneaky puff in our bedroom where the floor boards had quarter inch gaps between them. Being on the bottom bunk it was my job to stuff our butt through the cracks when we were finished. Anyway Dad got up to go to the toilet and we heard him pause in the corridor. Straight away Katarina chucked the butt down to me and we held our breaths. "Who's smoking?" Man - absolute silence and stillness from Katarina, and there I was holding the bloody thing. So I shoved the still burning butt through a crack, grabbed a can of fly spray that we'd used for mosquitoes earlier, sprayed my mouth and choked out, "Not me." I could hear and feel Katarina's hysterical giggles above me. I guess Dad decided he didn't want to know or didn't want the hassle because he just made a growling noise and stomped off. It took us ages to get over the fright and the relief of it. Just as one of us would settle the other would start laughing and away we'd go. What fun.
At the end of 1973 Katarina and I left school together. Mum had secured both of us positions in the January 1974 student nurse intake at Kaitaia Hospital. So we both had to get holiday jobs to make the money needed to buy our textbooks, shoes, stockings. petticoats, etc. I went to work at an electrical factory in Auckland, and Katarina worked as a housekeeper for a lady up the road from Pawarenga who'd had a mastectomy to treat her breast cancer. In 1995 Katarina was to undergo a less radical partial mastectomy of her own. I wonder if she remembered Judy McCraith for whom she'd worked all those years earlier? I'm sure she must have. Anyway that was our first experience of earning our own money and we liked it.
In those days, for the first 6 months of training all nursing students had to spend the weekdays living in the Nurses Home, even married students. And it was run like a female boot camp - strict hours, regimented routines and absolutely no men, not even husbands. Each intake occupied a separate floor with 1st years on the bottom, 2nd years in the middle and the graduating class on the top floor. Our bedrooms were allocated alphabetically which put Katarina and I next door to each other. When you have 17 women, all but one being fresh out of school, living together there are consequences. One of them was that we were like honey to the bees. Boys and men were at the door day and night and the housekeepers were kept very busy. Occasionally the Police had to be called. One instance ended with Katarina and I having to give evidence in Court. The girl on the other side of me had dumped her boyfriend for another and he'd drunk himself into a vengeful mood. The first I knew of the whole affair was being woken by the sound of a gunshot. I sat up as a second shot sent shards of glass flying past me and realised it was coming through my window. All I could think of was to scream out, "Cathy! Don't stand up." That was my first thought and my worst fear. My sister was going to get shot if she got out of bed or came in to me. Next thing I heard sirens, the light in my room came on and there was a mob of people asking if I was alright. But all I wanted to know was if Katarina was alright. It turned out that it wasn't gunshots that had come through my window, but two bottles of beer. The boy was arrested, the girl next to me was blamed, and Katarina and I had a day in Court. Later Katarina befriended the boy and wrote to him while he was in borstal. When he got out she had a wee bit of trouble explaining to him that she was just being nice.
For all our relative sophistication we were often naive. For example in our 2nd year we spent two weeks in Whangarei doing our Public Health units. We had a bit more freedom by then and Katarina's current boyfriend, Robin Littlejohn, who lived in Whangarei showed us quite a bit of night life while we were there. At one party this guy sat next to me and asked if I was a nurse. "Yes," says I. Then he asked, "Do you drop tabs?" I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but not wanting to look stupid I tried to nut it out for myself. Then I got it - tabs ... T.A.B.! "No," says I, "I don't bet." He just looked at me disbelievingly and moved away. Later he approached Katarina and I saw her suddenly look around then sidle away from him. She came to me and whispered, "Have I got my mate?" She turned around so I could see. I told her no and asked what made her think she did. "Because," she says, "that guy just asked me if I'd dropped my tampon." He must have thought we were a complete pair of nanas.
Katarina and I worked well together on the Wards. We had an understanding of each other and I repected her work enormously. She was quite simply one of the best nurses I ever saw.
We graduated in October 1975 and a few months later I left for a job at North Shore Hospital in Auckland, while she stayed in Kaitaia. In 1977 she had her oldest daughter and named her Janine Anne. I was tickled pink. Mum had delivered our youngest brother just 4 months before. That was our Aaron who is almost 16 years younger than Jenni. So Aaron and Janine have always been more like brother and sister than uncle and niece. Katarina becoming a mother was the beginning of a new era in all our lives - parenthood with all the challenges that represents and for which no amount of preparation ever fully prepares one. Changes were now coming faster in all our lives and they haven't slowed down to this day.
In 1980 she met Dennis Chapman and in 1982 she gave birth to Michael. 8 weeks earlier I'd given birth to Chev, and in July Jenni had borne Cheye. So that was our 1982 crop of babies. Sam and Quest (Jenni's 2nd) followed in 1986 and Denise came along by herself in 1990. By then they were living busy lives share-milking way down in the Bay of Plenty, I'd become a Mormon and she was leaning towards the Jehovah's Witnesses. So, though we continued to write to each other and visited as often as possible, there were increasing gaps between us.
Then they came back to the north in 1993 and the gaps closed just like that. She did actually go on to be baptised as a Witness, but we never allowed it to be a division between us, instead sharing what we could of our commonalities.
Now in 2004 I look back on a lifetime shared with Katarina. She has survived so many things which are for her to tell, not me. If I'd had my wishes she would have been able to employ her old childhood trick of running away as fast and as far as possible from some of the bad things that inevitably came into her life. But of course that is not the way it works. We cannot stop hurts and mistakes and regrets coming into our own life or the lives of those we love. But we can always hold hands, sing our anthems of courage, cover for each other, say our prayers and look after each other.
Funny isn't it how the most lasting lessons are often learnt in childhood. I'm thankful to have learned them with Katarina.
This reunion was an idea that I and Katarina had talked about making happen for years, and it finally got it's blast-off via the Old Friends New Zealand website. There were 17 women ranging in age from 16 to 36 in the Kaitaia Hospital Januaray intake for 1974. Whenever I revisit my albums & diaries of that period they reinforce the bonds forged in me with all those women. We were special. It may be that time & ego have skewed my perspective, but I don't think so. From challenging our tutors, to challenging our seniors on the wards about the way they treated patients - we changed the way things were done in Kaitaia hospital on a whole bunch of things. And in the process we marked and changed each other. But of them all there is only one who has stayed close to me through all the years since, and that is my sister Katarina.
I'm starting my memories of Katarina with how she got her name. When we were growing up she was known as Cathy because Mum had originally intended her to be called Catherine Mary. But we were a Pawarenga Catholic family which meant that Father Zangerl was "The Law." When it came to the moment of baptism he asked Mum for the name, and then completely ignored her answer, imposing instead the Maori transliteration "Katarina Maria," and Mum, in a fit of subservience, registered her as that.
All this came out decades later when Cathy applied for a passport and the Births Deaths & Marriages Registry could not find her birth certificate. It was a real mystery until Mum remembered that, legally, she didn't have a child called Catherine Mary Herbert. It says a lot about the times that not many Maori parents actually gave their kids Maori names in the 1950s. In any event it took another decade or so before Katarina took to actually using her legal name, and there are still scads of people who call her Cathy. But Katarina she is now.
My earliest memory of her was as a small, very blonde and skinny kid. In fact for a little while she was nick-named Blondie. Later she was called "Skitter" because Dad said she was like one of the skinny calves who had the skitters. At another time Mum called her the "I don't care girl" because that was her catch-cry whenever she was being told off or told something she didn't want to hear. And when she really did not want to hear or do something she'd just take off running to get as far away as quickly as she could from whatever or whoever it was. She was fast too. I remember the first time we saw a train. Dad was taking me for my annual checkup with the plastic surgeon who'd repaired my cleft palate and Katarina came with us. We went by bus to the railhead in Okaihau. But when the train came into the station she and I took one look at this puffing monster, screamed, and took off - in different directions. Dad was grateful for a pakeha chap who said, "You grab that one, I'll get the other." Katarina got a lot further than me. She was a real Speedy Gonzales. But I remember one time when she wasn't quite fast enough.
She and Bo had been fighting on and off through the day over something and she'd dealt to him a couple of times. She'd have been about 8 or 9 at the time which would have made him 5 or 6. Anyway by that night we'd all kind of forgotten their earlier battles and had settled into listening to some radio show. Katarina was standing on her head on the sofa with her feet against the wall and her face towards the radio, when Bo came through the door. He looked at her, we looked at him and there weren't nothing we could do to stop him. Katarina tried to get her feet down but it was too late becuase, as the Newcastle Song said, "...don't you ever let a chance go by oh Lord, don't you ever let a chance go by."
Katarina wore a shiner for a day or so and Bo got a hell of hiding from both her and me. But I'm pretty sure he felt it was worth it to have scored a hit on one of his older sisters, because we were always giving him his beans at that time. But he asked for it.
Another time the clash was between her and I. Again I can't remember what triggered it, but I think it was probably over kai because she was holding a boning knife at the time and, at some point in the argument, she threatened to throw it at me. I dared her to do just that and she started making throwing motions with it but not letting it go. It was just one of those brinkmanship things that kids get into, so you could have knocked us both down with a feather when the blade came out of the handle, flew across the room and stuck in my cheek as neat as a dart in a bullseye. Katarina was standing there with the handle still in her hand and her jaw on the ground. Actually it happened so quick and clean that it didn't hurt a bit but, like Bo, I wasn't going to let a chance go by, so I instantly fell flat on my back screaming blue bloody murder. Mum and Dad came rushing in and took one look then went for Katarina, but she was already gone. I can't remember if she got a hiding for that, but I remember feeling smug that for once it wasn't me in trouble.
On the other side of things, as much as we fought as kids, Katarina and I lead our siblings and worked together in all sorts of ways. And Mum and Dad came to rely on that. From a quite young age (about 9 or 10) they trusted us "big ones" (me, Katarina and, to a lesser extent, Patsy) to take the "little ones" (Bo, John and Jenni) swimming or roaming. We three older girls made the lunches and beds - although in truth Katarina was always more consientious and industrious than me in those kinds of tasks because I was basically lazy. I suppose that together we were sometimes unkind to the little ones, but they never liked going roaming without us. In fact even when they got to be old enough to take themselves swimming, they wouldn't go without one of us, which was a pain. But we always gave in - eventually - and ended up having huge fun every time. In everything we were unselfconsciously close to each other. At home, school, church or JMB we'd walk around holding hands, and when we were in new situations we always made sure each other was OK. We even lied and covered for each other - except when we were angry with each other. And, most telling of all, we lived our secret children's lives together. By that I mean the rituals Katarina and I made up that the adults knew nothing of. Like our annual pilgrimage to pay tribute to the fairies that lived in a particular cabbage tree stump (we'd make sure each of the little ones had some gift to leave - a posy of buttercup flowers, a stone, etc). Or the imaginery city we built, defended and clambered through in the huge privet hedge that grew out of a gully below the cow shed. That hedge must have stood 25 feet at its highest and it was on the side of a steep bank that dropped off another 6 feet or so. It completely encircled a stand of Taraire and Karaka trees that had Rata vines hanging out of them. One minute we'd be Kings and Queens in the high castles of the city, the next we were Jane and Tarzan swinging through the jungle. We'd get scratched to hell from the thorns but, as long as we had our gumboots on, we seemed able to hack the pain. We lost a bunch of boots in that hedge though and, in those days of relative poverty, that was a crime punishable with a kick up the backside. I remember a time when one of Katarina's gumboots got stuck. She was trying to release it her when foot suddenly popped free and she somersaulted right out of the hedge onto the ground some 30 feet below. We didn't notice she'd gone till we heard her crying minutes later. She'd been badly winded and it took her that long to get enough air in her lungs to cry out loud. Nothing was brokens because, I suppose, she was so skinny and light. Lucky - because we'd all have got a hiding. Anyway, we made sure to get her boot out of the hedge before we went home.
So, sure we fought, but we were always together.
In the early sixties Mum and Dad fell out with Father Zangerl and he refused to give them Communion. I'm not sure if he refused to let them go to Church as well, but they did stop going. They still sent us and that was an interesting experience. As Catholics there was an expectation that we'd go to the local Convent, but we never did. Mum and Dad never saw the sense in sending us past a school that was right next door to a school 5 miles away. Specially when there was no bus. Rotokakahi is now an accepted part of Pawarenga, but back then it was a very distinct valley community in itself. It wasn't even on the same telephone exchange. All this meant we weren't tight with our Catholic peers at Church who, I guess must have absorbed some adult prejudices, because our Sundays were one long battle both going in and coming out. Katarina and Pat had long hair which was plaited every Sunday while I always had short hair because I was a paru, untidy kid. But I didn't envy my sisters their lovely long plaited tresses which were handles for some serious yanking by the Convent boys we fought with every Sunday. Those same boys were to become our devoted slaves in our teen years. They never stood a chance, except for Hepa who took our side when he was around. We held our own pretty well anyway, with Katarina and I doing the damage, and Bo and Jenni were always usefully aggressive and willing. But Pat was a complete washout and John was sickly and often not with us. Mum and Dad never knew. I don't know why we didn't tell. I do know I loved the singing in Church, I liked it when the Legion of Mary visited to say the Rosary, and I felt protected by our daily family prayers. But the rest of the Catholic experience was just a bun-fight for me.
Anyway, when the Rotokakahi Maori School closed in 1967 we moved to Broadwood District High and a whole new world opened to us. We went from a school of 12 kids aged 5 years to 13 years (5 of us, 5 of our cousins and the schoolteacher's 2) to a school of over 100 aged 5 - 18, most of them a bunch of strangers. At first we carried on much as we had at Rotokakahi - holding hands, talking about "Mummy" and "Daddy" and looking after each other. But we got teased about those things. And then we were put in separate class rooms. Imperceptibly we began to let go some of the things that had bound us together and we inevitably grew apart. Katarina was a sociable pixie and made friends easily. She was popular and I think she got her first boyfriend not long after we started at Broadwood. Three years later, in 1970, I left for Boarding School. When I came back for my last year at school in 1973, Katarina had moved into the role of the oldest at home and the rest of the kids had grown beyond my control.
There is one more thing I need to put down here from our shared childhood. That is the perspective Katarina had of the intermittent warfare between Dad and I. I'm grateful for her honest recounting to me of the trauma of it. I know she has never required anything of me, and I understand that in telling me she gave up an unnecessary burden that she'd been carrying. Nevertheless I say it here as I did to her when she told me - I'm sorry for it.
Our teenage years were quite different to our childhood. I had less status, there were very few clashes, a lot more distance, family prayers petered out and our adventures were not so innocent. Having been in an all-girls school, and not being naturally sociable, I was way behind the dinner compared to Katarina and Pat in the boys department. Later, though I had my moments and I was no angel, I was always crystal clear about my desirability ranking compared to that of my sisters. Most boys lusted after them but respected me. One thing remained unchanged though - we still covered for each other like mad. Poor Mum had the 3 of us triple-teaming her at times. But we never dared try any tricks with Dad. One time I woke up and there was someone shaking my foot and hoarsely whispering "Cathy! Cathy!" All four of us girls slept in the same room in 2 sets of bunks, and our parents' room was just down and across the corridor from us. Both the boy shaking my foot and I got huge shocks to discover each other's identity and he high-tailed it out of there straight away. I could have just gone back to sleep and not said anything, but I knew that Dad had this uncanny way of finding out things. So I woke Katarina up and she agreed that I should go wake and tell him what had happened. Better for him to be angry because of a truth rather than a lie we figured. He was, but at least he didn't give me a hiding, which he would have if I hadn't told him and he'd found out later from someone else.
Another thing that I was behind on when I came back from boarding school was that I'd never smoked. But all the kids (even Jenni and John, but not Bo) were sneaking them from Mum and Dad. So, being a dummy at that time, I got into it too and before long I was more hooked than any of them. One night, after everyone else was asleep and the lights were out, Katarina and I were sharing a sneaky puff in our bedroom where the floor boards had quarter inch gaps between them. Being on the bottom bunk it was my job to stuff our butt through the cracks when we were finished. Anyway Dad got up to go to the toilet and we heard him pause in the corridor. Straight away Katarina chucked the butt down to me and we held our breaths. "Who's smoking?" Man - absolute silence and stillness from Katarina, and there I was holding the bloody thing. So I shoved the still burning butt through a crack, grabbed a can of fly spray that we'd used for mosquitoes earlier, sprayed my mouth and choked out, "Not me." I could hear and feel Katarina's hysterical giggles above me. I guess Dad decided he didn't want to know or didn't want the hassle because he just made a growling noise and stomped off. It took us ages to get over the fright and the relief of it. Just as one of us would settle the other would start laughing and away we'd go. What fun.
At the end of 1973 Katarina and I left school together. Mum had secured both of us positions in the January 1974 student nurse intake at Kaitaia Hospital. So we both had to get holiday jobs to make the money needed to buy our textbooks, shoes, stockings. petticoats, etc. I went to work at an electrical factory in Auckland, and Katarina worked as a housekeeper for a lady up the road from Pawarenga who'd had a mastectomy to treat her breast cancer. In 1995 Katarina was to undergo a less radical partial mastectomy of her own. I wonder if she remembered Judy McCraith for whom she'd worked all those years earlier? I'm sure she must have. Anyway that was our first experience of earning our own money and we liked it.
In those days, for the first 6 months of training all nursing students had to spend the weekdays living in the Nurses Home, even married students. And it was run like a female boot camp - strict hours, regimented routines and absolutely no men, not even husbands. Each intake occupied a separate floor with 1st years on the bottom, 2nd years in the middle and the graduating class on the top floor. Our bedrooms were allocated alphabetically which put Katarina and I next door to each other. When you have 17 women, all but one being fresh out of school, living together there are consequences. One of them was that we were like honey to the bees. Boys and men were at the door day and night and the housekeepers were kept very busy. Occasionally the Police had to be called. One instance ended with Katarina and I having to give evidence in Court. The girl on the other side of me had dumped her boyfriend for another and he'd drunk himself into a vengeful mood. The first I knew of the whole affair was being woken by the sound of a gunshot. I sat up as a second shot sent shards of glass flying past me and realised it was coming through my window. All I could think of was to scream out, "Cathy! Don't stand up." That was my first thought and my worst fear. My sister was going to get shot if she got out of bed or came in to me. Next thing I heard sirens, the light in my room came on and there was a mob of people asking if I was alright. But all I wanted to know was if Katarina was alright. It turned out that it wasn't gunshots that had come through my window, but two bottles of beer. The boy was arrested, the girl next to me was blamed, and Katarina and I had a day in Court. Later Katarina befriended the boy and wrote to him while he was in borstal. When he got out she had a wee bit of trouble explaining to him that she was just being nice.
For all our relative sophistication we were often naive. For example in our 2nd year we spent two weeks in Whangarei doing our Public Health units. We had a bit more freedom by then and Katarina's current boyfriend, Robin Littlejohn, who lived in Whangarei showed us quite a bit of night life while we were there. At one party this guy sat next to me and asked if I was a nurse. "Yes," says I. Then he asked, "Do you drop tabs?" I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but not wanting to look stupid I tried to nut it out for myself. Then I got it - tabs ... T.A.B.! "No," says I, "I don't bet." He just looked at me disbelievingly and moved away. Later he approached Katarina and I saw her suddenly look around then sidle away from him. She came to me and whispered, "Have I got my mate?" She turned around so I could see. I told her no and asked what made her think she did. "Because," she says, "that guy just asked me if I'd dropped my tampon." He must have thought we were a complete pair of nanas.
Katarina and I worked well together on the Wards. We had an understanding of each other and I repected her work enormously. She was quite simply one of the best nurses I ever saw.
We graduated in October 1975 and a few months later I left for a job at North Shore Hospital in Auckland, while she stayed in Kaitaia. In 1977 she had her oldest daughter and named her Janine Anne. I was tickled pink. Mum had delivered our youngest brother just 4 months before. That was our Aaron who is almost 16 years younger than Jenni. So Aaron and Janine have always been more like brother and sister than uncle and niece. Katarina becoming a mother was the beginning of a new era in all our lives - parenthood with all the challenges that represents and for which no amount of preparation ever fully prepares one. Changes were now coming faster in all our lives and they haven't slowed down to this day.
In 1980 she met Dennis Chapman and in 1982 she gave birth to Michael. 8 weeks earlier I'd given birth to Chev, and in July Jenni had borne Cheye. So that was our 1982 crop of babies. Sam and Quest (Jenni's 2nd) followed in 1986 and Denise came along by herself in 1990. By then they were living busy lives share-milking way down in the Bay of Plenty, I'd become a Mormon and she was leaning towards the Jehovah's Witnesses. So, though we continued to write to each other and visited as often as possible, there were increasing gaps between us.
Then they came back to the north in 1993 and the gaps closed just like that. She did actually go on to be baptised as a Witness, but we never allowed it to be a division between us, instead sharing what we could of our commonalities.
Now in 2004 I look back on a lifetime shared with Katarina. She has survived so many things which are for her to tell, not me. If I'd had my wishes she would have been able to employ her old childhood trick of running away as fast and as far as possible from some of the bad things that inevitably came into her life. But of course that is not the way it works. We cannot stop hurts and mistakes and regrets coming into our own life or the lives of those we love. But we can always hold hands, sing our anthems of courage, cover for each other, say our prayers and look after each other.
Funny isn't it how the most lasting lessons are often learnt in childhood. I'm thankful to have learned them with Katarina.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Wednesday Nights with Sia
Every Wednesday night our mokopuna, Siagogo, comes to stay while his mother attends her Institute classes. It also happens to be the night that Dougie attends his Ara Reo classes, and that leaves us free to play while all the cats are away.
Today we went shopping and bought ourselves a Deluxe Thomas the Tank Engine set complete with battery-operated Thomas, Bertie the bus, Harold the helicopter plus Annie and Clarabelle the carriages.
After dinner we set the whole thing up and I was amazed at Sia's adroitness and understanding when it came to the assembly. That involves over 3 metres of figure 8 track for Thomas that runs beside, then bridges, a separate roadway - Bertie's domain. There's also a train stop on the bridge overhead, plus a train station on the other side. Two D cell batteries fit under the station. When they're turned on they drive a shaft that exits from the chimney, into which one end of a boom fits. Harold slots into the other end of this boom and when the battery is switched on the shaft turns, the boom rotates and the helicopter flies round and round. The noise they all make is very satisfying and reminds me of the song lines, "It went 'zip' when it moved, 'bop' when it stopped, 'whirr' when it stood still. I never knew just what it was, and I guess I never will."
We played with it for hours until the batteries on Thomas and Harold were getting flat and they were slo-wing dow-own. But in the end Sia's batteries have died before theirs, so now I've got to disassemble it myself. No way will I leave it till the morning, otherwise we'll never get out of this house.
If there was only one good reason in the world to have children it's this - you get to play with Sia and his Thomas the Tank Engine set, then eat goody-goody gumdrops ice-cream with chocolate chips at 10 p.m. when he should be in bed fast asleep. It can't be beat really.
Today we went shopping and bought ourselves a Deluxe Thomas the Tank Engine set complete with battery-operated Thomas, Bertie the bus, Harold the helicopter plus Annie and Clarabelle the carriages.
After dinner we set the whole thing up and I was amazed at Sia's adroitness and understanding when it came to the assembly. That involves over 3 metres of figure 8 track for Thomas that runs beside, then bridges, a separate roadway - Bertie's domain. There's also a train stop on the bridge overhead, plus a train station on the other side. Two D cell batteries fit under the station. When they're turned on they drive a shaft that exits from the chimney, into which one end of a boom fits. Harold slots into the other end of this boom and when the battery is switched on the shaft turns, the boom rotates and the helicopter flies round and round. The noise they all make is very satisfying and reminds me of the song lines, "It went 'zip' when it moved, 'bop' when it stopped, 'whirr' when it stood still. I never knew just what it was, and I guess I never will."
We played with it for hours until the batteries on Thomas and Harold were getting flat and they were slo-wing dow-own. But in the end Sia's batteries have died before theirs, so now I've got to disassemble it myself. No way will I leave it till the morning, otherwise we'll never get out of this house.
If there was only one good reason in the world to have children it's this - you get to play with Sia and his Thomas the Tank Engine set, then eat goody-goody gumdrops ice-cream with chocolate chips at 10 p.m. when he should be in bed fast asleep. It can't be beat really.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
From Behind the Lines
QUESTION: Why would anyone leave Pawarenga at 7 in the morning, drive 15 hours to Wellington, roam around Upper Hutt until midnight looking for cans of spray paint, go to sleep at 2 a.m. then get up again at 5 a.m., drive to Te Papa, take 2 hours to walk one kilometre to Parliament Buildings, spend 2 hours there, then an hour visiting with whanau before driving 15 hours home again? That’s 48 out of 50 hours on the go.ANSWER: To join the Hikoi protesting against this government’s Foreshore and Seabed (FSSB) Bill, because that Bill is plain wrong.
A week before it ended we had decided as a family to make a four generational stand with the Hikoi and against the FSSB Bill. So off we went – Gloria, Anahera, Siobhan and Siagogo Herbert, along with Malcolm Peri.
Here’s my uncensored diary of our hikoi.
TUESDAY 14TH MAY 2004:
Driving down we hear that Helen Clark has met with Shrek the sheep that morning but won’t meet with the “haters and wreckers” leading the Hikoi because she “prefers company that is pleasant.” The message behind her words is clear – “There you go Hone, Annette, Ken and the misguided fools following you – even a sheep stands higher on the evolutionary scale than you lot.” What she hopes to achieve is uncertain, but the effect on our little group is that we laugh our trashes off. In meeting the sheep she has signalled her level on the evolutionary scale, not ours. Actually, she sounds angry and frightened.
We talk about what the future holds for Te Rarawa if this Bill goes through, if Labour loses the next election, if Don Brash becomes PM. We talk about the fact that Labour governments will throw away Maori support more quickly than National ones, and how it seems that we make our biggest gains under National rather than Labour governments, even though none of us have ever voted National. What’s that about?
We wonder what Dover is thinking and who he is listening to, because it sure ain’t anyone we’ve talked to recently. A letter signed by all the Taitokerau-based Iwi Authority Chairs is being handed to him at Parliament later that day. There are phone calls all the way down between Gloria and some of the other Iwi Chairs, and rumours fly that there is one Chair who has pulled away from the Taitokerau stance. Who is it? Poor Sonny Tau wears the label briefly until confirmation comes that he is amongst those who have handed Dover the letter and that he has reported that, “Dover looked sick.” How distressing it must be for Dover. I feel sorry for him even though I think he’s wrong. Does he genuinely believe “confiscation” of the foreshore and seabed is justifiable, or is he just a party hack desperately hanging on to his job as long as he can? Maybe a bit of both.
So who is the dissenting Chair? Later we find out it’s Tom Parore of Ngati Whatua. There is doubt that he has his people’s support for this stance, and we hear they want it kept hush-hush. That’s one of the difficulties of Maori politics – it’s impossible to pull the Chair into line AND keep it hush-hush. I ponder – is the wily old ex-Public Servant a Crown dupe, or does he see a better chance for protecting his people’s interests by keeping away from the high profile ‘radical’ face that so infuriates Helen, and by doing a separate deal with the Crown? One thing’s for certain, he has given his life and love to his people, and they know that. So hush-hush they shall remain. At least outside of Maori circles.
We talk about Pawarenga and the things that make it what it is. The Church, the drugs, the whakapapa, the harbour silting up, the Sports Days, the indifference to anything not local, the way the old people are still looked after, the way the children are not always looked after, the teen pregnancies and high offending rates, the dreamers and the scammers, the dreamers who let in the scammers. Does Pawarenga dream collectively anymore? Or is the easy life, as represented by the budding satellite dishes on the humblest homes, separating us from each other more and more?
A call comes in from Ngati Kahu Chair, Margaret Mutu. Each region will only receive 10 minutes to speak on Parliament steps and it has been proposed that Sir Graham Latimer be first up for Muriwhenua. Listening to Gloria’s side of the conversation I say “No!” even though it’s not in my power to deny it and the decision is to be made elsewhere.
We take a call from Shontee saying that 2 full busloads have come out of Panguru. Not surprising when the pouwhenua leading this Hikoi is the same one that lead Whina Cooper’s 1975 Hikoi. In total 9 busloads mai Te Rerenga Wairua ki Hokianga go to Wellington on this day. Later we hear how Charlie Dunn has gone from the Cape to Rotorua with the Hikoi – a week on the road. He spends a few days in Rotorua then decides to go home. But when he gets back to Panguru he finds everyone gone. He rushes out to Kerikeri, hops on the last plane to Auckland then on to Wellington. This Hikoi has been good for the unity of Panguru. Whina should be pleased.
Another phone call from Cat on the Kaitaia bus. Can we stop somewhere and buy some material for a Te Rarawa banner? I’m reminded of a night in 1995 when we’d similarly left it to the last minute to prepare a protest banner. Why do we do that to ourselves? Is it a Te Rarawa trait? Manukau City’s Spotlight sells us metres of fluorescent yellow nylon and thick interfacing, scissors, thread, pins, measuring tape and carpet knife. I wonder if they wonder, “What are these Maori buying this stuff for?” Do they guess or even care?
We stop in Taupo for a feed and in Waiouru for petrol. Siobhan has bought cardboard and paints and made up some posters for our back and side windows. “TIAKINA TE TAKUTAIMOANA.” “MAI TE RERENGA WAIRUA KI PONEKE – TE RARAWA SUPPORTS THE HIKOI.” People toot or stop to talk to us. “Where are you from?” “What time did you leave?” Where are you staying?” “Pai te haere.” Thumbs up and on we go.
A text comes in from Cat with a suggestion for the banner wording – “IT’S THEFT FORESHORE.” Gloria is not comfortable with it. Malcolm interviews her – “Why not?” Their korero wanders off on to other subjects and they never answer the question. I text Cat with an exaggeration – “Taihoa. They’re debating it.” Later Gloria tells me to text Cat – “Whoever has the passion to stay up all night and do the banner, can decide what to put on it.” Makes sense to us all.
Malcolm tells us of a short-cut to Upper Hutt from Waikanae. It’s dark as hell when we reach it. “Akatarawa Forest Rd” says the sign. It should have read “Sealed Goat Track.” 20 kms of one-way winding road climbing through forest. The sky is rarely seen and we catch only glimpses of city lights miles below in otherwise invisible valleys. It must be a spectacular drive during the day. The van handles it with ease. I drive it with un-ease.
We hit Upper Hutt, find Moonshine Rd, hunt out the college marae and unload. Cat grabs the banner-makings. We wander into one of two wharemoe, kiss Aunty Roma, Sister Jon, Whaea Pare, Cousin Mere, Aunty Wiki and aunty and aunty and aunty. Mostly women on this bus too it seems. Then off to eat a reheated dinner, find some mattresses and some space, make up our beds and sit down to shoot the breeze with cousin Dave, Tiwai and a bunch of the locals.
An aunty comes in asking if anyone has warfarin tablets because she’s left hers behind. Cat comes over and asks for the spray paint. So here I am driving around Wellington with Siobhan and Uira looking for spray paint and an all-night chemist. Neither exists at this time of night – morning actually. Thankfully aunty has found her pills when I troop back into the marae, and the banner-makers are cool. They’ve made the template – the spraying can wait till the morning. Blessed sleep.
WEDNESDAY 15TH MAY 2004:
Not enough sleep. Siagogo has handled the trip well, but we have a sneaking suspicion he won’t handle being woken up at 5 a.m. He sleeps through the shift from marae to van, the drive into the city and the transfer to his pram as the crowds build around him.
We park in Te Papa’s public car-park where the attendant has agreed to charge us all after the Hikoi. Cat and I are pinning the banner & template together in the confines of the van to avoid the howling gales. Malcolm suggests we move to the covered pavement of the Museum so we can spread everything out flat. It’s a good idea.
Two young guys help us with the pinning by standing on the edges. Because neither of us has any spray-painting experience we ask if they’ll do it for us, but they reckon we can do it, and they’re right. Cat puts on plastic bag gloves and stretches the template to flatten it in critical places while I spray. Two things happen. At first the paint floats on top of the nylon so that Cat has to use her finger to spread it. Then as the paint sinks into the nylon it begins to stain the pavement beneath. It seems there may be a permanent mark left showing that Te Rarawa was here. Maybe that’s why the young guys declined the spray-painting honours. Isn’t defacing public property a crime? We begin lifting the nylon as we paint, hoping to cut down on the stain left behind. Oops! Maybe they'll blame Te Arawa. Crowds gather round us like we are some kind of performance artists.My back is aching and I’m glad to escape to The Warehouse across the road to buy broom handles for banner-poles. It’s only 8 a.m. and bunches of us have to wait another half hour for the doors to open. It seems even the 'Whare Whero' is not tempted into opening earlier to make a few extra bucks off those with last minute protest shopping needs.
Back at Te Papa the crowds are huge and happy. We hook up with the rest of Te Rarawa (Panguru katoa) and Taitokerau. Our banner looks very .... bright! ”TE RARAWA PAST – PRESENT – FUTURE FORESHORE.”
We line up behind it and pass the time in conversations with complete strangers, practice the chants (someone could have made a mint by selling chant sheets) and whanaungatanga galore until the 10.30a.m. start. Well, more like start, stop, start, stop, start. By 11 a.m. though we’re moving smoothly.“TAHI, RUA, TORU, WHA! HELEN IS A HO-HA! RIMA, ONO, WHITU, WARU! HELEN IS A RARURARU!”
“ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR! MAORI OWN THE FORESHORE! FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT! DON’T YOU BLOODY CONFISCATE?”
At 11.30 a.m. Siagogo wakes up to find his mother gone – she’s off photo snapping up and down the two kilometres of Hikoi. He decides his Nanna and his Grandma are no substitutes for his mum and out-screams everyone. He slams his feet into the ground like brakes, making it impossible to push his pram. I tilt it back onto two wheels and get about four steps before his furious kicking frees him. He falls out onto the road, 20 kgs of angry, red-eyed, hupe-nosed Samoan-Maori 3 year old. I text Siobhan that I’m pulling out until he’s settled down.
He wants the toilet so I call into a nearby McDonalds. There’s a sign saying “TOILETS CLOSED FOR REBUILDING.” There are no signs or sounds of any rebuilding going on. But the Hikoi is moving so slowly we still have time to find a public toilet, have some lunch and a run around and play, before we rejoin. It’s moved about 200 metres and Siagogo is now happy to walk a bit, be carried a bit, hop in the pram for a bit. At one point I put him on my shoulders and he bugs out. “Nook at dat nanna! Nook at dat!” I don’t know exactly what it is he sees in the melange of colours, sounds, smells and sights everywhere.
“COME WALK WITH ME MY PAKEHA BROTHER,” reads one banner.
And some do. One just throws her hands in the air and steps into the slow flow. Many standing on the pavement are watching for old friends or whanau before joining. Others are content to watch. A very few walk by with eyes averted, faces pinched. Otherwise the atmosphere is gentle, the pace unhurried.We meet my cousin Roma, her daughter Te Whaea, and new husband – Sukronen I think. That’s how it sounds anyway. They feed us home-made sandwiches.
We pass a stall-holder selling hot nuts. “NUTTY PAKEHA” says his sign. He’s doing a roaring trade.
Hikoi Marshalls wearing fluorescent jackets guide us on an S-shaped route that’s supposed to cut down on disruption to Wellington’s normal traffic. Later we hear the disruption was huge and prolonged right out to the Hutt Valley. At every turn, police stand in clumps. They look interested but relaxed.
Bridget Allen (ex-Hauora Hokianga CEO, now with the Ministry of Health) joins us. I ask how come she, a Public Servant, is there? Specially when they’ve been discouraged from doing so. She says the discouragement was not a ban and in the end individuals had the right to choose. We talk about Te Puni Kokiri staff who have been point-blank banned by their CEO, Leith Comer, from joining the Hikoi. So the Maori CEO of the Ministry of Maori Affairs has not allowed his staff any choice. What is that about?
Loudspeakers keep us in touch with what’s going on and we hear that only those at the front of the Hikoi will receive and witness Te Atiawa’s powhiri into Parliament grounds. Ah well. Before entering the grounds, Marshalls separate iwi into distinct groupings. Unfortunately a group of Rangitane High School students are right up our backside and, because their banner is held higher than ours, Te Rarawa is missed by Annette Sykes who is announcing each grouping in her own special way. “COME ON RANGITANE,” she shouts, “GIVE US A WAIATA!” They don’t and we don’t. Ah well again.
We swing through the gates into Parliament Grounds. For the first time I get an impression of the crowd size – big!
Our roopu moves onto an embankment way below and off to one side of Parliament steps, but close to the Beehive where we can see shadowy heads behind the darkened glass all the way up to the top floor.The sun is now blazing, the wind has dropped and I’ve shed my windbreaker. A man holding a camera sees my blazer logo and calls, “Te Rarawa!” I stop and he gives me the thumbs up. I ask him if he is a Murray or a Proctor because he looks vaguely like Erana Waru from Whangape. But he smiles and shakes his head. “No,” he says, “Te Rarawa. That’s where Hands Across the Beach was.” Then he sweeps the hand-held camera over the crowd and winks. I think he means he senses the joined hands here as well.
Down where we are we can’t see or hear what’s happening on Parliament steps, but we do have a running commentary of sorts coming from Annette Sykes on loudspeaker. Siobhan and I take Siagogo off up towards Parliament steps to try and catch what’s happening up there and to get away from Annette’s voice. I admire the lady but have heard it all before. I also think she needs vocal lessons.
Later we hear that the Maori MPs came out on to the steps. The wahine (Tariana, Georgina Beyer, Georgina Te Heuheu and Nanaia) spoke and were well-received, the men (Parekura, Dover, John, Mita and Mahara) stood mute and were jeered, spat at and rejected. Being Maori can be a bastard.
We count the people. 100 x 100 = 10,000 x 2 = 20,000. That’s our best-guess. At least 20,000. Certainly no less. But there is nothing much going on up here now that the MPs have gone back inside. Only an old speaker from Hauraki saying old things. Later Malcolm tells us that Rima Edwards has spoken flawlessly for Muriwhenua followed by Margaret Mutu. He seems to feel the same kind of admiration for my mate Margaret as I feel for Annette. I reflect on how subjective each of us is as an audience. Ah well and ah well again. More remarkable than the speaking abilities of either though is the fact that they are both on the same side.
A gentle tap on my shoulder and there’s Pahia Turia. I used to work with this gentle-soul on Kia Piki Te Ora O Nga Taitamariki. Now in his early 30s, he came to Pawarenga as a 12 year old with his mum and dad during the Trusts and Co-ops era. Another connection – he went to Te Aute with Uncle Frank’s youngest son, Victor. I tell him – ”Give our love to mummy.” Huge posters of Tariana loom throughout the Hikoi. They remind me of an American political rally – or an Iranian one. In any event they signal the inevitable – Tariana will either lead a new Maori party, or such a party will coalesce around her until she leads it. I look at the posters and wish us all well.
At 3 p.m. we hear rumours that cars are being towed from Te Papa’s car-park, so we leave the Hikoi feeling we’ve contributed what we can, and head back to the van as a light drizzle starts.
A call comes in from my nephew Conan who’s living and studying in Wellington. He’s walking to meet us. Ten minutes later he’s there and it’s lovely to see this young man who is as much my son as Bo’s and Chrissy’s. Siobhan is on the phone to another Wellington-based friend. They arrange to meet and go off towards Victoria St. I shortcut through to Te Papa fearing the van might be towed. The drizzle is now a steady rain and I’m worried about Gloria. I have her coat and Siobhan has her cell phone. At least the van is still where I left it.
Malcolm arrives a half hour later. Siobhan, Conan and Siagogo are right behind him. Gloria calls on Lloyd Popata’s phone. She’s with the Ngati Kahu roopu at the Wellington train station. We drive up there and wait for her. There’s Tuku Morgan looking older than me, and overweight. There goes Marion Brown and Jill Minogue from Te Kao. Here comes Gloria.
Conan is hungry for us to stay with him for the night. We are a slice of home in far-away Wellington. Our hearts ache for him. We want to stay, but can’t. We compromise with a visit. He lives way off in Petone, but it’s a great hour we spend there, eating his food and fruit, talking about the this and the that, debriefing our Hikoi experience with him. We promise to stay with him next time we’re down. I promise to send him a Parengarenga application form. Then we have to leave. He seems satisfied. We most certainly are.
He points us back towards the city with instructions to make the crossover at the Porirua off-ramp. I never spot it and we end up back in the City anyway. But that’s OK because it gives us the chance to gas up and tune in to the live broadcast from Parliament. Then we point ourselves northwards listening to a Parliament which is trying hard not to listen to us.
FRIDAY 16TH MAY 2004:
15 hours later we drive into Pawarenga having taken part in a piece of history. If it all goes badly our uri will know that we fought it with everything we had.
Later that day, while we’re sleeping, the Foreshore and Seabed Bill passes its first reading, 65 votes for – 55 against.
POSTSCRIPT:
The time has come the Walrus said to put rubber on the road in terms of the nuts and bolts of our submissions to the FSSB Bill.
Now that the Bill has passed its 1st reading (2 more to go) the process is:
1. It goes to the Select Committee on Fisheries & Other Sea-related Legislation.
2. Submissions closed on 12th July.
3. Select Committee hearings will be held up until the committee reports back to Parliament on November 5th (Guy Fawkes Day!)
The members of that Committee are Larry Baldock, Russell Fairbrother (Chair), Phil Heatley, Nanaia Mahuta, Mahara Okeroa, Hon Dover Samuels, Hon Ken Shirley, Hon Georgina Te Heuheu (Deputy Chairperson), and Metiria Turei
I’ve watched what's happening politically in and out of parliament. I’ve seen how much leverage Tainui has now that Nanaia is pivotal to propping up this govt. I’ve seen that we don't have any hope of a pivot in Dover, but we do have our Treaty and our Whole of Government negotiations going on. So these negotiations must be our pivot.
In no particular order this is what I reckon needs to be done now:
SUBSTANCE VS STYLE: We've spent a lot on big gestures in the first half of this year. Time now to just get on with acting as "owners / kaitiaki". Focus your energies forward. Erect your pouwhenua, then slingshot the energy that takes and makes into your hapu plans, and get out and clean up your beaches and roadsides regularly.
INFORMATION OUT / DIRECTION IN: Use the media to circulate analyses of all Bills and their implications for our various plans and dreams. Get our views and opinions punched home to government.
DIRECT LINE TO PARLIAMENT: Every time our leaders are in Wellington, they should meet with at least one MP from both government and opposition benches to discuss something of mutual interest.
UNTIL our own leaders call on us for further direct action, there's plenty of work to be done at home.
Sunday, July 04, 2004
The Choices Imposed
One of the best things that ever has happened to me has been the love brought into my life by a beautiful woman who calls herself Chev, but whom I had christened Siobhan.
Her entry into my life came after I'd been out of school almost ten years. During the intervening years I'd trained as a nurse, done a stint as a telephonist and travelled to Sydney, Australia with a vague notion of getting into the entertainment scene over there. The first time I met Buddy was at a show there on the Cross featuring a troupe called "Hawaii By Day" in which I had some real hard-case mates. These guys and girls were mostly Mormon graduates of CCNZ and (I realise now) were largely inactive, given that their performances included several topless and quite erotic items. I remember they used to double-moonlight as "Tahiti By Night" on the North Shore during the day.
Anyway, Buddy came to one of their shows on the Cross and stayed to the after-performance party; a real Maori affair with lots of booze, guitars and singing. There was zilch attraction at our first meeting - just a friendly smile and casual 'hi'. Those parties proved to be the best part of what was actually a very seedy scene over there. Within a month I was sick of it, so I headed back to New Zealand for a job at Kaitaia Hospital where I'd originally trained. One day I looked out the Ward window and there on the roof was Buddy. This time there were showers of sparks. Our affair started at Kaitaia Hospital but finished back in Australia where we went in pursuit of his illusive dreams. Those turned out to be largely based around some pretty seedy things.
Now, at the age of 26 I had become all but resigned to a self-daignosis of being barren. Isn't that an interesting word? It has all these tag-lines that lead to other words like "devoid" and "lacking" and "unproductive". The theory is that two healthy bodies of the opposite sex having sex will generally lead to the production of a third. But the facts were that two previous relationships had not produced any sign of children for me, in spite of absolute zilch contraceptive practices. Admittedly neither relationship had been based on a marked desire for children .... But still, I'd assumed that eventually a child would eventuate and I / we (whoever he was at the time it eventuated) would go from there.
As it turned out the relationship with Buddy did the trick EXCEPT that there was no "we" after the event. Just me. Nothing new, nothing surprising and nothing at all earth-shattering about those facts. But at the same moment I discovered I was pregnant, I also discovered I was a real square. On that day I quietly got out of bed, dressed for work, kissed him goodbye, caught a taxi out to Sydney International and came home to New Zealand. I never saw Buddy again. Nothing new in that either. And yet, on the afternoon of 6th November 1982 as I held 56cm of perfectly formed blonde pinkness in my two hands, I regretted that he was missing what I considered to be a totally unique experience. Intellectually I understood and accepted that babies had been born before, yet illogically it was still possible for me to believe that no-one had ever felt this way before; that I had conceived both this child and the feelings that attended her birth, and that both were unique to me.
I had already chosen, regardless of gender, to name the baby Keely. But when she arrived I could see that it was far too angular a name for her. I was reading Leon Uris' 'Trinity' at the time and had come across the name "Siobhan". One of the nurses in the annexe was Irish and I asked her to pronounce it for me. It sounded lovely and liltingly soft. The nurse also told me it was a gaelic form of Judith meaning "much admired". My grandmother was Irish, I liked the sound and the meaning - and so she got her first name.
My mother had told me a few years before about how she wished that instead of naming me 'Anne' she had named me Anataia after a great-grand-aunt who was her major tie to our home town of Pawarenga. It was another instance of illogicality because mum could not, in 1956, have named me after someone she didn't know existed until the 1970s. But in deference to mum's frustrated wish I chose it as Chev's second name.
I chose early in my pregnancy to not impose the baby and my ex-partner on each other. Chev has always had acccess to all my knowledge of her father, but his name appears nowhere on any official record of her parentage. Yet I have to accept that in choosing not to officially recognise his role in her life, that I imposed a whole range of outcomes on both Chev and Buddy. But there you are - my intentions were honourable. And in the subtlest of references to him I imposed on her a third name - Avi.
Chev and I lived for two years with my parents. Bo and his new wife Chriss lived there with us too. Actually Chriss and I were both pregnant at the same time but at two months their baby miscarried. I'd been going through this crazy "Please God make it not true, make it not be" routine about being pregnant and not married. But from the moment Bo and Chriss lost their so-wanted baby I chose a whole new attitude about being pregnant. I saw it as a possible once in a lifetime experience (which it proved to be) and chose to be as beautiful as possible throughout, to eat well and to ENJOY it. And that's exactly how it was. My skin and hair shone and I looked and felt gorgeous throughout. Princess Diana was pregnant at the same time which meant that there were some truly lovely clothes to be worn by pregnant women in 1982, and maybe that enhanced the experience a little. But mostly it was about my choice to be pregnantly happy.
Not everyone shared my happiness. When I'd first got back to New Zealand I'd gone to my family Doctor who, like something out of an American TV idyll, had also delivered me. I told him straight "I'm pregnant." His response? "You pregnant? Oh how the mighty have fallen." I just laughed disbelievingly. It was a complete non sequitur, but I chose to let it go at the time. Later I wondered what the hell that was all about. Now I think it was about the fact that no-one from home knew much about that side of my life at that time. It wasn't that I'd hidden it from them, but that I hadn't lived it in their view. So they held this image of me in which I was a nurse, an intellectual, and a virgin.
Anyway, within months of Chev's birth, Chriss got pregnant again and this time their baby was born without any problems. That was Conan.
Everyone loved Chev straight off, but specially Bo and Chriss. They'd sit with her for as long as they could and they both held her unconsciously in the same way - face up, her head held in their hands, her body cradled on their forearms. Then they'd just rock her gently while stroking her downy head, and she'd never stir from the sweetest sleeps. I think there was a lot of longing for their own child in the way they held her, but even after Conan came they still maintained that loving way with her. Actually Bo, Chriss and I maintained a co-parenting role throughout our lifetimes with our children. So I was wrong to say earlier that it was just "me" involved in Chev's parenting, because there was actually a much larger "we" involved than there would have been, even had Buddy and I been together throughout. So, it was the most natural thing to choose Bo and Chriss as her godparents.
Not long after getting home from the hospital I found it easier to move Chev into my bed than to sleep her in a separate crib and room. When the visiting nurse asked how often I breastfed I laughed. Basically she slept on the breast. I credit the feeding regime for my very quick return to pre-pregnancy slimness, although at 5' 9" I'd only weighed 76 kg at fullterm. I was so skinny back then and Chev was such a plumpling. She's always been tall (6 foot and slim now), white-skinned and fair-haired and she has always been a twirler from the time she could crawl. So her looks and disposition combined give her an elegance and style that are tempered by an incurable coltishness. I remember her first year of playing netball as a 5 year old. Because of her height she would generally be put in goal as either a defender or shooter. But she was always surprised when the ball came her way, because she'd invariably be preoccupied with chasing butterflies or talking to her opponent about some girlish thing.
From the start Chev has been a lightness in my heart and a motivator to be better than I am. E.g. Her birth brought me to a time and space where I was asking the "big" questions like -why am I here?' and 'what's it all for?' Then, when she was two, she began to complain about my smoker's breath, specially when I'd go to kiss her in the morning. So for her I gave up my 60 a day habit with the help of acupuncture and lots of work to keep my shaking hands and addiction-shattered mind preoccupied. Then when she was 4 I gave up working to spend her last pre-school year at home. It was a shocking time for me financially, but being on the bones of my bum was worth it. I was able to do the kindergarten-helper bit, bake the after-school cookies and host the mates and strays she brought home. Most critically I was home on the day that Mormon missionaries came calling. Looking back I know now that if Buddy had been around and / or if I'd still been smoking - I'd never have let them through the front gate. Having done so and having accepted the challenge to read the Book of Mormon the rest, as they say, is history.
On 20th September 1987 I chose to be baptised and everything that has happened in my and Chev's lives since then has been influenced by that choice.
But the most serendipitous choice of my entire life has been to give birth to Siobhan Anataia Avi Herbert. Thank you beautiful girl.
Her entry into my life came after I'd been out of school almost ten years. During the intervening years I'd trained as a nurse, done a stint as a telephonist and travelled to Sydney, Australia with a vague notion of getting into the entertainment scene over there. The first time I met Buddy was at a show there on the Cross featuring a troupe called "Hawaii By Day" in which I had some real hard-case mates. These guys and girls were mostly Mormon graduates of CCNZ and (I realise now) were largely inactive, given that their performances included several topless and quite erotic items. I remember they used to double-moonlight as "Tahiti By Night" on the North Shore during the day.
Anyway, Buddy came to one of their shows on the Cross and stayed to the after-performance party; a real Maori affair with lots of booze, guitars and singing. There was zilch attraction at our first meeting - just a friendly smile and casual 'hi'. Those parties proved to be the best part of what was actually a very seedy scene over there. Within a month I was sick of it, so I headed back to New Zealand for a job at Kaitaia Hospital where I'd originally trained. One day I looked out the Ward window and there on the roof was Buddy. This time there were showers of sparks. Our affair started at Kaitaia Hospital but finished back in Australia where we went in pursuit of his illusive dreams. Those turned out to be largely based around some pretty seedy things.
Now, at the age of 26 I had become all but resigned to a self-daignosis of being barren. Isn't that an interesting word? It has all these tag-lines that lead to other words like "devoid" and "lacking" and "unproductive". The theory is that two healthy bodies of the opposite sex having sex will generally lead to the production of a third. But the facts were that two previous relationships had not produced any sign of children for me, in spite of absolute zilch contraceptive practices. Admittedly neither relationship had been based on a marked desire for children .... But still, I'd assumed that eventually a child would eventuate and I / we (whoever he was at the time it eventuated) would go from there.
As it turned out the relationship with Buddy did the trick EXCEPT that there was no "we" after the event. Just me. Nothing new, nothing surprising and nothing at all earth-shattering about those facts. But at the same moment I discovered I was pregnant, I also discovered I was a real square. On that day I quietly got out of bed, dressed for work, kissed him goodbye, caught a taxi out to Sydney International and came home to New Zealand. I never saw Buddy again. Nothing new in that either. And yet, on the afternoon of 6th November 1982 as I held 56cm of perfectly formed blonde pinkness in my two hands, I regretted that he was missing what I considered to be a totally unique experience. Intellectually I understood and accepted that babies had been born before, yet illogically it was still possible for me to believe that no-one had ever felt this way before; that I had conceived both this child and the feelings that attended her birth, and that both were unique to me.
I had already chosen, regardless of gender, to name the baby Keely. But when she arrived I could see that it was far too angular a name for her. I was reading Leon Uris' 'Trinity' at the time and had come across the name "Siobhan". One of the nurses in the annexe was Irish and I asked her to pronounce it for me. It sounded lovely and liltingly soft. The nurse also told me it was a gaelic form of Judith meaning "much admired". My grandmother was Irish, I liked the sound and the meaning - and so she got her first name.
My mother had told me a few years before about how she wished that instead of naming me 'Anne' she had named me Anataia after a great-grand-aunt who was her major tie to our home town of Pawarenga. It was another instance of illogicality because mum could not, in 1956, have named me after someone she didn't know existed until the 1970s. But in deference to mum's frustrated wish I chose it as Chev's second name.
I chose early in my pregnancy to not impose the baby and my ex-partner on each other. Chev has always had acccess to all my knowledge of her father, but his name appears nowhere on any official record of her parentage. Yet I have to accept that in choosing not to officially recognise his role in her life, that I imposed a whole range of outcomes on both Chev and Buddy. But there you are - my intentions were honourable. And in the subtlest of references to him I imposed on her a third name - Avi.
Chev and I lived for two years with my parents. Bo and his new wife Chriss lived there with us too. Actually Chriss and I were both pregnant at the same time but at two months their baby miscarried. I'd been going through this crazy "Please God make it not true, make it not be" routine about being pregnant and not married. But from the moment Bo and Chriss lost their so-wanted baby I chose a whole new attitude about being pregnant. I saw it as a possible once in a lifetime experience (which it proved to be) and chose to be as beautiful as possible throughout, to eat well and to ENJOY it. And that's exactly how it was. My skin and hair shone and I looked and felt gorgeous throughout. Princess Diana was pregnant at the same time which meant that there were some truly lovely clothes to be worn by pregnant women in 1982, and maybe that enhanced the experience a little. But mostly it was about my choice to be pregnantly happy.
Not everyone shared my happiness. When I'd first got back to New Zealand I'd gone to my family Doctor who, like something out of an American TV idyll, had also delivered me. I told him straight "I'm pregnant." His response? "You pregnant? Oh how the mighty have fallen." I just laughed disbelievingly. It was a complete non sequitur, but I chose to let it go at the time. Later I wondered what the hell that was all about. Now I think it was about the fact that no-one from home knew much about that side of my life at that time. It wasn't that I'd hidden it from them, but that I hadn't lived it in their view. So they held this image of me in which I was a nurse, an intellectual, and a virgin.
Anyway, within months of Chev's birth, Chriss got pregnant again and this time their baby was born without any problems. That was Conan.
Everyone loved Chev straight off, but specially Bo and Chriss. They'd sit with her for as long as they could and they both held her unconsciously in the same way - face up, her head held in their hands, her body cradled on their forearms. Then they'd just rock her gently while stroking her downy head, and she'd never stir from the sweetest sleeps. I think there was a lot of longing for their own child in the way they held her, but even after Conan came they still maintained that loving way with her. Actually Bo, Chriss and I maintained a co-parenting role throughout our lifetimes with our children. So I was wrong to say earlier that it was just "me" involved in Chev's parenting, because there was actually a much larger "we" involved than there would have been, even had Buddy and I been together throughout. So, it was the most natural thing to choose Bo and Chriss as her godparents.
Not long after getting home from the hospital I found it easier to move Chev into my bed than to sleep her in a separate crib and room. When the visiting nurse asked how often I breastfed I laughed. Basically she slept on the breast. I credit the feeding regime for my very quick return to pre-pregnancy slimness, although at 5' 9" I'd only weighed 76 kg at fullterm. I was so skinny back then and Chev was such a plumpling. She's always been tall (6 foot and slim now), white-skinned and fair-haired and she has always been a twirler from the time she could crawl. So her looks and disposition combined give her an elegance and style that are tempered by an incurable coltishness. I remember her first year of playing netball as a 5 year old. Because of her height she would generally be put in goal as either a defender or shooter. But she was always surprised when the ball came her way, because she'd invariably be preoccupied with chasing butterflies or talking to her opponent about some girlish thing.
From the start Chev has been a lightness in my heart and a motivator to be better than I am. E.g. Her birth brought me to a time and space where I was asking the "big" questions like -why am I here?' and 'what's it all for?' Then, when she was two, she began to complain about my smoker's breath, specially when I'd go to kiss her in the morning. So for her I gave up my 60 a day habit with the help of acupuncture and lots of work to keep my shaking hands and addiction-shattered mind preoccupied. Then when she was 4 I gave up working to spend her last pre-school year at home. It was a shocking time for me financially, but being on the bones of my bum was worth it. I was able to do the kindergarten-helper bit, bake the after-school cookies and host the mates and strays she brought home. Most critically I was home on the day that Mormon missionaries came calling. Looking back I know now that if Buddy had been around and / or if I'd still been smoking - I'd never have let them through the front gate. Having done so and having accepted the challenge to read the Book of Mormon the rest, as they say, is history.
On 20th September 1987 I chose to be baptised and everything that has happened in my and Chev's lives since then has been influenced by that choice.
But the most serendipitous choice of my entire life has been to give birth to Siobhan Anataia Avi Herbert. Thank you beautiful girl.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
He Kupu Whakataki - An Introduction
This blog is going to be about my unfolding memories of my self and family, so I'm starting with my earliest memories, even though I believe that who and what we are at heart is well and truly established before we become conscious of this world. Well - that's my theory anyway.
Anyway my first memory is completely unfiltered and really frightening. I recall being held over my uncle (dad's brother) Laurie’s coffin screaming my refusal to kiss him because there was something coming out of the corner of his mouth. I was three so it must have been 1959. Over the years no-one in the family I ever told about this memory could validate it for me until in 1996, two years before she died, I asked my nanna Alma about it. She was a very unsentimental person who'd had 21 children, 9 of whom she buried. When I recounted this memory to her she just very matter of factly said, "Yes, that's right. Laurie had a cut at the corner of his mouth and towards the end of the tangi (the lying-in-state period for Maori people) it was breaking down." It was good to have her confirm my memory, but even better to move it from the realm of horror to that of fact. Thank you nanna.
My next memory is of Bo’s birth. Although I am the first and he is the fourth of us seven children, it's not really strange that I remember his birth but not the earlier ones of Katarina and Pat when you put it in the context of the elevated place Bo had in our father's eyes and heart; a position he retains to this day as the oldest son.
Anyway, it was 23rd January 1960 and my aunt took the call announcing his birth, and I either took or was given the job to go and tell my father the news. Probably I took it on myself, because I liked it when dad smiled his rare smile and I felt that this might do it. I recall running down the road to catch him riding the horse home, then looking up at him and saying importantly, "You have a son.” I remember how his face was lost in the haze of the sun behind him and I couldn't tell if he smiled or not. I was almost four.
After that, I have no more unfiltered memories.
It’s funny - I almost forgot to mention my own birth memories which, of course, are borrowed.
My mother was twenty and my father twenty-eight. He must have taken her to the annexe, but he wasn’t there during my birth. After he'd seen me he was prompted to write his in-laws, “She looks like a monkey.” He also boasted, “Gloria has plenty of milk, more than the other women in her ward. She is a good cow.” I like to bask, even from this distance of time, in the reflected glow of his pride as manifested in that letter.
Anyway being young and inexperienced, my mother didn't really have a strong grasp of how her baby should look and act. But after two days she stopped asking the nurses why I cried non-stop and went looking for herself, at which point she asked a new question, “Is my baby’s mouth supposed to be like this?” She told me that there was dismay and remorse throughout that hospital, from the humblest to the highest. You see, I had a cleft palate.
So much for the good cow and the proud father. You know - I reckon that's why I'm always hungry. Well, it seems a reasonable theory, except that it conflicts with my earlier stated belief that we are who we are before we're born. Ah well.
I am today a more controlled and polished version of the child who was born on that day to an occasionally violent but loving father and a gentle articulate mother.
From an early age until my late teens my father and I regularly went to war with each other. And I mean real war with real weapons, punches and kicks that really hurt and made us both cry - but never in front of each other. Our anger could take either one of us across a room, and over the top of whoever or whatever was between us. Similarly and concurrently Bo and I fought for supremacy - me, the matamua (oldest child) and he, the tuakana (oldest son). Thank God our mum was both a buffer and a moderator between and for us all. My mum also took the brunt of a lot of my anger and frustration at dad and the double standards he unwittingly practiced between his sons and daughters.
My mother came from a background with sharp divisions between schoool - where she excelled in a Pakeha (white) world, and home - where she was never sure what she'd find happening on her return from school; anything from a church meeting to a party of visiting relatives from Pawarenga. Hers was a Ratana (an indigenous Christian religion) home which instilled genteel values in the 6 children, of which she was the oldest. Yet home was also where she increasingly saw alcohol and jealousy-fuelled exchanges between her parents. But by and large it was a place where education was valued, the rare violence was limited to between-adult exchanges, and mum was nurtured to believe in her specialness. Mum's never been so much as smacked in her entire life. She tells us now that she was completely blown away by her in-laws with whom she lived the early years of her marriage. They were Irish-Maori Catholic. A large and rowdy brood who were tolerant of difference yet intolerant of and punitive towards unrepentant liars and crooks. They were carelessly inclusive of all sorts of colourful characters and could be haphazardly violent, but they were never malicious. They were all physically attractive and both profane and loud in their conversations. They were accidently hospitable and hosted huge and lengthy parties that were often punctuated by drunken brawls which left holes in the walls. All merry people at heart, they revelled in practical jokes, had babies galore without benefit of marriage, competed and excelled at school, on the sports field and in the work place. They enthralled my mother.
The Supreme Fact of the matter is that we have (all of us) come to love each other without condition or understanding. Every now and then we'll take a stab at the latter, but it's a pretence really. Understanding has too many conditions on it.
At almost fifty, I've still got them all - mum, dad, Katarina, Pat, Bo, John, Jenni & Aaron. We've all gathered others (spouses, descendants, friends, enemies) and had experiences that have added to the alchemy.
I guess they each have their own angles, takes and beliefs on the Family. But these and all subsequent postings are my memory and my memoir. Welcome.
Anyway my first memory is completely unfiltered and really frightening. I recall being held over my uncle (dad's brother) Laurie’s coffin screaming my refusal to kiss him because there was something coming out of the corner of his mouth. I was three so it must have been 1959. Over the years no-one in the family I ever told about this memory could validate it for me until in 1996, two years before she died, I asked my nanna Alma about it. She was a very unsentimental person who'd had 21 children, 9 of whom she buried. When I recounted this memory to her she just very matter of factly said, "Yes, that's right. Laurie had a cut at the corner of his mouth and towards the end of the tangi (the lying-in-state period for Maori people) it was breaking down." It was good to have her confirm my memory, but even better to move it from the realm of horror to that of fact. Thank you nanna.
My next memory is of Bo’s birth. Although I am the first and he is the fourth of us seven children, it's not really strange that I remember his birth but not the earlier ones of Katarina and Pat when you put it in the context of the elevated place Bo had in our father's eyes and heart; a position he retains to this day as the oldest son.
Anyway, it was 23rd January 1960 and my aunt took the call announcing his birth, and I either took or was given the job to go and tell my father the news. Probably I took it on myself, because I liked it when dad smiled his rare smile and I felt that this might do it. I recall running down the road to catch him riding the horse home, then looking up at him and saying importantly, "You have a son.” I remember how his face was lost in the haze of the sun behind him and I couldn't tell if he smiled or not. I was almost four.
After that, I have no more unfiltered memories.
It’s funny - I almost forgot to mention my own birth memories which, of course, are borrowed.
My mother was twenty and my father twenty-eight. He must have taken her to the annexe, but he wasn’t there during my birth. After he'd seen me he was prompted to write his in-laws, “She looks like a monkey.” He also boasted, “Gloria has plenty of milk, more than the other women in her ward. She is a good cow.” I like to bask, even from this distance of time, in the reflected glow of his pride as manifested in that letter.
Anyway being young and inexperienced, my mother didn't really have a strong grasp of how her baby should look and act. But after two days she stopped asking the nurses why I cried non-stop and went looking for herself, at which point she asked a new question, “Is my baby’s mouth supposed to be like this?” She told me that there was dismay and remorse throughout that hospital, from the humblest to the highest. You see, I had a cleft palate.
So much for the good cow and the proud father. You know - I reckon that's why I'm always hungry. Well, it seems a reasonable theory, except that it conflicts with my earlier stated belief that we are who we are before we're born. Ah well.
I am today a more controlled and polished version of the child who was born on that day to an occasionally violent but loving father and a gentle articulate mother.
From an early age until my late teens my father and I regularly went to war with each other. And I mean real war with real weapons, punches and kicks that really hurt and made us both cry - but never in front of each other. Our anger could take either one of us across a room, and over the top of whoever or whatever was between us. Similarly and concurrently Bo and I fought for supremacy - me, the matamua (oldest child) and he, the tuakana (oldest son). Thank God our mum was both a buffer and a moderator between and for us all. My mum also took the brunt of a lot of my anger and frustration at dad and the double standards he unwittingly practiced between his sons and daughters.
My mother came from a background with sharp divisions between schoool - where she excelled in a Pakeha (white) world, and home - where she was never sure what she'd find happening on her return from school; anything from a church meeting to a party of visiting relatives from Pawarenga. Hers was a Ratana (an indigenous Christian religion) home which instilled genteel values in the 6 children, of which she was the oldest. Yet home was also where she increasingly saw alcohol and jealousy-fuelled exchanges between her parents. But by and large it was a place where education was valued, the rare violence was limited to between-adult exchanges, and mum was nurtured to believe in her specialness. Mum's never been so much as smacked in her entire life. She tells us now that she was completely blown away by her in-laws with whom she lived the early years of her marriage. They were Irish-Maori Catholic. A large and rowdy brood who were tolerant of difference yet intolerant of and punitive towards unrepentant liars and crooks. They were carelessly inclusive of all sorts of colourful characters and could be haphazardly violent, but they were never malicious. They were all physically attractive and both profane and loud in their conversations. They were accidently hospitable and hosted huge and lengthy parties that were often punctuated by drunken brawls which left holes in the walls. All merry people at heart, they revelled in practical jokes, had babies galore without benefit of marriage, competed and excelled at school, on the sports field and in the work place. They enthralled my mother.
The Supreme Fact of the matter is that we have (all of us) come to love each other without condition or understanding. Every now and then we'll take a stab at the latter, but it's a pretence really. Understanding has too many conditions on it.
At almost fifty, I've still got them all - mum, dad, Katarina, Pat, Bo, John, Jenni & Aaron. We've all gathered others (spouses, descendants, friends, enemies) and had experiences that have added to the alchemy.
I guess they each have their own angles, takes and beliefs on the Family. But these and all subsequent postings are my memory and my memoir. Welcome.
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