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.
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