Independance

This is something I know a little bit about.  I am a person who does not mind their own company.  Up to a point.  I am an introvert by nature, not an extrovert.  Although this blog might appear to put the lie to that.  It is more about how you interact with people in real life.  One on one is fine.  Presenting to an audience is fine.  Trying not to feel like the least desirable person in the room to talk to at any other time is the struggle.

Anyway, relying on one’s own company breeds independence.  Circumstances can also breed independence.  I have had that as well.  I like to think my grandmother was an independent person , although her breed of self-reliance might have been questionable.

We can only wonder at my grandfather’s motives for joining up to serve in WW 1.  By the time he enlisted the conflict had been dragging on for several years, and the bloom of adventure that propelled young men forward at the outset had faded.  Men were dying.  New Zealand men were dying, and our young country could neither comprehend or afford that.  Communities like those in Poverty Bay were hit hard.  But more men were needed, and more and more were conscripted or volunteered.

For the Maori community it must have been a matter of pride.  They could not be seen to avoid the fight, and perhaps memories of a warrior past were stirred and prodded.  On the East Coast, Ngati  Porou had its own company in the Maori Pioneer Battalion.  For a transplanted Nga Puhi there was a challenge staring him in the face.  

Then there was the marriage itself.  There is nothing to indicate it was on the rocks.  After all, in those days  a marriage might not have been a success, but that did not often end in separation and divorce.  Certainly not if you did not have money.  There was no support for a women left to care for a family alone, and societal condemnation for any party who left a marriage.  Generally you made your bed and you lay in it – literally in many cases.  But this marriage must at the very least have been turbulent.

My grandfather was proud, and he had a temper.  He looked after himself and his possessions, and had no difficulty in aspiring to all that Pakeha society had to offer.  

My grandmother was wilful, and she had a temper.  She had not much concern for society generally, and was a little slovenly and careless about possessions, hers and others.

When they first met none of these things was obvious.  As with so many young people, other factors were at play.  Lust, looks, the exoticism of different worlds.  The more prosaic elements of a relationship did not figure in their thinking at all.  Probably they were not actually thinking, just acting on overwhelming instincts.  But by the time my grandfather sailed off to Europe they would certainly have had the measure of each other.  They would have known each others best and worst characteristics, although neither would have had any idea the extent to which those traits would take them.

While it was unlikely my grandfather joined up to escape his marriage, he may nevertheless have felt that a break from it was not necessarily a bad thing.

My grandmother was left behind, and she is unlikely to have approved of his decision to enter the conflict.  She would not have been the only young woman left behind to cope with a young family, but she was not the type to volunteer for self-sacrafice.  Nor was she the sort to give up her pleasures in sympathy with the state of the world.  

But before you race ahead in your expectations of what comes next, let me tell you that she did not forsake her husband while he was off fighting. There were no children conceived or born out of the marriage during this time.  My grandmother sent no “Dear John … ” letters.

That is not to say she was not hardened and strengthened by the separation.  She would not have been unsupported.  The young family remained in the district, where Mary and Uncle Denny were still living.  It does not appear Uncle Denny served in the services.  At least he did not serve overseas.  So there was close family at hand, and even an able male to help out when one was required.  Even so, life must have been tough.

My grandmother was an intelligent woman, and she had received as good an education as most girls got at that time.  She was strong, and young and capable.  She was also a somewhat selfish and  rather neglectful woman, with little regard for social mores.  She had her indulgences that were not easily forgone.  Sadly, she was not above using others to get what she wanted.

How she got through the war years is not clear, but for her the war did not end in 1918 as it did for other women.  Her husband did not come home immediately, and when he did he was so sick that he spent two years hospitalised while his lungs recovered.  She would have used both wits and charm to enhance her lifestyle during these years, because you can be sure that she would not have been satisfied with the income of an enlisted man, not even that of a sergeant.

By the end of the war she was running a womenswear store in Gisborne, and her children were in temporary care.  The boys were together in a household they abhorred, and the whereabouts at that time of the baby, Maisie, is unknown.  To all intents and purposes, she was an unencumbered single woman.  What she did at that time was up to her.  One imagines there were men around, although we do not know whether or not she succumbed to their attractions.  

But she was still married, and she did have a family.  The independent life might have suited her very well, but she had not entirely abandoned her responsibilities.  What she did next some might say was merely her responsibility.  But I prefer to think it came from a deep well of compassion.  If you have no sense of responsibility, to nevertheless act against your deepest desires and inclinations takes a certain kind of resolution.

My grandfather’s health was not improving appreciably.  He was not a man made for hospital wards, and perhaps his spirit was broken by what he had witnessed and endured.  In any case my grandmother eventually took action.  She gathered back her family, faced down the authorities, and took her husband home to nurse back to health.  And back to health he came under her care, which could be and was devoted, when she set her mind to it.  

So it was, that at the beginning of the third decade of the 20th century, the young family were reunited and apparently back on track.  It could not, of course, last.

As I sit here writing on this early Sunday afternoon, I have been unable to avoid smelling my neighbours cooking and serving their midday meals.  I have previously mentioned that Sunday lunch is a big deal in France, and I described the one occasion I attended such a meal in Marseille.  Recently I have been critical of some of the food here, but believe me, there is no more enticing smell in the world than French home cooking.  Particularly during the winter.

Notwithstanding my late breakfast and recent habit of skipping lunch, I have been driven into the kitchen to tear a couple of mouthfuls of bread off yesterday’s half stale baguette.  Pickings are sparse in there.  I am forbidden by Johan to go to the supermarket until he arrives tomorrow.  Supermarkets are one of his favourite places in the world.  In a past life he ran a deli counter in a Dutch supermarket (he has a lot of past lives) and cheese and cured meats are part of his genetic make-up.  Go figure.  Anyway I also found and ate a slightly shrivelled clementine.  (They are mandarins really, but the French call them clementines and they come from Corsica.)  Then I downed the can of Red Bull Zero I was saving for later.  I am only somewhat satisfied.

I dare not go for my walk just yet because everyone in the entire world will be eating and drinking, and it drives me insane.  By 3 pm or so it should be safe to go out.  By then there will only be people drinking.  Luckily, it being the penultimate weekend before Christmas, most of the shops will be open.

On a final note, I am  curious to know who is reading this blog.  I have had some responses through other channels that suggest there are a few of you out there who are checking in.  But my technical abilities in setting up this blog did not extend to monitoring the readership.  So just this one time, and as long as you don’t mind the admission, it would be great if you would leave a comment in the field below just to say that you have seen this edition.  Don’t feel you need to actually say anything; just say “reddit”.  I promise not to put you on any secret email list.

And even if you don’t feel like adding a comment, thanks anyway for being out there.  I will be busy over the next couple of weeks, but I will try to keep writing anyway.

In the meantime wishing you a Joyeux Noël and a Bonne Année.