Month: January 2018

Spoiler alert – I don’t have the answer.

Three and a half weeks home and life is settling into a familiar rhythm.  I get up, go to work, construct the meals provided in my Whoop Box, do yoga, enjoy or curse the weather, and have found new and old favourites to watch on Netflix and Lightbox.  Then there is Johan, and family and friends, and all the events and occasions they bring.  Not too bad actually, but I am no longer prepared to drift.  France may not have taught me how to live the rest of my life, but it did confirm that I need a sense of direction to live it.

And as I remarked to someone last night, once I get an idea into my head I tend to want to get on with it toute suite.  So watch out for changes on the horizon.  No big revelations just yet.  Not even any final decisions.  But something has to give soon.

I am not sure how my grandmother dealt with the grind of day to day life.  By the time I knew her she seemed pretty resigned to it.  But the pattern of her behaviour over the earlier part of her life suggests she did not easily succumb.

There could have been worse places to be than Auckland in the 1930’s.  The Great Depression might have been biting, but no one was starving in the temperate north.  George V was still on the throne, cars were only for the very wealthy, the trams ran down Manukau and Dominion Roads into the city, and the mantra of “rugby, racing and beer” was the cultural norm.  People went to church on Sundays, knew their neighbours, and each others business.  They went to see movies in black and white (talkies!), and stood up for God Save the King beforehand.  Wireless was a novelty and the latest luxury household item.  Auckland was growing and pushing out in all directions, so that Onehunga became a suburb instead of a disconnected town.

The merged family could have been happy, and sometimes they were.  Certainly there can be no doubting the strong bonds my grandmother’s children felt to her, although she may often have been careless about nurturing them.

When my mother was born into her two-part family, Bill was already 18 – essentially a man and no longer living at home.  James was 15 and Maisie 14.  They were both well on their way towards moving on.  Children grew up fast in those days, and even faster in this family.  Bob was five and Jack nine.  In families of six the youngest is seldom spoilt.  Certainly my mother was not.  Benign neglect was the norm.  However, she adored her brothers, notwithstanding that the younger two treated her more like a play thing than a play mate.

In those days children, when not in school or church, ran free and unhindered.  No one much knew or cared where they went when out of sight.  As long as no one complained about their activities, they could go where they liked and do what they wanted.  Adventurous in mind and body, Jack and Bob did just that.  My mother tagged along.  In response they did what boys do.  They tossed her into the sea to practise their rescue skills.  They sent her climbing trees to see how high up she would go before she got stuck.  They tied her up, chased her, got her lost, used her to beg favours, and generally treated her like a vaguely annoying wind-up toy.  She may not have loved every minute of it, but her brothers became her ideal of what boys and men should be. 

Just a pity about the bad habits they acquired as they got older – women, booze, just the usual.  Boys will be boys.

So there was Mum, just a scrap of a thing, hanging out with her brothers and their friends, and as she got older with her own little gangs as well.  She was not well-dressed.  Going to the local convent school, her school uniform was the default all occasions dress-code.  New clothes and shoes were unknown, and new 2nd-hand a rarity.  She was not particularly clean.  No one cared enough to ensure that she was, although a kindly neighbour with a child the same age took her in for a good scrub occasionally.  But she was pretty.  Very pretty, and that was an asset.  Neighbours and shop keepers took a shine to her.  That was handy when my grandmother needed credit or to borrow something.  Send May to ask.  When she was old enough to understand, this became a source of burning shame to her, but she never refused an errand.  One did not refuse to obey in those days.

Spare the rod and spoil the child.  There was nothing actually biblical about my grandparents’ approach to child control, but they certainly neither spared the rod nor spoiled the child.  In that household, and probably in many others, corporal punishment was instant and brutal.  Worse, the severity of the punishment did not necessarily equate to the offence.  A learnt response of course, and to me as a child who inherited this pattern, the greatest source of injustice and grief.

My uncles got the worst of it.  Being boys they probably did not succumb easily enough to avoid the spiralling intensity of their parents’ tempers.  And of course it was my grandfather who dealt out the worst beatings, occasionally well beyond the bounds of what was considered acceptable even then.  No one intervened.  No one called the Police or child welfare.  It was not that bad.  It was, just barely, normal.

Let me be clear.  These children were loved.  They were clothed (after a fashion), sent to school, even feted on occasion.  But they were mistreated.  By parents whose own problems and dramas left them vulnerable and only intermittently inclined to bother.

Children grow up and they move on.  All had their demons.  They all loved their parents unreservedly, but not uncritically.  They became parents themselves, and I will get to that somewhere in this story.  

While not unscathed by violence and neglect, that is not what forged my mother’s values.

While children see only what is closest to them, those around them see and infer much more.  What the neighbours saw was a European woman married to a Maori husband, whose children very clearly did not have the same father.  Two strikes.  While he was upright and proud, she was slovenly around the house, careless of the children, and a regular at the trots and gallops.  Her store accounts paid late, and a little too friendly with men in general, particularly those who could do her a favour.  Three strikes, maybe more.

And the older siblings.  Dark skinned, nattily dressed, and stunningly good looking.  But, oh my, they were free and loose with the opposite sex.

Onehunga was a working class area, but people still had their standards.  They might have been shitty, unthinking, unforgiving standards, but they were used to judge.  It is always nice to have someone to look down on.  So while the neighbours were being nice to my mother, they were also pitying and patronising.  Not just the adults.  The children pick these things up as well.  As a child my mother was only  obliquely aware of this, but as she got older it sunk in all too well.  Her reaction – an overwhelming desire for respectability above all else.  It is a habit and a mindset that has taken her a lifetime to overcome, and it has shaped every facet of her life and that of her family.  The question is never, who am I, but rather, what do other people think of me?

Ok, it is not getting any easier.  Enough for now.  The long weekend beckons.

 

 

Often difficult.  I feel like I should be making choices at the moment, but so far I have failed to identify the options.

Some say there are no right or wrong choices, only better or worse outcomes.  I have some sympathy with this moral relativism, although like most people I still strive to make choices based on core values.  But for me, when choices come up that affect my future, logic comes a distant second to instinct and intuition.  I suspect my grandmother was the same.

What happened next is unknown to anyone now alive, and therefore unknowable.  My mother could have asked any number of people.  She could have asked her own mother who lived with her.  She did not.  Some things are apparently too dangerous to delve into.

To me this is simply incomprehensible.  Despite hints, and insults, and parsimonious snippets of information from her older sibblings, my mother simply never inquired.  Not me.  I would have delved where angels fear to tread, but my approach carries its own risks.  

My mother claims now to remember certain things.  A possible surname.  Visits to the house by a good looking, curly-haired man.  The gift of a bicycle, subsequently sold off when my grandmother had a debt to pay.  A visit charged with suppressed violence, where she was directed to go to her father and forcibly rejected when she went to the only man she knew as her father.  

I am not sure.  Memory is a strange thing, and for a not entirely happy woman reviewing her life through sleepless nights, it is not necessarily accurate.  At best, these are recovered memories, always suspect.

In the years after the war the family remained in Poverty Bay, and as he recovered my grandfather returned to work.  Apart from his years in the Army, he was a labourer of various kinds throughout his working life.  There was no shame in this.  Most NZ men of that era did similar work, turning their hands to whatever was available at the time.  During the Depression in the 1930’s he had government relief work, as did many others.  At other times he worked in the meat works at Otahuhu, which was a huge employer at the time.  Labourers were what NZ needed in those days.  The family may have been poor.  But so were most others, and they always had good food on the table.

At some point in time my grandmother got restless.  Or maybe just the relentless tedium of poverty, small children and provincial NZ wore her down.  Perhaps she  was just not having enough fun.  My grandfather after the war was no doubt a different man than the one she fell in love with.  Maybe she could not love the new man he had become.  Or else the clash of two strong personalities just got too difficult to handle.  In any event, another man came along.  Perhaps for my grandfather there were also other women.

There was a separation.  I doubt that it was amicable.  In my imagination I hear shouting and accusations, clothing and personal items tossed out the front door, and three little children resigning themselves to yet more upset and turmoil.  But perhaps it was not like that, and they were kinder to each other.  I was not there, so I do not know.

But my grandmother’s sister Mary was there.  She was a port in a storm. And my grandmother had a new lover.  Not just a passing interest either, but a serious, long-term relationship.  Their first child, John, was born in 1922, the second, Robert, in 1926, and finally my mother in 1932.  Ten years of domesticity and family, including the older siblings.  Six living children of mixed race and parentage, all bound together by my grandmother’s whim and will.

The household dynamics and inter-relationships mess with my mind.  By the late 1920’s, and perhaps even earlier, all the parties were living in Gisborne.  According to the 1928 census, my grandmother was living with her sister and brother in law at 6 Lytton Road.  We do not know if the other man, my biological grandfather, was also living there or elsewhere, or whether this arrangement was temporary.  It appears from those records that my grandfather, William, was living next door at number 4.  Certainly the two men would have been acquainted.  By the time my mother was born in 1932, the marriage had been resurrected and my grand-parents had moved to Onehunga in Auckland.

How or why my grandparents reunited is another mystery.  However, they had never been that far apart.  Perhaps the other man tired of her and left.  Perhaps the dramatic tension was simply too much for him.  Or she may have proved capricious and eventually found her former husband the more attractive of the two.  He may have petitioned her to return.  Who knows.  Whether she asked to come back, or he begged her to return, it must have taken a huge amount of swallowed pride on both parts for them to decide to live together again.  No wonder they departed to Auckland.

So choices were made, and then re-visited in a manner few people ever have the opportunity to experience.  The blended family were together in a workman’s cottage in Church Street, Onehunga, and my mother never knew it had ever been any different.  She grew up in and around the area occupied by DressMart today, with the Catholic Church where I was christened just along the road.  Her aunt Mary and uncle Denny also moved to Onehunga, and her cousins were only a few minutes away in Spring Street.  The house, which I passed many times as a child, was tiny.  She slept in a big bed with her mother until she was eight, which may be a clue to the state of my grandparents marriage.  Of course she was ejected for my grandfather’s visits, but I understand this was infrequent.

It would be nice to report that this unconventional family unit fared well, but that was not the case.  Survived would be a better description.

Yes, there is more to come.  Quite a lot I suspect, since I am nowhere near figuring out how we all got to be as we are.

I was supposed to return from France with all my thoughts and plans in order.  A blueprint for the next 10+ years of my life was to have been produced.  This has not happened.

It was never going to happen.  I am not a planner when it comes to the big things in life.  I am more of an opportunist.  This is ok, except it means that I have to hope opportunities and options come my way.  On the plus side, I am comfortable with change, and can change my life course on a dime if I feel so inclined.  But in the last week I have been drifting in a way I never did during my structured time in France, and I am not comfortable.

I know it is time to get on with my grandmother’s story, and I will.  But I need to get on an even keel first.

Being home has been a mixed bag so far.  Seeing Amy pregnant and glowing, and spending time with her and Eric has been wonderful.  We are both frustrated at not knowing the sex of the baby, but we do have photos.

In the meantime I have started knitting – in yellow.  I prefer to avoid white because it is so hard to keep it perfect, but ready to branch out into blue or pink at the first opportunity. Gender stereotyping – pfft!

Being back in my apartment, and catching up with friends in The Isaac, has been lovely too.  The apartment in Aix was bigger than my own, and within 5 minutes walk of the Centre Ville.  But I am more than ever satisfied with where I live.  The furniture and art that I chose myself are like old friends.  The welcome home barbecue was perfect too – relaxed, casual, gossipy, and so nice to be with people whose company is always enjoyable.  Going to the Banksy exhibition in the Aotea Centre was also a good move, even if just to remind myself that I could still enjoy access to interesting art locally.

And the GREEN.  Provence is coloured ochre.  Everything except the sky is ochre.  The north of France and Europe, at this time of year, is gun metal grey.  Auckland is GREEN.  Yea!  The absence of scarf, coat, boots, hat and gloves is a plus too.

Catching up with Mum has been good.  She was not too well in the week or so before I left France, and when I arrived home both siblings were on holiday in Australia.  So needless to say she was glad to see me, and fortunately feeling better.  Yesterday we went to the garden centre and bought plants for her upcoming ladies garden lunch.  Also a few replacements for the dead foliage I have cut out of the pots on my deck.  Some will hopefully recover, others are gone forever.  Then I planted her purchases in the rock hard ground (scarcely earns the title of soil) in her front yard, and made her promise to water them deeply and daily.  The sun was scorching, so I guess the promised good weather is back.  I was forcibly reminded that Auckland is host to the stickiest kind of heat, and had to drink copiously the rest of the day to recover lost moisture.

Reminder to self – ladies do not sweat, they perspire.  My grandmother told me that, but I was reminded of it last night when I described my state of being to Johan.  And that is another thing that is different.  For 10 weeks in France we spoke every day, usually morning and evening, on FaceTime.  He was my link to home and sanity.  Our contact allowed me to convert all my little fears and tribulations into funny stories on a daily basis, so that I never got too stressed about anything that happened.  Then we had two weeks where we were together the whole time.  But now we are home.  He lives in Warkworth and I in central Auckland.  We each have things that need to be done, obligations to fulfil.  We need to establish a new pattern.

And some bad and sad things have happened since I have been back.

Although I cannot wait for Jacqui to return so we can have a good chat about our mutual adventures, a mysterious (to me) estrangement with my brother has hardened into a complete rupture.  The hows, whys and wherefores are not for this page, even if I understood them.  Having witnessed a rift in someone else’s family healed while I was in the Netherlands, I had thought to sort out our problem face to face on my return.  But it was not to be.  And now it appears I am part of one of ‘those’ families where members do not speak to one another.  I am shocked and saddened, but not about to dwell on it.

Life for Jason and Laura has been tough the last few weeks.  Before Christmas they learnt that Jason’s father was in ICU in Canada with breathing problems, and so they cancelled Christmas and their summer holiday to spend time with him.  The timing could hardly have been worse as they flew straight into historic winter lows in Toronto.  Sadly, untreatable lung cancer was diagnosed, and last week Alex was taken by this vicious disease.  I am looking forward to the return of JayLor next week, when they will be moving into an apartment in the building next to mine.

So what else is wrong.  Well, on an entirely different scale of things … the road works around Grey Lynn are either finished and incomprehensibly unfit for purpose (a cycle lane in Richmond Road that has cost car parking but lets cars block the lane), or suspended while AT gets its shit together.  In Newmarket stores are closing and all the places I used to park are now construction sites.  The NZ Herald is so thin on news that the on-line version has been running the same stories for a week.  The hearing aid in my left ear has given up the ghost for the second time in 3 months and been sent back to the factory.  I have not gone for a walk for over a week. Jac, my yoga teacher has gone on holiday, and Ruby Wax has sold her salon so that I will have to acquaint yet another soul with all the bits of me that need correcting.  I suppose I should be glad I will not have to do that in French this time.

But mostly the problem is, what next?

Now I know what one reader would have to say about all this.  “Get back to work!  Work will set you free.”  Thanks ‘bloody Brian’, but work is part of the problem too.  I was hoping to resolve that particular problem, but I have not.  I have been into work for a couple of hours, and monitoring mail, although I am not due back till 17th.

Ok, what I do know is this.

I love writing, and I will continue to blog.  My grandmother’s story will continue and one day be completed.  I have to work, or find a way to earn money, in order to live as I do.  I like how I live.  I like having a man in my life, and I hope I don’t muck it up.  That might require some work.  I am going to be a grandmother, and that thought is bringing me joy.  For a while at least both my daughters and their husbands will be living within spitting distance, and that too brings me joy.  I have been lucky enough to have had a wonderful adventure, and I intend to have more.

 

I was promised beautiful weather.

Outside it is raining and has been for some time.  The headline on the front page of today’s Herald says, “Brace Yourself!” over a picture of storm clouds bearing down on the country.  Three days ago, as I drove from Aix to Nice across the bottom of Provence in full winter, the sky was blue and the temperature hit 18 degrees.

I think I might have been sold a pup weatherwise, although it is hot and sticky.

Perhaps my mood is influenced by jet lag.  Because I can sleep on planes, I am seldom too badly inconvenienced by the bane of long distance travel.  However, on this occasion I am beaten.  We left Aix at 9 am on New Years Eve – that is 9 pm on the same day (Sunday) in NZ.  We arrived in Auckland at 4.35 am on 3 January (Wednesday).  That means we spent 65 hours and 35 minutes travelling to NZ.  I have not slept more than 3 hours since arriving and it is now 4.30 pm on Thursday.  Today I have been to the beauty clinic, taken my mother lunch, and bought a dress.  Yesterday I unpacked, did washing, went grocery shopping, and cooked dinner for my daughter and son-in-law.  At this point I am not sure I am making good decisions.

Ok, let’s chart what happened.  We get up early, hand apartment over to the wonderful Rita, and set off.  Not to Nice, where we have a plane to catch, but north of town to get the perfect photographic view point of Sainte Victoria.  The man in the Tourism Office has given us the actual spot that Cézanne and all the other painters have used to capture this view.  Except that it is now in the middle of the suburbs, and there is nowhere to park on the steep, narrow and winding road.  So Johan parks anyway, and leaves me in the car while he sprints up hill to take photos.  Of course the view is no longer visible, the shot is impossible, and we are now on the wrong side of town for trip to Nice.  Moving on …

The drive to Nice Côte d’Azur Airport is unremarkable, and we get there in plenty of time.  Unfortunately the car lease depot is shut and the entry gate locked.  I ring the office number.  They are only open Monday to Friday 8 – 6, or by appointment.  It is Sunday.  I do not have an appointment (somehow after 32 hour trip 3 months previously I had missed this crucial information when picking up car).   The machine does not offer an option to leave a message.  I ring the international help number, wait five minutes on hold, only to be told, “someone will ring me back”.  Twenty minutes later, still sitting parked illegally  on an airport road – illegal parking is a theme this last two weeks -, ‘someone’ does ring me back.  I explain the situation again.  They have no solution to offer. The only number they have is the same one that is closed because it is Sunday.  The problem is ours to solve.

So solve it we do.  After trying to pursuade a couple of the car rental places to take temporary control, we simply ditch the car.  A three month old Peugot 308 is left sitting in a carpark beside the car rental return depot (note this is NOT a rental car) with two sets of keys and ownership papers in the glove box.  We have essentially ditched the car in favour of making our check-in on time.

Nice Côte d’Azur Airport is a pig of a place.  It has two widely separated terminals with numerous parking buildings in between and, at present, road works on the internal roads.  There is a free bus.  You have to walk a considerable distance, largely unsigned-posted, to catch it.  Then it will drop you about 100 metres from the entrance to Terminal 1.  With two large and two small suitcases, a camera bag, a back pack, and a very heavy overfull satchel/handbag.  None of this might have mattered much if my synapses were not already overloaded from 4,000 kms of road travel across four different countries in the space of the previous 5 days, and the prospect of ending my self-imposed exile.

So I was already a bit frazzled when, as it always does, my artificial knee set off the border control scanner.  It did not help that by this time I was dying to go to the toilet. Of course I anticipate the alarm, and as I walk through the machine I am already pointing to my knee and suggesting this is the problem.  Sometimes, not often, this is the end of the matter.  Not this time.  I had to go back through, take off my cardigan and shoes, and try again.  Then I got the good old fashioned pat down – not the once over lightly, but the all enveloping examination of all surfaces and crevices.  Very thorough.  Back through the machine.  Remove all jewellery – three rings, two bracelets (including the plastic one), earrings.  I still set off the alarm.  By this point I am snarling and uncooperative.  Finally they get out the hand scanner, survey my body all over again, and decide that it is indeed my knee and I can go.  Mini melt-down on my part as I fling my scattered belongings together.  Johan pretends he is not with my by engaging in friendly banter with the guard.

One toilet stop and a little cool-down period later,  we proceed to the gate, where we make ourselves comfortable.  Not for long.  There is an announcement in French.  I think I hear that our plane will be delayed for at least an hour.  I pretend they are talking about the other Qatar flight, due to depart for Istanbul.  Then they repeat in English, and of course it is our flight.  Not so bad.  We have a 2 hour 30 minute interval to catch our connecting flight in Doha.

Four and half hours later and we know this is not going to happen.  Furthermore, everyone else on the flight is going to miss a connection.  No-one actually goes to Doha, they just pass through it as the Qatar Airlines hub.

No information is available.  The fight may or may not leave sometime this evening (remember it is New Years Eve).  Groups of French people confer loudly and exchange phone numbers and emails of the places they can lodge complaints and demand justice.  French people tend to be big on justice.  The foreign travellers like ourselves, who have access to the Priority Pass Lounge, try to act less concerned.  I imagine I have a look of philosophical resignation on my face, but apparently not.  Johan disappears for a while and reappears with the gift of an Occitane scented candle that he hopes will make me feel better.  And it does, for a while.

Just when it looks like the Priority Pass Lounge will close for the night and kick us out, they announce boarding is commencing.  We are all jammed on board and the doors closed in super-quick time, but then sit another 30 minutes before trundling out to the runway.  At 12 midnight French time a small group of passengers, including me, burst into rounds of “Bonne Année, Happy New Year”, and there is much kissing.

So.  We arrive in Doha at 3.30 am.  There is ground crew waiting to sort things out for everyone.  We have to wait until 2.50 am the following morning for our new flight, so we get a hotel room and transfer.  This is actually pretty efficient.  It is only 5.45 am when we actually get to the hotel.  I have no toiletries or makeup, but no worries – I will shower and sleep, eat and go.

I manage one hours sleep, Johan maybe two.  We watch CNN for a while, shower again, dress and go have breakfast/lunch in the hotel restaurant.  It consumes 4/5 of our meal vouchers, which are supposed to provide breakfast, lunch and dinner.

What to do next?  Watch some more CNN, get bored, decide to visit the Souq.  It is more like 15 minutes by taxi than the 5 minutes stated on the hotel brochure, but it is at least ‘outside’ and a little interesting.  The clothes are bizarre; the jewellery hideous and over-worked; the goods largely rustic.  Then we find the pets section.  There are thousands of birds of all kinds for sale, and we are uncomfortable at the overcrowding, while fascinated by the varieties.  Then we find the section with puppies and cats (full grown, not kittens) and we are even more uncomfortable.  When we see a puppy extracted from a cage by being grabbed and lifted by one leg we are definitely not happy.  Time to leave.

Finally it was a light meal (which we had to pay for), another shower, and off to Hamas Airport again through the dark, although the city lights up like a theme park at night.  After many more hours in yet another Priority Pass Lounge we finally board for Auckland.  I sleep, watch a couple of episodes of Blue Planet II, about 10 Ted Talks, and eat all three meals plus snack box the airline supply.  The plane is 100% full, except in Business Class, which is tantalisingly just the next row ahead of us behind closed curtains.  Johan does not sleep at all.  He does Suduko and watches back to back movies.  Believe me when I say that 16+ hours in economy class is not fun, even when you have a bulk-head row to stretch your legs.

I was home before 7 am on Wednesday morning, only 24 hours later than expected.  My summer clothes were – and still are – packed away in storage for my tenants convenience.  The furniture was not where I left it.  I am sure I used to have a coffee machine, but the kitchen bench is empty.  My garden is dried up and dead.  I am tired and smelly – I was briefly apprehended by the customs dog at Auckland Airport – and I have nothing to wear.

A day and a half later I am not much better.  Tiredness does not bring sleep.  There are unopened clothing boxes in the lounge, I still don’t know where the coffee machine is, and the weather is just getting worse and worse.

BUT …

I have had a wonderful time, and I am home.  So I am not complaining really.