Empty Nest 2

the emptiness is not so much
caused by your leaving,
but rather, that your absence
has brought the knowing
that i have defined myself
by you for too many years,
that without you
i have no definition,
neither shape, nor form

Empty Nest

When I grow up
I'm gonna fall in love
with a wonderful man
and get married
and live happily
ever after.

When I grow up
I'm gonna fall in love
with a wonderful man
and get married
and have four babies
and live happily
ever after.

When I grow up
I'm gonna fall in love
with a wonderful man
and get married
and have four babies
and spend 28 years
raising them
and loving them
and live happily
ever after.

When I grow up
I'm gonna fall in love
with a wonderful man
and get married
and have four babies
and spend 28 years
raising them
and loving them
and watch proudly
as they grow up
and get married
and have babies
and live happily....

....and what will I do
ever after?

For Some Reasons.....

In Dinsdale there is a truly dreadful clothing shop that has had a sort of awful fascination for Jeff and me for over a year.

First we wonder who would buy clothes that are hideous and very badly made: yeah, sure they are cheap but even so.... However that is a minor point.

The big display windows in two sides of the building are totally covered in posters, excluding all possibility of natural light from the interior. About a third of the posters are the Christmas posters but they stay up all year round. The other two thirds are multiple copies of a poster that draws our attention every time we pass, and we laugh, not because it is funny, but because it is so, well, foolish. Who thought this up, and what did they think it meant?

Summer Fun

Three weeks ago I enjoyed a summer school book binding class in Huntly. I came away inspired and looking forward to getting back into my book making, and to experimenting with new ideas.

a sample of some of the things we made

But then everything got crazy with visitors and other busyness. We had so much fun, especially with our costume party.

the Mad Hatter and her March Hare pimp

I came a a crazy post-menopausal old woman - as myself in other words.

But now that's over, J has gone to Wellington for a week, and I have tidied my craft room, and have been practicing one of the bindings I learned at summer school.


The paper is a pulled paste paper that I made some time ago.

Sewing

I really want to get back to making my own clothes, as I did from my early teens to my early 30's. I stopped because I had children - boy children who seemed to sap all my energy, who didn't care much for pretty clothes, would rather have comfortable, practical clothes, and whose births changed my body shape to one that I didn't like enough to spend time and energy on.

My friend Jenny sews beautifully and when I said I would like to start sewing again, she took me shopping for material and patterns, and then spent a considerable amount of time re-drafting the patterns so that the shirts would actually fit my strange body. There was a time when I could buy a size 12 pattern and make it up with no alterations - but that time is past. Alas, despite all this help, I still have not made the shirts. Somewhere in the last 20 years I have lost confidence.

So I decided to start on a simple beginner's project: the first thing we made in sewing class at school, an apron. I have to admit, I have been lusting after Kate's gorgeous aprons and wanting to make one for quite a while. Well, mine isn't up to Kate's standard, but for a first effort after 20 something years, made out of someone else's left over bits of material - it's not bad.

Okay, so I'm on a roll. Next up something else that requires minimal fitting - just one measurement - a sun hat.

Not sure if I'm ready for the shirts yet, but I'm having fun!

Today M is back at work, and J is off to Auckland with a friend to stay with Steve and Heidi for a few days. It's not so long ago that it would have been Jeff and me going, but he's finally fledged and the old mother bird is left at home in the empty nest. I'm scared but am trying to remind myself of something I read in Dawna Markova's book 'I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: reclaiming purpose and passion':

"The big old spruce that stands behind the cabin reminds me that both of us grow by thrusting our roots into the darkness as well as our branches into the light."

In Fairbanks yesterday it was -57F or -49.4444445C. That's just plain ridiculous! So while my friend S was freezing her butt off in Alaska, I spent several hours chainsawing huge gorse, and trimming wayward, self sown pines, loading it all (with M) onto the trailer and then unloading it onto the bonfire heap. J helped in the second half of the day. It seemed very satisfying seeing the huge pile - until I looked at how much was left to do! We had only done a tiny bit, proportionately.

We rewarded ourselves by going for a swim, my first this season, and though there was a cool wind blowing by the time we got there just before 4, the water was perfect. I do so love the sea, and I especially love being just 15 minutes from the most beautiful beach in the world.

Taking time out

It seems like Mac rarely takes time out from working on our land except to sleep, but yesterday afternoon we decided to take his new work car for a drive and went to Kawhia for takeaways. Given the wait for takeaways in Raglan at this time of the year is around a hour, it wasn't that much more to get to Kawhia instead! Thirty five minutes driving, 10 minutes to wait for the food! Except we decided to go the long way home and visit his sister at Te Pahu.

While we were waiting for our food we watched the local rowing club take their boat out of the water just along from a pirate boat - sadly there were no pirates around, guess they were out waiting for their fish and chips too.

Then we ate our chips further around by the marae.

Mac's sister and her husband have added a beautiful room onto their house which sits up on the bush line of Pirongia, overlooking the Waikato Basin.

Then we drove home, into the sunset.

2009 Day One

We had a New Year's Eve Party. It was due to start at 7.00pm but one guest arrived at 10am, others around 3.oopm. Most people stayed the night, and some carried on this morning, finishing off the wine.

Others started playing Warcraft again.


Eventually the last visitors left about 7.00pm tonight, and Mac and I went for a drive to Manu Bay to watch the last light of the first day of 2009. I hope the rest of the year is as good.

It was twenty years ago today.......

This time 20 years ago I was sitting in an uncomfortable chair beside my mother's hospital bed. She hadn't spoken for a couple of days, was receiving fluid and pain relief only, but still she looked at me with eyes that demanded still more. Just after 11am I realised that she was going to hang on until I did something to release her, that yet again I was failing her. For thirty seven years I had been, not outrageously bad, not excitingly wicked, just a constant disappointment. Still she looked at me out of those hooded eyes, set in a death grey face.

I had tried a few times over the years to talk to her about all the issues that festered inside me: wanting answers to why she found me such a disappointment; why she never hugged or cuddled me as a child; why she told me I was tone deaf, clumsy, inadequate; why she never apologized even when she was clearly in the wrong; why she didn’t stand up for me when I was victimized by a vicious teacher – so many whys. The answer was the same each time I summoned the courage to ask: “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s done with.”

Yet her eyes now told me that she wanted something from me, and that even if she had the energy to talk, she could still make demands with those eyes.

So I said the words I thought she wanted me to say, words I desperately wished were true, “Thank you for everything you have done for me. Thank you for giving me life. Thank you for teaching me so much. I owe you so much. I love you.” Her only response was to close her eyes, take one last rattling breath and then she stopped.

Still I had more to do for her. When she told her doctor she did not want to be resuscitated, his response was that as a Christian he was morally obliged to do all he could to keep her alive, so no, he would not accede to her wish, he would attempt resuscitation. And so after my mother died, I continued to sit by her side for twenty minutes before going and telling a nurse – who then told me that said doctor was not on duty that day, and that all the rest of the staff believed in doing as the patient asked. Ah well.

Still it wasn’t over: my mother lived on in my mind and heart, criticizing and blaming and putting me down. A few years ago I finally went to a counselor again (my first attempt to go to one as a suicidal 17 year old is a whole nother story) and gradually started to come to terms with all my “mother stuff”. I reached a point where I wrote the following poem in August 2007. (Note: my mother was the daughter of an All Black and followed rugby all her life.)

The After Game Debrief

Right into extra time
It was all about you.
Lying grey and motionless
You still controlled the play.

You wouldn’t blow the whistle
Till I had shaken hands,
Acknowledged you as
Player of the Century,
And me – less than second five-eighths.

Even now, two decades on,
You still high tackle into my life,
Scrummaging in my head
At inopportune moments.

It’s time I told you;
The Game’s over.
The boot’s on my foot.
Your ball’s out of play.
My team’s playing live.
You team’s dead and gone.
It’s all over – even the shouting.

Well, it wasn’t quite true then, but HURRAH!! I think it finally is! I did Christmas my way this year and made it through without any bitterness or guilt or sadness. I had a wonderful day with my beautiful wonderful sons and their partners and their children – plus one partner’s brother. They are all people I love and want to know and spend time with for the rest of my life.

And now the time of my mother’s death – 11:15am, 20 years ago today - has passed without tears, or any bad feelings at all. I have lots of friends coming over for New Year’s Eve and there are no mixed feelings. I’m just looking forward to having a wonderful day in the sunshine, and a happy evening with people I care about.

After 57 years, I’m done and dusted with her!

Playing

I always loved the 'mucky play' part of Playcentre, and still I find such things therapeutic. As an adult, doing mucky play without children seems, somehow, not quite the thing. However, 'coming up with excuses' is one of the few lessons I learned at school, and so I have found an acceptable reason for indulging myself!

Finger painting - how can anyone resist the sensual pleasure of sliding one's hands around in slippery, slimy finger-paint?


Take out a bit of aggression by ripping up paper into tiny bits. Then soak it, beat it, and do some recycling while treating yourself to some water play - making paper.


Use the results to make a journal.

Then there are all those National Geograhic maps that come with the magazines, and somehow I just haven't been able to throw them out, just putting them into a box each month. Well, now I have used one, plus a local map, to make a travel journal for a friend who is going on an overseas trip.

The front cover is a map of where she is going, and the back cover is a map of where she lives.

There is another map of her destination on the inside front cover.

The inside back cover is to remind her of where I live.

On the inside I have random bits of leftover papers used for other books - I have become addicted to doing this to the books I make,

just adding an offbeat note, and using some of the scraps I can't bear to discard.

Counting Joys

So, how to change my frame of mind? Maybe focusing on the things in my life that do bring pleasure and joy into my life might help.

I've done a couple of bead workshops at Just Bead It in Hamilton East, and really enjoyed learning new crafts. I could have learned from books and experimentation at home, but I wanted the company, and also the inspiration that other people's choices gave me for future creations.

It was lovely to have S and H come and visit - the plus side of them needing Mac's help to fix their car. Their visit coincided with E's fifth birthday so they were able to join us at the Hamilton Gardens to celebrate, as did S and R who were up from Wellington for the election
weekend.














And, of course, it is always a pleasure to see G and C and the four grandchildren.












Bringing small joy into people's lives were some young people giving away iceblocks to celebrate Random Acts of Kindness day.

That evening Mac, J and I went to our last 'teen tea' as a homeschooling family. It was a great evening, with people we have know basically all J's life, fun, yet comfortable in the way that can only happen when you know people that well. We finished the evening going down to the local park and setting off
fireworks.


J and I have been enjoying the homeschool family days at a local Playcentre - despite the venue, we have 'children' from 0 - 19 attending and having a lot of fun, and it's a great place for parents to chat or to join in the games - our teens are more than happy for adults to play with
them.

J and I also spent a wonderful few hours and the Waitakaruru Arboretum / Sculpture Park. Such a peaceful and inspiring place to go. Although at times 'peaceful' was perhaps not quite the right word as the frogs were in full croak! The glass sculptures (the exhibition) were beautiful, and there were sculptures in the
other parts of the arboretum that
we had not seen before.

Granddaughter T came and stayed another night while G and C went to an adult birthday party. T had admired some clay faces that S and J had made many ago, so I had bought a bag of clay, dug out the clay tools, and we had lots of fun with that.

The next day T, and I went with J to Garden Place in Hamilton. J and the band he plays in, Gentle Jazz, played for about an hour and a half while the runners in a Fun Run gathered for the prizegiving.






T was more interested in the wizard and stilt walkers.












Yesterday S and R returned to Hamilton from Wellington, where they have been living this university year. I haven't seen them yet, but just knowing they are only 35 minutes away, instead of 8 hours, is great.

So much happiness in my life, must focus on that, must not think of the buts and the if onlys!

Must count the joys!

Possibilites

Last week I went with my sister to visit one of my father's employers, who I last saw in 1967. Dad worked on her farm. At 42 she was a white haired widow with three children. When her youngest was just a toddler, her husband had been killed when his tractor rolled on him - no roll bars or safety cages back then. She continued on the farm until she moved into the local retirement village.

We visited her at the retirement village and found a mentally alert, physically sprightly, 94 year old woman who talked about her life with enthusiasm, speaking of the things she was looking forward to, talking of the things she enjoys. Living her life.

Watching my grandchildren and children, I've been thinking about how life starts out with almost infinite possibilities, but future choices narrow with every choice that is made.

I've been thinking a lot about why I am finding the changes happening in my life so difficult. Instead of focusing on the choices still available to me, I, unlike my dad's ex-boss, seem to focus on past choices that proved not so great, and on the choices no longer available to me.

My unhappiness seems to revolve around the loss of possibilities; the loss of dreaming of the future. My future seems to roll out before me as an unchanging landscape, and even though I am very happy with my life and what I have in it, I feel a deep sense of grief for the loss of possibility in my life.

I saw this woman looking forward to small pleasures, enjoying memories of past successful choices. How do I enter this frame of mind?

Workshop

On Saturday I went to a poetry workshop in Tauranga, led by Tim Upperton of Massey University. It was fun, I had good company for the drive over and back, Tim was great, and I came home with that "Yes!!" feeling. But still, since then I have written nothing but the odd email.

I have done workshops before and each time the same thing happens. We are given writing exercises to do, and I do them. Sometimes what I write is crap, other times it is the start of something good. But I do actually write.

Back home, I have piles of writing exercises accumulated from workshops, and also in a number of books, but when I sit and look at them, I read through them, can't decide which one to try, and just can't seem to do it. What is the difference between being at home with writing exercises, and being in a workshop? I don't know but I do know that I want to keep trying - "must try harder" as my old report cards used to say (alongside "talks too much.")

Not that the following is anywhere near good poetry, but considering it was done in two goes, the first for 5 minutes, and the second 3 minutes, I can't help but think I could do well if I just spent time everyday doing exercises and serious writing, crafting and recrafting.

The exercise involved each participant offering a concrete noun (there were 15 of us.) We then had to chose at least ten and write something including those words. My choices were: chain, praying mantis, poem, calabash, clock, flower bud, bottle, handbag, anchor, gold - and this is what I came up with:

On those slipping sideways days when I find
a praying mantis in a green glass bottle
a grief-filled poem in a calabash
a fresh pink flower bud in the bottom of my handbag

On those days
the anchor at the end
of its gold filligree chain
fails to hold the clock
to its timetable.

Not exactly Keats or Elliot, but not bad for eight minutes with ten crazy mixed up words!

Now all I have to do is find the discipline to set aside half an hour or even just 8 minutes every day and maybe I can come up with some good writing!