Letter to Students 22nd July 2007

Dear Reader

It is Sunday night, and I am writing as my two daughters, Nicky and Suny are here with their daughters Ella and Indi.  We are sitting in the lounge with the fire on, and the room is toasty room.  I am very aware that to really enjoy winter you need to be in a warm environment, and have your family around you. How can I not enjoy the winter today?  However, our house is not that well insulated, and we do feel the cold if we don’t light the fires.  Is your house well insulated?  We are enjoying our Sunday ritual of singing songs, with Han playing the guitar and the children singing or rocking to the music.  We seventeen month Indi is very expressive and uses her hands as she rocks to the music.  Wee fifteen month old Ella is eating some of my home made bread and holding a book as she listens to Han playing the guitar. I am indeed blessed.

Today, we awoke early to clean the house and prepare a big dinner as we had invited friends for Sunday lunch. Although we only have a light meal at lunch time in New Zealand, I always cook a lot of food if friends come, and today was no exception.  Han gathered food from the garden and I cooked these with beef which had been recently butchered in Southland, and we had bought.  I cooked a combination of Indian, and Korean with a touch of Kiwi.  My cooking is very eclectic, and I love throwing different flavours together.  One of the couples we invited has a son who was deprived of oxygen at birth, and is therefore brain damaged.  It makes me really appreciate the health of my children, and I certainly don’t take their mental ability for granted.  The parents of this boy are absolute saints in the way they care for their son, and I take my hat off to them for their patience and understanding. How are people with disabilities treated in your country?

The girls have just left, and Han, Jan and I are sitting in the lounge, reflecting on the weekend, and enjoying the warmth of the fire.  Jan is sitting reading one of the three books I bought him when we went to the annual book sale at the Regent Theatre book sale.  Did you have the chance to go there?  I have gone every year that this special sale has been going, and I always love the atmosphere.  The reason for this sale is that about twenty five years ago, the Dunedin City Council didn’t appreciate the precious amenity which its forefathers had gifted the city, and was very happy to see this beautiful theatre be demolished to make way for a car park.  Thankfully, there were enlightened citizens who refused to see this happen, and formed a trust to take care of the running of the theatre. To pay for the upkeep of the theatre, some enterprising citizens put their heads together and came up with the idea of having a book sale in which the citizens of Dunedin donated books which would be sold annually in a 24 hour book sale. Musicians give of their time, and you can wander in at any time.  I am usually awake between two o’clock in the morning and four o’clock, and on Saturday morning I seriously thought about going into town to the book sale at that time. However, I thought Han would think me manic, and snuggled up beside my man instead.  Do you sleep well? I used to sleep so deeply, and never woke till morning but in recent years I wake in the early hours and toss and turn till it is almost daybreak and then go back to sleep!  I wake feeling like I haven’t slept at all, and get up feeling totally wrung out.  It is really frustrating, and I put it down to getting older! 

Jan has just gone to sleep as he babysat for Ella last night when we all went off the Jo’s thirtieth birthday.  I felt a bit sorry for Jan as he had been invited to Jo’s birthday, and he would have loved seeing everyone dressed up for the “cocktail and canapés” birthday party.  However, Nicky had asked him to babysit, and he didn’t feel he could turn her down. Although he frustrates me in the way he doesn’t tidy his room, he could offer to help me more, and not be so materialistic, he is a very good son.  Han thinks I mollycoddle him, and he is probably right, and I pay for the way I indulge him.  He often takes me for granted, but when he realizes, he apologises and gives me a big hug.  I can’t believe that my youngest son is now taller and bigger than me, and I continue to be surprised when he hugs me with his lanky arms and body. 

This weekend, I feel I haven’t had any time to myself but I have enjoyed it nonetheless.  In fact, I have very little time at all to myself, and that is fine.  I love being with people, and I love making them feel happy.  (Han is playing guitar to me as I write, and I love such evening.  He is playing Beatles songs and I love them.  Who are your favourite musicians?)  Yesterday, I took Jan to soccer and stood in the biting cold as he played.  Unfortunately he lost, but his team could have won if they had had more faith in themselves.  They had lost to this team once before, and I think they went into the game thinking it was impossible to beat them.  What they had forgotten was that they had improved markedly in the intervening weeks, and could easily have given them a real run for their money. However, they seemed to be always on the back foot, and although they appeared aggressive at times, never capitalized on their strengths.  Winning is so much about the belief in oneself.

Talking of the belief in oneself reminds me of my own life, and the milestones I have celebrated.  I was brought up in a working class family with both my parents having left school at the age of fifteen.  They met when they were working at a paint shop, and married three years after meeting, Mum at the age of nineteen, and my father twenty two years of age.  They had never dated anyone else, and after marrying, they worked hard to amass enough money for the mortgage on their first house.  Within a few years, they had two daughters, and Dad had bought into a grocery shop with a good friend, and he worked hard to create the best business in South Dunedin.  I vividly remember him packing brown paper bags with sugar and flour, and slicing the bacon in the back room.  These were the days before supermarkets, and the customers were served by the grocer.  There developed a close relationship between the two, and at Christmas time, I remember Dad going round all his regular customers with tea caddies, or tins of biscuits as a show of thanks for their custom.  Dad told me that many of the customers were low income earners and bought their groceries on a monthly account, but he said they always paid regularly at the end of the month.  He said the only people who were tardy at paying were the rich who live in Maori Hill, the wealthy suburb on the hill!  He loved having his own business, but gave it up when my younger sister said one day that she saw so little of him.  Because his family was his first priority, he decided to give up his own shop, and work for someone else so that he had more free time.  This was all very well in principle, but Dad was a perfectionist and a workaholic, and he actually worked just as hard to his new company.  The only difference was that he came home at night, and sat with all his paper work spread round him on the floor as he watched television.  Tears come to my eyes as I recall that scene, made all the more poignant as it will be the first anniversary of this death on the 14^th August.  This time last year I was spending a great deal of my time at the rest home where he lived, making the most of this last month, knowing that his day were numbered.  However, I am not going to be maudlin as my father would be so upset with me.  He was so proud of me and my school, and loved coming down to talk with students, even when he was so very ill.  He shared my love of people, and especially people from other countries. He was such a dignified old man, and loved to chat with anyone who would listen. We had a joke, though, that I wouldn’t listen to him, and that if he started talking I would switch off and leave the room.  It was only that I had heard all his stories, and I couldn’t be bothered listening to the same stories over and over again!  In that last month, however, I hung on every word!

On Saturday, I brought my mother out to our home as she is now living in a council flat.  She complained that the flat was so incredibly cold, and said she realized why my father slept in his socks, gloves and hat when he was in his council flat after my parents separated.  I cooked Mum a nice lunch as I knew she wouldn’t cook much for herself, and then we looked through a lot of the plastic bags in which she had packed so much of her life.  However, much of her clothes don’t fit her, or are of another era when she was either thinner or fatter, and we rationalized what she need, and decided to give most of the clothing to charity.  Mum was delighted I dropped her off at her flat, feeling much lighter as she has been burdened by the amount of superfluous luggage she has.

On Saturday night, we went to our daughter’s 30^th birthday, and felt honoured that we were the only “oldies” there.  All the other guests were Jo’s friends, many of whom had been out at our home for dinners in their teen years.  They are all now successful professionals, and making a success of their lives.  However, Han and I lament the fact that most of them are still single and have not had children.  We feel that this is such a worrying sign for our society’s future when such intelligent, enterprising, well rounded people are choosing not to have children.  We are so blessed that our children have chosen to follow in our footsteps, not that we pressured them at all.

Han has been very busy working on the garden around our cottage, and it is looking wonderful, although there is still a lot more work to do on it.  On Friday night, our daughter Suny and partner stayed in the cottage with Indi, the first guests to enjoy the ambience of the space which I see as a very special love nest.  After Jo’s party, we slept in the cottage, and it was such a romantic space to spend the night.  Han had lit the fire, and we sat in front of the glowing embers before retiring to the bed which Han had carried into the cottage on his back! The cottage continues to be a labour of love!

“I love seeing the grandchildren’s toys scattered haphazardly on the lounge room rug.” Han and I love our grandchildren being so close, an affirmation our desire to have close family bonds.  Han is very much the patriarch, and although I don’t see myself as the matriarch, I loved the fact that my granddaughter loved my beaded evening dress last night, and gave me huge hugs.  As we hugged, I wondered how she would see me in the future.  Do you think that strange?

I love sitting in our lounge, talking with Han, and he has agreed to teach for me tomorrow morning.  Han was nine years old when he came to New Zealand as a little Dutch boy who had no idea of what this land had to offer.  He was very happy in his village, going to school, playing with his friends, and picking a combination of pink and blue cornflowers for his mother.  The cornflowers grew in the wheat fields, and Han has always been disappointed that the wheat doesn’t grow as tall as it did in Holland.  If we return to parts of our childhood in adulthood we are always disappointed, aren’t we?  The tastes are different, and everything has shrunk!  I remember returning to my primary school, and the wall I used to hit a ball against had shrunk into insignificance.  I was devastated!!

I have been lucky, however, that I grew up in Dunedin, and have been able to return to places where I grew up. However, Han has never returned to Holland and to the places where he was brought up.  Han feels the cultural connectivity and disconnectivity in his life, and he sees this as a better word than affiliation, and as a psychologist he can explain this better. As we talk, we have talked about teaching students, and how the ideal environment would be to have students sit around on our couches and interact with us as we prattle on and explain.  Wouldn’t that be wonderful? How I would love a house where we could have our lessons! However, for now, I think our classrooms are a good second best!

It is now time to retire for the evening, and Jan has just called out to say that he has a headache.  Many years ago, I learnt a little “chi gong,” the Chinese healing technique which channels bad energy, and I tried to ease Jan’s pain. “No rest for the wicked!”

Have a great week, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Love

Sharron