Hawea

6^th May, 2010

Dear Reader,

I am sitting at the table in Suny and Nathan’s home, listening to the rain gently falling outside, and waiting for the midwife to arrive to check on baby Lucan, and the resilient mother, Suny. I feel so close to Suny, and we have had some good chats, as we dote over Lucan, and comment on his likeness to four-year-old Indi, when she was a baby, and to Suny herself. As I hold him, I am taken back to those days when I held Suny as a newborn baby, and I am overwhelmed with emotion.

I am finding this week, and the stay in Hawea, very emotional on many levels.  Suny has told me that Han replied to her news of the birth with his news that he is having a celebration of his relationship with Maggie, an announcement of their engagement on the 19^th June.  It really cut me deeply, and I found myself holding back tears.  It is the speed with which Han has found a new partner and moved on that tugs at my heartstrings. It feels like a devaluing of all we ever were, but then I knew that in the months following our return from Europe, two years ago, he was neither happy with me nor our life together.  For him, he moved on a lot earlier than I did, and today I realise how much work I still have to do at reconciling the fact that my life continues on without him beside me.

I am also finding the fact that the school is quiet at the moment, and the bills are mounting for the shed which is being built for Jan, a burden which weighs heavily on my stiffening shoulders. However, the students we have are amazing, with every new day bringing new students to enrol, and I know that one day the shed will be finished for Jan.  He was supposed to have moved in at the beginning of the year, but as the Mainland cheese advertisement says, “all good things take time!” The Bikram yoga, which works me into a sweat and focuses my mind on the moment, has been helpful, but on days like today, I feel very vulnerable. I have been reading the gossip magazines, and wondering how people, who have so much materially, can be so bereft spiritually. I know that I have lost so much in material terms, since my split from Han, but as Jan told me, I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself as I have so much to be grateful for in my life. My family and friends are all so close to me, and really what more is there in life? I never take the close bond we have for granted. Why this moment of immense sadness? I know I am not depressed, in any clinical sense, and I do think that we in the west become too self indulgent when it comes to our feelings.  We need to toughen up, and realise how incredibly blessed we are, and get on with it!

I can’t believe that today I actually feel like writing, and for the first time in ever so long, I have only 18minutes of writing time left on this computer, having forgotten to bring the cord to recharge the battery.  Murphy’s Law it seems.  Moshe and Indi are happily playing at kindergarten, having dropped them off at Hawea Flat this morning, Lucan is fast asleep, and Suny too has finally drifted off in the cosy warmth of the fire.  I love curling up in bed with the wind howling and the rain lashing the roof, giving me that sense that I am protected in a snugly cacoon.  I have lunch cooking in the oven, and feel pleased I can help out with heart-warming meals.  It was gorgeous yesterday to see Suny surrounded by friends as they popped in to see the baby, and have Jo, Nathan’s mother, here as well.  “Isn’t this great?” Suny has just said, and it certainly is.  “This house has a wonderfully protective aura about it, a friend commented,” added Suny, and she is so right.

I was so keen to see my new grandson, having been born at 11.20pm on Thursday after a one and a half hour labour at home.  It was very like the birth of my youngest son, Jan, although we had to go to hospital, as there was a worry because he was breech. However, it was a textbook birth, and we were home again within three hours of leaving the house!  By the time the children awoke, I was sitting up in bed with their wee brother!  What special days they were. Looking at Suny now, I can’t believe that I went back to work two weeks after the birth of Jan, although I was very lucky to have the crèche only two minutes away so he was breastfed for almost two years!  Both Jan and Shahan attended this home away from home, and were blessed to have been given a full time carer who tended to their every need.  I couldn’t have left them if I couldn’t have breastfed them, and I will always be so grateful to the Otago Polytechnic crèche in Tennyson Street. It was a very humble facility, with little “structure” to their programmes, but the children were well looked after, and have developed into wonderful young adults, so says a proud mother!

I always love the drive up to Central Otago, knowing that I am leaving any problems behind, and looking forward to seeing the family in Hawea.  The scenery is always changing, and the skies always amaze me. The clouds were white and fluffy, puffed up against a background of vivid blue, and I wish I could describe such scenes more vividly.

Driving back to Dunedin on Sunday, after a wonderful walk around the lake with Suny and the three children, I was overwhelmed by the stark beauty of Central Otago and the Waitaki region. I stopped to take a photo by the Clutha river as I wanted to capture the golden threads of the weeping willows, a scene which Han had captured in poetry when we first met.  I felt nostalgic as I stood in front of the shining gold of the leaves, and the twinkling blue of the water, and reflected on how much had happened over the past twenty years.  The mountains and hills were dark shadows etched in a clear blue sky, and although I had taken photographs, I knew I couldn’t capture the strength and colour which emanated from that powerful landscape which held so much natural energy and manmade history.  As it was Mother’s Day, Nathan had made me toast and tea which I had in bed, having been up early with the children, but gone back to bed for a little snooze.  I was surprised to receive a phone call from Han on Mother’s Day, but I felt my quickening heart soften as he thanked me for all I had done for his children.  We have had a difficult relationship since we parted, and I appreciated hearing words not spoken in anger, but in appreciation. I heard from the older children that Han is now engaged, and I must admit that this came as a shock to me.  I thought I was coping well since signing the separation, and felt I was able to move on alone.  However, hearing the news sent me into a private spin, and I had to work hard to keep the smile on my face for the family.  However, I kept the mask in place, and focused on all the wonderful moments I experienced in Hawea.

On returning to Dunedin, I picked up Shahan and we returned to my cottage where I made a roast dinner for the family.  Nicky and the children, and Jan joined us, and I felt so loved.  Shahan stayed the night, and I always love it when I am surrounded by my family, and I am able to cook for them.  The children are my heaven, and my legacy, and I love my cottage and the land with the studio across the road. 

11^th May, 2010

The battery in my computer ran out, as I knew it would, and it is now late afternoon on Tuesday as I sit at my table in my office, writing to you.  I had four very special days with my family in Hawea, and had a tear in my eye as I left, as always.  My special wee granddaughter, Indi, said, “You will miss my cuddles, Oma Shazza,” and I always do.  She crawled into bed with me every morning at about four thirty, and cuddled up to me with her favourite “Tigger,” which she has had since birth.  Did you have a favourite cuddly toy as a child?  Almost two-year-old Moshe has a beloved cow, with a very chewed ear, and when I got him out of his cot at six o’clock, we had to make sure that cow came with him.  He would come up into my room to join Indi, before I made them breakfast of rice bubbles and toast.  They have healthy appetites, and it was reassuring to see them sit at the little wooden table and stools I had given them, and eat a big breakfast.

On Saturday, after two days of relaxing at home with Suny and meeting some of her friends who popped by to see Lucan, we decided to clean the house. I was more than happy to do it on my own, but Suny was keen to help, and it was fun doing it together.  We then headed off to Wanaka, the rains and winds having wiped away the grey, to be replaced with a crystal clear day.  The last gold of the leaves shone brightly, dazzling me with their beauty, and the water on both Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka reflected the aqua blue of the sky. The water was as still as a millpond, and after a coffee at a café, Suny’s first foray out for a few weeks, and Lucan’s first adventure outside the house, we walked down to the lake, and I played with the children in the dinosaur park.  Suny sat peacefully on a park bench, and when a friend came up to talk, it turned out that he recognised me as having taught him Japanese way back in 1993.  What a good memory he had. He was just out of high school, when he joined the Otago Polytechnic tourism diploma course, and he said he remembered me vividly as I had taken the students to my home and showed them photos of my time in Egypt.  The power of sharing your own experiences is awesome! I love how small a world it is!

Speaking of small worlds reminds me that when Suny’s midwife was visiting, her trainee midwife said that I looked familiar.  Suny was fortunate to be able to have her baby at home, and the trainee said it was the first home birth she had attended.  Are homebirths popular in your country?  I think birth is such a natural process and having a baby at home is the most natural thing to do. However, the modern world has made birthing an “illness,” which must be treated in a hospital, with mothers often subjected to Caesarean sections which are really only necessary in the most serious of cases where the baby’s and/or mother’s lives are in danger.  The rate of Caesarean operations has escalated to 20% of all births, with the number of homebirths decreasing to around 5% in some areas, but only about 1% in the big cities.  One of my happiest days was giving birth to Shahan at home on a glorious sunny Saturday. I will never forget that day.  Although I had had Suny at hospital seven years earlier, it was as if this was my first baby, and I was so excited.  The power of positive energy is awesome, and I was so confident that everything would turn out well.  The midwife and the doctor arrived, although the doctor arrived late, having been interrupted during dinner with a new partner!  We joked that he couldn’t find the right door, and then he stood right in front of the video camera and obscured the arrival of Shahan. It was all very funny.

I am now away to pay a pile of bills that were stacked on my table. One of the students came in at the break and I said that I needed to do something with them.  He picked them all up and put them in the rubbish bin. I felt so much better, knowing I had a clear desk, but it was short-lived, knowing that the bills do indeed have to be paid! Most of the bills are for the studio that is being built for Jan, but we are already almost half way through the year and it still isn’t finished. There had been a promise to have it finished by the time Jan and I returned from our holiday in Thailand at Christmas, but we are still waiting.  

However, I am not going to dwell on the negative, but remember the glorious sunrises that greeted me every morning as I came to work last week.  The harbour was like glass and the reflections of the boats and the mountains made me reflect on my own life and all the good there is.  After Jan and I had finished our dinner on Monday night, we sat in front of the open fire, and talked till 10.30 about all manner of things; his school, his relationship with his father, his siblings, his girlfriend, and life in general.  His statistics teacher is critically ill, having had a brain aneurism on Sunday night, and he may never return to work. He is just my age, and I was talking with him at a meeting last Thursday. We never know when our time is up and it is important to live each day as if it were our last. I returned to the same designer who made my engagement, wedding and eternity ring, and I am having them redesigned into one ring.  The jeweller said that the rings were his favourite pieces, and I do not want to have them dismantled, but just combined into a single piece.  This will symbolise the history which has brought me to this point, and a dramatic statement that I have arrived at the place I am in now, and the person I have become. I hope you are happy in the place in which you are and happy in your own skin!