His Resolutions

THE NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS OF L, AGED 5

I will keep my room tidy.
I will always hold a parent's hand when crossing the road.
I will not put my hand over my mouth and then blow yukky stuff out of my nose.
I will always go to sleep within five minutes of going to bed.
I will (not) always loudly ask for things when I go to the mall.
If I discover how to be invisible I will not go around punching people.
I will not lock myself in shop changing rooms because I don't want to try on a larger size that a parent has gone to get.
I will wear shorts in summer and not fleecy black tracksuit pants with thick socks and a long-sleeved top.
I will always be kind, honest, generous and gracious to all living beings, especially my mama.

Happy Day

Silent Night

The other night I was lying in bed, dozily drifting off. I heard a little rustling, a movement of someone in the hallway. I thought it was probably L - he often wanders out of bed to the bathroom sometime in the night. Moments later, the phone rang. It was my sister. "Grandma died a few minutes ago," she said. Grandma - Madeleine. She fell last week and broke her arm and collarbone. Because she was so old, they would not operate. Her bones were brittle, like chalk, a tiny bird's, like fragile driftwood. She was being kept under sedation. " I don't think she'll come out of this one," my mother said. On my way back from the phone, I looked in on L. He was fast asleep. Did she pop in for a visit on her way home? I would like to think so. The funeral was today, a hot and sticky Christmas Eve. I have been a mess the past few days, liable to melt into an unexpected heap. When I was young we weren't so close (she was often overseas), but in the past few years we saw more of each other. I have been compiling her old photos to be made into a short film (for this very day), and in the process felt as if I was beginning to know her more as a person and less as a distant relative. One of the rest home staff was at the funeral. She told us that carol singers were visiting the night Madeleine died. The sister in charge asked if they would sing for her, close by her bed. They sang, and at the end of the carol, Madeleine gave a little sigh, and peacefully passed away. Beautiful, sad, the end of an era.

Upside Down Christmas

It's funny the things we do here at Christmas. We buy fir trees, decorate them with sparkly lights, and listen to wintery music. We eat roast potatoes and turkey and fruit cake with brandy butter. We accept without question the pictures of Santa flying about with his reindeer through snowy landscapes. But outside the garden is filled with purple hydrangeas and hot pink camellia, and strawberries are on sale by the side of the road, three punnets for $5.

I grew up with images of Christmas straight out of British schoolgirl annuals. The children wore knitted Fair Isle jumpers and hats with earflaps. They made snowmen with carrots for noses, drank hot chocolate, and said hello to cheeky robins in snowfilled gardens. In hot sandy New Zealand we burned and blistered, oblivious of anything called a hole in the ozone layer. We ate fruit salad, beetroot slices and corn straight from the tin. We went on long journeys in the old Holden station wagon, all the way from Wellington right up to 90 Mile Beach (what a great name), bickering and sweating and sometimes puking right there on the side of the road.

A Week of Firsts & Lasts

LAST
Day of school
Day of work
Days of film crew invading the house
Flannelette sheets
Spring cleaning (never really started)

FIRST
Day of school holidays
Pair of shorts (eek)
Proper visit to the beach
Christmas tree & decorating it
Staying up longer and getting up later
Cheap blueberries, tomatoes and asparagus
Barbeques
Crop of fresh basil

Little Dog, or maybe a Pig

I didn't want to go to printmaking tonight. I wanted to lie on the sofa and watch Masterchef and drink wine. In the end I did go, because I didn't want to give in to lethargy and lack of inspiration. We were doing linocuts, and I had to fight my dislike of that, too - memories from school, of hacking away at slabs of lino with no finesse and gouging chunks out of my fingers. Of course it all ended happily (as these things often do) and I made a little dog print, though there was some debate as to whether it was really a pig. Whatever it is, it's something with three legs, as my rough and slightly manic hacking chopped off one of its legs and half an ear.

Pohutukawa and Milk Bottles

Yesterday I went to the Ministry of Art & Design Christmas Sale. I was sent an invite by a friend who was selling her baked goodies there. How much nicer to drift round looking at beautiful New Zealand design rather than plodding round a mall! My favourite thing was the little lamp made from an old milk bottle. You could even get an original holder to put it in, the ones that were once put out at the letterbox for the milkman.

 

   

nzhistory.net

I bought this little resin pohutukawa decoration to put on the Christmas tree. It's going to England to my friend Anya, who is having a very cold and shivery time at the moment.

On The Road

I have been away for four whole days, on my own, childless, jobless, responsibility-less. Back to my lovely Cooks Beach which is now at the very beginning of summer and so takes on the golden misty look of how I remember childhood holidays. It was odd at first, being without L, because we do so much together. I had to remember how to be me, on my own, by myself. I found myself doing a lot of aimless wandering, taking photos and scribbling things in notebooks. Driving down was a dramatic process, through violent rainstorms and brooding fog. Roads were closed the next day and people were stuck in cars for hours, waiting for the floods to recede. Jandals have made a reappearance and pale hairy legs have emerged from the depths of hiding. Driving solo, music, the slowly unfolding countryside...things I used to do a lot. Now I am having fantasies of a giant road trip in a campervan, all around New Zealand. I would take L with me, and introduce him to the joys of second hand shops and little country towns. I am sure he would much rather be whacking things with sticks and eating a million hokeypokey icecreams, but I will do my best.