20 April 2020
Reflective entry regarding the enforced Covid 19 bubble, memory and gathering
Featured image: Rangihīroa, ‘Tōtara North, Ditch‘ 10.51 am, 1 September 2019, captures a stretch of road that once was the life blood of the little kauri timber milling community on the Northwestern side of the Whangaroa Harbour. To the left at the entrance of the road is the hall where pictures used to be projected and cricket was played on grounds that today are being reclaimed by the arterial fingers of the harbour. The road leads up towards an historic graveyard where many of the colonial families are buried (including my mother, my grandparents, my aunties, uncles and Pākehā ancestors) assembled together as they once were in life. Further on is the nineteenth century school which many of these loved ones attended. For 6 months in 1970 I would walk with cousins from the corner where the bus would drop us off. I sometimes had bare feet and I remember the soft soles of my town feet didn’t much like the loose metal road. That was 1970.
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I remember the hillside you planted in edible green
And hours spent weeding, picking beans
cutting courgettes up there
killing holiday time on the windy ridge
amongst red soil soaking up afternoon sun
drying ocre encrusted feet and
penitent knees
overlooking the Whangaroa
And in just one summer the daughter boasted
enough was harvested for the coming year
and for weeks you were the proverbial bee
converting acres of soil, toil and sunshine
into a large
white freezer
a sentry
near your front door
like one of your working dogs
close enough
to the kitchen table
so that in winter
with quick efficiency
your crooked arthritic fingers could quickly plummet
like hungry gannets into
the bottomless pit
probing snowy waters
for something
from last summer’s garden
peas, carrots, beans, a prize, a trick
busy deft movements
while our grandfather would entertain
bellowing
brissly unshaven whiskers thrust out
Give us a kiss Luce
my tui in the tree
and the tui would blush
chortel
and retort
Charlie you know you’re just doing that in front of the grandchildren
And as you sat on his knee
the kiss would inevitably come
And, embarassed, we
dutifully cringed
as he teased
meanwhile in the adjacent sittingroom life and death was unfolding
William Solloway Lane’s schooner ‘Maile’
was struggling with gales off the Tasmanian coast
waves higher than masts
the watercolour kept the Captain and his eleven crew,
perpetually young
lost at sea
never to return
I secretly wished you didn’t have to go to the freezer so much
To pull out the meal,
frozen vegetables or some ancient Christmas cake
yearning for room temperature
on a white Crown Lynn plate
But here today
at Pak n Save in Mount Albert
As I stand in this long, long line
That greedily snakes its way around a carpark
I remember you
As if I was sitting around that family dining table
And if I was working the land the way you did
I would probably not be here
At least not as much as I dare
Waiting in lines barely longer than the lengths of your gardens that
reached up towards the sky
…And I would not blame you grandpa for wanting to leave Auckland during the war
To avoid this madness
And to escape to arcadia
Early this morning I tried to avoid the crowds but everyone had the same idea.
At checkout I watch an angry woman berate a quiet Chinese shopper
2 metres, 2 metres she gesticulates
He gently complies
With not a word
as she infers Wuhan, Wuhan,
Do you have the virus…?
she demands of him
but really of us all
I miss the stability
you both offered
how would you handle this crisis I wonder?
A fair question when addressed to a couple that
Lived through punishing Influenza, the depression and two world wars
Less talk
And more how you lived
Seems the lesson
In my grandmother’s garden
