I don't really know what I want to say here

but I need to say something.  Things have been going on and I just haven't known where to start to get it all out into a post.  It began with a phone call last Thursday.  My Grannie (nearly 98 years old) was in hospital after a fall which resulted in a brain bleed, and she wasn't expected to last long.  So I went to the hospital straight away and sat with her, with my mum and my aunt, and later my dad.   She was looking pretty vegetable-like.  I was so glad that the last time I had seen her I'd said a proper good-bye.  

Last week I also found out that my friend's Auntie had had a stroke.  By chance this Auntie was also on the same floor as Grannie.  I sat with her that Thursday night as well.   Auntie Coll had been in and out of consciousness, and when she was conscious was showing signs of improvement, so her family were hopeful.   I visited them both the next day.   Grannie had improved, and Auntie Coll was more alert than the day before.   She was so interested in Abigail, and kept reaching out to touch her.  

Then Grannie stabilised and was shipped out to a rest home hospital.   Where she now lies resplendent in her best nightie sipping tea out of a straw, asking me whether I came in "the back door or the front door."   Next to a woman who has her own bedroom furniture, covered with old photographs.  I could hear from adjoining rooms both lucid, animated conversation, and strange groans and babbling noises.

Then Auntie Coll deteriorated.  She had another stroke, and slipped back into a coma.   The woman who looked so well and full of life (71 is young when you know a 71 year old) and was obviously trying so hard to come back to her loved ones, was gone again.  Then on Thursday afternoon, after the most impressive thunderstorm, she passed away.

So what could I have written here?  That I have been thinking all week about death?   That everyday my thoughts have been with two women living on the edge of existence?  Who wants to read posts like that, really, when the sun is shining and the cicadas are out.... 

But one day it will be me, and if I'm lucky I'll be 71... or maybe even 98.  I'll probably be the one making strange babbling noises down the hall.  You'll come visit, won't you? ;)

A photo

Me and the girls were just looking at my twitter page... and they asked me about the photo I have as my avatar.  (See it here.) 
Isobella:  "Is that you at Grannie's bach with Abigail?"
Me:  "No, that's you when you were a baby."
Greer:  "Where was I?"
Me:  "You weren't even in my tummy, you weren't born yet."
Isobella:  "God was making you."
Me:  "Good answer."

PS.  If you follow me on twitter I will be tweeting when I put a new post up... if you are that way inclined.  www.twitter.com/MsMunnn

PPS.  I'm still taking calendar pictures, remember? I have a couple, (literally) and as soon as I get one or two more I'll share...  Go on, take a picture while it's still January and send it to me at idoyamunn@yahoo.com.

My Favourite Place

We spent the first week of the year at my favourite place - Great Barrier Island.  A group of us went to Orama Christian Community in Karaka Bay, near Port Fitzroy.  Orama is used like a camp, in conjunction with OPC (Outdoor Pursuits Centre), but once it was a fully-fledged community with over a hundred people living there.  I've been there once before, two years ago.  Paddy had to work, so I went with Ella and Greer.  It was a mission, but so worth it.  I found a haven - an incredibly beautiful, wild, remote place, full of history, a place on the edge, a "thin place" in the celtic vernacular.  I fell in love with it, so to go there again all of us together was amazing.

The group we were with was there partly for a holiday and partly to learn.  We were a mixed group of ages and backgrounds, brought together by an interest in the story of New Zealand, using the Huia as a metaphor for our journey of discovery. (More about that to come.) We were there to share perspectives and ideas, and maybe even collectively hear what God might have to say about our country.  (Yeah, I know, Christians are weird like that!!)  We heard from Keith Newman, author of Ratana: The Prophet, Alastair Reese, who holds postgraduate degrees in History, Maori Culture, and Theology, and who has written this dissertation on the alienation of Maori land, Cindy Ruakere, and Brad Haami, author of True Red.

The book I'm working on is partly historical, so it was just the inspiration I needed.

The girls had such a good time.   There was plenty for them to do, and lots of kids around to play with.   At dusk and when it was quiet wild rabbits came out from the bushes by our rooms and they loved watching them.  (Good entertainment for the kids but not so good for the vegetation...) The building we stayed in was at the back of Orama, looking up to the bush and hills behind, and right beside a creek.  We slept listening to the trickling of water.  It was perfectly peaceful.

It is a wonderful thing to have found a place that connects with somewhere deep inside of me.  A place where I feel completely at rest, completely at home, and at the same time completely alive and envigorated.   Where I feel so grounded, so connected to the land and to the past, and yet as if I am standing on the threshold of my future.  Words don't do it justice.

I do have one other place that feels almost as good as that - Raglan.  My mum's family is from there, and it's the setting of my book.  So maybe I should be honest and say I have two favourite places.  I like the maori idea of having a turangawaewae, a standing place.  The best explanation I could find of it was here.  "Tūrangawaewae are places where we feel especially empowered and connected. They are our foundation, our place in the world, our home."  Maybe my turangawaewae, in a physical land sense, can be two places, maybe I have one foot on Great Barrier, at Orama, and the other on the shore of Raglan Harbour.

Do you have a favourite place?  Where is your turangawaewae?  Tell me...

Today

Today I sort-of cleaned the house

I sort-of tidied it too

the kids were sort-of happy

baby slept, sort of

we ate a sort-of lunch

the shopping got done

minus onions

so it was a sort-of dinner

I sort-of watered the garden

and sort-of folded the washing

and then I sat down and wrote this sort-of poem

happening around here - Christmas

     

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the New Year

I've just put up our 2010 Calendar.  This is the first year I've bought a calendar before January 1st.  It's a nice calendar.  Very white.  No dog-eared corners.  And blank.  Full of possibility.  It makes me very happy to see it up there on the wall.  Happy partly I guess because happy is how I feel about 2009.  I've said good-bye to a very good year.  The hardest, yes, in some ways, but also the best.  I had a word for 2009 (cheesy I know but I got the idea here.)  My word for 2009 was hope.  It was the perfect word, and it served me very well.  So when I said good-bye to 2009 last night I did it gratefully.

Then my thoughts went straight to 2010.   What do I want for this year?  What is it that I want more than anything else?   The answer is easy.   To explain it I need to take you back to 2009... and hope.   You see in all the things I had hope for the thing I hoped for most was a book.  The one I am trying to write.  You've probably heard me mention it every now and then, over the last few years.  It hasn't got very far, but it hasn't gone away.  And the harder it has been to find time to write the more I have wanted to do it.   To the point now where I want it terribly.  I want to write a real book.  One that sits on the shelf in libraries, is bought in bookshops, is read.  I'm putting myself out there telling you.  I won't be getting much more heart-on-my-sleeve than this.  But I am quietly, shyly, confident.

Enter 2010.  A year that looks surprisingly different now that we are not homeschooling.  I have time.   One whole day a week - Thursdays - when Greer is at kindy, Ella's at school and it's just me and Abigail at home.  No prizes for guessing what I'll be doing on Thursdays!  The thought of a whole day to write is intoxicating. 

As far as a word for 2010 goes, I've got a few ideas going around.  I'm looking for something like hope-becoming-real, or hope with legs on! :-)  Something that reflects the hopeful determination I feel for this year, to just get on and do what I've been longing to do for so long.  

And you, my dear family and friends, if you had a word for 2010 what would it be?  Go on, think about it... humour me!