August birthday down under

looks like this...

Spouting with joy

I know it has been rather bloggy lately with all these entries after something of a drought, but this needed to be talked about. Keith and I were in my little garden study this morning, growly with each other because we have at least four days of content we’re trying to fit into a three-day programme next week. Suddenly, a knock on the door: Rob, telling us that there was a whale in the sea. Now, Rob is notorious for saying, excitedly, “Look! Right now! Look! No whales again!” And you find yourself looking out the window, to see the no-whales. So I was doubtful. “A real whale?” I asked. “Swimming between us and Kapiti,” he told us. “Everyone’s lined up on the beach to watch.”

And so we rushed out of the writing room, not growly anymore. There, on a perfectly flat azure sea, was what looked for all the world like quite a big log. I admit that I wondered whether Rob was pulling our leg again. But no, there were dozens of people on the shore, watching the log excitedly. And then the log blew, plumes of sea water spraying into the air.

We stood there, the three of us with a wandering Perry, on my front porch in the dazzling warm sunlight, sharing the binoculars and the camera. Everyone was perfectly him or herself: Rob paged through a cooking magazine and glanced up to see a tail or head; Keith struggled to figure out what kind of whale it was, muttering under his breath (“yes, it’s a Southern Right Whale, look at its head. But no, do they have a dorsil fin? Too big to be an orca.”); I stood there feeling delighted, eyes glued to the whale, and tried to think of the words and pictures to tell you all about it here. Then, onto the sea, a surfer began to paddle; our friend John was heading out to the whale to get a close up view. And then the delighted laughter of children as the kids’ school rushed down onto the field next to our house. Now the whale had a sound track; whenever she blew or pushed head or fin or tail into the air, there were delighted sounds of children. People pulled their cars over and got out to watch, came out and stood on porches and roofs, stopped walking their dogs or jogging or talking with friends and all turned and faced the sea, eyes fixed on a mother and her baby slowly moving down the coast.

Very often, you read about tragedy bringing neighbours together. You hear about people striking up conversations after a terrorist attack, after an earthquake, after a fire. Here, though, the village stopped to watch something so beautiful and noble and, in some ways, so ordinary. From my perch on a hill over the village, I looked out over friends and neighbours and school children and felt a surge of connection with them all. “We are the luckiest people in the world!” I wanted to yell. “Do you know how lucky we are, to be here in the sunshine with each other? Do you know how lucky we are, to be living on the edge of the sea, on the edge of the world? Do you know how lucky we are, to be graced with the presence of a mammal so large, so beautiful, so much like us and so wildly different?”

I did not say those things. I stood and held myself tightly, worried just a little that in the sun and the sea and the whales and all the love around me, I might melt into the golden air and drift off over the water.


Click here for a little newspaper piece about the whales.

The pleasures and trials of life at the bottom of the world

This morning, my second day back, I am vibrating with the tiny joys and sorrows of being here and not waking in the US summer this morning.
The sorrows:

That I cannot walk over and read aloud to my father, whose hurt eye was more hurt than we thought and who is now supposed to rest and heal for more than a month

That I have to schedule calls with my mother weeks in advance to be sure that we’ll get time together;

That I didn’t buy regular Cheerios and now the kids are Cheerio-free for another four months;

That I didn’t see all the folks I didn’t see—and that I won’t see them, either, not any time soon.

The joys:

The sounds of my chickens, the blooming of my new camellia, the shoots of spring bulbs;

Stepping back into my work life here with a workshop yesterday and hearing about the impact of the leadership development programme Keith and I are running and how it is rippling through the organisation in powerful and beautiful ways;

Waking in the middle of the night (just a little jetlagged) and finding that my room had turned into a planetarium and that my walls were made of stars;

Walking home from throwing the ball for the dog and surprising a flock of gold finches who rose into the sky, yellow breasts sparkling in the sun;

Seeing the South Island emerge from the morning mist slowly, slowly, until it was so hulking and solid that I could hardly believe it was ever missing at all;

The promise of dinner with Melissa on the weekend;

Holding hot tea in one hand and Naomi’s hand in the other as I walked the kids to school this morning, our conversation punctuated by the rhythm of the sea, the music of their laughter, the song of the tuis in the trees.

Where we've been and where we're going

Quickly, from the koru club in the airport. I'm not sure why the US airlines can't manage clubs like this one. Zowie. and I'm looking out at a lovely dawn, over harbour to hills in the distance. Yesterday it was summer and we ate fresh berries with our cereal. Today it is winter, and while this is a lovely club, canned peaches were our only fruit.

Yesterday we took pictures of our past (this house pictured here, our first house, now on the market again in Augusta), our present (my dad and Jamie's house where we stayed this last week) and our future (?) the house we're going back to and the sign which greeted us upon our arrival in the Auckland airport. Naomi said, "They put up a sign to welcome us!" and so they did.

Summer rain

The rain falls straight down from the sky here, in grey, pattering drops. We’re in the middle of a southern summer storm, after having the rolling thunder threaten for the last 18 hours or so. The sandy soil will pull in the rain, the red clay will bleed it off, and we will have some relief from the heavy hot air which has been pregnant with this possibility since we arrived in Augusta on Saturday night.

If it has been a long time since I’ve written here, it’s because my mind is so full the words won’t unfurl themselves from the others swirling around—and sometimes my mind is so empty there are no words to find. This trip home, to DC and then to Augusta, has been alternately fast and furious and slow and spacious. I have slept in many beds, seen many (but not enough) friends and family, and now am in the slow and gracious south (what Keith rejects as the south and calls the “upper-middle” believing that Kiwis know something about being in the real south).

In each of these places, we are not simply reconnecting with family and old friends, but we are finding bits of ourselves—real and imagined. Here in Augusta there are many people who were at our wedding 18 years ago, who have been in my life since I was Naomi’s age. Hearing our story come out of their mouths sounds absurd. When someone drawls slowly, “So are y’all still living in New Zealand?” I want to laugh at the absurdity of it. “Are y’all still living on Saturn?” would sound just as unlikely.

My father is discovering a new life. Whenever Jamie or Michael or I have that kind of sharp intake of breath that comes with an unexpected email or a forgotten to-do item, he smiles serenely. “That feeling you’re having right now, with the tight belly?” he says, “I don’t have that anymore.” On this, his official twelfth day of retirement, he is loving his new spaciousness and thinking only vaguely of the future.

I am discovering, uncovering, imagining a new life too, although mine comes with a tension in the belly. I hear stories of vague acquaintances from long ago and hear their stories tangentially. My friend from high school is moving to Central America for a year to give her kids an international experience. Someone has cancer. There are divorces, adopted children, little kids who are suddenly teenagers and driving. If you stay in a place for a long time, it weaves through you and becomes a part of who you are—and you become a part of who it is. Dad, who has lived in this house for almost 30 years now, is so woven into the fabric of this place that we can’t drive out of the grocery store parking lot without hearing, “Congratulations!” or “We’ll miss you so much, Dr. Garvey!” People look at me earnestly when he’s out of earshot and say in hushed tones, “Well, I probably don’t need to tell you how deeply sad we are that your dad is going. This place won’t be the same without him.” And it won’t, couldn’t be.

So the tightness in my belly comes from having an exciting and beautiful life that I love and wondering about what we’ve lost by not staying in our house on McDowell Street, two blocks from here, and having babies and teaching at Davidson for the last 20 years. The tightness comes from wondering about whether I’ve been woven enough into the fabric of anything or whether I’m a patchwork, leaving behind patchy memories in a mostly-unbroken pattern of life before and after me.

And none of this is the tight belly of real regret. I have a life so good that it makes me want to weep, and a kaleidoscope of experiences and delights which I couldn’t possibly regret. I know, though, watching these old friends now, a little greyer, a little heavier, watching my vibrant and wonderful father pack his office, pull his awards down from his wall, and give away his books—this life is all we’ve got. This one time is time enough only to stay planted for a life time OR to wander around and end up in paradise. There is time only to live a lifetime in Georgia, a lifetime in Maryland OR a lifetime finding your joy at the end of an airplane ride. I admire the choices my father has made and the choices I have made. But I cannot make them all.

And so this week I celebrate my Dad and his stability, his deep, woven contribution to the community and the college. And at the end of that celebration, I’ll get on a plane and soar home to my house on the sea in another season, another hemisphere, another south. I can feel good about my choices and regret them at the same time, just as I feel good about this rain and wish we could be out picking peaches. Life is overflowing with beauty and joy and sadness. The one moment we can be sure about is this one, the murmuring of my kids in the next room, the sound of my father’s clock ticking, the sound of rain on the roof. All of our choices arise and fall away, sinking into the sandy soil or running off the red clay, leaving rivers like blood over time.

back in the USA

We're more than a week in to our US trip. The Maryland time was a whirlwind--staying with Michael's sister and her family, then to my mother's place and time with her (and a slick new haircut for Naomi). There was a fast trip for me to NYC to do a piece of work I really liked with people I really liked, and then an airplane down to Georgia to spend time with my father and stepmom.

We have been surrounded by people we love and we have missed we have seen cousins growing up--and even seen animals at the zoo who are growing up. We are connecting with the lives we used to have--driving through our old neighbourhood in DC, past our old house in Georgia, re-living old lives, re-hugging old friends, re-telling stories of our life in New Zealand.

All of this both brings back memories of what we used to have--and also brings up memories of imagined futures we never had. Once I thought I'd spend my life in Augusta; once I thought I'd spend my life in DC. Now I'm not sure where I'll spend my life, but neither DC nor Augusta seem to be all that likely. And so we give long hugs, listen urgently, try to soak in as much of this life as we can. We soak in and in and in, basking in the hot summer sun here, so that we can be full of these people and these places in our lovely, wintery home.