Home again

Ok, so it's not Sydney. And, in fact, it wasn't the most fantastic day in the world either. But the tide rolls in and out, turning the beach to a mirror. And the sun rises and then sets, turning the clouds salmon. And even exercising the dog becomes an experience of beauty and joy (regular readers will notice that it's my house behind me--and mirrored in the sand in front of me--as I throw the ball for the dog). It's beautiful to be home.

Loving Sydney

I’m trying to figure out why I love Sydney so much. I have loved this city since I first stepped foot in it four years ago, and this morning walking to this Subject-Object workshop I’m running, I found myself with the kind of silly smile I often have on my face when I’m here.

Some of it may be context. I’ve come to Sydney this time to take a certification programme (for the Leadership Circle 360 instrument) and to teach an Subject-Object Interview workshop. In both of these workshops, I get to hang out with smart and interesting people asking important questions about how do we help support people—others and ourselves—to grow. And specifically in the SOI workshops I have run here so often this past year, I get three days of totally interesting conversations about human sensemaking, and I learn and learn and learn.

So Sydney is a place I do not live but come to visit, it is a place where I spend my days in workshop rooms with interesting people doing work I love, and my evenings out to dinner with people I’m deepening relationships with, and my nights in quiet hotel rooms with only my own thoughts for company. I walk along the most beautiful waterfront, watch the rainbow-coloured parrots in the trees, and savour the best Thai Basil Tofu I’ve ever tasted. I am fully alive here.

I have been particularly cheerful this week. It has been hard being away from home this time, and the weather has been utter crap, raining constantly. I have worked too hard and slept too little. And still, my life feels so rich with possibilities that I can hardly believe it’s my life. I think I am noticing especially where I have come to since moving to New Zealand, and how fantastic it is not to be in the transitional space I’ve been in for so so long. I love the work I do in Sydney, I’m excited about the new connections and new practice field I’ve found this week, and I’m thrilled to be going home tonight to cuddle with my children, kiss my husband and pet my chickens.

kapa haka video

Ok, here it is at last, a decent view of Aidan and Naomi, kapa haka-ing. This performance was to launch a book by a local Maori poet, and he read his poems in English, Maori, and accompanied by a variety of instruments he played. Magnificent. Sergio was surprised at all the passion and talent in the room.

Chooks at the end of the rainbow

It was a dark and stormy afternoon. We had picked the children up at school, piled them with Sergio (our spectacular Spanish WWOOFer) in the back seat of the car. The children were scratchy; Michael was peckish. But the mission was at hand and not to be turned away from. It was chicken day at last.

Long-time readers will remember that I asked for chickens for my birthday last year and held out hope that they would be here when I arrived home from the European trip I took in May 2008. Alas, no chooks. Since then there have been hints and wishes and nags galore. No chooks. But as my birthday approached this year, Michael got a severe case of the guilts, and by 1 June 2009 there was a rough but nearly-finished chicken house. Then some back and forth with A and J’s neighbours who raise (and show) purebred chickens. We told them what we wanted—quiet chickens, good with children, good layers. They told us what we’d get: a Rhode Island Red, a blue Orpington, and a black Orpington.

On the way north, through the driving rain, I tried to figure out why I had wanted chickens so badly, why I had nagged and moaned about them for so long. At first, it was in the panic of the beginning of the recession, the Ocean Rd house not selling, the never-ending house renovation bills. I was wanting to conserve and save. We turn our kitchen scraps into nasty smelly compost; what if we could turn them into something seriously wonderful?? Rob brought us fresh eggs from the places where he was house sitting, and the idea was, er, hatched.

Many weekends ago this stopped being a cost-effective pursuit. How long will it take to save $500 on eggs? I’m guessing a long time. And so I was feeling silly when we pulled up to the old shed in TeHoro and ran through the rain to huddle with the owner, chickens stacked in cages all around us, many more strutting proudly at our feet.

The chicken keeper, E, was matter of fact about these creatures all around her. All those in cages were getting ready to go to another fancy poultry show on the weekend, and she had been working to clean and primp them for their moment in the limelight. Our chickens sat squished in a cage like the others, maybe twice as big as I had thought chickens were.

“What do we need to know about these guys?” we asked. “How, for example, do you feed them/pick them up/take care of them?”

“It’s all common sense,” she said (a theme she’d come back to rather frequently), and then she told us about mites and scales and lice (can you BELIEVE there are more ways for me to have to deal with LICE??? The deal was almost off right then). She told us to feed them protein (they love cheese and yogurt) and good quality food. She told us to paint their perches with kerosene to keep the nasties out. Never hold them by the wings. Fresh water every day. Common sense. Our minds were spinning.

And then I finally got up the nerve to hold the grey one. Ahh, she’s soft like velvet and gentle, making the rumbling noises that don’t sound anything like the way this city girl imagined chickens might sound. I held her close and scratched at her feathers (no lice though) and maybe started to fall in love with her. And then with the brown one. And then with the black one as they came out of the cage to be introduced.

This was no time to be sentimental, though. The chickens were shoved into cardboard boxes (seriously, it looked almost like a magic trick) and we carried them unceremoniously to the trunk/boot of the car. Once home, we walked to the new coop and opened the boxes and suddenly there they were—our new girls. These creatures are not the money-saving food-producers I once imagined (in fact, these girls are young and won’t lay eggs for months, much to the chagrin of Sergio, who is leaving at the end of July). But they are our pets now, and I am already shockingly attached to them. We went out to visit them in the dark and fretted over whether the perches were enough and if they liked celery (no and who knows).

We picked Paekakariki New Zealand, in part, because it is as different from our former life as we could ever imagine. Now our house by the sea (unimaginable) with my little writing cottage out the back (unimaginable) has three chickens: the brown one (Cocoa, named by Naomi), the grey one (Star, named by Aidan) and the black one—Joy. We have a house by the sea and a coop full of Joy. We have a dog at the end of the rainbow. It is a beautiful strange life here in the wintery June. Next time you’re around, Gentle Reader, stop by for some poached eggs and a cuddle in our menagerie.

Scenes from a winter birthday

The cold snap continues. I sit in front of the fire swathed in merino, fleece, and occasionally cashmere. I work proposals at NZCER and with Keith, I plug away at my book (about which the publisher is asking) and play Pictionary with the kids. I work in my writing shed (but do not write there enough) and negotiate chores with the children. I am too busy, working too much, but loving it all the same. Note to self: it takes about 2.5 years in a new place to achieve the same kind of over-the-top busyness of the place I've left behind to get away from it. I bet in a US city, that time would be cut by 75%.

So no stories today but pictures from the Queen's Birthday (observed). Sunset and rainbows at the end of the day, cake and cupcake decorating, cake delivery at the party and me, after the party, overcome with delight about the present Melissa gave me (her band's CD--to check them out, click here) while wearing the fantastic scarf J and A gave me. Not a bad beginning to the last year of an era for me...

snowy june

I think of preparing for my birthday party in the hot of Georgia, the lovely warmth of DC, the first summer delights of Cambridge. Here, though, as we have cleaned and chopped and prepped, it has SNOWED here, which is a rare and wondrous thing. So, some pictures of nearly-June to cool off my northern hemispheric friends...

Pictures are of snow on the hill near our house, and kids reading on a cold day--and one of Aidan outside, scooping snow off the car (which is the only place to get snow when it's all melting away). I hope where ever you are, it's toasty and lovely.

(Un)American

It has been a time of odd and lovely experiences which show us the expat life in stark relief. In this week of shockingly bad weather, with near-freezing temperatures, gale-force winds, and horizontal rains, we have been clear that we are not in Kansas (or, er Washington DC) anymore.

One of the things expats do is get introduced to other expats in the same way that single folk are always getting fixed up by their partnered friends. “Oh, I know another American couple! We have got to get you folks together!” Or there’s the I-know-someone-in-New-Zealand thing that gets us lovely new connections from Americans who have never stepped foot in this country but know people who are making the long journey across the sea. We have had two such meetings in 8 days—with two different couples from Chicago who have been introduced to us by different mutual friends. The ones last week were a quirky surprise. Our friends L and J had invited us to meet an American couple here for six months on a fellowship. When we walked into their kitchen, I was not shocked to see that I’d seen the man before, but I couldn’t place where. Was it at a meeting or conference in New Zealand’s small education community? At an event in New Zealand’s tiny education community? It was more of a shock when he placed us—we’d met in the US, sitting next to each other at the dinner at the New Zealand Ambassador’s house two years ago (you can read that blog here). To have a connection to someone from a New Zealand context is one thing, but to meet an American in the US and then bump into him here unexpectedly seems very unusual indeed. He’s an exec in the foundation that funded my doctorate, so I’d remember that dinner conversation for a long time. But I never imagined that the next time I’d see him would be at L and J’s house! It is a tiny world, criss-crossed by international threads.

The other thing expats can do is drink deeply of their new lives. In the last couple of days, we’ve had a deep drink. Sunday the kids performed in their first kapa haka. Some long term blog readers will remember the kapa haka we went to nearly two years ago, which astonished us (and rather terrified Aidan). (You can read that one here from 16 October 2007.) Now it’s my kids in front of the room with their feathers (Naomi) and beaded skirt (Aidan), swinging pois and beating chests. The house has been filled with Maori singing and chanting for the last 10 days in preparation for this, and Aidan stomps around the house with vigour while Naomi tries to get the singing, swinging, and stepping all aligned (makes me dizzy just to watch it). Seeing them in front of the group was so disorienting I could hardly process it. It is for experiences like this that people move to foreign countries, so their kids can have a bigger vision of the world. Watching my kids—Americans? immigrants? Expats?—participate in this magnificent indigenous ceremony was so moving that I could hardly make sense of it.

Somehow similar was last night when Rob had a party celebrating his permanent residence visa, which has been hard won and a long time coming. It was on a Monday night because that’s when folks in the restaurant industry are free, and so I rushed home from work to finish glazing the triple chocolate cheesecake and cleaning the house for the onslaught. It was a very Paekakariki event, with a full band setting up in our living room, the couch and chairs all pushed aside to make way for the drum kit and the amps. The sax player played in the doorway to the study; the bass guitarist next to the fireplace, and the singer in the centre of the new stage (formerly, the “living room”). We ate soup made from fish Dave had caught on the weekend, tortillas from masa Carolyn had brought on her last visit, and cheesecake I first made on a lovely Cambridge evening. The glass baubles vibrated, the children watched movies on laptops, and Perry barked to the most energetic beats. Now Rob is planted here in a different way too.

There is no hint of Memorial Day here (although we had Anzac Day so recently that the wreathes are still stacked in front of the memorial on the harbour), but next Monday we celebrate the Queen’s birthday—a commonwealth artifact that even the Brits themselves find quirky (they don’t celebrate her birthday). It happens that Monday is also my birthday, and that’s a day that crosses the oceans with me. It has marked the coming of summer and of winter, nearing the longest or the shortest days of the year. Still, there is something stable and grounding to know that wherever I happen to be now, I will always have been born on June 1st and to hope that wherever I happen to be on that day, I will have people I love around me. I am American and unAmerican. I am here and not there, granddaughter of immigrants and perhaps mother of immigrants. I have been on this tiny and fragile planet one more year, and I am grateful for all the perfection and paradox in my life.


pics today from kapa haka. I'll post party pics too (so you can see living room band) and try to upload video when I figure out how to do it on my mac!)