Christmas spirit

The buying of a Christmas tree seems to be a yearly challenge. Last year’s was so ugly that once it was fully decorated, I had Michael and Rob carry it to a place in the house where I wouldn’t see it so often. I didn’t even know how beautiful fir trees were until I came to a country where Christmas trees are spindly and floppy pines. This year would be different, we vowed. We would drive the 1+ hours to Graytown where there was a Christmas tree farm, begun by Canadians, selling what they called “Real Christmas Trees.” Ah, but the weekends were so busy. So we punted and asked them to deliver us one, at great expense. And so it was, on Wednesday of this week, that we got the phone call…We had asked for a tree to be delivered? A 7-foot tall fur, brought to Paekakariki? Yes, that was us. Sorry. No tree, no delivery. Maybe next year.

Crushed, we regrouped and decided we’d settle again for one of the floppy native pines. Now we had to find one. In the US, Christmas tree stands pop up like mushrooms after Thanksgiving. In New Zealand, they spring up by the side of the road for an hour as someone sells the 20 pines from his backyard, and then are gone forever. Last year we wandered endlessly searching for something, and the best one we found was as horrible a tree as I could have imagined. This year, we couldn’t find any at all!

So Keith directed us to a driveway in a local suburb. He claimed that we’d see a sign by the side of the road, “Christmas Trees, $20.” And so we did. We pulled up the drive, braved the WARNING GUARD DOG sign and rang the bell. A sour-looking fellow, tank top stretched tight over belly, appeared on the other side of the fence. “All the good ones are gone!” he told us. “Only ugly trees left!”

Because we found all of the trees generally ugly, this was either a nonsensical point or else a serious worry. But we followed him in anyway. An adventure.

He led us past his house, past the doghouse where we let the sleeping dog lie, and down a path. Thick forest all around us, the clear cut for the new subdivision ahead showed what humans often consider progress. His lawn was punctuated by veggie gardens and a scattering of straggly pines, with a view of the subdivision on one side and cows in a pasture on the other. “All the good ones are gone,” he repeated in a thick Dutch accent, surprising for one who had been in this country nearly 50 years. “Maybe you find something that is not so bad.”

And so we wandered from tree to tree. He followed us with saw in hand, helpfully offering advice. “This one isn’t so ugly,” he’d say if we stopped at one he seemed to like. “At least it’s green,” he’d point out if we stopped at a seriously ugly one. Then more plaintively, “This is taking a long time, eh?” as we wandered around the floppy trees for the third time.

Perhaps it was the thick putrid scent of the cow manure and the festering stream. Or perhaps it was that four Americans were being led around by a Dutch man in shorts as they tried to pick their New Zealand Christmas tree in the summer heat. But finally we pointed to one (“at least it’s green”) and he took his saw and quickly cut it down (at least it’s fresh). We carried it up the hill, shoved it in the back of our car, and went out for Indian food at a strip mall. Ah, the pastoral life.

The tree, in addition to being truly ugly and almost entirely without branches (but it’s green and fresh), has one more appealing quality. Maybe because it is summer here, maybe because it grew in a meadow, it seems to be covered with enough pollen of something so that Michael is deathly allergic to it. But no matter. The windows open to the sea rain seem to have washed most of that away, and now that it’s decorated and we have come to understand the concept of “lipstick on a pig” in a whole new way, the tree brings a kind of unfamiliar Christmas sprit to the house. Friends try to come up with nice things to say about it after they get up from being doubled over in laughter (“it doesn’t interfere with the view of the sea” or “look how well your ornaments stand out”).

There are benefits to having a tree like this. This year we will not mourn when we have to take it down, will not weep when it becomes firewood. We don’t waste time gazing lovingly at its branches. There’s always a close-by source of amusement. And, my favourite, this tree provides the clear motivation to get ourselves to Graytown next year in early December and cut down a Canadian import. It is heartening to know that some things are not more beautiful in paradise.


Ps Thanks to all of you who wrote in response to my blog question last week. It is amazingly satisfying to hear from you and hear what you make of this whole enterprise. I feel you with me in a new way. Perhaps we can keep up more of a back and forth, eh? And craft this new life of mine—two years in now—together.

Old friends and big waves

Today, the last full day of school, was the best boogie boarding I've ever done. After school, Naomi and Aidan and I--along with Anna, the beautiful German WWOOFer and Keith, who had just been on a conference call with me--headed to the beach. I've had some folks ask for us to show a video of what this looks like. Here it is.

Also today, we heard from some lovely new old friends. Check out the second comment on this blog entry . We look forward to our next time with Duane and Janet, and I'll never sit next to someone on the airplane with quite the same feeling again...

This from Aidan: Hello all it is good living here but we really miss you .It was great to visit you all.And to everyone that that we didn't see last year that we saw this year we miss you too.

This is from Naomi:
Hey Everyone!
I just have some free time, so i'm just saying hi. If anyone remembers, i used to have my own blog, and since school ends tomorrow (YAY!!!) I have decided that I will start blogging again as a sort of summer project thing. So my blog address will go here and you can see what I'm up to.

Point inflection

We have come to another of those many inflection points on the journey from here to there. Last week was our two year anniversary of life in this new land. To celebrate, my work friends brought Afghans, a wonderful and odd kind of New Zealand chocolate cookie, to our afternoon meeting. I looked around the room at NZCER and thought that two years ago I was in a total identity crisis about what my life would be like and where I’d find friends. And now here I was, surrounded by people whose thoughts and opinions I valued deeply, people I have been thinking alongside for these past years. We passed around the cookies and laughed and worked together, and then walked down the hill through this familiar city to the familiar train together. In addition to being impressed with the quality of their thinking and writing, I also genuinely like these folks, admire their values, love to laugh with them, learn from every interaction. That’s a beautiful thing.

Then, to celebrate this occasion, I got a present out of the blue from Michael. In the US in October, Michael bought a MacBook for himself, a present to replace the work laptop he was leaving behind as he began a year-long secondment in another governmental department. Ever since, in the evenings when Rob and Michael and I sit in the internet café that is my living room, I’m the odd one out with my little grey Dell laptop next to their shiny white Macs. For our two year anniversary, Michael bought me a new computer for this new land, an amazingly sexy MacBook Air. I have coveted this computer since I first laid eyes on it, but never harbored a thought of actually buying it—this is a global recession after all. In our 21 years together, Michael has never surprised me as much as he did for our two-year anniversary present, and now the sexy computer sits in my lap on this familiar train.

And then today, the third marker of this inflection point. For a variety of reasons, when you are awarded permanent residence in New Zealand it comes in two different visas: one that allows you to stay here forever, and one called a “returning resident” visa, which allows you to come and go whenever you want. That one expires after two years, a way to make sure that you actually live here in NZ and don’t just bank the residence permit for use at some later point (like after you’re 55 and you can’t get this visa anymore). But if you’re good, and you live here and work here for the 2 years, that visa too converts to permanent. And so, now that our anniversary is behind us, Michael headed over to immigration, proved the various things that needed proving, and now we can come and go from New Zealand whenever we want for as long as we want. We belong here now.

These three inflection points have left me looking at this new land in a new way. My work seems to be here and the work in the US is gone. My house seems to be here and my house in the US is gone. Even my visa says I belong here, no more checking of expiration dates as I clear customs or board a plane to NZ without a ticket to someplace else. I have long wondered when I’ll really feel like I’m here, when I’ll stop feeling my strangeness, noticing how American I am in accent and culture. I have wondered when I’ll get to feel fully like I belong, either here or there.

The big lesson for me, though, is that it is a life-long journey from here to there. Through facebook, I’m back in touch with a huge number of former students, and they ask and ask, “Why New Zealand?” It’s hard for me to answer that question, or the inevitable follow up questions about how long we’ll live here and where we’ll go next. This is my home now. These hills are familiar, the sheep, bedraggled after several days of last spring rains, are the regular companions of my trip home, along with the kite surfers I pass as I go through exactly this part of the journey on a windy afternoon like this one. I love it here, love waking up to the sea and falling asleep looking at the stars. I don’t know if this is our home for the long haul or what comes next. But at this inflection point I am here and at this moment, here is home.

PS Here, after keeping this blog for 2 years—when I never thought I’d write here at all—I am at another inflection point. You may have noticed that I am writing here less. That’s because I have lost the plot about what this blog is for and whom it communicates with. If any readers have opinions about that, I would be grateful.

PPS Pics today of Aidan on Karen's bike (cool Karen!) and from the surf club on Sunday

and counting...

It’s my two year anniversary today. Two years since our plane touched down early one Thursday morning in a cold and damp December. When we moved here, I said I’d be here at least 18 months. Seems like we’ve met that target. Wonder what’s next.

(“What’s next” turned out to be MORE nits in Naomi’s hair. This is a fitting celebration of our 2-year anniversary. For those of you who haven’t been following since the beginning, it’s worth a dip back into the horrors of December 06.)

Goldilocks, the skylight, and the quest for perfection

On Tuesday I decided that I would make one last big move on the house and then call it really seriously finally done (for now). When we bought this house, the attic was just a cavernous space of an easy standing height, crossed with support beams, and occupied only birds’ nests. We wanted up there! We dropped the ceiling in the kitchen and hall to get one lovely room and a bathroom, a haven for guests. But over the rest of the house, the ceilings on the ground floor are high which makes the space above smaller. The other half of the attic has been an unfinished space—with reinforced floor and the beginnings of dry wall and one small window. On Tuesday, I decided we’d just make that one last change and then we’d be done.

So I called Dave, the Builder Extraordinaire. How much will it cost to put one skylight in that room and plaster it up? I asked. And when can you do it? Dave gave me a figure that was less than the cash I had on hand from my work in Sydney last week. And he said, I’ll come tomorrow and be done by next week.

And so it was, on Wednesday, that I was looking at my attic walls and pointing to the place where I wanted the skylight. I was on an international phone call and so I had very little time to get the placement right. I wanted it far forward so that this skylight wouldn’t interfere with what we wanted to do to the room later. And I wanted it low enough to give me a view. Thursday night, I looked. The skylight seemed to be in the right place forward, I thought. But it was so high. I’d never get a view from there. I agonized, discussed things with Rob and Michael, and wished for the view.

Thursday morning I laid out my problem to Dave. How much work would it be to drop the skylight another 2 feet so I could see out of it? “No worries, Jen,” Dave told me (I think Dave is the only person I have met in the last 15 years who calls me Jen). He dropped the hole and I stood in the opening, delighted with my imagination of the view I’d see once the roof was cut open.

On Friday, I got to experience that. Shaking of house, rattling of windows and suddenly sunlight streaming into an attic that had never seen the day before. And, through the hole in the roof, broad views of blue sea waves lapping onto green hills. Perfection. God how I love perfection. I had exactly what I wanted.

Have you ever noticed how short lived perfection really is? And so it was, when the skylight was moved into place, when it was perching, not in the hole as I had imagined, but on top of the hole to be flashed above the roofline, that I once again remembered how little perfection there is in the world. The depth of the roof plus the depth of the skylight raised the viewline up 8 inches. The only eight inches of my sea view. Now, from my eye level, I look straight into the edge of the skylight and can raise my eyes to see the tips of the hills bumping into the sky. To make things worse, now the window is too low to add head height to the room, and maybe, just maybe, it’s a little too far forward.

I am in agony over the 8 inches wrong here, the 12 inches wrong there. I brooded around the house yesterday, feeling stupid for having made Dave move the hole once and wondering whether I should have had him move it again when I saw that it wasn’t what I wanted. This bed is too hard, this one is too soft. How many beds to you try before you find one that’s just right?

I try very hard to remember that perfection is the enemy of the good, a lesson that doesn’t come easily to me. But, ah, the responsibility of choosing where to put a window in a windowless wall. Suddenly, the world seemed full of responsibilities that I wasn’t up to meeting. How do you pick the perfect high school for Naomi? What shall we serve our dinner guests, controlling for multiple allergies? How do we know which country is the best one for us to live in? What colour should we paint the walls that surround the too-low and too-forward skylight?

And it’s also totally absurd. I have a good friend who is trying to come to terms with his dying father. I have other friends trying to figure out their loves and make relationship choices for their futures. I talk with teachers who are trying to figure out what on earth to teach for the new curriculum. We are gifted and plagued by our ability to measure and weigh, to agonize over decisions and to hold future—and backwards—images. We decide which things are too high, too low, too hot, too cold, too hard, too soft. This is life, though, where we cannot get it exactly right each time. There are roof pitches to take into consideration (oops), unexpected storm clouds, whether she loves you back, the effects of the new leadership on morale. There are unexpected detours and a confusion of competing commitments.

I spend big swaths of my day looking at the sea, watching its relentless rhythm. I watch the clouds get pushed around by the wind, the green hills go yellow without rain. I should be getting natural patterns, should be understanding that this life I lead is small and the choices I make (do I go to the UK in March? What shall I make for morning tea for the kids’ Sunday school class tomorrow? How do I support a high school’s leadership team?) are just part of what the fabric of the next part of my life might be. Paul pointed out that perhaps it would have taken a president as disastrous as Bush to get one as astonishing as Obama. Each choice opens and forecloses, like the thrumming waves.

When Keith came over yesterday, having heard something of my discomfort about the window, he leapt up into the attic room and smiled broadly. “What do you mean no view?” he asked, looking out. “This is perfect!” I pointed out that it was perfect for some and useless for others and he looked at me confused. Putting my hand on his shoulder, I stooped him down until his eyes were level with mine, looking straight ahead at the edge of the skylight and into a sea-less hills and sky beyond. He burst into laughter. “The window isn’t too high—you’re too low!” he said. “Or we should raise the floor!” He pulled over a paint can for me to stand on, and there was my beloved view, swath of sea ruffling into hills. There isn’t an objective too high or too low or too hot or too cold, there’s just Goldilocks and the particular mood she’s in and the fact that she’s closer in size to baby bear than to Mama or Papa. There is only what is, a window there, a skylight there, the waves forming white crests in a silver sea.

images of a week

Ok, there's a substantive blog coming, but first there is lunch to get for the kids and a cake to bake on this beautiful Saturday afternoon. So until then, here are pictures from the last week or so: Naomi at surf club, Aidan experimenting with a new hair style (like it?), me in Sydney, the grounds of the school fair last weekend (only, er, in the backwards order--not sure why).

Creating spaces for change?

I spent a day last week in a school full of dedicated, passionate teachers, all interested in trying to figure out how to make their school the best place for students—now and into the future. These teachers were devoted and energetic and smart—and terrified and exhausted and overwhelmed. In a world without enough time to keep up with the demands of the present needs of students, parents, school leaders, community members, how on earth will teachers make a change to something different? After all, there may not be general agreement about exactly how schools should change to meet the demands of the future or exactly what those new schools will look like, but there is widespread agreement that schools do need to change somehow. The question I’ve become curious about isn’t even about what schools in the future should look like, but what schools today need to look like so that they can develop into schools for the future. How do we create schools as spaces where teachers to be able to experiment and make changes?

The key problem here is that teachers have neither the time nor the permission to make real changes. Schools are busy places, and teachers are devoted to the students they have right now and don’t want to take any chances on messing up those students’ lives in order to try some new fad. Parents, too, are pretty devoted to the school experience their children are having now and are not interested in sacrificing any quality their kids might have now for some future gains for other children. And yet, if we don’t want more of the same, and we also don’t want the inevitable risks that come with innovation, we seem pretty stuck.

People notice when someone tries something different and it falls flat. We can recognise a failure when we see it. Can we also recognise the time after which continued success, in the same way, will also be a failure? If cars today had the same safety features, gas mileage, and performance as cars 100 years ago, what seemed like success at the time might strike us as a big problem. It’s possible, though, that we might not notice at all that cars hadn’t changed much in all that time; it’s hard to see—and regret—innovation that doesn’t happen anywhere. If schools today are still educating some percentage of our children work in yesterdays’ jobs and live in yesterday’s society, maybe there’s a hidden failure there to which we should turn our attention. And it’s not just teachers who need to have their attention turned in this way; it’s all of us. Parents need to be more supportive of innovation, even when it doesn’t work. Principals need to support teachers to have new ideas and then get out of their way as teachers try things out. Community members need to be less reactive to the stories the press puffs up about chances teachers have taken that haven’t gone very well.

But all of this needs to be done inside a context where real children spend their time—not a social science experiment. We have to be smart as we are being bold, have to be cautious as we are being creative. These are hard mixes; even at companies where there’s plenty of time and money to spur innovation, there are all kinds of barriers to doing things a new way. I’d love to hear from those of you, reading this, who have some interests in this area—whether you’re school leaders, parents, teachers, community members, or students. What makes it possible to keep innovation going where you are? What do you wish you had more of? How could we think of ways you could get what you need? This is a hard thing we’re trying to do. It would be easier if we were thinking about it together.