Thinking of home
Good news and bad from New Zealand yesterday.
We spoke to Georgie's father in Masterton, who has been discharged from hospital after surgery for cancer. We are hopeful that the cancer may not have spread, and are thinking of Peter, Claire, and all the Hills family.
We also heard from my mum, Janet. Her mother, my grandmother Joan Scott, died in the Bay of Islands yesterday. She was 84.
Georgie and I have wonderful memories of sitting round her kitchen table in the evening, all smoking, and drinking whisky that she retrieved from a hidden cupboard in her roll-top writing desk, and playing canasta. Cheating and telling stories and arguing about politics, almost like Witi Ihimaera's card-playing aunties.
Waitangi felt like a second home for me, and with my work I was lucky enough to be able to visit on Waitangi Day and usually once or twice more each year. I knew my way round, I knew many of the people: my childhood memories of catching my first fish off the Waitangi bridge and collecting cockles in the estuary, refreshed by more recent memories of karakia in the meeting house on the Treaty Grounds, beer and pool with Alison and Bryan at the RSA, and the interwoven Waitangi politics of past, present and future.
And always Grandma, at first glaring out her net curtains on Te Kemara Avenue at the Waitangi Day protesters and politicians on the camping ground next to Te Tii Marae, blocking her view of the Bay and obstructing her morning walk along the beach; in the last few years above Waitangi at Baycare, always with a little stash of sherry for her visiting grandson, hungry for family news, generous in sharing her own news and views and the flowers outside her room.
The funeral is on Thursday morning in the Bay of Islands. Georgie and I won't be able to make it back, and neither will my sister Anita and her family in Manchester, nor my sister Frances in Melbourne. But our hearts and prayers will be in sunny, sparkling Waitangi. Kiri and Steuart will carry the love and memories of all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren with them.
We spoke to Georgie's father in Masterton, who has been discharged from hospital after surgery for cancer. We are hopeful that the cancer may not have spread, and are thinking of Peter, Claire, and all the Hills family.
We also heard from my mum, Janet. Her mother, my grandmother Joan Scott, died in the Bay of Islands yesterday. She was 84.
Georgie and I have wonderful memories of sitting round her kitchen table in the evening, all smoking, and drinking whisky that she retrieved from a hidden cupboard in her roll-top writing desk, and playing canasta. Cheating and telling stories and arguing about politics, almost like Witi Ihimaera's card-playing aunties.
Waitangi felt like a second home for me, and with my work I was lucky enough to be able to visit on Waitangi Day and usually once or twice more each year. I knew my way round, I knew many of the people: my childhood memories of catching my first fish off the Waitangi bridge and collecting cockles in the estuary, refreshed by more recent memories of karakia in the meeting house on the Treaty Grounds, beer and pool with Alison and Bryan at the RSA, and the interwoven Waitangi politics of past, present and future.
And always Grandma, at first glaring out her net curtains on Te Kemara Avenue at the Waitangi Day protesters and politicians on the camping ground next to Te Tii Marae, blocking her view of the Bay and obstructing her morning walk along the beach; in the last few years above Waitangi at Baycare, always with a little stash of sherry for her visiting grandson, hungry for family news, generous in sharing her own news and views and the flowers outside her room.
The funeral is on Thursday morning in the Bay of Islands. Georgie and I won't be able to make it back, and neither will my sister Anita and her family in Manchester, nor my sister Frances in Melbourne. But our hearts and prayers will be in sunny, sparkling Waitangi. Kiri and Steuart will carry the love and memories of all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren with them.
posted by Jonathan Milne at 9:25 am
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