Carol has written as part of her career. She is now enjoying writing to tell her stories.
I stood in front of the large two-storey house. It seemed like a fairy tale house, much bigger than where we lived then. Looking back however, I cannot remember the house we moved from, only this house that we moved to. The house seemed to twinkle in the sunshine, its windows beaming down at me. We went around to the back of the house where there was a large section that cascaded down in terraces. The front, which would eventually hold my mother's roses, was like a roughly furled field the sods of dirt interleaving. Why did the front garden look like a field? It didn't seem to fit. It was like Gran and Grandad's place; they lived in the country where they grew berries, collected eggs, fed the goose that pecked angrily at the back door. Are we going to live here? I asked my mother. Yes, she said. I had conflicting emotions. Excited and scared. I felt very small looking up at this big house that appeared friendly but imposing; like a gentle giant towering over me with a puffed up chest. My mother and I walked around the house hand-in-hand. I can't remember going in. Maybe she didn't have a key. I was a little shocked when I re-visited this house in 2008. It was humble and not very big. I had grown much taller. The garage my father built, and that had housed his beloved Rover, was still there. One of the first cars in a street of houses that were all the same. The imposing giant had vanished. Carmel is an Irish New Zealander. Until now her musings about life have been mainly in her head.
I used be a bit embarrassed that I couldn’t really remember anything solid before the age of four. Now I think that may be because nothing of grand note really happened. My sense of that time is of being cocooned – safe, loved, with nothing to fear, freedom to just be. And so with an absolute trust that all would be fine, I took my father’s hand as we walked through the school gate for the first time. I had just turned four and had no concept of school, having been at home with my gentle mother until that time. Entering the classroom I sensed the harshness of it all. Rows of wooden desks, each one with its own precise, delineated space around it. Lots of bright, primary colours, probably meant to be exciting but to me just glaring. And rows of small girls in uniform, their hair restrained in navy blue ribbons. Rules existed in this place and I did not know them. At the top of the classroom stood a very large blackboard and a very short, old, bespectacled nun. She seemed an exotic creature to me, in dusty, black, flapping clothes. Somehow I knew her smiles were feigned. Later my fellow tiny soldiers and I were lined up along the wall on the corridor and taught to march past our great leader, reverentially bowing our heads to her as we filed along. Even then it struck me as an outrage. What had she done to earn our respect? As the years passed, the bowing continued and the questioning grew. Graham has been using writing in his work, for a lot of his professional life, to let people know things, or to persuade them to try something. Now approaching Elderhood, he is taking up the new role of Life Writer with trepidation and excitement.
It was a long way from home. Things looked different here. The school lay at the edge of a range of bush-covered foothills. Beyond, houses stretched in dense, tidy rows. I’d never seen kids like them: polite, with cheeky grins all the way around the edges of their respect. I liked them, their dark skins showing off shadows in so many different ways from me and mine. Numbers were off school as a result of an influenza epidemic. More dramatically, so were many of the teachers. In a weird way, I was the last man standing. Not precisely, but at one level I might as well have been. A white student teacher, from an Otago seaside village. Sent to Taita College from Christchurch Teachers’ College. Taita was one of the government’s housing estates in the Hutt Valley and the teenage kids were the children of factory workers in 1970s Wellington. Many from Maori families from the country, moved to the Hutt for work. With no one critically breathing over my shoulder with a red pen in hand, I got on with teaching these kids English. And my God, it worked. I was flu-less. The College asked me to take over the classes of the Head of the English Department. And I did. For me, I moved from a place where I was just a survivor, struggling to keep my head above water, to a place where I was the one thriving and the oldies, the teachers, had dropped like flies. I enjoyed myself. I was needed. I did what needed to be done. The senior teachers appreciated that I had stepped into the breach, held the fort, and done all those good things young heroes are supposed to do Taita launched me into getting along with teenage kids for the next forty years. Marilyn Eales enjoys writing in her retirement. This is her second story for Deborah’s website.
One Summer evening over twenty years ago. I was collecting washing from the clothesline. The sun was slowly setting. I was enjoying the quiet beauty of the evening when suddenly from behind the bushes, in the next door garden, a little boy all of four years old, appeared with a whoop as children do and gave me one hell of a fright. I screamed. He, not knowing what he had done, just stood there staring at me. I in turn stared back at him. He looked so vulnerable but inquisitive. Instead of scolding him I fell in love! “ What is your name? Where do you live?” I asked. It was obvious from his replies that he had an intellectual disability but I learned that his name was Michael and that he lived in the house across the empty section next to mine. We talked. I told him what a fright he had given me and that was why I looked scared. I also told him that I liked him and would not be cross again. He replied, ‘I like you, too.‘ Over the next twenty years Michael was a regular visitor at my place especially at weekends. He would unload his worries and I would tell him about my busy working week. He listened. Whilst not understanding the content of my conversation he was quick to catch moods of sadness or happiness. Sometimes he would just sit and observe me doing household chores. A few years ago I moved from this home. Michael was now in his twenties. We saw each other less regularly but did meet occasionally over lunch at my place. After lunch, remembering that I enjoyed a daily swim he would say ‘Marilyn are you going for your swim now? I shall escort you to the beach.’ And escort me he did. On these occasions I would arrive at the beach with a six foot, good looking male proudly holding my arm. Sadly Michael died suddenly last October. When his parents asked me to read at his funeral I considered it a privilege to do so. To my surprise the chosen reading was from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Act 3, Scene 2 where Juliet is talking about her Romeo: When he shall die Take him and cut him in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun And now starlit Summer nights always remind me of this very special friendship. |
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