Personal Writing

 It's Monday but I'm at home. Work at home. The all consuming teaching job, unrealistic, imbalanced. I get Kahu out of bed to go and look for electric doorbells. Seems they don't exist. Not in shops anyway. So we drive to Chricton Terrace to deposit red bin stuff and some cardboard. It's their collection day. I pick up scrap metal from Biff's red bin to add to my collection. I have to recycle where I can. Comes from growing up with parents who lived through the Great Depression and World War Two. They didn't throw away anything that had another use. Or any food scraps. Things are coming back round. I've told my students they will live through hardship and will come to realise the value of what they have. 

It's a hot afternoon and I brief Kahu to help me sort out the south fence garden which the concreters, hard men that they are, washed their concrete into. It's left a mess and the ground level has dropped. First we've got to get the concrete crust out, then we have to deposit earth, then dig, and more earth. As well as replace the trees which have died. A massive, time consuming job. After half an hour Kahu wants to quit and asks for another job. Meanwhile, Tom is busy putting irrigation along the north fence and into the verandah beds. The strawberries are wilting. I've never seen anyone work as hard under the beating sun, as Tom does. The ground is rock hard and the sun scorches like a bar heater on full but Tom toils without a break. Kahu opts for painting the fence. An overdue cosmetic job.

We leave Tom digging and head for the beach. The South Pacific Ocean drops body our temperature and soothes fractured nerves, nature's valium. Later, Kahu heads out to Sam's and I drive to Christmas book club "on a blanket on the ground." We each read a piece we've written- poems, short stories, Julie has her master's thesis, Naomi a description of her dying father-in-law. Our lives a web of words. We share personal perspectives encased in imaginative tales transcending time and place. Chocolate, berries and nuts fill the silence. We could be sitting round a fire in a cave... story telling is timeless. I leave early to a 60th party for a friend at a bar on the strip. The setting is ubiquitous but Sarah's is a celebration with heart. She's a counsellor and, true to her role, is providing for us all: olives, sauvignon blanc, friends and honesty. We sneak bottles of half drunk wine under our sleeves to finish off at home. Nicole, life heavy with responsibility for whanau, drunk but looked after, finds freedom. Tonight is her time to cut loose in the care of people she trusts. I taxi her home then pour myself a glass of Marlborough Savvy as I unpack another box.