Diary of a House: May 2021

Friday, 28 May 2021

Sisterly Help

Nic can't get on a ferry for a few days so comes to stay. She pitches in with the garden and saves Kahu the job of restaining the verandahs. Sunshine on Saturday and Sunday is a nor wester so it's perfect timing as the window for drying is disappearing. When she's finished the verandah looks like new, and has an oily layer of protection from winter weather. Nic has seen the state of Kahu's room and found a dressing table on Marketplace. We collect it in the school van on Saturday after finishing the verandah. We can't unlock the back door and put a few dings and scratches in the dresser but Kahu is happy with the extra storage. Now he can clear his floor. Cousin Helen and Mark stop by for a cuppa on Sunday. I show Helen the pic of Tui and Marie in the rescue frame from the family house. The two little girls, our mums, smile sweetly at us down the decades.

Monday Pete puts up the laundry shelves, at last. They look great and putting preserves and knick knacks from the laundry cupboards on them frees up space. In my head as well. I finally find lights I like for the kitchen island, and my room. More progress. The week ends on a teacher only day. Relief from the daily combat of the trenches. Hard to underestimate the power of sisterly help, though. Nic got stuff done I could only dream of. I look out at the garden with a sense of being more or less in contol and feel less like I'm climbing Everest.

Friday, 21 May 2021

Going Home

I can no longer call the house my parents live in, home. They're gone. In fact I haven't called it home for a while. Not since they moved from the house I spent my early years in, on the farm just out of Te Anau. Even then, I divided my growing up space with Enwood Hostel in Invercargill. Not that Enwood was much of a home, too institutional. Today I walk round empty Fir Close, a shell empty of people and belongings. So, what makes a house a home? People, personal belongings, no matter how small and insignificant....photographs, nick nacks, a bulging kitchen, junky garage, clothes strewn bedroom. The paraphenalia of active occupation. Te ahi kā, the burning fire in Te Ao Māori.

Leaving this property closes the book on me as a daughter. As inevitable as human mortality. We don't get to go backwards. I'm ready, relieved to have this job finished. Wondering about the future of buying a house with Nic. It's in the lap of the gods. But I wish I could fast forward and it could just have happened. Houses are so personal. Judging by property prices we'll only be able to afford a flat, hopefully not brick because brick houses have always depressed me. They feel boxier and claustrophobic.

Maxine brews me a coffee, I pick some Granny Smiths then get in to car for the oh so familiar drive to Christchurch. My new home in Strowan. Sharyn is entertaining and it's good to come back to a warm house and food. Te ahi kā.

I'm straight into house finishing stuff as Mark, the plasterer calls, and he and his wife arrive on Saturday morning to smooth out the plaster dribbles between the coving and the pelmet. He's kind enough not to charge so I ask what beer he drinks. Saturday night is Greg Flynn's birthday party at his earthquake rebuild house, and shed. Life goes on. Nicki is managing her change of medication as well as she can, on top of finishing building two new houses and renovating two older ones. She's still smiling, but only just. Sleep deprivation is getting to her. Work is inevitable, at least I've got a job to complain about. I'm at school on Monday wondering how I'm going to get through the day, let alone the week. And the first work back after term holidays always goes slowly.

Mind over matter and autopilot sees me through. On Tuesday Robyn drops off boxes of family stuff from Alexandra. I'm grateful but feel overwhelmed again. Every time stuff comes into the house, it adds to the general clutter and my brain threatens to melt down. Made of sterner stuff, I don't dwell on such a first world problem. I have to keep going till it's all in and all put away or moved out to a different life or the land fill.

Tom calls to even out the back garden dirt pile then sew grass seed. I'm nearly there with landscaping but the 500mm high foundations present challenges of differing levels and concrete extending into the garden. A practical man, Tom suggests bricks. I'm in no rush. Kevin from Dig Out Services dumped a truck load of dirt after the demolition and before the foundations, future proofing the landscaping. So glad he did, so good to see it gone. It's a clear sign of progress. My garden is an outdoor extension of my house, essential, integral and it needs to be good. I remember Tui putting down flower beds when we arrived at Te Anau. Fifty years later it's time for me to roll up my sleeves and tackle this part of the build. My house journey is nearly over but finishing off is way more involved and time consuming than I ever imagined.

Sunday, 16 May 2021

Final Pack Up

It's truly The End... the Home Straight...the Final Curtain Call. But the fat lady hasn't sung yet; we have the house to empty. Nick and I, minus Rob, carry the can. That's the way the family rolls.

There's a lot of organising and living to do in the meantime. I take Denis to Autumn Festival in Arrowtown. He packs two trumpet ice creams which are liquid by the time we eat lunch. It's odd standing shoulder to shoulder with crowds of people knowing that elsewhere people are hiding from each other, too frightened for face to face contact, cautious against the spread of disease. The luck to have such freedom in New Zealand is unreal. We're in a parallel universe. Removed from the trauma of the rest of the globe.

I manage a couple more swims, the latest ever. Cold but not too cold. And I'm getting tougher. I find a dead kahu in the middle of the road and rescue it for feathers. I take a couple for myself and drop it at Maxine's. Luke Anthony, who is carving a tui out of wood for me, tells me it's illegal. There's lots of permissions to get to use the feathers. Who is going to find out? I visit him in Ranfurly to organise the wooden branch for the tui to sit on. He has a selection of pine tree roots to choose from and talks me through his work. Scarcely draws breath and I learn a lot. The wood he is carving the tui from is rescue wood from a Christchurch church. On my drive I reminisce about all the drives I've done with Lionel over these roads. And the night he got lost in the fog. Driving on because he didn't know what else to do. Sighted by a truck driver after the police posted a call out.

I go to a Ballads, Bulldust and Balderdash concert in the Galloway Hall. Sitting in the middle of farm land, a former school house for a long established, backwater community. A Roxborough man reads a poem from his great, great, great, great Scottish grandfather to his son who came to live close by. It's a parent's well wishing lament and hope for a better future for his beloved boy. I sit with Beth, a member of Lionel and Tui's church congregation. The story telling reflects the human condition, humerous and poignant. Happy sad.

And Uncle Bruce's 81st birthday. A covid catch up celebration, in Queenstown. The extended Morris family are there in force. Auntie Ruth, cousin Sally, first cousin once removed, Katie and lots more. The food is good, so is the wine and I'm not driving. I learn more about family rifts. People are people.

I visit Denis daily. Maxine tells me he has a crush on me. So I let him down gently- he's more of a dad figure to me. He gets it. We drink whiskey and I buy the painting a carried for him after the Food and Wine festival. It's unfinished so he gets up at 4am to put the final touches on before I can take a before picture. A river of tranquility. He's proud and I begin payments.

At Tui and Lionel's grave the rabbits are digging holes. No respect.

I attend the Clyde Anzac service. The memorial is above the Clutha. Peaceful and remote from the battlefields the Anzacs fought on at Gallipoli. The speaker lists the wars New Zealanders have gone to, ending with the wars fought on our soil: the musket wars between Maori tribes, and the New Zealand wars, Maori v Pakeha. The ones we don't teach in schools.

Rosemary, the buyer of the house, stops by to ask questions. She doesn't want the skody old carpet in the garage so Nick cuts it up and we find bins to put it in. We visit Jill, Tui and Lionel's most special carer and a family friend, and husband, Frank. Donna and her husband Robin take us to the Post Office for dinner. It's a week of finishing ups.

Physically emptying the house is a huge task, so we enlist help. There are lots of offers but stuff is personal and we stick to the helpers closest to Lionel and Tui: Mark and Diane, and Arthur. And Donna lends us the L.J. Hooker trailer. We move appliances, the wooden cabinet in the living room, the sofa, assorted boxes of miscellaneous bits and bobs. We get a big load out in the trailer, working together to sort, wrap and stack. It's not exactly fun but with a few of us, it's social. Some head scratching to fit things in but enough combined brain power to figure it out. By lunch we're starving. Nic produces supermarket chicken, rolls and salad. It's sunny and there's a sense of optimism. There's discernible progress and we keep boxing on. Next day Mark and Diane bring their trailer to pick up the freezer, collect beds and whatever else is left. We store it in the garage at their Springvale Road property. When they mention rats I grab rat poison and peanut butter. Fingers crossed it works. A last tidy up and we go to Kari's for a farewell drink. Then Nic and I go to stay with different friends. I drop in to the empty house to tidy Lionel's and Tui's room and pack my car. It's weird. The house is empty. All that living over and done with. I say a final goodbye to Tui and Lionel before I shut the door. My life as a child gone in the click of a lock.

Lighting a fire on the outskirts of the apricot orchard at Maxine's, we burn the road kill kahu which is rotting and smelly. Sparks fly, ash ascends to the heavens. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Life beyond clay. Eternity beyond reach.