Is it just me or am I the only one who marvels at how one can be in one place one day and across the seas home again next?
Yeah perhaps its just me..so I am home. This is home. Just before I met my husband I was in the midst of planning a move to Auckland. I was 23 years old. I didn’t have a job but I had family there and if I’m honest the relationship between my parents and I had shifted slightly south. At that time and I’m sure many can relate I’m not sure they agreed with some of my life choices but those life choices in hindsight have made me who I am; well that’s the excuse I am giving myself for those life choices that caused so much heart ache at the time. So when I was planning my big move my parents and I were not as close as we were now for one reason or another and I was searching for a sense of family and New Zealand offered that to me. I had cousins, aunts and uncles and when I went and visited which was often I felt adored and part of something. It felt like home.
I had been flying to New Zealand for almost every major holiday as a child and started the journey on my own as soon as it was legal for me to travel unaccompanied. Both my parents worked one worked FIFO or DIDO and well rather than be alone my parents sent me back to what they still called home. It was a double bonus of baby sitting and getting that sense of family and where I came from. My mum and dad however no longer call it home, Australia is home. As do I but I do but I wish that my boys could meet my family and know them a little as I do see where their grandparents grew up to give them an understanding of them.
And so it was with great delight that my Uncle was able to give me the family tree on my mothers fathers side. Turns out that my great great great great grandfather who was a British writer and documenter of the Maori people who went onto marry a Maori Princess and well we are direct descendents which accounts for my mothers interesting nose. And so with books papers all tracing our lineage almost back as far as 11oo AD so it was one of those ‘where do you come from scenario’s’ around my Aunts kitchen table last Tuesday night. Knowing this is kind of amazing if you ask me my family was part of the first documented cases of mixed race marriages. That and there was relief that there was more than basket weaving going on in my family tree which is the case of my father’s family.
So there is a lot going on in my head this Monday the second week of Spring..
1. The last flight home was as painful as my 42nd week of pregnancy it felt like it would never end.
2. I watched a mother feed her three-year old child snakes, gummy bears and coke as they waited in the departure lounge for their flight. I have never prayed so hard not to sit next to child and rather a bloke who has eaten his fair share of tuna than I did on that flight.
3. My neighbour’s dog has just joined me in bed and I do believe she found the chicken I buried two weeks ago.
4. Summer is finally on its way. In the words of my B3 thank goodness for that.
5. He fancy you is what the hostee said to me when a fellow let me go first with a wink. I looked at her…its disappointing that good manners have become so far removed that the slightest bit of courtesy is mistaken for flirting.
6. Jack the ripper has been found after one hundred years here.
7. Scarlett Johansson has had a baby girl here.
8. I am doing my first public speaking thing..I accepted because I am trying to break through my almost crippling fear of groups but also because I wanted to share what I have learnt. It’s the Cairns Writers Festival the program is here.
9. The other side of those really cute baby photo’s..one for the 21st birthday here.
10. For the latest spring fashion here.
xx Deb
{image source with thanks to here}
