Back At It

Well, here I am, back at home in the United States. It has been just over a week, and I think I have pretty much settled back into the routine. I'm not sure if that it good of bad it just is. I have returned to work, and once I got past the initial shock at the size and speed of everything it is all just as it was. The sun rises, the sun sets (albeit a lot earlier than when I left).

The last few days of my time in New Zealand were a bit of a whirl. Home to New Plymouth after the wedding to Mum & Dad's place where I took life very slowly. Mum went back to work pretty much right away, but Dad had a few days off. We hung out. Actually I made a point of our having lunch together at some cafe on Devon Street one day, and then going out to Waitara to the cemetery to visit my grandparents, among others, the next day.

Many of the people I remember well as a child are now dead and lie there together under the short cut grass. Not far from My grandparents - Fred & Cova - are their infant daughter (my aunt) Sandra, Cova's mother Ethel, and the infamous Granny Jones (Ethel's mother), among others. I recognized many of the surrounding surnames - and some of the forenames - as being part of my extended whanau. These are the people I am from. These are who I have been birthed from. They existed to bring me forth.

I took pictures of headstones so that I would remember them, and be able to piece many of them to the photos I scanned at my uncle's place in Otaki of these people when they were alive.

On the way back to New Plymouth from the cemetery we passed the first house I remember my grandparents living in. "Richmond Street" looks nothing like it used to. It is empty and hollow with no sign of the love that once dwelt there. Gone are Cova's freesias which she tended along the front of the house with great pride, and gone too are the twisted grape vines in the back yard that Fred tended with equal diligence.

Yet, I saw it all so clearly, with a crispness of memory that brought small full tears to my eyes. It was a sad and tender moment to remember days past, and see the present at the same time. The pungent aroma of those flowers in their tall vases all over the house, and too the sweet, plump explosions of his grapes as we munched to our hearts content.

They were magical and love-filled days that I spent at their house as a boy during the school holidays. For that short time, as the engine idled at the curb, I was transported there again.

The route back to the highway took us by the Marae - our Marae - Owae. It is a beautiful place that I remember well. We stopped and I took a walk around taking more photos (which I'll post soon). As I drank it all in, I felt both Fred and Cova - and all my whakapapa - there with me.

It was a perfect place to pay tribute to where I am from, and who I am from, who I was, and who I have become.

Te Aroha,

He Whakapono,

Te Rangimarie,

Tatou, tatou e

Love, Truth and Peace - now and forever