Christmas ...
Last year was the first 'real' Christmas I had had in 9 years.
I left New Zealand mid-2003 and experienced my very first northern hemisphere non-Christmas in Istanbul that year. Living in a predominately Muslim country meant that life didn't stop for Christmas. The weather was rubbish. It was winter.
That year I was given the day off to celebrate Christmas because I was considered a 'christian'. And my Turkish boss took me home to her family that evening, generously celebrating Christmas for me and with me. The next year I was teaching English conversation class at the university on the day, then raced off to English friends to experience my first-ever English Christmas (in Turkey).
Then came Belgium and the next few years were spent attempting to get used to the whole Christmas-in-winter thing. But the traditions here have simply moved Christmas so far from my New Zealand origins that I don't experience Christmas as Christmas. It's just this strange holiday that people mess about with over December, beginning on the 6th - that day when Sinterklas comes, leaving gifts for the children who then, more often than not, have to head off to school after present-opening.
This time last year though, I was home in New Zealand and it was magnificent. With a little bit of terrible thrown in too. I was trying to do that final organising of a lifetime's worth of possessions. I needed them to fit into just a few boxes so I could store them before shipping them over to Belgium. I think I arrived at 4 medium-sized plastic containers ... giving the rest of my stuff away or throwing it into the rubbish.
Christmas Day, 2012, in New Zealand was so familiar and delicious however throwing out most of my previous life and trying to pack two 21kg suitcases to fly in the morning ... it was difficult despite being the best Christmas day I had had in a long time.
This year, I seem to have misplaced Christmas. I haven't bought any presents (except for that gift organised for Miss 9, shared between 4 of us. A gift she will love because it is simply marvelous). Nor have I sent any cards. I haven't even managed to organise Christmas Day but perhaps that's because it's not really Christmas Day to me anymore. There is none of the excitement of summer, of cherries and strawberries, of finding a box of new potatoes ... it's just so different.
It will come together on the day, we have children around and I'll make sure it's marvelous for them but I am suspecting that Christmas just is that thing I don't get excited about anymore.
Let's see how it goes. Meanwhile ... my people, last Christmas in the land Downunder.
New Zealand in Antwerp
It seemed I only needed to roar a little and voila, the words came bubbling up afterwards.
I sent the advert text away before rushing out and across the city on the Thursday school pick-up. It's a half-day, like Wednesday. So now I just need to do the bio and locate some photographs of Genova.
But the happy news from today was that Miss 9 and I stopped for lunch at the new New Zealand shop located in the heart of Antwerp. Pies ... Buzz bars, L&P, and etc. We love it.
Miss 9 is a fairly radical vegetarian at the moment and so she chose the vegetarian pie which, to me, seemed like a very big waste of 'pie'. I had the Stoofvlees pie ... a pie filled with the rather divine Flemish beef and beer stew.
L&P was our choice of drink. Miss 9 because she finds it delicious and me because it takes me straight back to those childhood days where it was always summer.
Fortunately, before devouring too much pie, I remembered to stop for a photograph. An imperfect image but I was far more interested in eating it.
On Missing Home ...
It's been an odd day here. Some blog posts were deleted today and I decided to step away from Facebook for a bit. I'm learning the limits of 'what else I can do while writing' and having FB available just doesn't work for me.
I've been homesick for New Zealand. Dad's brother had a fall last week and so I spent a few evenings talking with Dad via skype. It was sad knowing he was spending his days at the hospital, watching Uncle Brian slip away. They couldn't save him. The funeral was last Friday.
Uncle Brian was a butcher by trade but when I think back to my most vivid memories of him they seem to involve those backyard games of cricket played by families, and their neighbours, all over New Zealand during summer.
I think Brian might have been a Speights man back then too. Like Dad. I think all of them were, and I don't think he would mind the link. That series of adverts usually makes kiwis smile some.
You will be missed, Brian Mackey.
Autumn ...
hello, autumn... hello, smell of smoke in the air. hello, hot cups of ginger tea with a cookie on the side, hello chilly evenings, hello colors spreading from mountaintops down, down down into the valleys here below.
Nina Bagley, extract from her blog Ornamental
If I had to describe the place I would most like to live then a location like Nina's would be high up on the list. Her blog is the place where I go when the need to wander off and be quiet is upon me and I can't physically go anyplace.
In fact there's a novel I've been writing since those days when I was an airforce officer's wife. It's a story that has retained the same main character but one that has reshaped itself as I have moved countries and lives. She always has a dog, lives someplace beautiful but slightly isolated, and her life has been simplified.
She was a war photographer, so I researched post-traumatic stress and Iraq and the Green Zone and so many other places where people like her go, filled with the conviction that if people just knew the truth of those places and situations, they would rein in the monsters who create wars.
My bookshelves have more than a few war journalists and photographer biographies sitting there, next to the climbers stories. Another people who fascinate me.
But there's still no dog in my life. Everyone feels compelled to remind me of the responsibility when I bring up my desire to have a dog again. They tell me ... the woman who has had dogs since she was 9 years old, that it's a big decision.
I don't roll my eyes ... well, not visibly but it does get boring. I rode horses, had cats, my daughter had a pony. There are things I just know by now.
Another birthday soon. Another year older and, oddly enough, I'm enjoying these years. I'm becoming less concerned about what people think of me, how I 'should' look, and I'm turning down the self-censorship dial on those things I would like to say directly.
I learned the fine art of careful and considerate behaviour as a child, with a side-helping of all-consuming guilt if I slipped up and was honest or direct. It's almost fun unlearning these things. Fun and frustrating, and challenging too, but as long as I'm gentle ...
Autumn is here. It was crisp out there this morning. The pollution levels have been high recently. Our city is split by a ring road that has some of the heaviest traffic loading in Europe. We're a true crossroads and it's a nightmare living so close to a section of it. And then there's the industrial pollution.
It takes about 3 days for my system to begin to clear when I flit off to Genova, that spot by the sea that is close to some beautiful hills and mountains.
New Zealand ... out there the air was simply stunning. I would all but dance, delighting in the variety of scents the air carried as we journeyed there.
Wild thyme in Central Otago, then the seemingly limitless beech forests and lakes that give Fiordland that unforgettable smell. The wild west coast of the South Island, with the Tasman Sea crashing on one side while, on the other, the Southern Alps roar up into the sky. The scent of the sea and the glaciers, soaking wet glacial moraine and forests.
Mmmm, I'm not really a city girl ... must work that one out one day soon.
But today is all about packing and preparing for another journey. My cousin continues her journey back to New Zealand on October 8. We will say our farewells in Milan, after almost two months together. It's been good having someone around who shares a history, whose mother was my mother's much-loved older sister.
Sometimes, over these weeks, I've looked into Mum's eyes - Julie's are almost exactly the same. Mum died way back in 1999 and I've missed her often over the years. Anyway, it has been a time of 'remember when ...' and of familiarity, of picking over old wounds, and creating new stories to tell next time we meet.
We're off on a roadtrip to a part of Europe I haven't thought of exploring before. Although, admittedly, I do find it hard to go past Genova ...
But anyway, meet Julie. She was the model of choice one day out there in Piedmont on the photography workshop. Sandy and I photographed her, delighting in the colourful backdrop Diana provided with her delicious use of colour.
Julie has eyes just like my mother's.
In Bourgogne ...
I find myself comparing the landscapes here in Bourgogne to those back in New Zealand. Although, surely, that is the fate of the wanderer. I find myself always layering memories of places I've lived or visited over where ever I am in the now. Looking for some kind of 'fit' or familarity.
Some mornings I wake up in Antwerp and I smell that particular smell, that heavy-traffic pollution smell, first discovered in Los Angeles, a familiar scent back in Istanbul and now, oftentimes, there it is in Antwerp.
Here in Bourgogne it is the geography ... the lay of the land. The vineyards that run as far as the eye can see, the hills, the lush fields. The air is good. And somehow the cloud formations make me imagine the coast or a huge lake is somewhere close by. It's big sky country where we are.
Chateaus and castles are everywhere. Sunday was spent wandering le Château de Cormatin. Rather exquisite it was ... no echoes of 'home'. It was particular and surely an example of 'someplace else'. Unimagined. Unknown.
Evenings, and I've been relaxing with a short tv series out of New Zealand, Top of the Lake. A Jane Campion creation. I'm hooked but find the storyline disturbing. However the scenery is so beautifully familiar. Two episodes to go ... Salon.com has promised a 'superb finale'. Let's see how that goes.
And now? Sunshine and Bourgogne are calling me.
Off and wandering.
