decorative

The lounge is a mess. The two couches are piled high with clothes (one is the summer couch, one the winter) and a heap of 'non-seasonal' clothes is in the middle of the floor. Scattered around these clothes are smaller clusters: footwear, toiletries, jewelery, books, gifts, electrical things... and 'decorations.' Yes, I'm packing for Toronto and yes, I have a separate category for things that will make my new place feel like home. Photos, fabric, ornaments, spunky nz themed teatowels, a door cover from near my sister's late-90s home in Japan, poi, an embroidered kowhaiwhai stitched by Nana many years ago, a sticker declaring in Maori a 'smokefree house,' a few magnets, and a cream coloured wreath which Mum made for me while she and my sisteen year old self sat with Grandad's elder sister Martha shortly before Aunty Martha passed away...

These are the things that remind me who I am. Not because of their material worth (I suspect most of them would be on a 50c stall at a garage sale) but because of the people I associate with them.

I've always puzzled over my very global, somewhat jetsetting and perhaps even transitory life, because I know myself best as a bit of a home girl. I love fixing up the place I live so it feels like a good place to be, and in the twelve (yes, I just counted them) places I've lived since moving out of Mum and Dad's place I inevitably unpack and sort out the decorations before turning my attention to clothes and other practical items. I always assumed I'd spend a life in New Zealand with a man and some kids and the same house for much of my adult life, and yet since I was 19 the longest I've lived in the same house is 2 1/2 years (a record which is only partially accurate, because I spent a year in Honolulu between the first two year stint and the last 6 months)

Because I'm moving to Toronto for ten months rather than permanently, and because I need to fit everything into a small number of  bags for the flight, I find myself paring things down: daring myself to remove trasured things from the pile, almost always replacing them quickly with something else I've just remembered. Also, everything has to be fairly unbreakable; surely the thing worse than not having a loved object nearby is unwrapping a collection of shards or pieces which used to bring joy when they were together.

The cream coloured wreath, which reminds me of Aunty Martha but also of those last years of being 'at home' before venturing out, and which Mum made while I sat in the December sun reading Alice Walker's profound novel The Temple of My Familiar, has hung in every bedroom window since then. Yep, in Otara, Mt Wellington, Kingsland, Sandringham, Glen Innes, Downtown Ithaca, Fall Creek, Honolulu, Waiwhetu, Alicetown, Marsfield and Epuni, the wreath has welcomed mornings and evenings on my behalf, tapping at the glass when there's a breeze and hanging quietly through all manner of personal seasons.

As I packed my 'decorative' items this evening, Mum reminded me to go and get the 'Aunty Martha wreath' which was still hanging in the window here in Epuni. I've brought it down, and it will be gently washed and careful dried before being packed into the inside pocket of my carry-on wheelie bag. I'm also going to pack a drawing pin, not because I think they don't have drawing pins in Canada, but because exactly ten days from today, I will land in Toronto and the next morning I will make my way to my new whare.

My first night in my apartment will be hot because it's summertime and strange because I'll have new sounds to get used to hearing as I fall asleep. But it will also be familiar, because hanging in the window will be a small round twist of wire and stitched strips of fabric which remind me of the people and places I've known and been.