It's nearly a new year at home, but it's still the old one here in Toronto tonite. I'm even closer to the moment when I will need to finalise and declare my reflections, joys and regrets about 2011 and my resolutions, commitments, goals and hopes for 2012.
Matiu, Megan, Dominique and I went to see the Muppets Movies today. It was awesome: I laughed, cried, was nervous, knew how it would end, was suprised, remembered things, got excited, had my memory jogged, sang along to bits...
A lot like 2011 really.
Hmmmm...
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Friday, 30 December 2011
snow
It snowed today... proper snow.
Megan, Dominique, Matiu and I all loved it... so fluffy and clean at this end of winter...
A good reminder that this isn't home, but at the same time it sparked memories of when this kind of climate was home for me too...
We were dreaming of a white Christmas, but it wasn't to be. It's still a winter wonderland though!
Megan, Dominique, Matiu and I all loved it... so fluffy and clean at this end of winter...
A good reminder that this isn't home, but at the same time it sparked memories of when this kind of climate was home for me too...
We were dreaming of a white Christmas, but it wasn't to be. It's still a winter wonderland though!
 |
| Matiu's first snowman |
Thursday, 29 December 2011
on the cusp
Today is halfway between Christmas and New Year. Between a chance to slow down, enjoy, celebrate, reflect on innocence and memories... and a chance to get excited, enjoy, reflect on future possibilities.
I'm quietly slow-cooking some resolutions, but for now...
Christmas was lovely at the Lyden-Elleray house, and followed by a sleepover and a slow and fun Boxing Day breakfast with bacon and latkes... then a streetcar ride home, a walk up Bloor to see the lights and window displays... and a day yesterday of lazing at home and going to the mall. Today I took Matiu and his wee friend Kingsley (Anne and Michelle's son) to the movies... we all ended up back at Anne and Michelle's for tea. Matiu is now sleeping soundly in bed, having had another two chapters of The BFG read aloud to him by his Auntie Lala (I loved the book when I was a kid, and gave it to him for Christmas). Megan and I are watching Notting Hill, one of our favourite crappy movies, and she's sleeping on the foldout couch tonite before heading off to pick up our friend Dominique who's flying in in the morning to spend New Years with us.
Sometimes being on the cusp is nervewracking... so many ways things could turn out, so many things unknown, so many risks. The past month has been full of suspense and things out of my control...
Tonite, the cusp feels different: I'm poised between here and there; then and now. Surrounded by family and friends, and hearing from family and friends in Aotearoa and other places around the world, right now I'm trying - mostly with success - to appreciate this cusp between 2011 and 2012, and all that came before and all that will come after.
I'm quietly slow-cooking some resolutions, but for now...
Christmas was lovely at the Lyden-Elleray house, and followed by a sleepover and a slow and fun Boxing Day breakfast with bacon and latkes... then a streetcar ride home, a walk up Bloor to see the lights and window displays... and a day yesterday of lazing at home and going to the mall. Today I took Matiu and his wee friend Kingsley (Anne and Michelle's son) to the movies... we all ended up back at Anne and Michelle's for tea. Matiu is now sleeping soundly in bed, having had another two chapters of The BFG read aloud to him by his Auntie Lala (I loved the book when I was a kid, and gave it to him for Christmas). Megan and I are watching Notting Hill, one of our favourite crappy movies, and she's sleeping on the foldout couch tonite before heading off to pick up our friend Dominique who's flying in in the morning to spend New Years with us.
Sometimes being on the cusp is nervewracking... so many ways things could turn out, so many things unknown, so many risks. The past month has been full of suspense and things out of my control...
Tonite, the cusp feels different: I'm poised between here and there; then and now. Surrounded by family and friends, and hearing from family and friends in Aotearoa and other places around the world, right now I'm trying - mostly with success - to appreciate this cusp between 2011 and 2012, and all that came before and all that will come after.
Sunday, 25 December 2011
christmas eve
A small party at my house tonite: Megan, Matiu and me; the Lyden-Elleray family, including Auntie Cathy; and Bridget and Sarah my Toronto friends. Kids decorating gingerbread houses, Christmas-themed charades, nachos with lurid red and green 'Holiday' corn chips, a few prezzies from home, so much delicious sweet kai, hot chocolate with peppermint sticks, and good times.
Matiu is knocked out in bed, and Megan and I have finished packing up after the party. The Christmas iTunes playlist continues to quietly keep us enveloped in the festive mood, on nonstop shuffle, and will do until I close this laptop in a few minutes.
We're in it: this is it; this is Christmas.
After a time of preparation - Advent - this is finally the real thing. The season of getting ready has given way to the actual celebration. Before we rush on to regret already the too-soon passing of this time together, let me spend time enjoying and appreciating every part of it...
Of course I'm thinking about home, and whanau around the world, and friends elsewhere... for Lauren and Jed, this is the first - and much hoped for - first Christmas with Holden and Alex... for us, the first Christmas without Grandad. People are travelling, visiting, hosting, standing still. People are spending time with people, missing other people, feeling deeply satisfied, feeling deeply lonely. So many family memories: Halcombe, singing at the 'Upper Hutts' when Megan and I were the first kids of our generation, waking up on warm early-summer mornings, elaborate table decorations, church, church, church, more singing, lots of good kai, returning home to the smell of a Christmas tree that's been drying out and filling the air with its aroma in a warm house in Auckland, Christmas dinner leftovers at the Te Punga cousins picnics... so many more... some that Matiu will share, and others he won't experience... but one day when he's an old man he'll tell people about his few dim memories of his six-year-old Christmas in Canada.
This is it. Christmas.
Matiu is knocked out in bed, and Megan and I have finished packing up after the party. The Christmas iTunes playlist continues to quietly keep us enveloped in the festive mood, on nonstop shuffle, and will do until I close this laptop in a few minutes.
We're in it: this is it; this is Christmas.
After a time of preparation - Advent - this is finally the real thing. The season of getting ready has given way to the actual celebration. Before we rush on to regret already the too-soon passing of this time together, let me spend time enjoying and appreciating every part of it...
Of course I'm thinking about home, and whanau around the world, and friends elsewhere... for Lauren and Jed, this is the first - and much hoped for - first Christmas with Holden and Alex... for us, the first Christmas without Grandad. People are travelling, visiting, hosting, standing still. People are spending time with people, missing other people, feeling deeply satisfied, feeling deeply lonely. So many family memories: Halcombe, singing at the 'Upper Hutts' when Megan and I were the first kids of our generation, waking up on warm early-summer mornings, elaborate table decorations, church, church, church, more singing, lots of good kai, returning home to the smell of a Christmas tree that's been drying out and filling the air with its aroma in a warm house in Auckland, Christmas dinner leftovers at the Te Punga cousins picnics... so many more... some that Matiu will share, and others he won't experience... but one day when he's an old man he'll tell people about his few dim memories of his six-year-old Christmas in Canada.
This is it. Christmas.
Saturday, 24 December 2011
in more than one place at once...
I'm home. Well, I'm in my apartment in Toronto... and Megan and Matiu are in the next room; last nite we got back to Canada after spending time in NYC and Ithaca. My closest whanau are enjoying a long Christmas Eve celebration in Hamilton at my cousin's place. Earlier this evening we skyped with them, and they stood around holding bottles of beer, wearing short sleeves, grinning at the camera; here, it's -7 degrees and we don't even start Christmas Eve celebrations until tomorrow evening.
Ever since I moved to the States in 2000, living 'here' has always been about not being 'there.' Christmases are about time with various people, but also time without others. My first US Christmas was in Rochester with my friend Dorollo's family; my second was (oh no! I can't remember!); my third was supposed to be with Jolisa and Richard in Ithaca but I was snowed in and ate the chocolate mousse I'd prepared to share while watching back to back episodes of 'changing rooms' on TV; my fourth I was home on a research trip, and preparing my eventual return to NZ; and my fifth was with Anne & Michelle and their kids, who we'll join on Christmas Day this year, as well as Alyssa who spent Monday with us in NYC, and the lovely Johnson who'd travelled from Hawai'i to share Christmas before I moved home.
Tonite, about to embark on another 'away' Christmas, I am deeply grateful for Megan and Matiu sharing 'here' with me, and at the same time I find myself thinking about people in other places: family and friends, yes, but also people I don't know. Christchurch. West Papua. Attawapiskat. The Philippines. And so many more... Surely these places, these people, are the reason for the season.
Ever since I moved to the States in 2000, living 'here' has always been about not being 'there.' Christmases are about time with various people, but also time without others. My first US Christmas was in Rochester with my friend Dorollo's family; my second was (oh no! I can't remember!); my third was supposed to be with Jolisa and Richard in Ithaca but I was snowed in and ate the chocolate mousse I'd prepared to share while watching back to back episodes of 'changing rooms' on TV; my fourth I was home on a research trip, and preparing my eventual return to NZ; and my fifth was with Anne & Michelle and their kids, who we'll join on Christmas Day this year, as well as Alyssa who spent Monday with us in NYC, and the lovely Johnson who'd travelled from Hawai'i to share Christmas before I moved home.
Tonite, about to embark on another 'away' Christmas, I am deeply grateful for Megan and Matiu sharing 'here' with me, and at the same time I find myself thinking about people in other places: family and friends, yes, but also people I don't know. Christchurch. West Papua. Attawapiskat. The Philippines. And so many more... Surely these places, these people, are the reason for the season.
Sunday, 18 December 2011
'twas the night before the arrival...
A few hours ago, Megan texted from the Tokyo airport departure lounge. She and Matiu are flying to New York City via Heathrow, and soon I'll drive down to meet them there.
This is my last nite in a one-person apartment until the end of January... once we return to Toronto on Thursday it will be a three-person apartment! There's expectation, hope, excitement in the air :)
********
Am not sure how often I'll be able to blog over the new couple of days, while I pick them up from NYC and we return to Toronto, taking our time along the way. Will try - or else will provide a good update once I'm back. In, yes, an apartment for three! :)
This is my last nite in a one-person apartment until the end of January... once we return to Toronto on Thursday it will be a three-person apartment! There's expectation, hope, excitement in the air :)
********
Am not sure how often I'll be able to blog over the new couple of days, while I pick them up from NYC and we return to Toronto, taking our time along the way. Will try - or else will provide a good update once I'm back. In, yes, an apartment for three! :)
Saturday, 17 December 2011
the finishing of things
It's the 17th of December... yes, this is Friday's post... but you know how I'm the late-nite girl who rarely posts during the time alloted for the day by her calendar. Four months ago, on the 17th of August, I left Aotearoa, and arrived in Toronto... after four months of being in Canada, things are still fresh and new and exciting... but all things are ultimately governed by seasons, and for some things the season is ending.
People are saying goodbye to people... I know of several people who are farewelling loved ones who have passed away.
Mum and Dad are spending this weekend packing up the house in Epuni... yes, next week the house I moved into halfway through 2009 when I got back from three months in Sydney, will finally be vacated and left for another family to enjoy.
Megan and Matiu are on an amazing trip around the world on their way here, and they only have one more day left in Japan with the host family she lived with twenty years ago. They've been having an amazing time, and Matiu has been having a ball, and Megan has been connecting, and soon it will be time to say goodbye.
People in the US and Canada who teach at universities have been busily grading essays and exams all week, after finishing classes and saying goodbye to students. The feeling of finishing marking is always bittersweet: the grading is never something to look forward to - it always feels like such a task - but as you enter the grades and see the outcome of the work you and your students have put in over the past semester you suddenly realise how lovely they were; how smart, how fun, how engaged... you realise that, because teaching is about giving of yourself, that you've left a part of yourself there too.
Christmas and other holidays and celebrations are heating up... which involves the beginning of things, but also the finishing: getting to the end of the present wrapping; buying the food; making final decisions which cannot help but quietly close off possibilities... after weeks of pouring over magazines, I've finally chosen the cookie recipes we'll use when Megan and Matiu are here... the other contenders will have to be made by other people; that decision is done.
There are many things I'm supposed to be finishing, or saying goodbye to... the large list of things 'to do' is far longer than it should be right now. And so, I realise, I feel excited about the newness and thrill of New Year and having family around and Christmas and thinking about the future... but I'm weighed down by the things I regret, the things I'm embarassed to have not finished, the promises I've made and broken.
I never wanted to be one of these kinds of academics: someone who finds I always have about 27 hours worth of living to squeeze into the 24 we're all allotted; someone who misses deadlines, doesn't reply emails, isn't as prompt as I'd like with feedback for students, takes too long. I realise that this has implications for people beyond myself... there are flow-on effects of every incomplete task and I find myself feeling responsible for all manner of anguish and stress that I cause by not being as good at finishing things as I am at starting them.
I make resolutions, I read books about organisation, I take heart in what I do get accomplished, I make lists. These strategies all have variable effect... some days I'm pleased by what it happening and some days I feel awful giving in to my tired body and gonig to bed despite the things I haven't done.
It's okay, gentle reader, I'm not a complete mess about this... I have perspective on the situation... I don't need sympathy.
But. I do want to become as good a finisher as I am a starter.
It's not a resolution - it's too early in December for them! - but it's something for me to think about as I reflect that I am halfway through December, and the end of December is halfway through sabbatical. I am almost at the summit of te tau okioki... and maybe this is why the pack is starting to feel a bit too heavy. I've been loving the climb, but I brought a few too many things on the journey and I thought I would have dispensed with more of them by now.
So, rather than thinking that the upcoming trip to NYC to pick up Megan and Matiu, then Christmas, then a visit from Dominique and then New Year is a distraction, something that will torturously keep me away from the slow burning sense of panic about what's not yet done, I'll see it as a chance to put down the pack for a while, stretch my legs, reshuffle the pack a bit, look at how far I've climbed, appreciate the view from here, and get ready to enjoy the rest of the journey.
People are saying goodbye to people... I know of several people who are farewelling loved ones who have passed away.
Mum and Dad are spending this weekend packing up the house in Epuni... yes, next week the house I moved into halfway through 2009 when I got back from three months in Sydney, will finally be vacated and left for another family to enjoy.
Megan and Matiu are on an amazing trip around the world on their way here, and they only have one more day left in Japan with the host family she lived with twenty years ago. They've been having an amazing time, and Matiu has been having a ball, and Megan has been connecting, and soon it will be time to say goodbye.
People in the US and Canada who teach at universities have been busily grading essays and exams all week, after finishing classes and saying goodbye to students. The feeling of finishing marking is always bittersweet: the grading is never something to look forward to - it always feels like such a task - but as you enter the grades and see the outcome of the work you and your students have put in over the past semester you suddenly realise how lovely they were; how smart, how fun, how engaged... you realise that, because teaching is about giving of yourself, that you've left a part of yourself there too.
Christmas and other holidays and celebrations are heating up... which involves the beginning of things, but also the finishing: getting to the end of the present wrapping; buying the food; making final decisions which cannot help but quietly close off possibilities... after weeks of pouring over magazines, I've finally chosen the cookie recipes we'll use when Megan and Matiu are here... the other contenders will have to be made by other people; that decision is done.
There are many things I'm supposed to be finishing, or saying goodbye to... the large list of things 'to do' is far longer than it should be right now. And so, I realise, I feel excited about the newness and thrill of New Year and having family around and Christmas and thinking about the future... but I'm weighed down by the things I regret, the things I'm embarassed to have not finished, the promises I've made and broken.
I never wanted to be one of these kinds of academics: someone who finds I always have about 27 hours worth of living to squeeze into the 24 we're all allotted; someone who misses deadlines, doesn't reply emails, isn't as prompt as I'd like with feedback for students, takes too long. I realise that this has implications for people beyond myself... there are flow-on effects of every incomplete task and I find myself feeling responsible for all manner of anguish and stress that I cause by not being as good at finishing things as I am at starting them.
I make resolutions, I read books about organisation, I take heart in what I do get accomplished, I make lists. These strategies all have variable effect... some days I'm pleased by what it happening and some days I feel awful giving in to my tired body and gonig to bed despite the things I haven't done.
It's okay, gentle reader, I'm not a complete mess about this... I have perspective on the situation... I don't need sympathy.
But. I do want to become as good a finisher as I am a starter.
It's not a resolution - it's too early in December for them! - but it's something for me to think about as I reflect that I am halfway through December, and the end of December is halfway through sabbatical. I am almost at the summit of te tau okioki... and maybe this is why the pack is starting to feel a bit too heavy. I've been loving the climb, but I brought a few too many things on the journey and I thought I would have dispensed with more of them by now.
So, rather than thinking that the upcoming trip to NYC to pick up Megan and Matiu, then Christmas, then a visit from Dominique and then New Year is a distraction, something that will torturously keep me away from the slow burning sense of panic about what's not yet done, I'll see it as a chance to put down the pack for a while, stretch my legs, reshuffle the pack a bit, look at how far I've climbed, appreciate the view from here, and get ready to enjoy the rest of the journey.
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