From Hoha to Hikihiki

After I wrote the first part of our story and Felicia (Rob's mother) finally died as I finished it, we had no idea what to expect in the days after this long awaited event. We had hoped that we would feel relief and that the weight of control, shunning and betrayal would lift from our lives. 

And although we should have anticipated it, the difficult stuff did continue for some time as familial patterns metamorphosed and formed new constellations. In fact in the few days before Felicia died Rob experienced a sudden onset bout of renal colic, that came to nothing more, but was perturbing for us both as it was severe & most unusual for him. It's interesting that our kidneys hold our life force, our mauri, our essence. Rob began to feel better again after a few days & as we were sitting here in our living room in a meeting with Fungii, Wattie's present EHS, Rob received a txt from his brother Colin to say that his mother was dead. The following week there was a tummy bug, the week after that, right out of the blue, I managed to succombe to a phishing scam on facebook thinking that I was helping a trusted friend. In the event we lost 8 solid days of our lives scrabbling to save- well almost everything. I have totally lost my 15 year Facebook journey, memories, stories, knowledge and caring- erased in a callous move by a heartless creep of a hacker, on one ordinary day of life.

Somewhere in the overwhelming panic and swirl of this mess I realised that I needed to surrender to the process and see where it took us, trusting that we were being lead to safety as we went along. I didn't get my account back but there's come a huge relief as I have shed the weight and complication of too many gathered "friends" and connections. The intention was to cause mayhem, the outcome has been quite the opposite- a shoring up and consolidation, building trust, believing in ourselves, collaborating, expanding, gaining confidence and knowledge. And finally knowing that we've done enough to make ourselves safe again.

It was during this process that it dawned on me that hackers and those with narcissistic traits have a great deal in common, not so much the intelligence and psychology aspects, but neither party care, nor respect the sanctity of another's life- soul even. They truly believe that they can do whatever they like without the slightest twinge of conscience. There's an amorality about their actions and intentions that bleeds into blasphemy- entitlement, and 'you can't stop me mentality'. It's a game. Stain.

But still we have this life together- our sunshine vintage world, our authentic life. Our best, truest way of showing up in the world.

"Now, about that word authentic. It is related to the word author—and you can think of it as being the author of your own self. When you’re living your own reality, you become the sovereign of your own life. You know who you are, you speak what you believe. There’s a natural pride that goes with that:

This is who I am—take me or leave me...

To me, real power is about presence. It’s the energy of knowing that you are who you are, and therefore speaking and acting from your authentic self. It doesn’t matter what your work is—if you’re a teacher or a nurse or whatever; it is your presence that’s the power. It’s not power over anybody else. It’s just the expression of who you are."

- Marion Woodman

We got to here despite our stories and only because we found each other.

Living authentically means there's no room for cognitive dissonance and bullshit.

Slowly, slowly we've been shedding anything that hasn't fitted, worked or lined up with our sunshine vintage values.

I wonder if some things will remain unhealed in our lives, maybe there will always be broken, vulnerable parts of us that never quite settle, but I do know that our best shot at looking back and saying- yes, that was a good life- is doing it this way- the sunshine vintage way; all wrapped in hikihiki.

So what the heck is hikihiki?

Hikihiki

1. (verb) (-tia) to carry in the arms. To wrap someone in a blanket of love.

I envy Maori their anchorage, their whakapapa that can never be dissolved. It's like a beetroot stain, it never goes away. You can wander off, get lost, mess up, crash...but your Turangawaewae will always be there, waiting for you. You will never ever be turned away. There is always a place and your people to come home to.

It has not been so with our ancestry. We know who we are, but where do we belong? 

So when I stumbled upon "hikihiki" I knew we'd found the key to what was missing, lacking, needed.

The larger than life best expression of this concept is found in Ron (Maungarongo Te Kawa) from Woodville and his vibrantly colour story quilts. You can see them here. They are blankets of aroha (love) for a world that needs it.

And I think I have to put a photo of Ron in here as words just don't cut it.

Maungarongo (Ron) Te Kawa Photo: Seb Charles

"The only rule for his work is “that they have to be gorgeous.” 

“To show up in life, to be present, loving, unapologetically Māori and happy is a political statement,” writes Te Kawa. “It pokes its tongue out at the expectations of others.”

“When I look at our carvings from the old people,” he continues, “I see cheekiness, humour, rhythm, defiance, partying, loudness, matakite, cleverness, love, and abundance…

"I take all my mamae (pain), anger, and disappointment, and I transform that energy to make the most faithful, funny, dynamic, musical, and modern images of us that I can, using the discarded, unwanted fabrics of society. "

Pain, anger and disappointment all belong to the human condition, no matter what our origins, but to be wrapped in a 'blanket of love' soothes all ills.

I know I wrote at great length back here in the post Tell Your Story. And it was all said, it was written, it was complete...until just this last few weeks when I began to ask questions about Rob's grandparents- the ones that we had heard so very little about. Rob's father once told us that he couldn't remember his mother's name, nor the names of most of his siblings and I was incredulous- how could such a thing happen? He also failed to ever mention that he had a sister called Catherine- also Catherine Reeves (well she was Cathy actually). And yet an urgency grew as a few photos surfaced and dates of birth and death and names of kin and a new voice asked to be heard- that of the Reeves ancestry. It's a strange thing the Mauri (essence) of a story rising, surfacing in to presence. It is said that a picture speaks a thousand words, but pictures also lie through their teeth. A picture does not inform you in any way of the true character of a person; the 'at home behind closed doors' nature of a family. However, the photos have helped to give hints of context to our story & fill in some gaps.

Where does a legacy begin? At what point can we say- well here's the couple that started it all?

If you think about it, ancestry is simply an ever widening cellular and energetic river- a flow of genes, quirks, preferences, gifts, DNA, crooked smiles, rogue genes, constitution, great love, not love, good fortune and utter random tragedy.

Rob's great, great grandfather John Reeves was born in 1825.

John Reeves and Julia (Davis, County Cork born in 1828) married- it's not known when.

John and Julia had a son Henry who was born in 1859. They had 6 children in all.

John died in 1881 at the age of 56 and Julia died at the age of 76.

Henry Reeves and Jane (Curtin, born in 1860) married on the 13th June 1881- the same year that John (above) died. Their marriage lasted 45 years. There is no record of Henry's death but Jane died in 1926 at the age of 66. This couple had 6 children, the second son being John Reeves born in 1885 (just to confuse us all).

John Reeves married Florence Umpleby on the 4th May in 1913.

The picture below has them all coming together The Reeves and the Umplebys.

Rob has colourised the photo through Ancestry to add a bit more life to the setting.

The Umpleby's (meaning from up in the village) are seated to the left and the Reeves to the right.

The following year war was declared and John (a labourer) aged 29, was called up to fight in the Great War- WW1. Florence gave birth to their first child Henry (Harry) on the 20th of February 1914 and she was then deserted by John for the sake of King and Country not knowing if her husband would ever return to her.

Although there had been a global embargo placed on the use of toxic gas back in 1885, both sides continued to use the dreadful stuff. John found himself gassed in the trenches and at some point returned home a damaged soul. Baby followed baby and life was pretty grim, lean and sorrowful for everyone, as their world was brutally, irrevocably changed forever. Trauma and overwhelm, too many mouths to feed (made worse through rationing) cptsd, permanent impairment of body and soul, the loss of children and of safety and dignity; was an appalling way to navigate married life. John filled to the brim with angst and other unassuaged emotions, it seems, turned to drink and violence. Three weeks after their 10th child (Rob's father) was born, John died at home from cardiac failure, and bronchitis and influenza on the 19th October at the age of 44. The same year Florence lost her father-Thomas (sweeper). Then came the Great Depression and then of course another world war.

John & his first son Harry probably 1915

Unpacking these stories has cultivated a deep compassion in our hearts for these people and all that they endured in such harsh times, with none of our modern comforts and social supports to call upon. Here in New Zealand ANZAC commemorations have become a part of our cultural recognition of these brutal times, where so many esteemed as heroes are honoured and remembered and thanked. Men like John Reeves did not die in the trenches or on the battlefield, they are not regarded as heroes, yet they too lost their lives in a more assiduous way, tortured by the ravages of war; marking their families and offspring profoundly as a consequence; yet also contributing to attaining our freedom, along with all others who signed up.

Rob's grandfather was quite possibly rendered unable to decently father his many children as he never recovered from these early life traumas. With his father's death overlapping his birth, Rob's father Roy found himself born in to a chaotic household infused with lardy grief and trauma and poverty.

So John and Florence had 10 children:

Henry (Harry) 1914-2005

John E 1916-1998

Florence 1919-1985

William (Bill) 1921-2005

Catherine 1922-1977

Donald 1924-1927

Joseph 1926-1927

Robert 1928 died the day he was born

Ronald 1928-1929

Roy 1929-2008

John Reeves died 19th October 1929, the eldest child was 15 and Rob's father, the youngest, was 3 weeks old at that time.

Florence took on Harry & his girlfriend Ivy's daughter June & brought her up as her own. Harry was 18 at the time. So Roy grew up with June. I wonder if he ever knew that she was his brother's child?

June 1932-2015

Lastly there was Joan, born late in life to Florence and the local butcher who she'd had a long term affair with.

Joan 1938-1987

John served in the British army from 1914~1920. I dare say the pay was better than the labouring work he had been doing.

What an horrific five years in their lives- losing 4 young children in such a short time and then going through yet another birth. I don't imagine anyone was too thrilled about Roy's arrival and he may not have been expected to live either, but he survived; albeit suffering particularly poor health throughout his life.

It's difficult to imagine coping with the death of 4 babies, your husband and your father, all in such a tight cluster, let alone facing the hormonal and physical turbulence of those 5 pregnancies.

John and Florence lived those 16 years together (apart from when John went to war) in London. After Roy was born and John had died the family eventually moved to 11 Windmill Lane, Ashurst Wood, East Grinstead.

We think that this may have been a family home (perhaps the Umplebys) as the same wall can be seen behind the bridal party.

Many years later here is Roy with June, Patsy (Felicia's mother, on the left) his own mother Florence, Roy and Rob- the boys sitting on the wall! There are very many brick walls in England so this may just be supposition on our part.

What was not made possible for John and Florence in their lifetime, is now a privilege offered to us - the choice and grace to live a "stirring-the-oatmeal love" kind of existence.

Let me explain here:

"Many years ago a wise friend gave me a name for human love. She called it "stirring-the-oatmeal" love. She was right: Within this phrase, if we will humble ourselves enough to look, is the very essence of what human love is, and it shows us the principal differences between human love and romance.

Stirring the oatmeal is a humble act-not exciting or thrilling. But it symbolizes a relatedness that brings love down to earth. It represents a willingness to share ordinary human life, to find meaning in the simple, unromantic tasks: earning a living, living within a budget, putting out the garbage, feeding the baby in the middle of the night. To "stir the oatmeal" means to find the relatedness, the value, even the beauty, in simple and ordinary things, not to eternally demand a cosmic drama, an entertainment, or an extraordinary intensity in everything.

Like the rice hulling of the Zen monks, the spinning wheel of Gandhi, the tent making of Saint Paul, it represents the discovery of the sacred in the midst of the humble and ordinary. Jung once said that feeling is a matter of the small. And in human love, we can see that it is true. The real relatedness between two people is experienced in the small tasks they do together: the quiet conversation when the day's upheavals are at rest, the soft word of understanding, the daily companionship, the encouragement offered in a difficult moment, the small gift when least expected, the spontaneous gesture of love.

When a couple are genuinely related to each other, they are willing to enter into the whole spectrum of human life together. They transform even the unexciting, difficult, and mundane things into a joyful and fulfilling component of life. By contrast, romantic love can only last so long as a couple are "high" on one another, so long as the money lasts and the entertainments are exciting. "Stirring the oatmeal" means that two people take their love off the airy level of exciting fantasy and convert it into earthy, practical immediacy. Love is content to do many things that ego is bored with. Love is willing to work with the other person's moods and unreasonableness. Love is willing to fix breakfast and balance the checkbook.

Love is willing to do these "oatmeal" things of life because it is related to a person, not a projection. Human love sees another person as an individual and makes an individualized relationship to him or her"

Robert Johnson

Illustration by Phoebe Wahl

www.teallach.com

That's all very well for us in this time in history to have been gifted a "stirring-the-oatmeal" love,

but it was clearly not that simple for those who came before us.

Life didn't get any easier in London after the war. What a mess! In the middle of all the turmoil Roy's three elder brothers, wondering what on earth to do with their lives, now that the toy factory that they had worked in was blown to smithereens, had an inspiration to head off to more promising shores, namely the prospect of a fresh start in South Africa; if only they could get there.

Once the idea ignited, Roy was invited to come along. He was 17 at the time and one day he decided yes, he'd go too.

Harry was in charge of the expedition that certainly took on grand proportions!

He later set about writing a book about their exploits that he entitled 'Sand in my Shoes'. Rob's brother Roy helped in the process of getting the book published. At that time we didn't want anything to do with the jolly book after all that we had been through with Rob's family and so never accepted a copy. However Rob's cousin Stuart passed on a pdf version that has remained unopened and unread a good long time. But now, the time had quietly arrived where we felt that we could open our hearts to this Reeves story. In fact last Wednesday we took a little picnic up in to the Old Napier Hill Cemetery and sat in the Lytch Gate house, drank elderflower fizzy and read aloud another chapter or two of the big adventure.

The boys didn't make it to South Africa but managed to stumble in to Kenya- alive. Roy found work with the railways. It was here in Nairobi while riding a bus that Roy met Felicia. They married in 1951. Both Rob and his brother Roy (Fred) were born in Nairobi. It's not surprising to learn that Roy's health was not at all robust (the child that no one expected to live) and he was to struggle with the ravages of degenerative spondylitis all his life. He spent a good deal of time seeking medical treatment back in London and also underwent tests to determine whether the disease could be passed on to his offspring, before they had any. Apparently not, however, his sons' teeth tell a familial story of deprivation and lack of nourishment. Weston A Price speaks about this generational nutritional lack and the impact of it here. It certainly didn't help when Roy, in a fit of rage hefted a wheelbarrow over his head and threw it out of the path of the car, on the last day of term when Rob was 6 years old. He broke his back and that was the end of the family holiday at Malindi.

It seems that there was an arrangement where the ex-pats would return to England for a holiday every three years. One of these visits saw the family visiting Florence when Rob was barely 2 years old as seen in the photo above. The stories tell that no one felt welcome back home, but as an outsider I'm not overly surprised, as all four boys had shot through on Florence all at once, she had endured so much grief and heartache, had found a little happiness for herself with the local butcher and then years later, with wives and children in tow the boys trickled home looking for support, connection, a welcome place to stay and open arms. I could understand why that didn't work out so well.

So Rob's family spent much of this 6 months on a farm and visiting bluebells in the woods!

It was never going to be a great plan after the war for hoards of Britons to swarm Kenya looking for free farms and new beginnings with all their smarty pants colonial attitudes. Felicia's mother Patsy married herself a free Frenchman by the name of Louie somewhere along the line and together with Patsy's three children they too set off to farm in Africa. We're not sure that this plan went too well as Patsy was no gardener and her children didn't like Louie who soon turned to drink. As the unrest grew at the time of the Mau mau uprising, the family packed up their belongings (Patsy included) and made their way to New Zealand; mainly by boat. They left without saying goodbye to Louie.

It's now four months today- the 9th November since Felicia died and we continue to see changes, small freedoms and shifts as the control of decades begins to lose it's grip on our lives. There are still nights, like this past Friday, when the nightmares and torment bear down on us and most days one or other or both of us feels sadness, melancholy, anger or a sense of dread and hopelessness in our bodies.

When I lost my facebook account and had to start again, one of the first things I came across in my new feed was a page called "Once upon an upset". Jessica's wisdom and insights have been a Godsend to us and just the medicine and guidance that we have needed at this time.

This excerpt from her book (Once upon an upset) was the first time that we felt truly heard and validated about what happened to us within our family context:

Oh and did I say what hoha is? Here's a good explanation:

"Be a koha not a hoha" means to be a "gift" or a positive contribution, rather than a "pain" or a burden; "koha" is a Maori word signifying a gift or donation, while "hoha" is not a standard Maori word but is used colloquially to mean something annoying or troublesome, essentially encouraging people to be helpful and considerate instead of causing problems." 

Hence our journey in life from from hoha to hikihiki.

Rob has spent some time connecting with folk from East Grinstead in a facebook group, some of them even remembering a few Reeves family members from back in the day. He was made very welcome.

Once we got to here everything went quiet. The story is at peace.

And as you can see below Ashurst Wood- where the family lived in the photo earlier in the post with the brick wall, is still a well wooded & lovely place to this day.