Memoir - Corpus

To Medicine via Paradise

7 December 2020 4 Comments

Rae Varcoe

“I’m going to be a nurse” had always been my answer to that perennial childhood question. It seemed to satisfy the questioner and happily deflected any further enquiry. When I was sixteen, five sturdy school friends organised a week’s trip, to a hut on the edge of Diamond Lake in Paradise Valley, near Glenorchy. To get there involved a bus trip from Dunedin to Queenstown, the Earnslaw Steamer to Glenorchy, a hitched ride to Paradise, then a walk. All this involved money, and I didn’t have any.

I needed a job for the preceding two weeks, preferably with lots of overtime. Just such a job appeared at Seacliff Mental Hospital, so I swapped my gym frock for a rigidly starched pink uniform, crowned by a board-stiff white cap and ventured into the Admissions Ward.

At 7am each day the six duty nurses stood around the oak desk in Sister’s office and read THE REPORT. Among other helpful nursing tips it offered a assessment of the mental condition of New Admissions. These individuals were invariably described as “pleasant and cooperative” or “sullen and resentful.” Most of the nurses would also fit the latter category.

Dr Smith of Rawene

7 December 2020 16 Comments

Jocelyn Harris

Dr G. M. Smith: “a cross between an Arab Chieftan and an Archbishop.”

Soon after the war, my intrepid mother Margot Wood (later Ross) set off on the long, dusty journey from Dunedin, in the south of New Zealand’s South Island, to the Hokianga, in the far north of the North Island, in her little Ford Anglia car. My father, Captain Win Wood, had died in Egypt, and medical student Janet Smith, daughter of Dr. Smith of Rawene, was then our boarder. She would prove a life-long friend to Margot and a second mother to me. We were both run-down and thin, so Janet recommended a holiday with her parents, George and Lucy Smith. George was the well-known Rawene-based doctor George Marshall McCall Smith (1882–1958), described by the poet A. R. D. Fairburn as “a cross between an Arab Chieftain and an Archbishop.” To a small child, he seemed almost as awe-inspiring as Tāne Mahuta, for he was a tall man-tree with fierce, penetrating blue eyes, big hooked nose, white eldritch locks, open-necked white shirt, loose flannel jacket and trousers, flapping oilskin coat, old grey felt hat with a sagging brim, Roman sandals, and curved Cherrywood pipe. He and Lucy immediately set about stuffing us with fresh eggs, cream, and butter. Alas, I’ve never looked back.

I remember waka racing on the harbour, and Māori children, blinded in a measles outbreak, singing in a choir. Rooms opening off the verandah were filled with flowers; sofas were strewn with books and journals; paintings by Olivia Spencer-Bowers and Eric Lee-Smith hung on the walls. We began to heal.

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The Suitcases (Part Two)

7 December 2020 7 Comments

Lynn Jenner

This is Part Two of “The Suitcases.” Part One can be read here.

My mother’s name was Lesley Jenner. She brought me up to call her Lesley, because she said she was a person, not just a mother. From her late eighties Lesley had dementia. Not long before Lesley died, she drew a map and gave it to a caregiver. Lesley had put the words ‘Rest Home’ on the map, and somewhere above that and to the right, sitting all by itself in the sky, like Jerusalem on a mediaeval map, was the house where she grew up, neatly labelled ‘6 Highcliff Road.’ There was a loop to indicate the Ross’s Corner tram terminus and two sentences written in pencil. One said, ‘Can you help me find my mother?’ and the other said ‘My parents are not well off.’ The fact that Lesley had organised a pencil and paper, written this plea for help and given it to a staff member spoke of her desperation. The accuracy of the map was proof of the islands of memory and logic Lesley still had inside her.

When I visited her in the rest home, Lesley never wanted me to leave. She never said, “Don’t go.” She would just look at me like an animal in a trap, and I knew what she meant. When her tea-time approached, or when the sun was setting, or when I just couldn’t stand being there any longer, I would tell her I had to pick up my partner from the train and Lesley would nod, because a man needing his dinner trumps everything in the lives of women. Lesley would watch me as I walked out. In the car I would sanitise my hands and look at the sun setting over the sea. I would try to breathe normally, and I would drive to the railway station where I would sit in the car until my partner’s train arrived. Sometimes that was an hour.

Friends in high places

8 June 2020 6 Comments

Margaret Austin

Something most of us get told early on in life is that the really influential, important people in the world are ones like politicians, policemen, professors, preachers, pontificators – the ones who make a lot of noise, a lot of money, a big impact and get the most publicity. They’re the ones who affect us most, evidently, make a difference to us, govern us, tell us what to do, keep us in order, advise us, even get us jobs … that sort of thing. But my experience tells me something different. My experience tells me that the most significant and influential people in one’s life are not the ones mentioned above, but quite different ones. I call them friends in high places. As a matter of fact, I often found them in very low places!

On my OE during the ’70s and ’80s of last century, new to Amsterdam, I got a job (illegal) as a breakfast waitress in a seedy little hotel on one of the canals. On my first day, shouted at by an irascible Dutch boss, hassled by diners, and struggling with unfamiliar tasks, I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the dishwasher, who was apparently always late. In walked a personage who was to effectively change the course of my life. He was a black American of extraordinary grace whose way of dealing with the dishes clearly demonstrated that he was no more a dishwasher than I was a waitress. When I eventually plucked up the courage to ask him what his day job was, I learned that he was a dancer.

Lost in time: some thoughts on gardening

11 May 2020 6 Comments

Gwynnedd Somerville

Over the last few weeks I have spent many hours locked down in my garden. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to do those tasks I usually avoid: clearing paths of aluminium weed, thinning banks of Renga Renga, digging out invasive anemone japonica. This rather ruthless gardening has been modulated by planting bulbs and weeding around the delicate autumn crocuses which have just started to appear. I often find myself starting one task and ending up doing another, responding to whatever takes my eye. As a result the vegetable garden remains luxuriant with weeds.

Working in the garden is a great place to ruminate about life. Recently, I found myself thinking about my maternal forebears, especially the story of my great-grandmother, whose life has always been a mystery to our family. Delving into the records of her life has helped make other family members more robust – a case of history illuminating the path ahead. I’ve been thinking, in particular, about her son, my grandfather Richard Victor McGarrigle. He was a great amateur gardener. He believed in order and routine as a basic principle, and would never have had a weed in his vegetable garden. I learnt gardening at his knee. Now I wonder about what his garden meant to him, and where his meticulous devotion to the daily tasks of looking after his plants sprung from. What were his thoughts while gardening?

“Will I walk again?”

2 December 2019 4 Comments

Brian Bourke

In the summer of 2005 I was visiting my sisters in my home town. After Mass a woman approached, put her arms around me and said, “Brian you are still alive. You were such a lovely boy”. My wife was standing nearby with a puzzled look on her face. It was not every day that strange women put their arms around her husband. That woman was Monica. Monica had nursed me one-on-one when I was fourteen and they thought I was going to die from polio. It was 49 years since Monica had last stood beside me. In 1956, Monica was twenty, and in charge of the isolation ward of the Ashburton hospital. I only ever saw her in a long white gown, rubber gloves and a white mask. She had beautiful blue eyes and wore rimless glasses. Her quiet voice encouraged me to eat and she held on to me when I went to the toilet. I needed her help to get sitting to standing, and because I could not stand she held me during the entire operation.

She was patient with me as the paralysis took hold and was never cross with me when I fell out of bed. I felt the comfort of her arm around me when I cried, and I cried often. In the middle of the night she would shine her torch on me and ask if I was all right. Did I need a drink? Time and again I asked her, “Will I ever be able to run again?” She replied quietly, “We will see, Brian.” Even in the early stages of having polio, I knew that nothing would be the same again. Monica’s reply told me so.

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