Stories: Love
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"...I tried to remember Hohepa's words about the nature of love - or aroha. 'It does not have one meaning,' he had said, 'but many. It cannot be considered by itself in isolation. It has to be associated with other words like awhinatanga, to support, and manaakitanga, to offer hospitality, and whanaungatanga, to honour kinship. When all its qualities are observed, they ensure that we are the in the right relationship with each other and with our world.' "
(W. Ihimaera, The Towenna Sea, p. 464)
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Back in NZ from the US and I love being home, catching up with friends and family, eating great food, and hanging at Te Arai Beach.
R and I met 2 years ago and have been married for 1 and even in that short time I know I am with the love of my life - it took long enough to find him. We have had one of the roughest years newly marrieds could go through, losing 6 babies to miscarriage in 14 months. Our love has changed and deepened as we rode this roller coaster of hope and then the crashing disappointment and grief when we lose another baby. The grief could have ripped us apart, but instead we ripened into a different love - I am glad in some ways that we are older. I'm not sure that we would have handled it otherwise, especially as there is nothing to 'fix', no reason found for the losses.
We of course still have lots of time that the earlier love shines through, that's why we're good at making the babies, just not good at keeping them.
And of course I love my family for still hoping for us and being happy and then disappointed with us.
And then there is the love that I feel for the little olive or peanut that grows inside me for only a month, two months or three, before leaving. How they have changed my life, and how I miss them so.
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Oh Sarah, I am so sorry that the last year or so has been so rough for you. So so sad for all of you.
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Thanks Jackie - you do have those years don't you! You certainly know looking at your story. We have survived, and I love it that we are optimistic, happy people in general. It helps a lot to get through.
Certainly had some lessons about love this year! Roll on 2010 :)
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Oh, Sarah. I know... one-sixth... of how you feel, and I'm very sorry.
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Ow, Danielle, please don't say thats recent.
No, two years ago. It was pretty high on the Not Fun scale.
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Can I just say that if the Copyright thread was 50 pages (give or take 10 or so) long, then a thread about love should be five times that long?
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Percale, my dear.
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Just keeping the thread alive, as per earlier instructions.
Sarah it took 5 years*, but we now have three, and it was all worth it.
On the love theme, this drying puddle at Muriwai today was shot as you see it.
Arohanui & Happy New Year.
*Unintentional David Bowie reference. Noted, and moving on...
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Stephen, it is always great to apologise to someone when you really mean it.
Love eh, well I am feeling profoundly thankful to my flatmate, friends and family who have put up with my unemployed self after I was made redundant. When I moved into my flat my flatmate knew I had been made redundant and didn't hold my non-earning status against me. No doubt she (nor I) had no idea how long it was going to take for me to find permanent work. She has been an absolute balm to my injured pride and a stoic companion on the breadline (she is a musician on a low income).
An ex-colleague paid for me to fly to Auckland for my mothers 50th and refused to be paid back. Another friend flew me to Auckland for a mental health holiday when she could sense I was truly distressed.
I got the news that I had scored a (great) job on Christmas Eve.
The foodbank is going to get regular donations from me and Paula (beneficiary basher) Bennett can kiss my arse.
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That's the spirit
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Also, I think showing love to people takes persistence, people often push you away and wont tell you what they need. I know I have failed at paying attention and persisting sometimes this year. So I am going to aim to pay attention to what people need and ask for what I need as directly as I can.
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E hoa ma - to all at PAS- ka mihi nunui, ka mihi koa ki a tatou katoa. (Yep- even the irritating posters :)
Russell & whanau, and all the PAS columnists - thank you so much for an invigorating site in a deadening year. All best to us all in 2010-
mihi aroha-
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Accidents will happen. I forwarded an email to my son as I thought that he would want news of the adventures of his mother and sister in Japan--forgetting that there were earlier messages below, where I voiced disappointments about some of his behaviour (the lack of moments of gratitude which parents seek from their children). Anyway, it mean't that we then had a long and honest telephone conversation, that got a bit emotional.
Hope you all have a good evening to see out 2009. I have greatly enjoyed PAS this year and it has given me the kind of intellectual pleasure I don't always find in the academic circles I move in.
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I don't think I ever apologized to you Danielle, for that time I got really grumpy at you. So, I apologize, belatedly.
No problemo! (Although: I don't remember you being particularly grumpy at me. I blame the demon weed. My brain is full of holes.)
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Thanks for a good year PA and what Islander said (her trade is words after all)
2010
I hope to explore both the West Coast and later on France after my son's wedding -
i love the skin i'm in and hope y'all feel the same about your good selves...
...if not, then gwarn wit ya bad selves:)
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A couple of weeks ago I had a teeny black dot removed from my arm. Yesterday I heard that it was a - fortunately early caught - melanoma. A good reminder that life can bite at any time. However, such encounters can be galvanising and it started me thinking about what it is that I really value (apart from family, friends etc).
Above all I think it is the free will that we humans have, along with freedom of thought, and in NZ we also have significant freedom of speech. Of course, circumstances may severely constrain some life choices (eg incarceration or slavery), but we still have freedom to think and react (or, to hope and dream and act).
Freedom of speech means that I hope to be brave enough to speak up when I see injustice. Or just when someone needs support.
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@ Sarah H, Danielle - I'm so sorry.
I met two lovely women today, IRL, for the first time. Julie Fairey, who comments here occasionally, and writes at The Hand Mirror, who is interesting and insightful, and bloody hell, why do I have to fly back to Adelaide tomorrow when I would far rather stay here. And the gorgeous Jackie Clark. Funny, golden heart, big smile, possessed of vices and virtues that I admire enormously. You should all try to meet her. Now, if possible.
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As for the people I love - my husband of nearly 20 years, through plenty of ups and downs, and my mum and dad and one exceedingly cool uncle. A few nights ago we all had dinner together - the first time I have had all my very favouritest people in the same room for about five or six years, I think. It was a special evening for me.
And then there's my beautiful daughters. For many years, as we battled our way through infertility, Christmas was very hard for me, as yet again sang masses of carols about a new baby, and still my arms were empty. The hardest of all was the one when we had just had our first cycle of fertility treatment, and a couple of days before Christmas, we found it had failed. I drowned my sorrows that year. But then a month or so later, we found that at last we had been lucky, and in October that year, we held our darling daughter in our arms. She was, and is, so beautiful.
It took us a little longer to get pregnant the second time around - seven cycles of despair, and we were on the point of giving up. One more trip down to the clinic in Wellington, and then waiting, waiting, waiting, thinking that if this cucle failed, there would be only one more. But it didn't fail. We didn't talk about it for a few days, until eventually, we got up the courage to do the test. My doctor sent us off for a very early scan, given all the drugs I had been on (wretched things, and when I was on them, yo-yos looked stable in comparison to me), and to my delight, we found that we were expecting twins. How lucky can you be?
Eleven and eight years later, my beautiful daughters still fill me with wonder and delight, and my heart still does a funny squeezy thing when I see them after I, or they, have been away for a day or two. Six in the morning on Saturdays... not so much of the squeeziness, but I love them dearly all the same. They make my heart sing.
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We love Sacha. He knows the meaning of Lapjrooaaig.
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Tis the seasojn for giving and for partaking..
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Thanks to those who have written about fertility and that intense and sometimes thwarted desire for children. Several years ago I interviewed some women from my mother's generation. Some revealed miscarriages and even stillbirths that they had never talked about, even to their closest friends. Others mentioned (mainly young) women whose pregnancies were hidden and the babies secretly adopted out. They were all supposed to just get over it. Never any chance to grieve.
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The love thread is languishing. Sad, when we need love more than ever, especially as a basis for public policy.
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