Tag: family

A new chapter…

NZtravel

A new chapter has begun in the Robertson household. It’s exciting, scary and sad all at the same time. Aonghas turned 18 last October, he passed NCEA Level 3 and has finished school. He is still at home, working as an out of school care assistant (OSCAR) for the YMCA after school hours, coaching his old secondary school 2nd XI hockey team and mostly, for the rest of the time, playing computer games.  Transition is a hard time. Frustrating, confusing, unsettled.  Well, it is for the parents, anyway. Not sure Aonghas is bothered! Lachlan is in his final year of university (hopefully), he is between houses so he is back at home. Living in my office, so I have decamped to the living room. The house and garage is full of ‘stuff’.  They are good kids, they will get there, wherever ‘there’ is, sometime.

Family of two sons, parents and aunty in a restaurant.
All ‘growed up’

Why is it exciting? Well, we are ‘free’ of being a taxi service now that driving licenses have been acquired, although our cars are still required … not sure how that happened! So we can get away for weekends, no need to ferry boys to sports matches, no need to stand freezing on the sidelines. We can plan our weekends around ourselves and our own needs. Our boys have exciting adventures ahead of them, when they work out what they are, that is. They have new life experiences to look forward to.

Why is it scary? So much unknown territory. We have been ‘four’ then ‘three’, now we are ‘two’ again. Time to rediscover ourselves, each other. Can we find ourselves again after years of our focus being on two boys and not ourselves? Scary too, that we don’t know where the boys are. How do we keep them safe? How did we ever keep them safe? Are they spending too much time on computer games? Are they drinking too much? Are they taking drugs? Are they driving too fast? Are they doing stupid stuff? Where do they go when they answer the question, “What did you do with your mates?’ with “Oh, just hanging out, doing stuff.’ ? Hell’s teeth – what is ‘stuff’? and where were you hanging out?

Now I know what/how my parents felt.

Why is it sad? There is a hole. A hole which was once filled with hugs and cuddles, and new experiences that were shared and enjoyed together, and conversations, and worry about friends and school, and laughter, and I am unsure that it can be filled again. I miss my boys. I miss the spontaneity that seems to have gone now they are older. There is a hole where there were football matches and hockey games and mountain biking and lawn bowls and squash.  And binge watching of Star Wars and Harry Potter. Oh, I know it filled our weekends, but now it’s not there, I miss it. I miss standing on the sideline cheering them on, chatting to other parents, being an embarrassing parent – “Mum, do you have to shout so loud!?” I miss watching ‘George of the Jungle’ for the umpteenth time. I miss the noise, I miss the excruciating pain of standing on the lego brick in barefeet, I miss the lego creations and the battlefields of monsters, soldiers, and strange creatures arranged across the living room.  I miss the bedtime reads, the treasure hunts,  the looking after, and  … well, I miss being ‘needed’.

I am not ‘needed’ anymore.

My boys are ‘all growed up’.  They are pretty much independent. So I am not needed, at least not in the way that I have been ‘needed’ for the last 23 years.

So, we have found a way to fill the hole.

white camper van parked by the beach. Sun is setting, sky is pinky orange in the background.
First evening in ‘Vera’. Kaikoura.

We have bought a camper van so we can escape whenever we feel like it. There are so many places to explore that we haven’t been to yet.  More time to rediscover who we are, in new places.

It’s only a wee thing, and it’s pretty old and battered. But it’s ours. She is ours. Vera is ours. Okay, the name is not fixed yet and Nigel isn’t convinced but I’m working on it! She came with a free panda – Pete the Panda. (Name courtesy of William!)  I bought her when I was in Christchurch for work and then parked her at a friend’s house for a few weeks until we could fly down and pick her up.  That was our first camper van adventure.

 

 

 

 

A flying visit

NZ

I am fighting the lethargy and fatigue of jetlag.  It is inevitable that I will fall asleep if I stop moving.  However, it is too early to go to bed or I will wake at some unearthly hour and not be able to regain the deliciousness of slumber…  So, I have decided to ramble about our whistle stop tour of the UK that is the cause (partly) of my state of exhaustedness!

Eighteen days is not enough. Never again will I attempt to fit a trip to the homeland in such a short length of time.  I should have learned from last year’s trip to Spain.  But I thought that the fact that I was studying, immersed in a foreign language was the main cause for my exhaustion then.  Wrong!  It is a causal factor, but the main reason is that two weeks is simply not enough time to travel across the time zones, regulate a body clock, visit as many people and places as possible and then fly back across the time zones and actually feel human. Add to that a twelve week term, with two camps and a full term of teaching and organising Teacher Professional Development…

Nevertheless, I am glad I went.  It was wonderful to see my beautiful sisters, my nieces, nephews, great nieces and lots of dear friends.  Some things and people never change – how refreshing!  Isn’t it amazing how we slip so easily back into friendships as if we had never been away?  We lament that we don’t keep in touch often enough, our lives are so busy, we have so much to do, the immediacy of our lives and the issues connected with them impede maintaining contact with those far away.  But once together, it is as if we had never been apart.  Yes, water has flowed beneath the bridge, but we are the same people with the same interests that bound us and bind us still.  We say that we will write more often, speak more often.  But we won’t.  The reality is that we know each other, we know that our friendships run deep and we will maintain contact ephemerally if not tangibly.  We will pick up where we left off the next time we meet.

So where did we get to?  Our whistle stop tour took us to Olonzac in France, Ingleton & Kirkby Lonsdale in Cumbria, Harrogate in  North Yorkshire, Leeds in West Yorshire, Stanley in Newcastle, the Northumberland coast, and Edinburgh, Scotland.  How many people did we meet up with us? 41.

It was a trip full of nostalgia – visiting old haunts – fleetingly.  And a reminder of how bloody cold it is in Spring in the UK!  We really have acclimatised to NZ weather!

No more writing… here are some images to reflect ouir time away, the people we met and the things we saw.


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