1Listening to the Wisdom of Our Elders
Listen to your elders’ advice not because they are always right, but because they have more experiences of being wrong.
Girly. He called me “Girly.” He was my great-grandfather and he taught me how to listen. Not just to him or other humans, but to the sounds around us: animals, birds, machines—or just nothing. Sometimes in life there can be nothing sweeter than the sound of silence. If you let it in, you might just find yourself centered, rested, comfortable in who you are and where you are in the moment, time, and place. For some this is called meditation; in more recent times, mindfulness.
I grew up in rural New Zealand surrounded by family. This could be both good and bad, but it was my reality, my upbringing, it was all I knew. My great-grandparents lived two orchards away from the home I shared with my parents and four brothers. I was the second-born, two years and two days after my oldest brother. The three boys that followed I considered an annoyance to be ignored. Pirongia, the place where I lived, cannot be called a town, not even a village. The mountain the area was named after ruled over us, its slopes, forest, rivers, and streams my backyard. It is where I would escape to, often with my oldest brother. The area was dairy country, cows ruled our lives. The twice-daily milking, calving, everything bovine, was part of our DNA. They remain my favorite animal. Self-sufficient in all food groups, what we didn’t grow, a neighbor did, and we exchanged produce. We also exchanged labor with our neighbors. Some of my fondest memories are being at a neighbor’s house as my father, along with the other local men, got together to bale hay, plant—in general, help out where needed.
Years later, when I watched the movie Witness, a story set among the Amish people in the US, I flashed back to my childhood. It was the same. Neighbor helping neighbor, minus any religious affiliations. I never minded every school holiday being packed off to a relative to help work their farm. I had an uncle and aunt who lived about two hours away, ran a sheep station and had five daughters. Here, gender meant nothing, as we girls pulled our weight with the men. Riding horses, we rounded up sheep spread over thousands of acres, ushered them into the race to be “dipped” in (dunking them in insecticides), then into the pens to be shorn.
My other escape was school. With only four classrooms and fewer than fifty students covering Years 1–6, my friends were limited, gender played no part in who you befriended. With the majority of children coming and going from school by bus, playing with friends after school was not an option. My brothers and I walked to school; no bus came our way. The joy of walking in winter, when the puddles alongside the poorly made road were covered in ice, gave me immense pleasure. I’d use the heel of my shoe to shatter the ice, often meaning I’d then spend the rest of the day in wet shoes and socks.
Men were men. Women were, well, women, but not the kind of woman I intended to be. There is nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mother and homemaker if that’s what you want to do. However, in the 1950s and ’60s, women like my mother, my aunties, and other local women I knew only ever complained about their lot in life. They envied their men, though I don’t know why—they worked all hours of the day and night and seemed as sad and unfulfilled as the women. The only difference I recall was that the men didn’t bother complaining. I need to repeat: I was living in rural New Zealand—I cannot say how it was for the Kiwi women in large towns and cities.
I am so proud of New Zealand. From being the first country in the world to give women the vote, it has had three female prime ministers since 1997, which is a superb achievement. Dame Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark led the way to the current incumbent, Jacinda Ardern. Jacinda embodies everything needed in a leader, particularly at this point in time when we are all living under the pandemic, COVID-19. Her compassion, her empathy, and the way she listens to the people of her country makes her the envy of many other nations: she is seen, she is heard, she listens.
Children should be seen and not heard. This was the backstory to my childhood. Except for one person, my great-grandfather. Sadly, on reflection, no other family member wanted to hear from us children and certainly didn’t want to listen to anything we might have to say; they never took much time to speak to us, certainly not at the level of imparting advice or wisdom. Except for my great-grandfather—and if you could get him on his own and he was in the mood, occasionally my quiet, thoughtful father as well.
Then there was my mother. I am told all mother/daughter relationships are complicated. Mine, I would describe as practically nonexistent. Other than to tell me to do something, she seldom spoke to me. Affection was absent, and I balked at being told to clean up after my brothers, make their school lunches. Do the domestic chores and do them without complaining. She followed in the footsteps of her mother and my widowed grandmother, who lived directly across a small road from us. Cousins, uncles, and aunties also lived not too far away. Extended family scattered in the small village.
From the age of about ten, I was instructed to stop off at my great-grandparents’ house on my way home from school to see if there was anything they needed. My mother would have already been over and left them their evening meal to be heated up. I always found my great-grandmother inside, either pottering in the kitchen, or later, as her health deteriorated, in bed. She never had much to say to me. She looked at me with an expression of pity, a look I also received from my grandmother and mother. I was a girl. My mother had told me many times she was sorry she had me, that being a girl I was doomed to a life of hard work, limited freedom. My brothers were the lucky ones and would have the world to explore, choices where I had none.
As a teenager, I recall my mother making comments about one or two local boys she thought I should spend more time with. I didn’t understand what she meant—I saw them as much as I wanted to. They were OK to spend time with one day, but I wanted nothing to do with them the next. On one occasion, she told me I was having dinner at a neighbor’s place. We never went out to dinner. Occasionally, when the men were working on a neighbor’s farm, as families we would gather there and share a meal, but to be told I was going to dinner, alone, was unheard of. When I asked her why, I was told it was so I could spend some time with one of their sons and get to know the family better. I had known them all my life, what more was there to know? But I was told I was going and that was that. I confided in my older brother, who was a close friend of the boy, asking him what he knew. Never one to hold back, he told me our mothers had considered we should get together; it would be a good fit for our families if we married. So I did as I was told, and went to dinner with the boy’s family. His mother was a better cook than mine.
But within a year, as soon as I had saved enough money, I fled to Australia. I was not quite eighteen. Until I subsequently married and produced a grandchild, my mother did not feature in my life. It helped that I was in another country. Even after I produced two more grandchildren, gained a university degree as a mature student, and got a good job, she still wrote to me as Mrs. (my husband’s first name) Morris. No emotional or personal conversations ever took place. In retrospect, I know how lucky I was to have one person in my life as a young girl who talked to me: Gramps, my great-grandfather.
Regardless of the weather, I would find Gramps sitting on the back veranda in a big comfy armchair put there just for him, a small stool for his feet to rest on in front of him. Next to him was Grandma’s chair, though I rarely saw her sitting in it—perhaps she did during the day when I was at school.
As I came out of the kitchen door onto the veranda, the slamming of the screen door would make him turn his head. You know, his face always lit up when he saw me and he would pat Grandma’s chair, which was my indication to sit. Minutes would pass before he spoke. We both looked down the backyard with its giant chestnut tree to the right, the vegetable garden to the left, the paddock with the “house cow” grazing next to it, the outbuildings, sheds, garage to the rear and the gate and path that I would take through two orchards to my home. Next to the chestnut tree, a prized persimmon tree threatened its neighbor for dominance. As the leaves changed color, heralding the end of summer, the fruit on the persimmon tree would reach its peak. A persimmon is only edible if picked to eat when it is so ripe, it is nearly rotten—otherwise it immediately removes all moisture from the mouth.
Now, persimmon was my great-grandmother’s favorite fruit and it was up to Gramps to ensure she got the lot. However, the local birdlife also rated the persimmons highly. At the appointed hour in the ripening of the fruit, Gramps would tie several pieces of rope to strategic branches, attaching a cowbell to each one. The other ends of the rope, running the length of the backyard some one hundred meters, were tied to the arm of his veranda chair. I can only presume he was required to sit there all day for several weeks as the battle for the persimmons was played out between him and the birds. As I sat with him after school, our conversation was peppered with the jangling of cowbells as he yanked on his end of the rope anytime a passing bird so much as slowed down. Often, he would ask me to pull on a particular rope and we would dissolve into giggles as I delayed the tug, letting the birds get close so they would scatter, having passed an unseen line in the sky. This was precision timing at its best. Can I add, no birds were harmed in our protection of the persimmons and I was in my happy place sitting with Gramps.
He was the only person who asked me, “How was school, was it worth going?” Often, I would reply, “No, learned nothing new today,” whether I had or not. I didn’t want to talk about my day, I was waiting to listen to whatever story he was going to tell me. But at the same time, I was always grateful that he asked, because it told me that he cared. I would sit still, hold my breath, and wait for him to start talking, for the magic to begin.
Copyright © 2020 by Heather Morris
