Sometimes words come easily, sometimes they don’t. This update was due last weekend, but the blocks of time I had set aside for it were consumed by other things, work and life spilling, as always, into the margins, and so on Saturday evening I sat for several hours when I got home struggling to gather my thoughts into something semi-coherent — typing, deleting, and starting over again, trying to find the thread of what I wanted to say, pushing forward, believing it was in reach, only to find myself tangled in knots once more, back where I started, always just a little more tired than before. Eventually I gave in and went to bed. I had been so proud of keeping to my schedule over the past couple of months, the disappointment cut keen. But then as ever: it hurts just as much as it is worth.
We are in a drought, at the moment, in Auckland. It doesn’t surprise me when I remember just a few months ago flying to Australia and back, looking out over long stretches of dry brown land, before the fires hit hard. In some ways that feels like a lifetime ago, so distant and disconnected from what has happened in between. Now the dams are low. On the way to work I see billboards announcing water restrictions. And yet it seems as though every day has been wet and stormy for weeks. Days are still getting darker, even as the solstice draws near. Winter is setting in.
I struggle with the seasons here still, in fact it is perhaps the one thing that triggers homesickness the most. I had not realised how much I lived my life rooted in weather and landscape until those things were turned on their head, quite literally inverted. Now every day I am vaguely aware of something inside of me searching for new hooks, new markers, new milestones. It is a never-ending quest, driven by something deeper than conscious thought, over which I have no real control, often upsetting and exhausting. I see a tree in bloom and my mind blurs briefly, sifting through the context in which I saw it last, stirring up and tumbling a lifetime of feelings in a matter of seconds, rejecting all those that don’t fit, and then I feel my heart pucker all of a sudden, a sharp dart of pain, as though some unseen thread makes to pin that scene together with another, creating a tapestry woven of a million tiny moments and memories, a new net of personal meaning, still thin and threadbare, but slowly filling out, guiding and grounding me. I remember writing some time ago about one of the joys of moving to a completely new country: the fact that everything was so clean and unspoilt, that there were no heavy layers of meaning attached to anything. I could walk about at any time of day and feel — at peace. Disconnected so utterly from my past that I could live fully in the present moment, delighted by every single detail of it. Mainly this was restful, at times disturbing, as a gust of wind and the warmth of sunlight on bare skin could suddenly recall a moment long forgotten, with an intensity always utterly overwhelming, there being no obvious link, aside the weather, the sensation on the skin, the smell in the air, the feeling of being in that moment somehow echoing a long forgotten moment buried deep in the past, prompting something deep inside me to offer it up with pride: here we go, something familiar, something to reference, do you remember?
“Perhaps it’s something to do with being stripped of basic day-to-day familiarity out here, or perhaps it’s just to do with being so far from home, but certain scents, colours, temperatures bring me back memories these days with a rush so hard it is overpowering”
…
Strong By Your Grace, December 2017
If that reads in a discombobulated disorientating way then I am glad, for I can’t begin to describe how unsettling it feels, and has felt. Now that I have lived here for several years the moments without reference are fewer, further between. And yet the new framework of meaning is still bare, so that every day on the way into work when I walk past the Magnolia tree above, just beginning to bloom, I am reminded of the months I spent working as an Obs and Gynae House Officer (this time — can it be?! — two years ago!), of the cold biting winds that year, the many rainbows and freezing showers, but first and foremost I remember cycling around Cambridge in Spring, that most beautiful time of year when the days are growing longer and exams are still far enough away to be cast out of mind, of driving out of Cheltenham on the way to Oxford, of cycling up from the train station along the canal path, and I am bemuddled again, caught between a cold winter and soft spring, my heart accepting of (April!) showers and frosty mornings, but disorientated by dark evenings, alert for daffodils and snowdrops, confused and bitter at their absence. It takes conscious thought at this point to alter the script: June in Auckland is the season of Magnolias, low misty clouds over the playing fields, heavy red mornings suns, brassy golden evening light, rainbows stretching right across the sky, cold floors and damp ceilings. This is Winter.
So that’s how I’ve been feeling. Sometimes people ask me what it’s really like to live abroad — like this, often.
At work I have just finished up my second full six-month block as a registrar (Niikau and Matai), although in reality it has been longer than that, since I stepped up halfway through a run and did a couple of months of relief before taking time out last August. So closer to eighteen months now a Reg. I felt slow when I came back after exams, thrown off by all things COVID, and it has only been in the past few weeks that I have finally felt that I am hitting my stride again. It feels good.
A lovely thing recently: my house officer commenting that prior to this rotation, she had never really worked on a team where there had been the occasion for patients to give a bit of background or insight into their lives – the people in the photos at their bedside, the story behind a jade ring, tiny moments of humanity and caring. These things have always been so fascinating to me, so important to draw out. They somehow make space for those offhand remarks that put everything else into context. The lady who presents with fluid overload, tells you openly that she hasn’t kept to any dietary restrictions, that the family had a big feed over Easter, and why not, because “I don’t have much of a life, you know?” Not seeking sympathy, just stating fact. Or when coming to the end of a neuro exam recently, the eighty-nine year-old gentleman who asks anxiously if I’ve found anything wrong, because “I haven’t got much longer to go, you know?” Again, just stating fact. But it throws the whole encounter under a different light, often bringing it back from the brink of irritation. The eighty-five year-old with delirium, documented to be “agitated and abusive to staff”, who freely admits to you that she called her nurse fat (“she is a fatty, and she hit me first!”). The lady with hypoglycaemia and bipolar disorder who is ever-so-slightly too elevated, who hides cake in her drawer and nicks yogurts from other patients’ trays, who absconds from the ward to do a supermarket shop when she should be hooked up to a glucose drip, but then who ploughs her energy and love into scrubbing her room, plying her elderly roommate with cookies (“she needs feeding up!”), and spending her next-to-nothing allowance on TV that they can both share. The gentleman who came in with skin raw and red, who got up early to take a shower because he thought he would be discharged today, who beams at you every day you see him and tells you he’s feeling strong, and recounts in his own words what he took away from his Dermatology consult: “Friday is a special day, Friday is the day of the Doctors of the Skin, Friday I will go home!” The lady who came in with facial swelling, a large malignant mass invading her SVC, who has been sitting on the ward all week waiting for news of her biopsy, whose results you’ve been refreshing three or four times a day, which turns out to be a lymphoma, a cancer, yes, but one with treatment options. The little lady who fell asleep on the telephone, the old man being wheeled away on an ambulance stretcher in a hospital gown wearing a tweed hat, these are the moments you want to remember. Gen Med is renown for long thankless hours, sometimes these moments are the only things that keep you going. I’m so glad that she will take that away from these past few months.
One thing I have been savouring recently is the wonder of my day-to-day with K. It is so easy, so tender, so loving, so safe. Initially I hesitated to write about this, feeling that I should hold back, that it would be ungracious somehow to talk about it, upsetting perhaps to those who do not have something of their own. But equally I am aware that if others had not written similarly of their own joy, I would never have known otherwise, never have dreamt of the potential that lay ahead. Just waking up together in the morning, cooking meals for each other, cosy evenings at home and lazy weekend mornings, curling up at night. Every day I am so glad that I did not settle for something not quite right, every day I am so grateful.
Another joy recently has been my books! On the first weekend the lockdown was relaxed I picked up the following pile:
I started with Possession, which reminded me of Cambridge and Undergrad days, then moved on to Love in a Cold Climate, which reminded me of Brideshead. I loved them both, but I have since started Beloved and my gosh, I have not read such tender beautiful writing for such a long time! It is such a joy for me to be reading again. I remarked upon this to K the other (- I like to draw attention to things that bring me joy) and he just laughed and was like, “I know!”
Other joys: packages that were sent months ago and have finally made it through the post! Letters from sisters, emails from friends. Beautiful light while driving home, weekend walks (most recently the Puhinui Stream Forest Trail). Christmas stocking face masks, morning yoga. Homemade (pink!) pickled onions, birthday pancakes, roadside flowers. So proud of my baby sister Pup for getting the highest mark possible in her final year project, so much love always for all my wonderful siblings who are always out bringing beauty and joy to everyone in their lives. Check out my sister Rose’s photography – she’s only just into the third year of her business but has already raised so much money by donating prints to different causes this year, most recently here.
Ohmygosh and you guys, only longtime readers of this blog will understand how much joy this brings me: my ultimate favourite hobby is back!! Number plate spotting!!! Seriously, these completely disappeared off the road during lockdown (- clearly Essential Workers do not choose to invest in personalised number plates -) and it made me SO HAPPY to start seeing them out and about again! Here’s a few snapshots just to share the love:
(You know you love them too).
I think that’s enough for now… If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter yet but would like to, go ahead and do so now. I’m planning on sending my first one out real soon(!)
Sending you as much love as I have for number plates!
-Zx
Mad to Live 
Your joy is mine❤️x