The 4th day of Christmas in Waikikamukau

[or “My Visit to the States in Wildlife Sightings”]

happens to be the fourth day of the fourth Kiwikirk Christmas in New Zealand! In the ubiquitous spirit of summing up the events of the year (and the decade?) we meander through the following thoughts…

Cognitive dissonance remains attached to Christmas happening in the summer season! One might think that attending a Spring concert on November 8th was an adequate jolt to the internalized system of seasonal orientation—‘alert, re-compute’--but no…also, a further alarm, a friend’s celebration of an ‘American Thanksgiving’ which we attended en famille failed to reset the clock/holiday calendar, although the fact that it actually occurred one week earlier than indicated by the calendar did not help ‘bring home’ the reality.

The high points of ‘09’ (?) are definitely the satisfying achievements by the offspring—the two younger ones both winning academic recognition in their schools; the older ones in graduating with a PhD from Harvard, landing a record label and keeping a JOB in this hairy economic time for writers and publishers.

High points of the decade would have to be teaching at Bennington College where my life intersected with many brilliant students, many of whom ‘went on’ with their music…and then, of course, the move to New Zealand.

Other high points of 2009 are all related to the big trip overseas…seeing friends and family, playing a concert, attending the graduation and just being there. What follows is copied from emails ‘home’ to New Zealand from the home country and were generated a request from the youngest to watch for a moose:

Dear L,

*yesterday, wandering around Smith College, i was so startled to see little rodents running around. [we are so rodent aware now in NZ!] i had completely forgotten about SQUIRRELS! cute little pests! i wonder if i will see a deer or a bear, like E and I did in Northampton.

*The Hampshire Gazette had an article today, with pic, about a Kea stealing a Scottish passport. James dubbed it a pirate parrot.

*on the way to B’ton , today's animal sighting: a huge wild turkey! It was wanting to cross the road but turned back when it saw (my) speeding car...it must have been 3 feet tall.

*no moose yet but i did see a ground hog - big, fat, brown and very sleek eating grass out in back of Jennings

still no moose BUT

*there were two deer grazing outside the window of the guest farmhouse while I washed up my dishes this morning...

*right before i actually left Jennings for the last time, out the window in back of the library this time, were RABBITS! -- 2 big grayish friends (?)

*then driving through the town of Bennington i finally saw three moose. they were not moving however because they were sculptures...life-sized and in bright colors...

*The only animal that I expect to add to the list today is the duck which should be omnipresent when we go to the outdoor concert tonight along the Charles River!...but on the way back from the tennis courts, we just saw (guess....) a RACCOON!!!

*back in Noho, J got a phone call just as we were finishing breakfast this morning (bacon and eggs!) from a neighbor saying that “the” bear was on its way down the driveway. we all rushed to get positioned with cameras at the ready. Then Dave drove in, apparently having scared the bear into the woods.

*So, the animal sighting of the day turned out to be a pretty smart chipmunk who scurried into the middle of the road and froze, thereby avoiding certain death by automobile tire (as they flew past on either side) as we departed from Noho

*In Syracuse, Wim saw a groundhog—his first--peaking out from under the door of Lucinda and Jeremy's garage. (Do you think it lives there?)

*yesterday, when we drove from Syracuse to Vermont we hoped to see a bear or a moose…we did see a blue heron flapping past and two young pheasants in the middle of the road looking puzzled...days later, Wim did see a deer on the way down from Colchester but I missed out.

*Back again in Noho,…WELL…today, i went on a big bike ride starting from the D's, towards Easthampton then back to Northampton through Acadia and the big fields after the one-lane bridge. I stopped next to two birders (who also had bikes) and an lady who turned out to be the owner of a yard where a big red-tailed hawk was standing. The explainers told me that the hawk had apparently caught a squirrel but was being harassed by barn swallows and bluebirds because he/she was so close to their nests. Unwilling to leave its meal behind the big bird was clearly uncomfortable as the bothered nesters did kamikaze fly-bys…. [The birders lent their binoculars so that I got a really close look, even though the hawk was only about fifty feet away to begin with. (Also through their field glasses, I saw some flickers they pointed out.)]

The corker was that when we got to chatting and the found out that I was living in New Zealand, they said that they had been in Dunedin in February! How unbelievable is that...?

[All of this reminded me that i never reported seeing the humming birds and cardinals at Auntie Lydia's...]

*yesterday's animals went from some interesting slugs (two and a half inches long, long and worm diameter) in the D's driveway, then some very small salamanders that were an even brighter orange than the slugs. We finished off that day in Manhattan by seeing a small rat in the subway station down at track level!

*The Museum of Natural History has an exhibition on of extreme mammals, just up Wim's alley. (Tom took him to the Central Park Zoo—so that will have to be his email…)

*The last chapter, to close “My Visit to the States in Wildlife Sightings” is a record of my last day in San Francisco. My (Kiwi) wife, with our children, are at this point on the East coast. I am about to travel back, alone, to ‘her’ and ‘our’ country, our new home. I rented a bike, wended my way to the Golden Gate and cycled over and back, wishing to have an landmark experience to highlight the day. On the way back from the bridge, I saw seals lolling about. The poignant, poetic realization sweep over me that these animals were cousins to those that I would be returning to on the other side of the Pacific in my new home. It was a small world in that moment and we were one: the seals, the ocean and I.

Holidays bring up stuff

The bonus of the extra downtime that accompanies holidays or ‘hols’ is often given over to contemplation. Waves of nostalgia arrive for the Easters of one’s youth, the sad services of Good Friday (with a choir member fainting on more than one occasion—an unfortunate who forgot breakfast or a snack before the 3 hour vigil) and then the jubilant hymns of rejoicing on Easter Sunday (prefaced by Jone’s sausage (a special treat), scrambled eggs and baking powder bisquits). A little Easter basket, woven out of paper appeared at some point in the day with a miniature fluffy chicken presiding over jellybeans. (Certainly Ronald Regan’s finest attribute was his appreciation and reverence for the humble jelly bean.) And, oh yes, the Easter eggs decorated with waxy crayons and dipped in the many hues of vinegary spring.

These days in Waikikamukau still nourish bouts of cultural cognitive dissonance in this instance: Easter in North America happily conflates rising from the dead from the sepulchure near Golgotha and the return of flowers and plants in the family plot, garden and lawn. You are seeing your first robin--we await the first frost. Our clocks going back for daylight saving instead of ‘springing ahead’.

Then there is this…

“Here comes Peter Cotton tail,
Hopping down the Bunny Trail,
Hippity, hoppity, Easter’s on its…”
BLAM

Your Easter bunny brings treats while the NZ bunny has only Easter bunny hunt to look forward to. This year 39 teams entered for the 24 hour hunt and the carcass count on Saturday revealed a record number of rabbits shot per team. The weekend tally included 1152 hares, 54 possums, and 54 stoats [if that’s a typo, it’s not mine] for an overall tally of 24,378. [Perhaps it should be called a varmint hunt to make the moniker more ‘inclusive’. (Wim just informed me that he saw a rat strolling by while he was playing with his XBox—the Easter rat?)]

More stuff: The intensity of many hours spent last week preparing, rehearsing and taking part in a performance of Bach’s Passion According to St. John added to our nostalgia and awareness of the season. It has been years since we inhabited a town or city where all commerce ceased for Good Friday and Easter. [April 4th, Easter, was my father’s birthday too. He was born on a Psalm Sunday!]

None of this constitutes or has created a moment of personal ‘epiphany’ “when the present moment reaches out into the past and the future”. A blog entry pondered but not pounded into purposeful prose was planned back in January to sum up the year and the decade from my perspective as someone leaving the past decade behind and moving country. A moment of heightened awareness did produce the following observation: when your mood is dark, you are apt to miss your ‘home’, your friends, relatives and everything! You do not feel at home in your new country—you are an immigrant. When you are feeling upbeat and secure, you can step back and feel happy to be dwelling in a very beautiful world filled with stimulating variety and wonderful people here and in your previous home. You are a ‘Permanent Resident’.

[Postscript: If the’rat’ was indeed a mouse, he/she would be the rodent that succumbed during the night in our handy-dandy mouse trap. The last supper in this case consisted of gourmet peanut butter or a quick whiff thereof...]