In 1981, I escaped from my father’s house (of abject misery) to go live with my mother in Tairawhiti, Gisborne. I joined Gisborne Boys' High School in Form 3 at the start of the third term that year. My maternal grandparents lived about 200 meters from the high school.

For the first year or two, I'd ride my bike from Kaiti, where we lived, to my grandparents’, store the bike in the woodshed. I'd wander into the house to say g'day to them in the morning, and then walk to school. They had separate beds in the same room. Nana would be sitting up reading the paper, and Pop would be listening to the news on the radio. Then after school, I'd walk back, get my bike, and ride home.

Gisborne Boys' High School was odd to me in those days in that you were allowed out of the school grounds for lunch, and so lots of kids actually went home for lunch. I would walk back to Nana and Pop's house and have a cooked lunch with them.

They had their main meal of the day at lunchtime. I don’t know what they did for dinner, though. I was not to complain, having a cooked lunch and then usually stewed apple and quince with vanilla ice cream for dessert before heading back to school for a history or maths lesson was pretty cool.

So for those couple of years, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, morning, lunch, and then after school, with weekend visits. They were retired and, I'd guess, in their mid-60s. I think my grandfather was a retired mechanic, but I'm not really sure exactly in what. That is an indictment on me that I wasn't engaged enough back then to be more curious. I regret that now.

That is all backstory for something that I was thinking about on the drive home tonight.

I can distinctly remember 13 or 14-year-old me standing on their driveway one hot summer's day, probably talking some shit that only a 13-year-old who knows everything and nothing can. Him with his full head of silver hair, side-eyeing me with a stupid grin on his face. Bloody hell, I can picture him now, and I miss him. He absolutely knew better than me.

Early teenage me, of course, wasn’t considering at all that he'd lived a whole life with all the same experiences I'd had so far, forgotten and not. Romances and conflict. The sweet, finger-licking taste of victories and painful arse-wiping losses. He'd done it all and now was standing on his own driveway, a place he'd lived in for 40+ years humouring a boy trying to tell him something that he already knew.

I'm not his age at that time yet, but I already have more years behind me than ahead, and every now and then, I learn the lessons he had already experienced. I guess we all have to go through this. We all have to take our turn at life's lessons. Some just take much longer and are non-obvious at 13 years old.

So I think I will just stand there from now on grinning at the much younger people telling me shit. I don't need to correct them or judge them The world will do that for them eventually, when they get into their late 50s and connect some dots. Just like my Pop did on that day in the early 1980s.

The photo

We were back on the New Plymouth coastal walkway on a lovely evening, enjoying the serenity and watching the ocean trying to smash Aotearoa into submission only for the New Plymouth District Council to get in the way with big rocks.

Post Meta

Posted: Friday, 14 February, 2025 18:44

Captured: Friday, 31 January, 2025 19:40

Add your own comment