“Do you like your new life?” I ask K. We’re driving for our weekly Friday lunch date.
“I just love it,” he nods. “I mean, the freedom is almost unreal.”
And that’s just it: immigration brings the freedom to choose again. And that doesn’t mean everything is suddenly roses, our personalities instantly gregarious and massively fabulous. It just means we have a chance to choose new ways of being.
“I just love it,” he nods. “I mean, the freedom is almost unreal.”
And that’s just it: immigration brings the freedom to choose again. And that doesn’t mean everything is suddenly roses, our personalities instantly gregarious and massively fabulous. It just means we have a chance to choose new ways of being.
Seven months ago we left our entire world behind in South Africa, save our possessions and our kids, moved to the other end of the world and started life afresh. It is hard to imagine the experience of a new start, unless you have done it yourself. It’s as huge as having a baby. You’re so inextricably linked to this tiny newborn who has arrived in your life – permanently - you and your life are forever different. So here we are in a new country, and by default we are catapulted into an entirely different world.
And something of the complete newness of everything allowed us to take steps and make changes we would not normally have considered. There is no rut yet, because everything is startlingly fresh. One of the things we decided before coming here was: seeing that we were “losing” our country, friends and family, secure jobs, a lovely home, seeing as though we would start off on a blank slate, we may as well choose our most amazing place in Auckland to live. Hence Titirangi.
Where before K worked in a high-level academic position in Cape Town doing his 8 – 5 stint, now he works from home with me. Our days are punctuated by trips into the bush to fetch our kids from their various schools, exclamations over the turquoise sea through all our windows, the height of the tide up the creek, the stillness of the tree ferns. On every level, we have a new life. It is shiny. It is peaceful and graceful and calm and conscious.
So we left stuff, but now I can say we didn’t lose. We gained. We are a much, much happier family, even though we have had to build a friendship circle from scratch and have had to give up intimacy with family back in SA. Schedules feel looser, times ambles more gently here.
We have gained a more certain future, a happier, more connected community, found friends for our kids who know how to be friends, and access to fantastic resources, opportunities and support. There is no heavy undercurrent of unresolved communal baggage in New Zealand, and no one is about to be murdered because of their race. Entire swathes of worry and concern just do not feature here. The relief is extraordinary.
I like the way I parent, more. It feels so right to see kids happy and free in the bush. I don’t have to be anxious in public places or quiet areas. I don’t have to watch the kids as if my eyes were an invisible chain. I can let them go a bit. No prisons, no cages, the kids here in Auckland city don’t know about being chaperoned by adults to and from school, to extramurals and back, in their backyards, at the park. They are kept safe from cars, land slips, and maybe, the worry of an earthquake. An altogether different kind of conversation.
Our first winter came and went without a fuss. It wasn’t grey for months on end like we expected. It didn’t hail or storm or blow gales daily or even weekly. There were no tantrums of any kind: just a bit of an icy May. The sun shone, the days were often windless and still. Mostly I thought it was exquisite. And then Spring came with a flurry of colour on the trees: magnolia, camellia and rhododendron blossoms of every hue. It also brought gusts of wind. But it certainly felt like Spring. We thought that Winter lasts until December, but we are already wearing t-shirts on some days, the plants are sprouting wigs of lime-green growth and tiny white and yellow daisies (weeds!) dot the grass everywhere.
We even sat outside o
ne evening last week as the sun was setting and felt the heat of the sun burning us, reminding us that summer is just around the corner. The smell of the bush is different in the heat and triggers memories of that tingly, sunset-on-the-beach, happy family feeling.
And something of the complete newness of everything allowed us to take steps and make changes we would not normally have considered. There is no rut yet, because everything is startlingly fresh. One of the things we decided before coming here was: seeing that we were “losing” our country, friends and family, secure jobs, a lovely home, seeing as though we would start off on a blank slate, we may as well choose our most amazing place in Auckland to live. Hence Titirangi.
Where before K worked in a high-level academic position in Cape Town doing his 8 – 5 stint, now he works from home with me. Our days are punctuated by trips into the bush to fetch our kids from their various schools, exclamations over the turquoise sea through all our windows, the height of the tide up the creek, the stillness of the tree ferns. On every level, we have a new life. It is shiny. It is peaceful and graceful and calm and conscious.
So we left stuff, but now I can say we didn’t lose. We gained. We are a much, much happier family, even though we have had to build a friendship circle from scratch and have had to give up intimacy with family back in SA. Schedules feel looser, times ambles more gently here.
We have gained a more certain future, a happier, more connected community, found friends for our kids who know how to be friends, and access to fantastic resources, opportunities and support. There is no heavy undercurrent of unresolved communal baggage in New Zealand, and no one is about to be murdered because of their race. Entire swathes of worry and concern just do not feature here. The relief is extraordinary.
I like the way I parent, more. It feels so right to see kids happy and free in the bush. I don’t have to be anxious in public places or quiet areas. I don’t have to watch the kids as if my eyes were an invisible chain. I can let them go a bit. No prisons, no cages, the kids here in Auckland city don’t know about being chaperoned by adults to and from school, to extramurals and back, in their backyards, at the park. They are kept safe from cars, land slips, and maybe, the worry of an earthquake. An altogether different kind of conversation.
Our first winter came and went without a fuss. It wasn’t grey for months on end like we expected. It didn’t hail or storm or blow gales daily or even weekly. There were no tantrums of any kind: just a bit of an icy May. The sun shone, the days were often windless and still. Mostly I thought it was exquisite. And then Spring came with a flurry of colour on the trees: magnolia, camellia and rhododendron blossoms of every hue. It also brought gusts of wind. But it certainly felt like Spring. We thought that Winter lasts until December, but we are already wearing t-shirts on some days, the plants are sprouting wigs of lime-green growth and tiny white and yellow daisies (weeds!) dot the grass everywhere.
We even sat outside o
ne evening last week as the sun was setting and felt the heat of the sun burning us, reminding us that summer is just around the corner. The smell of the bush is different in the heat and triggers memories of that tingly, sunset-on-the-beach, happy family feeling.So, after seven months, what’s it like being an immigrant? Sometimes it’s really hard. Like, we just don’t know things. By now we know the names of some suburbs and how to get there. We know our favourite brand names, and what is sold in most of the shops. We know the quality of the gardens and houses here is far from what we were used to in SA. Now it’s the finer subtleties that demand our attention.
I still don’t understand why Kiwi women will be friendly one day and ignore me the next. I am slowly learning that here, friendliness is a fine art, a cultivated trait, and not insinuating friendship, loyalty, or even a connection. ‘Friendly’ is simply what Kiwis aspire to as a way of being. The women are wrinkled as hell from cracking smiles and tinkling laughs at every opportunity, but catch their eye and you will see the smile has often not travelled past their nose. They’re just being incredibly, incredibly nice.
Sometimes we feel insanely anonymous. That we are the sum total of our connections, and without many and old connections, we are nothing. We are invisible. Like, who cares who we or our kids are if hardly anyone knows our name. Some people find opportunities to hand out their name like business cards at a trade show. But I am not like that.
At times I force myself to pick up the phone and connect with people. I force myself to overcome my shyness, my tendency to judge. I literally put on a smile. When I want to escape under a bush and lament that life feels a bit grim, I remember that it is I who is choosing that thought.
Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. --John F. Kennedy
I still don’t understand why Kiwi women will be friendly one day and ignore me the next. I am slowly learning that here, friendliness is a fine art, a cultivated trait, and not insinuating friendship, loyalty, or even a connection. ‘Friendly’ is simply what Kiwis aspire to as a way of being. The women are wrinkled as hell from cracking smiles and tinkling laughs at every opportunity, but catch their eye and you will see the smile has often not travelled past their nose. They’re just being incredibly, incredibly nice.
Sometimes we feel insanely anonymous. That we are the sum total of our connections, and without many and old connections, we are nothing. We are invisible. Like, who cares who we or our kids are if hardly anyone knows our name. Some people find opportunities to hand out their name like business cards at a trade show. But I am not like that.
At times I force myself to pick up the phone and connect with people. I force myself to overcome my shyness, my tendency to judge. I literally put on a smile. When I want to escape under a bush and lament that life feels a bit grim, I remember that it is I who is choosing that thought.
Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. --John F. Kennedy
