31. Trips to National Women's Hospital, Piha and Auckland's West Coast

Lion Rock and North and South Piha from the roadside lookout at the top of the hill

Papatoetoe, 1st March 1977

Dear Mum and Dad,

I had hoped to write earlier to thank you for your letter of 10th February but we have had a very hectic ten days or so and a number of things cropping up all at once.

The main news is of Mary. This morning I took her to the National Women’s Hospital in Auckland where she has been admitted as a patient. She has had a lot of internal bleeding over the last few months and the doctors have been unable to stop it successfully for any prolonged period or to diagnose exactly what the problem is. She has had trouble for over a year but just lately it has become much worse – partly I expect from the pressure of all our personal upheavals and trying to stay on top of her work when she has not been 100% fit. Anyway she will be in hospital for the rest of this week having tests and she will see the consultant, Mr Green, tomorrow morning. The two most canvassed possibilities seem to be that either she needs a hysterectomy or she has some form of cancer in the neck of the womb. She will come home for the weekend and then go back again on Monday next for a biopsy and after that they will decide on treatment. If it is a hysterectomy she will have to wait for six weeks or so before being admitted for the operation. We have been assured that whatever it is it can be treated successfully with no long-term damage and at least she has had to take a rest which she has been very reluctant to do. The National Women’s is a public hospital, mostly for maternity and gynaecological, and the patients have rooms of their own. Visiting hours are from 1pm to 8pm and since Mary has masses of friends and relatives I don’t think she will be too lonely. I shall be in and out as much as I can. The hospital is right beside Cornwall Park and only takes fifteen minutes to reach from Papatoetoe. The ward sister seemed very nice and helpful and willing to explain everything to us and to allay our fears of cancer. I expect you felt much the same when you were waiting for the results of the biopsy on your tumour, Dad.

We were glad you appreciated the poems. A lot of people have been very touched and helped by them. And thank you too for the warmth of your feelings towards Mary. She returns your kisses Dad!

The children are well. Last Saturday I went to their school sports day – Sacha won the three-legged race with a friend of hers – and then to the beach where the weather was warm and the sea delicious. On Sunday Mary and I went to Piha for the afternoon just to spend time away briefly on our own.

Love to you both from all of us in New Zealand.

John

[For origin of this letter see blog 30, "Love, Death and Letters from My Mother's Hut".]

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One of the recurring themes of my blog is the interplay between physical places and emotional states, between my footplace (where I am) and my headspace (where I'm at). I am most acutely aware of this dynamic when I think about re-visiting special places at different times in my life with members of my family, with friends and with different wives - in the UK: Edinburgh, London, Brighton, Wells, the Malvern Hills; in New Zealand: Auckland City, its parks and regional reserves (especially Cornwall Park, Long Bay and Wenderholm), Paihia and Russell in the Bay of Islands, Tairua and the Coromandel peninsula, Queenstown.

I knew that Piha, one of the beaches on the Tasman Sea, west of Auckland, had played a significant part as backdrop to the emotional landscape of my life but had forgotten that it is to Piha that Mary and I go the weekend before the confirmation of her cancer. I think that is the last time I see her run, and only then because the black sand is burning her feet! But I do remember a number of visits there and to other West Coast beaches.

My first trip to Piha is at Labour Weekend 1972, a few weeks after Pat and I and the children arrive in New Zealand. It is our family’s initial foray into the countryside around Auckland and it is a wonderful day – they all are that first month, in retrospect at least. To reach Piha we go along part of the scenic drive in the Waitakere Hills and then turn on to the coast road. Much to our amazement most of the last part of the road is unsealed with a loose surface of dirt and stones, which makes the final descent down the steep hill to Piha quite scary. On the return journey our old Vauxhall Viva Estate, recently delivered from England, has a bit of a struggle making it back up that hill. Not only is the state of the road a revelation but the sand is black - iron sand, some of it used in New Zealand Steel’s works at Glenbrook and much of it shipped to Japan for conversion into steel.

The west coast is wild, dramatic and dangerous, and Piha a lovely and spectacular place. It is a surf beach and, in spite of the presence of surf life-saving patrols and warning signs, has the highest number of drownings each year of any single beach in New Zealand - partly caused by the dangerous rips and partly by the ignorance or stupidity of surf-casting fishermen who perch on the rocks and are liable to be swept away by the notorious ‘sweeper’ waves, as are unwary new immigrants. The west coast is a very emotional passionate landscape and the beaches there quite unlike the calm, romantic and more meditative beaches of the North Shore. If Shakespeare were a kiwi he would have had Lear on a west coast beach howling at a galeforcewind-driven surf rather than a thunderstorm on a British heath.

Gannet colony at Muriwai

Fishing off the rocks at Whatipu

Piha, Karekare, Bethells, Whatipu, Muriwai and its gannet colony, the scenic drive in the Waitakere Hills, all become favourite places for day trips and for showing off to overseas visitors. I take my Mum and sister Elizabeth to Piha in August 1982 when they come to stay with me at Sugar Mountain. Twenty years later in 2002 I go back to the west coast with Anne-Marie, an old friend from the London School of Economics who has come to help me pick up the pieces of my life by sharing a holiday with me (and to walk the Milford Track – that part by herself unfortunately since the track is way beyond my respiratory capability). I take her out to Piha, but first we go down to Karekare because Anne-Marie wants to see the beach where the opening sequence of Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano has been shot, the scene where the party and their luggage and the piano are landed from the surf. The road down to Karekare through the bush, steeper than that to Piha, is mercifully sealed now - fine for visitors but less so for the few residents who preferred the isolation. We walk from the car park through the glade of pohutukawa trees and over the sand dunes to the beach, me with the video-camera the children give me for my sixtieth birthday, taking shots of Anne-Marie dwarfed by the cliffs and sea, the soundtrack punctuated by cicadas, the roar of the surf and my attempts not to cough inopportunely. After wandering about on the edge of the sea, lost in our own thoughts and memories, we walk up the stream and sit on the grass together, and momentarily I am, we both are, at peace with life, content.

It is one of those moments bienheureux so loved by Proust, those magic moments you wish you could freeze-frame, do freeze-frame as, like a squirrell storing nuts for winter, you construct memory banks of good times to help you through the bad.

The Piano (2003) Karekare Beach

There are other such moments in more recent years to add to that memory bank. Sharon and I take my two sisters, Ruth and Elizabeth, to Muriwai in 2006 on their big trip down under and last year we celebrate our wedding anniversary with a luxurious weekend full of magic and much pampered moments at Waitakere Estate.

  

Elizabeth, John and Ruth on Muriwai Beach 2006

Sharon at Whatipu 2006