2020 A story of connection
There was a princess who lived in a house on a hill. That is, she thought she was a princess when she was young. It was what she was always being told. After all, how could anyone disbelieve the sincerity of Walt Disney. His stories of golden castles and princes on white horses, gleamed with bright colours even on a black and white TV.
In this house on the hill that her prince had built, (although she sometimes pondered if he was actually a frog), she could stand in any room, even the kitchen, and look out on green native trees, big skies and blue sea.
This princess had been born with curly blond hair and everyone called her Shirley Temple. She was sure her mother with her fine bones, porcelain skin and jet black hair was a fairy queen. The fairy queen wore high fashion clothes and her perfume followed her through the air. She sewed so that she could dress her girl like a princess because such dresses could not be found in this unrefined land. Whenever they travelled it may have been by bus but there was no leaving home without well brushed hair tied with satin ribbons, white socks in shiny black shoes, a lace handkerchief in the pocket of a buttoned-up coat, and a dab of 4711.
They would go to a hairdresser in an upstairs salon on George Street where the effeminate Davie would cut her mother's hair in short modern styles that showed off her fine fairy face. Davie doted on the princess. His salon was just as a girl imagined Paris would be with delicate filigree edged tables, a large gold framed mirror and curtains which draped against the walls serving no purpose other than to look billowy. Davie was part of a cultured Dunedin family who lived at 'Glenfalloch' on the peninsular at a time when that grand house was still privately owned. The princess thought this family were royalty. They also owned the opulent Savoy restaurant with plush red carpet, silverware and white table cloths. It was here that the fairy queen worked, elegantly drifting from table to table, 4711 trailing behind, while her princess hid behind the carved brown bear. A bear that she felt had magical powers despite its role as an umbrella stand. From this vantage point as her mother’s ankles below a calf length skirt swept passed, she observed the patrons. She thought they must be extremely special people to be dining here. Still, she could not help but think that her fairy queen mother outshone them all.
Her mother always said a finely turned ankle was a sign of refinement and that the chiseled bones in their family came from good European genetics. When the princess was a teenager she had just one friend whose intelligence and artistic ability she revered. These two girls were not heavenly creatures but were fierce friends. Later in life this friend, who hid her chunky knees and ankles under long skirts and trousers, forsook her. It was one of many times that the princess reflected on her mother’s wisdom. Sometimes these wise words were of simple things, but her mother would say them with eyes of reverie. Like the one about how important it is to have a kitchen window with a nice view.
The first half of the princess’s childhood was in one of the good suburbs beside the sea. But block by block reality pushed them deeper into the swamp. Her teenage years were therefore spent in a dark house with a pitiful kitchen window that looked out to nothing but an old shed. Now-a-days people like to make this swamp sound hip by calling it South D. The winter air would be thick with suffocating coal smoke and summer barely touched the cracked pavements. When it rained the backyard turned into a brown pond and the parks were soft and soggy so that your shoes would sink in. You could walk your dog around the edges but that was it.
As our princess grew living in this place doubts set in. After all princesses don’t have to walk everywhere and hide behind fences when cars drive by with bawling bogans looking for trouble. Princesses don't have to run when such young men with wicked intent on their minds give chase. Perhaps it was that despite trying to be invisible she carried a princess glow that drew attention. How that worked with her teenage frizzy brown hair was a mystery to her. She wondered at the rough hewn peoples in this strange land. Perhaps their edges were toughened by their colonial heritage, who’s blood histories lay in raw survival. These edges they tried to mask with British superiority. The people in this land pretended there was no class here but it was clear to the princess there were those with style and gentle mind like Davie, and those with bitter coarseness. This later group had their own minds and let you know it with verbal and physical blows. The difference seemed to lie between those recently arrived, or at least within a generation or two, who had hopes and dreams, and those who were several forgotten generations in and had only discontent. Strangely their eyes lit up when they spoke of 'the war’, even celebrating it as it were some grand, heroic time. For any European their eyes would shadow with sadness and their voice retreat with imprisoned words.
Despite this sorrow the princess’s family were full of playfulness and frivolity, of a sort that seemed quite alien to those others. It appeared that imagination and mindless joy did not suit their sensibilities. They could laugh, but when they did it was so often at the expense of others. Over time, from the dark house with no view, one by one the other family members moved far away. In her doubt there was nothing for the princess to do but be diligent at school, and along side her mother work hard bringing in what could be earned to help pay the bills. All the while she dreamed of art and music. Her art teacher took her to exhibitions a long way from home. Her mother sang songs with her and bought her an old piano. But here in this dank swamp the sorrow that her fairy queen mother carried intensified, gradually cloaking their lives like the Tenebrae at their church.
So here in the swamp she forgot she was a princess and all she could do was keep doing what she was doing in the university’s clock tower shadow. No one from her school joined her but she made new friends. It has been observed however, that one can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely. Her books filled her hours of solitude and she began to write. She wrote stories and she wrote poems. She wrote long letters to her family overseas.
As time went on this young woman began to roam this strange land. Her feet took her away from people into the rainforests, over the bottomless lakes and among the mountains. At a place in the depth of a west fiord on a night that the moon shone down on the waterfall by which she camped, a mountain spoke. She had learnt from the true people of this land about tūrangawaewae - 'the place where you belong’. The mountain and the waterfall had taken her into their place. This was a strange land but it was here she was born, here that her feet were, and her heart eased.
Years later she found herself living in a house on a hill. Her writing had kept the spark in her eye and that indiscernible princess glow she had forgotten lingered deep down. This house had floor to ceiling windows with a view from the kitchen that her mother could only dream of. But before she had got to this house the princess had buried the fairy queen whose golden light had dimmed, but never fully extinguished. The fairy queen mother left her princess not with a pot of gold but a small tin of it. Enough for the princess to buy a plane ticket to Europe.
It’s often been said that you need to go back to your roots to truly find yourself. Having never traveled like this she was sure that she would be frightened by the unknown and overwhelmed by the unusual. Yet the moment she put her feet on the ground and looked around taking in the sights and the sounds, that fear evaporated. So completely that she felt she could dance with a lightness of being she had never known. Family she had not met fitted as gloves and mirrored her fairy queen mother.
A cousin who was named after her mother took her on a road trip to places of history and culture. One day she sat within the artistry of the Cologne Cathedral. Oblivious to the tourist throng, she felt time and place connect between the stone of this building and the rock of her west fiord mountain. How that could be was not of issue but that it simply was, was all that mattered. She knew she would return to her place of birth feeling whole at last.
Beyond the cathedral she contentedly wandered the paved streets without aim. Then as darkness fell around a corner a building stood. Golden and gleaming against a sky of stars, it was beyond anything Disney could imagine. The House of 4711.
©Bice Grace Lapin
Bice Grace Lapin 