Anna Jackson - The Long Road to Teatime

Just as Maui once chanted the Hiki to make heavy weights light and so from his waka pulled up New Zealand on his fish hook so Robert Sullivan has the way with words to make light the whole heavy mythology of New Zealand and pull it up, up, up to burst into the supermarkets and mortgaged houses of his Star Waka, his life, our lives. I paddle my waka in his slipstream. Roberts Waka 80 tells of Peter Robinsons painting of all the white canoes and the one brown canoe that depict his ancestry, one part Maori. Of my sixteen waka lined up on the beach, none would be painted brown. My families came from Scotland and the north of England. One of my sixteen waka arrived in Auckland in 1860, the Ellen Lewis from Nova Scotia, and on board my great-great-grandparents, John and Flora McDonald. One of my sixteen waka arrived in Auckland in 1860, the Ellen Lewis from Nova Scotia, and on board my great-great-grandparents, John and Flora McDonald.

Thomas and Mary Ann Jackson arrived on the second of my sixteen waka, the Burns, in 1879. A shoemaker, and the daughter of a shoemaker, they taught school, dispensed medicine and the Quaker faith. Their son Theodore married Margaret McDonald and in 1904 my fathers father was born.

Most of the eight waka of my mothers family landed in nineteenth-century Tasmania where family fortunes rose and fell like waves. My mothers mother Elaine was the rich daughter of John Speed who came to Australia a poor cobbler and made a fortune in shoes. My mothers father John Lovett was the poor son of a wealthy Tasmanian family who lost everything in the Depression.

He rose again with Speed Shoes.

My fathers mother, Margaret, was the daughter of doctor Adam Pairman, the son of doctor Robert Pairman. Adams brother Thomas was a doctor too, and a reader of Dante who started Dante reading groups all over settler New Zealand and gave a translation of the Paradiso to my Gran, long before I translated it into my own life. He called his daughter Beatrice. My brother is Cameron, I am Anna, my sister is Juliet. Shakespeares three children were Hamnet, Susanna, and Judith.

And they were shadow names too. Names, manes.

When Simon and I crossed seas to England we carried with us a daughters name. We would call our baby Elvira after the pinball game we played at Urbi et Orbi. Of the town, and of the world. There is all the taonga of my tohunga to pack. There is all the taonga of my tohunga to pack.

I carve translations for Mayakovsky, Ovid and Dante. There is a dark wood to carve into a would.

The baby carries the language genes we have carried across the generations since our hair grew sparse on our skins and our babies, unable to cling, cried out to us to speak. We sang. We call the baby Johnny after Johnny Cash. We call the baby Johnny after Johann Bach.

We call the baby Johnny after Grandpa John. Sometimes we call him Johnny Smoke. Johnny calls himself Envelope Man. He calls himself Superhero and Batman. Sometimes hes a polar bear and sometimes a rabbit.

Simons ancestors were Welsh, French, Spanish. Simons ancestors were Welsh, French, Spanish.

He grew up on ships sailing to and from Wales and New Zealand. We went to Wales, to Bangor, where he was born, but couldnt find the hospital, and I wanted to swim in the municipal baths but they didnt hire out togs. What we liked best about Wales was how much more like New Zealand it seemed than England.

England is Johnnys Hawaiki somewhere like Home, too far away to visit but the source of miraculous things, like Rose, and toys from English toy shops. He was born there, but remembers only here. We went to Spain when Johnny was still a fish inside me smaller than a trout and in the heart of Spain found Elvira street. We went to Spain when Johnny was still a fish inside me smaller than a trout and in the heart of Spain found Elvira street.

We would have bought tiles with ELVIRA on but the shop was closed for the winter we had come outside the tourist season. I took a photo of Simon in Elvira street under graffiti of his name S I M O N and he photographed me under the sign ELVIRA with Johnny, who might have been Elvira, invisible inside me.

Simon is fifteen-sixteenths Celtic, a descendant of those restless Celts who kept moving right to the edges of Europe, and across the Channel to the edges of Britain, heading for the edge of the world. The Greeks thought them barbarians in their hilltop huts, a story-telling, war-waging people who spoke no Greek. Today the Welsh children are relearning their language in language nests like the Kohanga Reo. Our daughter was born at last, in New Zealand, at home, in the bath, on the 7th of February after a Waitangi Day of contractions. Our daughter was born at last, in New Zealand, at home, in the bath, on the 7th of February after a Waitangi Day of contractions.

We call her Elvira a Spanish name meaning fair one foreigner Pakeha. At sixteen months, she still rows herself about on the floor, bottom-shuffling. Not a walker, but a waka my waka to the stars.

In the middle of our journey we found ourselves lost. This is the jungle, said Johnny. Rose asked if we had a map.

Not a road map, said Simon. So what sort do you have? We looked for a life map. In the middle of the journey of my life, I sat on one side of Elvira and Rose sat on the other. I have known Elvira for sixteen months since she was born, Rose for sixteen years. At Karekare Rose and I left the children to walk the length of the beach. What was it like? she asked.

It was like a dark wood. We walked across sand next to water, under sky. We walked back to the car across the dunes and through a wood of cabbage trees. Johnny said, Be quiet or the wild things will hear. There might have been a leopard.

Lost in the dark wood I want to rekindle my affair with the sun. Lost in the dark wood I want to rekindle my affair with the sun.

I look about for my stiletto-heeled black leather boots to put on. It is too dark to see. Three beasts stand between the sun and me. Simon, Johnny and Elvira stand at the top of the hill and howl at me. We are baby panthers. Elvira howls at the sight of my wool work coat.

I cant get past. But out of the obscurity emerges the figure of a man, weak, as if his lungs have been still too long. It is Dante, of course. Dante! Cant you take me to the sun? But Dante has to take me first along the path he once was led along by Virgil. Another poet will take you to the sun. Frank OHara knows the sun well and knows the way to Paradise.

But I can show you the way to hell. And so to escape the three beasts I take Dante by the hand. When he moves on, I move on close behind.