My 77-year-old mum (as the Kiwis would call her) made the 36
hr. trip across 19 time zones, alone, with four connecting flights, to visit us
in New Zealand. Dr. E.O. Bierhorst is known to most as Ellen, her brothers as
Chusti, our son as Bubbie, and to my brothers and me as Mother …or at least until a few years ago
when she announced that she had retired that particular role and we were to
call her Ellen henceforth. She is no less than a super-woman and a model of how
I want to be in my later years.
Ellen is a practicing clinical psychologist and Alexander
Technique (AT) teacher, which explains two of her requests for the visit: to
get to interact with plenty of Kiwis (“humans are the most interesting part,
for me”), and to host a workshop on AT. She also wanted to go sailing. This
blog details what we did together. Warning: this is a long one. It serves as a
vignette of how the Simons roll in New Zealand- most of my posts gloss over our
astonishing schedule of events, but this will give you some idea.
We expected that when we picked her up at the Dunedin airport, Ellen would want to go straight to bed, but instead she was keen to join us on a 40 min. hike down the hill to the university to hear a lecture by our friend David Shneer who was also visiting from the states. She says she slept well that night.
The next morning, we treated Ellen, David, and his husband
Gregg to a tour of Olveston House, specially arranged by David’s colleague and
our new friend, Erika. This mansion was
owned by an influential Jewish family who collected incredible mementos from
their many trips abroad. Jeremy was in heaven during this peek back in time and
took more than 30 photos, particularly of the weapons collection.
We had timed this visit to coincide with the Jewish holiday
of Passover, which celebrates the exodus from Egypt. Ellen helped me get the
brisket started and then spent much of the afternoon designing a haggada (book
of prayers) for our seder (service). Guests included David, Gregg, Erika with
daughter Dina, and Erika’s neighbor Stuart with his daughter Sabrina. Ellen led
the service with dramatic flair, cuing the kids to throw popcorn at the
announcement of each of the ten plagues (frogs! lice! hail!). The brisket was
perfect, the teenager got drunk, the younger kids ran wild on too much dessert…
in other words, the perfect seder.
Saturday, Ellen, the Simons, and David (Gregg wasn’t feeling
well) drove down the east coast to the Catlins, where we went on a couple short
forest hikes to see beach and waterfalls, and visited the Lost Gypsy Gallery.
Ellen enjoyed talking to the owner and designer of all the quirky treasures
there.
We stayed that night at Rosie’s Backpacker Homestay in Te
Anau, where Ellen jammed on a harmonica with a backpacker from the UK, who
played the piano. Ellen is quite capable on a number of instruments; including
flute, guitar, and hand-drums just to name a few. We slept in best we could and
then made the drive north to Milford Sound.
It rained most of that drive (rainfall in Fiordland is
measured in meters), but the weather let up for a short visit to Mirror Lake,
aptly named. We witnessed a bright rainbow reflected in the water against a
backdrop of mountains.
We also stopped after the Homer tunnel, a famous place to see wild kea parrots- the ones famous for ripping apart cars. As we photographed one by the side of the road, Jeremy announced that Ellen was welcoming a parrot into our vehicle! After I slammed the door shut, she complained that I had interrupted their conversation and that she would have been able “to calmly escort him out” if he had started mischief. No doubt.
We also stopped after the Homer tunnel, a famous place to see wild kea parrots- the ones famous for ripping apart cars. As we photographed one by the side of the road, Jeremy announced that Ellen was welcoming a parrot into our vehicle! After I slammed the door shut, she complained that I had interrupted their conversation and that she would have been able “to calmly escort him out” if he had started mischief. No doubt.
That afternoon we began our cruise of Milford Sound aboard
the Real Journey’s Milford Mariner (click here for photo of our boat and more photos from that cruise). I had picked this tour in part because the
ship had sailing masts; the sight of them thrilled us both. It turned out that
they were mostly for show on this motor-powered boat, but it was a fine vessel
nonetheless.
Rain in Fiordland means waterfalls, and we had the perfect
mix of rain and clear skies that allowed us to enjoy taking photos on deck. The
dinner that night was a buffet feast with five kinds of salad, soup, beef,
lamb, chicken, and other savory delights, not to mention an extensive dessert
bar. The four of us shared a tight cabin that night but Ellen said she slept
well. I don’t know if she’s just a non-complainer (true) or if she actually
sleeps better than most people I know over 40.
After breakfast, Fran surprised us with the a special
underwater adventure add-on, where we viewed ocean life normally found at much
greater depths. Fresh water from waterfalls stained dark from travelling
through dead leaves on the surrounding cliffs floats above the denser salt
water, keeping it dark and cold. The longer we looked, the more we saw. We then
returned to port and drove back to Dunedin for the rest of the day.
On the way back, we stopped in Milton to buy Merino-possum
sweaters at an outlet. These are the softest, warmest garments one can imagine
and Ellen swore she would never take hers off. We bought matching ones in black
and magenta (but not so we could match).
After one day to catch our breath (Anna got work done while
Fran took Jeremy to a marine science event and Ellen rested), Ellen gave two
Alexander Technique workshops on Thursday. The first was one I arranged with a
violin teacher at the university, teaching four music students tools to manage
pain while playing. The second (the same day) followed a potluck we hosted for
the “L” club, a community of mostly Boomer-aged lesbians.
The dinner was a group of 13 feisty women (plus Jeremy, who
enjoyed giving kendama lessons), lots of amazing food, including hummus- a
requirement of any lesbian gathering.
Several of the women emailed later to say how great Ellen’s
workshop was, and they had so much fun that they decided that they should start
meeting at members' houses for their monthly dinner, after many years of
convening at a local restaurant.
Friday, Ellen, Jeremy and I borrowed a boat from the Otago
Yacht Club so that Ellen could skipper in the Dunedin Harbor. The weather was
beautiful and each of us took a turn at the tiller as we scooted around for an
hour and a half. I have many fond memories of sailing with my mother as a
child, always in calm lakes.
But this was not a lake. A feature of this harbor is that
the weather can change in a heartbeat; just as we were returning to the jetty,
a mini-squall hit, whipping the boom around and tipping the boat so far to port
that salt water poured in. The three of us instinctively threw ourselves starboard,
preventing capsizing, but the sail still alarmingly flipped back and forth in
the high wind.
Ellen took command, yelling above the wind and flapping sail
to order Jeremy to sit in the bottom of the boat --where he would be safest--
and me to lower the main sail. The movie above shows us just before this, racing home, skies darkening, and Ellen starting to anticipate that I should lower the main. Jeremy was scared, wet, and cold but was able to
keep his cool until we made it to shore sailing with the jib (small secondary sail).
It was a bit more adventure than we had expected, but Ellen’s view of the
excursion was not affected. “Any sail is a good sail,” she said.
That night, we welcomed Shabbat at Stuart and family’s home
as we marked one week of Ellen’s visit. Frida, his wife, is an excellent cook.
Their house is a converted B&B, full of Victorian touches that reminded
Ellen of her own historic house in Cincinnati. Jeremy enjoyed talking to their
new parrot, Mango.
Saturday morning we were too exhausted to go on our planned
hike with “Wild Women Walkers” (an event scheduled for Dunedin’s gay pride
week) and instead all went to watch Jeremy shoot with the Dunedin Archery Club.
Jeremy had already advanced once a few weeks before, and this week he shot well
enough to move up again, now qualifying to aim at the target a full 20m
away. Ellen took a much-needed nap that
afternoon and Fran and I got some work done.
Sunday Ellen and I met with the waka club, “Fire in Ice” to
paddle around the harbor, now calm. Jeremy politely declined our invitation to
get back on the water. That night, we had my botany
colleagues over to dinner: Professors Kath Dikinson and Sir Alan Mark, and his
wife Pat. Alan was knighted for his conservation work in Fiordland. He is a
mountain-climbing powerhouse at age 86 and his wife no less so. I was eager to
introduce them to Ellen, who enjoyed talking to them.
Every visit with locals gave Ellen another perspective on
living here. She had arrived full of talk of escaping the “sinking ship” of
America by possibly emigrating to New Zealand, but by this point in the visit,
she was seeing the problems with the plan, including the difficulty of finding
work there. Her conversation with Alan about her idea seemed to be the final
nail in the coffin. She wrote later,
“…when I mentioned to a "Kiwi" (NZ native) that I
thought it would be a great sanctuary if the rest of the world collapsed, they
pointed out that the wealthy and entitled in the rest of the world would
surely be knocking over the barriers to invade and overrun the country in such
an eventuality. Seems likely.”
The final day of the visit we went to the Orokanui Wildlife
Sanctuary, an impressive fenced reserve where exclusion of mammals has allowed
native birdlife to thrive. It was our second trip there; this time we went with
the Dunedin homeschool group that we hang out with regularly. It was a
blustery, chilly day so after a short walk to see the takahe (Jeremy’s favorite
bird species and one rescued from the brink of extinction), Ellen and I enjoyed a hot
drink in the café while Jeremy and Fran took a more ambitious guided hike with
the other “big kids.”
An hour or so later, it was time to take Ellen to the
airport. She hates what she calls “vestibuling” (drawn-out goodbyes while
standing by the door), so the farewells were heart-felt but short. She said
when she got home that it “felt like she had been travelling for days,” which
of course, she had. As we determined earlier in the trip, she is a true Griffindor
(Jeremy is Ravenclaw, I am Hufflepuff, and Fran is Slytherin- as anyone who
knows us already knows): brave and valiant. I’m in awe of her and proud she’s
my mum (sorry, Ellen, you always will be to me).
