My Amazing Mum

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.

Sunday (the third day of her visit), the Simons plus Ellen hopped back in the car to travel west to The Fiordlands. On the way we stopped for a hike that began with crossing a long swinging bridge high above a rushing river, a stunning baby blue due to it being glacier melt. Unknowingly, Jeremy bounced along behind Ellen on the bridge, who was edging her way across with hiking poles. By the time I reached her, she was quite shaken, noting that a person could lose their balance and just flip over the low rails into the freezing water.

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.

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).