Broken is beautiful, p.15
Broken is Beautiful, page 15
“Not trialled in humans? Why would they give it to us?” I don’t like the sound of this.
“The vaccine will tell your cells to make chemicals in your body. Programme cells to do things they wouldn’t normally. That’s like cancer with cells going rogue and doing their own thing until the rogue cells kill you. Testing of vaccines has been rushed – normally it takes years. This vaccine has been developed in a few months and now we are supposed to be a bunch of placid human guinea pigs.”
I don’t know much about medicine. I have been lucky enough to rarely get sick. My main exposure to the New Zealand health system was when I was pregnant with Amanda and when she was a baby. That was a long time ago now and all those memories live in closed boxes in my brain.
I haven’t thought much about COVID vaccination either. Vaccines sound fine if they end the pandemic and return life to something like it used to be. However, my life hasn’t been so different from normal during the pandemic therefore I haven’t been very concerned. Maybe I should be more concerned but once there was no COVID in New Zealand after lockdown, why would I worry about it? Anyhow, it’s mostly old people who die of COVID. I will be fifty in April and that’s hardly old.
Gran told us she had made sure we got our vaccinations because Mum wasn’t responsible about such things. Gran believed in vaccines because she lived through the New Zealand polio epidemics. She told the polio vaccine story in a way that made Johnno and me listen. She was nine years old during the 1924 polio epidemic. Most of the people who got sick were children and Gran remembered being scared she would catch polio. Adults had whispered conversations in which they wished sick children would die, rather than surviving as cripples who couldn’t fend for themselves. Very sick children were put in iron lungs which breathed for them. Living in a metal tube didn’t sound comfortable. How did they go to the toilet?
If anyone in a family got sick, the whole family were shut in their house, so they didn’t spread disease. In 1936, when Gran was a young woman, Dunedin was isolated from the rest of New Zealand because they had a polio outbreak. Then there was a three-year epidemic in the late 1940s while Mum was a baby. If Mum had got polio, Gran and Donald would have had to isolate at home for weeks and wouldn’t have been able to earn any income.
Gran said there were all sorts of theories as to why people got polio. She was told to stay off the beach, wear a sunhat and not run around a lot because people thought the virus could be lurking in the sand or you might get sick from too much sun or too much activity.
In 1956 New Zealand started administering polio vaccines and Gran wanted Mum to get one. When Sumner Primary School sent a consent card home, Gran signed Mum up right away. By the time we were born, a set of vaccines was available for babies which Gran took us to get. I have always assumed vaccines are good things and you should get vaccinated, like you should drink milk because it is good for your bones. Is it possible vaccines can also be bad for you?
“Greg, are there times vaccines have been harmful?”
“Absolutely, vaccines have hurt huge numbers of people. Early polio vaccines were bad. Hundreds of thousands of children in the United States were given live polio vaccine and tens of thousands of them got sick. The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism. A doctor in Britain found the link after noticing autism was becoming more common. That vaccine was supposedly well tested. If a tested vaccine can give you autism, would you risk putting something into your body that has barely been tested?”
I don’t like the idea of trying out a vaccine that hasn’t been well tested and where we don’t know the long-term effects. I don’t want to get COVID, but I also don’t want a vaccine that will make me ill.
At this point Fran and Lynda come into the Surf Club. Lynda is wearing a colourful mask with a tūī embroidered on the side. How the world has changed that I see a mask as pretty. She is also carrying a platter of snacks. The snacks are little pies with pumpkin decorations on top.
I feel stupid. Why didn’t I ask Fran who was supposed to be bringing snacks today? What a loser. I can’t even get snack making right. Now not only have I brought snacks on the same day as Lynda, but I have brought the same snacks as Lynda. As I think this, Lynda heads over to the bench and exclaims loudly, “Who else thought it was a great idea to make pumpkin pies?”
“Me,” I say in barely more than a whisper.
Lynda comes over to where I’m sitting with Greg. “I knew we were going to be friends from last meeting. This proves it. Great minds think alike, right?”
“Looks like you two have something in common,” says Fran from behind us. “That’s excellent, because I want everyone to pair up for homework between our upcoming sessions and I thought you could join forces.”
I look at the evening sun reflecting off the sea and feel a glimmer of a new kind of hope. Perhaps I could get on well with a doll-obsessed bundle of hyperactivity who also likes making pumpkin pies.
30
“Your homework for the week will be to talk in pairs and each identify at least one concrete step you can take towards being in control of your obsession. The pairings will be Julia and Lynda, Greg and Barry, and Matthew and Monique.” As Fran is explaining this, Barry comes in late and apologises. Fran smiles briefly at him. “No problem, Barry. You can all communicate electronically or in person, whatever suits you best. What I would like for next week is for you each to identify a step you are comfortable sharing and on which you can continue to report.
“Because we are going to do more between sessions, I am going to reduce the frequency of our meetings to fortnightly. I hope you are all okay with that?” Everyone nods in general agreement. I feel a slight, surprising, pang. As the only constant activity in my life, I could miss OA.
After the karakia, Lynda and I go outside, sit on a bench along from the Surf Club, and discuss what we will do. We see Matthew and Monique wandering down the beach holding hands. That’s one sort of success for Fran – the OA sessions have created a couple who would not likely have met otherwise.
Greg and Barry have a brief chat outside the Surf Club door then drive off. Greg has a practical white Toyota station wagon that looks appropriate for taking a family on trips. Barry has a stylish and impractical black Audi two-door coupe. He lost his job, didn’t he? Why is he still driving such an expensive car? Does Barry’s missus drive a family car which fits his teenage children?
As Barry pulls out of the parking lot I catch a glimpse of someone in the passenger seat of his coupe. At this distance the person looks like Fran. Would Barry be giving her a ride home? But if Barry was giving Fran a ride, why didn’t they arrive together?
I watch the coupe depart round the corner, bracketed on one side by fifty-metre cliffs and on the other by the sea leading towards the estuary mouth. A memory flits through my brain of when that corner was barricaded with piles of containers. Following the February 2011 earthquake there was a van abandoned for days in the road with a large rock sitting in the passenger seat. The driver must have got the fright of his life when the rock smashed through the windscreen and landed on the seat.
During the aftershocks, the cliffs remained unstable with rocks rolling down intermittently. After the June earthquake, a container wall was built to protect cars and walkers. The containers were a mix of unattractive blues, reds, and greys with company logos – Maersk, P&O, Royal Wolf. At the time, people were too scared to come out to Sumner because of possible rock fall and the cafés were struggling. A local art gallery owner and a graphic designer got together to inspire artworks on canvases stretched over the containers. They paired artists with sponsors to turn an eyesore into an asset that people came specifically to view.
My favourite artwork was a huge blanket of knitted and crocheted squares in every colour of the rainbow. People from all over the globe sent squares in and a local woman sewed them into ‘Container Love’. Today the art is gone, replaced by a huge wall of protective rocks covered with ngaio trees bursting out in all directions.
Lynda is talking to me, and I have been wrapped up in earthquake memories in an impolite way. “Sorry, what were you were saying? I was in a complete daydream about Sumner after the earthquakes. Were you in Christchurch then?”
It turns out Lynda was in Christchurch, and we have one of the earthquake conversations that will typify the ‘getting to know you’ phase of Christchurch people’s relationships, until we are all doddering on walking sticks in nursing homes and yelling into one another’s faces because we forgot to put our hearing aids in. Unless we are all locked in our rooms because of a pandemic.
“Yes, I was in Christchurch and a conservator at the Museum. In September nothing much happened to my house. A few cracks. February was a different story. I was on a run in my lunch break in the Botanical Gardens behind the Museum. Trees swayed, the ground shook and I fell over. I could hear car sirens going off and see clouds of dust opposite the Museum.
“When the shaking stopped I got up off the grass. I didn’t think about going back into the Museum. Too many things to fall on you. I had my phone and bank cards in my pocket. My bike was behind the Museum in a shed. I planned to head home. Later I realised I hadn’t once thought about other Museum staff. My brain can’t have been working properly.
“I headed south towards the hospital. The old Arts Centre buildings on the other side of the road had dropped big pieces of stone on the footpath. Ambulance sirens started to wail. I thought I should try to help, so I turned east towards the city centre. The roads had rips in the tarmac and I fell off and bashed my knee. I didn’t see the deep gouge till much later. When I reached Cashel Street Mall it looked like a disaster. Piles of bricks everywhere. Shop awnings collapsed on the pavement. People wandering around looking dazed.
“There were people lying on the ground. People were pulling at rubble, looking for survivors. Dust filled the air, pools of water from burst pipes ran between the rubble and people were screaming. I didn’t know if the screaming people were on the street or under the buildings.”
Lynda is pacing back and forth, like she is back in Cashel Street Mall.
“I joined a team of people pulling rubble off a pile beside Whitcoulls. An elderly woman was talking frantically. Her husband had gone into Whitcoulls to get a pen. He always lost his pens and then needed another one. Why couldn’t he be more careful? She kept her pens in her handbag. She had owned the same pens for years. She was supposed to meet him in front of Whitcoulls when he finished shopping. She had gone into Ballantynes to look at dinnerware. Had he bought the pen and gone into Ballantynes looking for her? She wasn’t in Ballantynes long.
“I don’t know what happened to her, or him. At some stage her voice went away. I left the rubble when we uncovered an arm and half a head. It was clear the arm’s owner was dead. My hands were bleeding from grasping stone. I could no longer see any point scrabbling at bricks to find dead people. I cycled home to Cashmere past streams of people walking. Women in bare feet carrying high heels. School children in uniforms. Where were their parents?
“There was no one at home to worry about me other than Freddy the cat. But cats don’t worry. However, I started worrying about Freddy when I remembered him. He was a fluffy ginger cat with one eye. I got Freddy from the SPCA with my neighbour. She looked after him when I was overseas. I tried texting my neighbour to ask about Freddy. Cell phones weren’t working.
“When I got home, I walked around the garden calling for Freddy. He didn’t come. It took him a week to turn up. From outside I could see my floor piled with dolls and books and pictures and food. Bricks from my house cladding had fallen out.
“My neighbour was worse off. Her brick house had completely collapsed walls. She came home early evening, sat in her car looking at her misshapen home, then drove away without talking to me. I heard from other neighbours she went to stay with family in Nelson. She never returned.
“It was late evening when I finally went inside. I cleared a path to my bed by pushing everything towards the walls. I slept fitfully between whumping aftershocks.
“When I got up I gave myself a good talking to. I dug a pit toilet in the garden because the water wasn’t working. At least there was no neighbour to watch me use my toilet.”
“But that’s enough about my earthquake experiences. I think because COVID times are so strange I keep reliving the weird earthquake times. What happened to you in the earthquakes?”
“Why don’t we talk about my earthquakes another time? My house was okay enough. A mess like everyone else’s but the outside wasn’t too bad because it’s weatherboard.” There’s no way I’m bringing Amanda up in a conversation with a woman I barely know, even if I think we could be friends. “What about our homework? Where shall we meet? I don’t have a car, so it needs to be cycling distance from Sumner.”
“No problem. Let’s cycle to a mid-point. How about UpShot Café? It’s by the Heathcote Valley Riding School. Meet there Sunday afternoon? I go for a long run early on Sunday mornings. By lunch I’m starving. I can support their business by eating two lunches.”
“Sure,” I say. Then I realise I have little money remaining because I spent my week’s earnings on mini pumpkin pies, the remainder of which I have left together with the container in the Sumner Surf Club. My bedside drawer is almost empty. Can I rustle up some income between now and the weekend? I don’t have much choice. “See you Sunday.”
31
7 March 2021
In anticipation of Sunday, I feel more energetic than at any time since Robbie left. In two days, I complete ten jobs from the top of my recent queue. A trickle of repair work has been arriving in response to my trickle of repairs performed. The repair work turns up on my doorstep, sometimes with a note, sometimes just an item in a box with a name and phone number. It is interesting how COVID times are making what would previously have seemed odd, commonplace. Social distancing is the norm so there’s nothing strange about socially distanced repair work. It has been hard to get new things because of broken supply chains so people are ever more interested in getting what they own fixed.
Luckily some clients are prompt with pickups, so I have a small amount of cash in my pinafore pocket when I cycle to UpShot. Once through Sumner, I head along the rock barrier past the Clifton cliffs. I go past Shag Pile, a sea stack previously known as ‘Shag Rock’ because of the perching birds who make it their home. Its name was changed after the earthquakes reduced it to a sorry heap.
I cycle through Moncks Bay towards Redcliffs, where ostentatious mansions are being developed along the estuary-front sections trashed by liquefaction. How quickly human memory fades and desire overcomes common sense. Those sections are still prone to liquefaction and sea level rise, as the land is only a metre above the high tide. I can already hear residents howling for compensation when floods start to enter their houses.
I pass the closed New World supermarket in Redcliffs which was another casualty of the earthquakes and is now a white elephant monstrosity in the centre of the village. The New World was a bustling supermarket prior to the earthquakes, with densely packed shelves containing everything I needed in a compact footprint easy to get around. However, the earthquakes destroyed the building and the insurance and rebuild took four years. By the time it was reconstructed, much larger and grander than before, everyone was used to shopping elsewhere and didn’t return. I tried it out but didn’t go back either, as it didn’t stock Kenya Bold and the prices were high. The store limped on for six more years, raising prices and driving away customers, before finally shutting its doors. Now it is an ugly, multicoloured reminder of how your world can change in ways you can’t predict.
As I cross the estuary causeway the tide is going out and the current is strong, with smelly sea lettuce swirling in the water. On the far side of the estuary, the sand dunes of Southshore Spit define the estuary mouth. Southshore was even worse off than Redcliffs after the earthquakes when liquefaction and land subsidence took broken houses below sea level. No doubt there are a few of Barry’s Red Zone cats there.
On I go, to the wide Heathcote Bridge where I turn left to skirt round the base of the Port Hills on Bridle Path Road. The bridge leapt in the air during the February earthquake and was left so damaged it was only accessible to cyclists and walkers. The road was pitted with liquefaction holes; for several weeks there was a two-metre-deep hole with a car and a tour bus on their noses with their ends standing proud.
Bridle Path Road feels like a mini oasis because it has farmland on the river side and leafy sections rising up the hill opposite.
I reach UpShot and see Lynda already there, sitting outside. Most of UpShot’s seating is outside. The café shifted to the riding school after their city location collapsed in the earthquakes; they thought it was a temporary move. However, temporary has now lasted a decade and the outdoor setting is entirely suitable to COVID times, when we don’t want to be exposed to germs spread by people.
Lynda and I are dressed very differently. I have my dull blue pinafore on, which I am now regretting. Couldn’t I have made more of an effort rather than picking the same old dress up off the floor? At least I checked it didn’t have food stains on it.
Lynda is clad head to toe in Lycra and looks as fit and strong as her marathon running would indicate. She is wearing wrap-around sunglasses with an iridescent lens reminiscent of a beetle carapace and the strange shoes worn by road cyclists which clack when they walk and look extremely uncomfortable.
