The Gift of Life
I feel there’s not much more for me to say about receiving and appreciating the gift of life – done it so much elsewhere! However, this piece is a homily distilled from a few experiences, mainly to do with my mother and a couple of ancient people I’ve been closely allied with. I hope in advance that I don’t sound like a religious text or a self-help manual. Heaven forbid!
Something personal here is a visual memory of my mother standing with her left arm akimbo, her right hip thrust forward, and proclaiming that life was for the grabbing by the neck as if it were a dog and giving it a good shake. Then she would add with a sniff, “Because no-one else will do it for you! Mark my words!” When I’m feeling a bit disconsolate or tired and down, I remember my mother and her words, and immediately find some more positive outlook and energy. My parents certainly gave me the gift of life and how to live it.
Most of us have been fortunate enough to have been given the wherewithal to move, think, feel and fill some space in this world. We have to try to recognise every day, even if just for a moment, that this gift of life is special, that it is the same for many others, and that it can be made better by feeling it, thinking about it, appreciating it and above all helping others not so fortunate in life’s circumstances to do the same. Actually, I recently read some research about helpers and non-helpers: the former live longer! Your gift of life can be shared or it can be focused on alone, the latter may be better if you have the good fortune to have some time to yourself, because we were born alone and we have to renounce the gift of life alone, unless one is daft enough to join a cultish group that decides to commit group suicide, and you go along with it!
My mother didn’t entirely agree with going it alone all the time. Part of her way of grabbing life was connected to others, sharing experiences, telling impassioned stories, and often advising people how to lead their lives and appreciate the great gift. She was also capable of cutting off though, going her own way, preferring often doing things herself. Possibly that’s why she was a one-teacher or sole-charge school mistress in the “braes”, the hills of Aberdeenshire in north-east Scotland, five miles from the nearest town.
The gift of life is really to do with time, which is all we have in the end. Using time well is an appreciation of the gift, and the gift in turn is enhanced. We have to use the gift of time as well as we can, be it singing or dancing Rock’n’Roll, travelling the world, learning another language, helping others in need, joining a political party, going for a long walk, writing vignettes like this or simply enjoying a glass of fine wine with good friends.
I often wonder how the very old get on with their not having a lot of time left. Maybe they appreciate in memory the time they’ve had, if they’re fortunate enough to be able to recall their long lives. I think of those fortunate enough to be able to recall happy events, those not weighed down and changed by memory-depleting illness. Those lucky people must find solace and refuge from their ageing infirmities by remembering. I well recall how my grandmother’s face would light up at the remembrance of some happy time long before, many times just a glimpse in her mind of “Roses round the door”, the smell of baking bread or honey on toast. She loved sausages and would often say, “Sausages are the boys!” She had a big family, four sons and two daughters. One of her sons was lost in World War Two, another came home with shellshock, now called “pos-traumatic stress disorder”. (Somehow I prefer the former!) She noted it in his wild eyes the moment she saw him again. My grandmother died early compared to many other old people I’ve known, being only 74. Still, bearing six children into an impoverished small house must have taken its toll. She was possibly the softest and kindest woman I’ve ever known, her smile full of love and reverence. My memories of her are great sustenance.
There again, maybe there’s an acceptance by the very old of the present, there’s nothing else for it, their lives have been long lived, they are where they are now, either do a bit of looking forward or be thankful for many years hopefully able to remember some of them. I have found it useful to pretend no matter how fleetingly what it must be like to be a very old person. This has usually been with my mother-in-law, Elena, aged 86 in 2009, and rather frail. I don’t mean just idly pretending but actually feeling into the being of that person, their inability to move well, their struggle to articulate something, their worries about managing and what will happen. This is really also getting out of your own body and mind, the way an actor must do in getting inside a character. When I managed to achieve that, I had a greater feeling for Elena’s tribulations and immobility.
Another very aged person I visited for six years was Thelma McLean, from the age of 99. She was a force of nature, full of the past and life now, a great appreciater of poetry and simply living, noticing everything going on around her. I loved her style, best exemplified by the large plastic wine glass she would ask to be filled at mealtimes in her resthome. She was the only one drinking wine, the only one over a hundred! I’ll never forget her asking me about what I was writing as I made notes of what she said. I replied it was simply notes for something I was writing about her. Her reply was wonderful: “Good! So long as it’s not my obituary.” As she tried to recall some poem or other, I would often just look carefully at her and try to imagine how she must feel at well over a hundred.
If I manage to do that kind of thinking about an old person’s being, I’ve found there is a two-fold reward: a greater appreciation of the other person and a gladness in returning to myself, more able to give thanks for this gift of life. Now I am reminded of the rock song, “The Gift of Love”. I can hear these words enhanced in The Everly Brothers’ wondrous two-part harmony:
“The gift of love, the gift of love
The debt you pay with tears and pain …”
Oops! Hang on there a mo! My ageing memory is playing tricks. It was “The Price of Love”, a great song! I wonder what “The Price of Life” would sound like. Or the gift of life? Maybe I’ll try to write a few lines, a few more lines.
I was always impressed when Thelma’s daughter visited. One of the reasons was she was in her early 80s, but still able to take her mum out for a drive. Of course, the admiration should be for mum! There was no hint of the aged role reversal that can creep in. I have often noticed how roles are reversed when parents get old, especially if their children have to care for them. The children become the parents; the parents in their aged weakness must be indulged just as the children had to be.
The last time I saw Thelma’s daughter was at Thelma’s funeral service back
in 2014 or so. Over ten years on, I hope that she’s still going strong, like her mother!
My Lucky Life July 17 ’05 (Reviewed 2026)
When I somewhat recall my life now over 70 years, I find it fits neatly into stages and each period is imbued with happiness and good fortune. Of course, the tapestry has some torn threads but standing back from it I see a fine picture.
I was lucky being brought up by happy and kind parents who believed in the simple things of life. I was born in Orkney in 1948 and lived for nearly four years on a croft of which my most vivid memories were of howling winds, great expanses of heather, dad’s cows in the byre just off the kitchen, Old Jim the sheepdog from dad’s home farm, sliding down the red door taken off its hinges and propped against the table, dad’s ready laugh and my mother’s smile. I also recall moments of six weeks in hospital with a broken femur incurred when I ran through “the windy gap” to greet the grocer’s van. I was almost three and wasn’t talking. I can remember lying in Balfour Hospital, Kirkwall, looking at my leg in plaster and all strung up. When I came out of hospital I was able to talk, and 75 years on I still have a shiny bit on my ankle where the plaster rubbed.
I have been lucky in this life in terms of strong desires and needs. The strongest urge has been to travel and I have surely satisfied that, and in retrospect fairly easily, including Canada (crossing by train to Vancouver) with my parents when I was nine; going by bus with my mother across the US; going to the USA in 1967, travelling east to west and back again by Greyhound bus (the cost was 99 dollars for 99 days); France several times with parents and on my own in my teens; Greece two times before heading to New Zealand for work and permanent living for 10 years; then Australia for a year before Japan for 20 years. The over-riding feeling looking back on it all is of great satisfaction, also a feeling of achievement, especially managing to live in all these countries and learn their ways, make friends, be part of the culture, take the place into my heart. Of course there have been tough times, especially travelling alone, although I feel I’m pretty good that way, having had loads of practice.
One of the worst times I can recall was leaving the conviviality and fun of the Atkinsons’ ranch where I stayed a week near Rockport, Indiana on my way across the US by Greyhound bus. After a great week swimming in the ranch lake and riding their ponies with the family of young and older teens, I headed off again to St Louis, lonesome and very sad that night in my hotel room. I wrote a letter of thanks to the family, and somehow they wrote back to me, maybe in Vancouver (I’d given a forwarding address), and invited me to come and stay again on my return trip. I did this for a few days, a delight to see them all again.
The next piece of great fortune has been my desire for friendship and partnership, and in that I have been blessed with amazing friends both interesting and generous. My greatest friend, my partner, has never ceased to surprise me insofar as she has put up with my eccentricities, such as needing to move on, needing to find out more and needing to plan things carefully. She gives me joy in my every thought, especially on travels with me, and also wishing me well on the road when she prefers to stay home.
The third is physical. I was born active. I climbed trees, ran and did sports (football in winter, cricket in summer) for nearly 18 years in the country areas we lived in. I look back on a life of great mobility, involving walking, running, cycling, swimming and going briskly from place to place.
The fourth is academic or scholastic. I had a happy education. I went to kindergarten in the south of England, in a tiny village by name of Baughurst in Hampshire. From the age of five, my mother taught me for four years in her one-teacher school in Aberdeenshire, then I had a great year with a male teacher in Vancouver in 1957–58 when my mother did a year’s exchange teaching; after that it was Scottish schools from age 11 to 18, then Edinburgh University and Herriot-Watt University. However, I like to think that I learned much more after I left these formal exam-oriented institutions and moved to New Zealand where I was lucky to find myself in a school and training environment allowing me to learn the craft of teaching by doing. I worked hard at that for several years after I had gained a Distinction in the Teaching Diploma from Christchurch Training College. I also did several certificate courses in classroom teaching and speech&drama as part of helping me to teach better. Then there was an interest in teaching English as a second language. Once a week as part of my Polytechnic teaching I took a class of immigrants – I recall one class had nine different languages! How much easier it was to understand and cater for the needs and difficulties of Japanese students in Tokyo, just one common first language.
After ten years of great work and a wonderful social life in Tokyo, we headed for France thinking that with our experience of teaching English we would easily get work. This was not to be, the French not greatly interested in learning to communicate in English. We headed back to Tokyo for nine years, then returned to New Zealand to buy a paradise of two acres, full of wild ducks, guinea fowl and hens supplying us with fine eggs. Life could not have been more different! And my lucky life of travels has continued with many visits to Australia, France and back to Japan almost annually.
Home Thoughts June 4’05
Many years ago in Wellington in New Zealand in the late 1970s when I was living at a meditation centre, one of the teachers said, “I have no home, but I’m building one in my heart.” These words have stuck with me ever since because I think it must be the same sentiment that has supported me through living in seven countries and having many “homes”.
I grew up in a good home certainly, a loving one in various locations, from a stormy island in the furthest north of Scotland to the soft, chalk landscapes of the south of England. The locations were always in the countryside so I came to love nature and all the weathers that characterised these extremities. I was happy insofaras I was greatly cared for and wanted for nothing in terms of the simple good things of life: beauty, nature, books, fresh air, walks, trees to climb and the ever-present getting of learning. But a constant refrain in my upbringing was my mother’s words: “This is not everything, there’s more to life”. She meant travel. She had travelled herself, including a year teaching in Los Angeles before she married, but for her it was probably not enough, so it was up to me to do more for her.
The “not everything” theme with my mother was satisfied for her probably by lots of departures. She seemed to specialise in them, whether it was on a daily basis to go to work or a weekly thing to go to a school conference or taking a longer trip to see her family or “going for a run” (the expression used for going somewhere in the car, usually on a picnic to the hills or beach) or the annual two-week summer holiday. Then there were the big movements because we moved house and location a lot. We had lived in seven different places by the time I was 12. I was often told, “You have so much to see, so much you can do”, as if it would be too much of a risk for me to work this out for myself, an exhortation to me perhaps to make up for my mother’s lack of satisfaction with her life which she wished was all travel, all exotic, all anywhere but where she was. She had been told by her father, “Aye, the grass is aye greener wi’ you, onnywhere but here.” He had been born and lived in the same house for his 88 years. What he thought of his younger daughter’s peregrinations, especially going to live in Los Angeles in 1947 for a year, is encapsulated in that wry comment he made to her about always looking for better, especially elsewhere.
Home for me was very tied to my treasures: books, comics, cards of all kinds, objets d’art, photographs, notes, posters, a drawerful of pennies and other trinkets. It was also as much about feeling I was content in one place as being taken imaginitively out of that cosy home. I mean I was often told there were other places, given information about other countries, shown pictures of palm trees and orange groves and people with strange head gear. More specifically, my mother had an amazing heavy deep crimson photo album with huge black pages filled with photos and postcards collected from her year in Los Angeles. In quiet moments when I wasn’t “being wild” chasing Indians in the woods, climbing trees, fashioning swords and spears from beech tree branches or just pretending I was Captain Oates heading off to his frozen death (home in the hills of Aberdeenshire was cold enough to allow easy simulation!), I would take out this photo album and look at my favourite pictures of the Hollywood Hills, desert cactuses, huge silver buses carrying people heaven knows where, also my mother on horseback on a track in the Grand Canyon. Invariably she would say to me something like, “You’ll be able to go to these places yourself some day.”
I suppose something we both had in common was a mixed-blessing inability to remain in one place for too long, either physically for both of us or in the magical realms of memory for her and of imagination for me.
Home is surely in its fullness and security a place where people feel able to wish they were somewhere else! My mother certainly did that, and wished the same for me.
Soon I go to Tokyo for a week. It’s a funny feeling always going back
there. I mean it always feels odd because it is where I lived so long and
it’s familiar up to a point. Still, Japan is such a different country to
other places because the people and culture promote that; they’ll
often say, “You have to try to understand us”, as if they are difficult
to understand. Can you imagine government or any other institution
in New Zealand or Australia saying to anyone else we are so enigmatic that you’ll have to make a big effort to understand how we think, why we do what we do? I can’t!
Now I’d like to say a wee bit of something about home that’s bubbling within. Let’s see what springs forth! To most people home is where they were brought up or where they have family and friends. I must have missed out although I came from a very loving home and have many happy memories. When I say “missed out” the situation now is that I feel a bit rootless without a culture that I love. To explain, when I go back “home” to Scotland where I was born and lived for 22 years, I see people that clearly are firmly rooted there, they have their family there, and feel they’ll live there until they die. Well, all that kind of thing didn’t excite me greatly. I took off after university and although it was sad leaving, when I got to New Zealand, about as far away from Scotland as one can get, I never really thought seriously about going “home” again. Maybe home had become where I was, a kind of self-centredness in a good sense, a recognition of a good life in a good place.
Certainly, this was reinforced when I went “home” to Tokyo recently. It was so easy to be there, so relaxed (probably because I didn’t have to go to work), and it was so interesting. I felt at home but I was also conscious of travelling! That’s an interesting condition and I think it’s one which for many years ever since I was 22 I’ve been encouraging. Still, I’m left with a feeling of no real home but also glad to be able to recognise many homes.