Happy anniversary baby, got you on my mind (Little River Band)

Happy birthday Dulcie! (Photo credit: Graham Purdy)

Wie geht's?

Quite a few April anniversaries happen that need some commentary. 

There are plenty of happy occasions to celebrate. We've had my parents wedding anniversary (on the 18th in 1953), Jacky and my wedding anniversary (on the 21st in 1984), and mum's birthday (on the 23rd in 1930).

There are also two losses of life anniversaries in April: Lucy Adsett, a.k.a Ma (on the 3rd in 1974) and our dear friend - Margo Buchanan-Oliver (on the 25th in 2018).

I know these are just names and dates to the blogosphere, and that a lot of others celebrate their own anniversaries as they come up but clearly without Lucy and her daughter Dulcie Adsett and then her wedding to the strapping young pharmacist Graham Purdy, you would not be reading this, because I would not exist.

That's a huge debt of gratitude I owe all three.

That Earth-shattering event in 1984 also means that our four children exist and consequently, our four grandchildren also exist. So, I think you'll agree, that one is worth a massive celebration as well.

Love and peace - WNP

I'm far, far away with my head up in the clouds (Slade)

You angel, you (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 2, pt 4)

Kawau Rd., One Tree Hill

After a traumatic event people tend to toughen up, build some outer layers of resistence. Not me.

Emotionally, after my Uncle Jack's death in 1967 (yes we're still in that stellar year), I transferred love to Ma.

Lucy Adsett had the uncanny ability to make you feel special. Outside of my parents, I've only come across a few with that knack. Jacky Smith, Colin Prentice, Margo/ Clay and Patrick Cameron have that genuine ability.

I'm pretty sure she didn't treat me any differently than she did her other grand children, but I felt she did.

Eleven Kawau Road, One Tree Hill, was a state advances home of peculiar design. A long path at the front led to the front door but we rarely entered there. Instead the big back stairs led up to the kitchen diner (where all the action took place), through into the bedrooms and the lounge.

Ma, Uncle Mel, Uncle Jack

It housed the Adsett family until two sons and a daughter were married and left home, leaving Ma and Jack to themselves. It had a big back section with a bird aviary attached to an outbuilding. The aviary, in particular, always fascinated me.

This is the house I would visit often during the sixties/ early seventies. I went there for special trout dinners - Ross was allergic to fish so we never had it at home, and I LOVED fish, especially trout, and especially the way Ma cooked it. 

Typically, mum would drop me off (it's a 10 minute drive from Korma Rd to Kawau Rd). I'd do some gardening, maybe mow the lawns, do some painting - whatever odd jobs Ma needed doing, and I'd be rewarded with a trout  lunch, cooked to perfection. I've had trout cooked for me since, but it never tastes like Ma's.

I would often stay overnight and have special treats like being allowed to stay up late to watch The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Then mum would pick me up the next day. Life was warm and safe and happy at 11 Kawau Rd.

I can't remember ever having an argument with Ma. She was small of stature, but a little dynamo of energy - still washing walls and beating carpets in her 80's. She had a wonderful combination of steel and compassion. She never tried to buy us with presents, as Grandma did. She bought us with love.

Her influence is incalculable. Looking back, I can trace many positive aspects of myself ultimately to her.

I knew something was wrong in 1974 when dad picked Ross and me up after school from Mt Albert Grammar. That had never happened before.

Ma had been unwell ( I was living in teenage boy fog at the time, so I'm not sure of the details) and it was decided that she move into our new Ramelton Road house with us. Specifically she was in mum's sewing room by the front door, and that's where she passed away.

I don't remember crying. I didn't need to. She had given me much more than I had any right to expect. She had lived a long, full, rewarding life and she was at peace, passing away with my mother by her side. She was back with Jack again.

Love and peace - Wozza

You angel you, you got me under your wing (Bob Dylan)

You angel, you (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 2, part 2)

Uncle Jack with his two nephews, his mum and kid sister

1967 was massive. 

It was the year of Sgt Pepper (music would never ever be the same); it was the year I turned 10 (my birthday in October was a special one); and it was the year the concept of death became real for me. 

From 1967 onwards - my life was never going to be the same.

Albert Henry Adsett (never called that, he was always 'Jack') was 16 when a baby sister arrived. She would prove to be of use in the years to come, as she supplied plenty of good eating. 

Dulc' would bake a sponge and see it devoured by her ravenous brothers in short order. She never appeared to mind. In fact it was a tale she'd often relate with obvious delight. She loved her brothers!

Jack was always and forever a bachelor. I have no idea if he ever had a girlfriend but somehow the question was completely unnecessary. Jack appeared complete within himself. 

During the time I knew him he only ever lived at 11 Kawau Rd., One Tree Hill, with Ma. To me he was clearly a white knight, a good guy, a protector. He was a big guy, a man's man - tough and strong, but quiet, at peace. He was seemingly invincible, a giant in our lives.

My beloved Uncle Jack.

He was a great playmate for a little boy. He always seemed satisfied with whatever he had or with whatever he was doing. Nobody's perfect, but he was as close as it comes.

We'd often visit him at his work at the Alexandra Park raceway. I'm not too sure what he did there but he enjoyed it, as he enjoyed his life. He'd often take us around the horse stalls - Cardigan Bay was a champion of the day and we saw him up close! 

Jack was a keen angler, with his brother Roy. About the only tangible legacy I have of him is an old calendar he owned, showing various fishing scenes from around New Zealand, including his favourite place - Rotorua.

The Adsett clan at my parents' wedding, Jack far left.

I would come to cherish the times we'd spend together, with Ma ever-present and all my memories of him are as a gentle giant who was kind, who loved me.

And then, on June 12 1967, he was gone. 

I awoke sharply, having heard the phone go in the darkness and sensing something was wrong. The light was on, there were voices.

By this time I had moved from sharing a bedroom with Ross to a back bedroom which backed onto my parents' room.

Suddenly my light was on and mum was explaining to me what had happened. I suppose it's around the age of eight or nine that children begin to be conscious of death and I had certainly already had conversations with my parents about this. But it was an abstract concept, so nothing would have prepared me for this devastating news. I cried and cried. Tears of confusion, tears of pain, tears of rage. Tears for my Uncle Jack and tears for myself - I wouldn't be able to play with him anymore.

Life is short and cruel and parting is so often, sweet sorrow.

Love and peace - Jack's nephew.

Get back Loretta, your mother's waiting for you (The Beatles)

Get Back (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 1, part 4)

Dulcie Mary Adsett, my mother, was partial to jazz music - she'd seen Louis Armstrong in concert in Auckland and she had been a fervent Sinatra fan (the copy of Swing Easy I have in my vinyl collection, belonged to her rather than my father).

Adolescent Dulcie grooves to the
latest 78s at Bond and Bond

Her love of music meant that she enjoyed her job at Lewis Eady's record shop, rising eventually to a position of responsibility. 

Since leaving Cornwall Park School she'd tried other jobs before joining Lewis Eady's in the early 1950's; usher at the Victory cinema in Greenlane and shop assistant at Bond and Bond, an appliance store in the 1940's.

Luckily for me and my brother, they hadn't amounted to much, so she now took the daily journey from One Tree Hill into Queen Street's Lewis Eady's, where one of her pesky customers, let's call him Graham, bought his records. He worked just down the street at Eccles' Pharmacy.

Dulcie was a pretty, seemingly simple, country girl from the King Country. Born in Taumaranui on April 21, 1930, to Lucy Constance Adsett (nee Morris) and Henry Adsett (always referred to as 'the old man' by Lucy and her children).

Dulcie with Mel, 12 years her senior

When Dulcie arrived, the couple already had three strapping boys to contend with: Albert Henry (Jack), aged 16; Melville (shortened to Mel but called Ike by Jack after Ike Carnegie) was 12; and Roy who was 9.

Now they had a kid sister but it didn't change the fact that life for the Adsetts was one of hard physical labour which revolved around their saw milling business, with no mechanisation to help them. Henry Adsett, my grandfather, was a tough disciplinarian on others, but he failed to practise what he preached and abandoned Lucy and the four children shortly after Dulcie was born.

Shamefully, when Dulcie was a baby, Henry's girlfriend also had his child a month or so later - a half-sister to Dulcie.

It probably goes without saying that I never met my grandfather and heard very little about him. Although it didn't take a rocket scientist to sense the deep feeling of betrayal that surrounded any conversations about him.

Lucy was a rock, the small in stature citadel of the family. Around her strength circulated the King Country Adsetts. Not only did she have to cope with a bastard of a husband and had to provide for her four children, she also had to cope, alone I suspect, with the death of her first daughter, Enid. 

News reports of the day, carefully clipped out, tell me that Enid died from burns sustained from a household accident - a shockingly common occurrence in those days.

Cornwall Park School, Class of '37. Dulcie Adsett bottom row, far left.
Class photos haven't changed much over the years, have they?

Similarities between the homes of my parents were vastly different. Graham was an only child, Dulcie felt the hubbub of a large family. Graham had both parents, albeit absentee ones at times as Harry and Christina had an active social and sporting life. Dulcie only had Lucy and was way down the pecking order, but Lucy was an ever present loving parent. The two developed the tightest of unbreakable mother/daughter bonds.

Graham was raised in a refined environment with piano lessons, quality clothes and a top education at Kowhai Primary and then Mount Albert Grammar. Dulcie finished her schooling when she left primary school.

Compared to Graham, Dulcie's life was one of material poverty but a richness of family love that Graham could never experience.

So, two vastly different people. No way they'd ever get together, right? Impossible!

Ha! Destiny pays no mind to such trifles.

Love and peace - WNP  

Sail away with me honey, I put my heart in your hands (David Gray)

John Lennon got it right - all you need is love.

Except it's not that simple is it. That was a statement rather than a question.

It's a start and without it you can't build something that lasts but I'm not that naive. Okay - I am, but still...

I look at that picture on my last post and can't help thinking about those two characters who pledged their lives to each other (I take those vows VERY seriously). I look at that photo of my mum and dad on their wedding day April 18 1953 from the post before that and can't help thinking about them as well.

As George Costanza knows a good relationship needs a good meeting story. 

My father was a young gun pharmacist working at 171 Queen St (Eccles Pharmacy) and my mother was working at 192 Queen St (Lewis Eady's record department). He would visit the store looking for jazz records and bringing her some perfume of his own concoction to sweeten the deal. 

He got the brush off but he never gave up. They were so different, from different social backgrounds, with different interests.

My mother recognised this and tried hard to shake him off but he was persistent, my father, and, according to my mother, he gradually wore down her resistance. 

By a complete fluke of timing and location they had met and eventually one thing lead to another (wedding, children, life together, illness, death). As it does.

Me, Deedoo, Grandma, my brother Ross.

Prior to this my father came about because somehow my grandfather saw something in Christina Holden.

Unbelievable. There must have been something there that Harry found wondrous but I could never figure out my grandmother. She always seemed old (Harry - Deedoo, was never that) and unknowable. I only once saw her being compassionate and it seemed so out of context it lodged itself firmly into my memory.

Stop me if I've told you this before - we were having Christmas dinner at their place - Reimers Ave, Mt Eden and a women walked in the front door - she was clearly disoriented - turned out she had wandered out of a nearby nursing home. My grandmother was quick to be supportive and understanding. Shocked the hell out of me!

Ma, Ross and our mum - Dulcie Mary Purdy

My other grandma - Ma - was the complete opposite: gentle, always compassionate, loving - things she passed on to her daughter (my mum). How she ended up with her husband Henry is a life mystery too. 

He left her as soon as my mother was born (their fourth child) for another woman. We never met him. Why would we? He was only ever referred to by the grownups as a negative presence but...she had fallen for him. They had had three boys before Dulcie. They had had a life together in Taumaranui. After he ditched Lucy gathered up the Adsett family and moved to Auckland. Mum attended Cornwall Park School. My father had also moved around with his parents work but they also settled in Auckland where he attended Mt Albert Grammar.

Mum had a variety of jobs after leaving school and was happy at Lewis Eady's. Dad had become a pharmacist and was happy at Eccles Pharmacy. A fluke set of occurrences and then BAM!! I arrive on planet Earth.

All this got me thinking. What leads people to find each other and then stay together?

What is love? is the most popular search on Google (according to The Guardian). Here are some thoughts from different points of view:

Love is chemistry - in true love, or attachment and bonding, the brain can release a whole set of chemicals: pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin and vasopressin. However, from an evolutionary perspective, love can be viewed as a survival tool – a mechanism we have evolved to promote long-term relationships, mutual defence and parental support of children and to promote feelings of safety and security. 

Mature love develops over a long period of time between long-term couples and involves actively practising goodwill, commitment, compromise and understanding. I have no doubt that my parents were faithful to each during their thirty year marriage.  

At its best, however, all love is a kind a passionate commitment that we nurture and develop, even though it usually arrives in our lives unbidden. That's why it is more than just a powerful feeling. Without the commitment, it is mere infatuation. Without the passion, it is mere dedication. Without nurturing, even the best can wither and die. 

The paradox of love is that it is supremely free yet attaches us with bonds stronger than death. It cannot be bought or sold; there is nothing it cannot face; love is life's greatest blessing.

Me? I'm just out to find a better part of me. Being around SWMBO helps me on that pathway. I've put my heart in her hands.

Love and peace - Wozza

P.S. This post inspired by some questions Jade fired at me today and questions we fired at her about her new young man!

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops (Henry Adams) *

*An awesome quote by Henry Adams (the handsome dude pictured left when he was at Harvard) used in a book I've just finished reading - another of Mitch Albom's efforts called Tuesdays with Morrie.

I've been thinking about teachers a bit lately as you know from an earlier post (come on - pay attention in the back). 

I am a teacher. Lately I have been teaching the teachers - doing professional development work in Al Ain and before that, Doha.

It occurs to me that I'd like to get back to teaching students after this contract ends in July next year. Maybe not the full-time stuff of 5 or 6 classes, but definitely teaching students again.

The Morrie in the title was one of Mitch Albom's favourite teachers/mentors. The book's a celebration of Morrie's life and life itself. It's good. Emotional; it had me going a couple of times. Words hold great power when used skillfully.

Got me thinking about the mentors I've had in my life outside of my parents, who are an automatic inclusion.

Mentors? Who or what are they?

The burb on the back of the book says:

Maybe it was a grandparent, a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and impassioned, helped you to see the world as a more profound place, and gave you sound advice to guide your way through it.

I have been lucky enough to have had one in each category.

My mother's mother (Lucy Constance Adsett), called Ma by me and Ross, was my first mentor. Luckily I have some of her calm, common sense DNA about me. She was tough too - having to bring up her sons and daughter on her own, and she was independent. She lived on her own, in her own home until her death in 1974.

The second was a teacher at Mt Albert Grammar (Warwick Gibbs). I'm not sure what Warwick has as a teacher but whatever it is, it should be bottled and sold online. He has become a mentor to countless generations of boys.

And the third was a colleague - the Principal at my second school as a teacher (Colin Prentice). He is simply the most (maybe only) charismatic leader I've had the good fortune to work for/with. An inspiration in both his professional and private life.

The best influence they've had on me is the recurring thought, "What would (insert name) do in this situation?"

For the most part I've kept in touch with them (they are in the whanau list down the margin).


Wozza, Ma, her son Jack, Ross, her daughter Dulcie (our mum).



Colin taking a leaf out of his own book!

Warwick (right) at a MAGS sports award dinner.

 I'm lucky in that I've thanked them many times for their guidance and inspiration. What about you? Have you thanked those special mentors in your life?

Love and peace - Wozza

Maybe it was a grandparent, a teacher or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and impassioned, helped you to see the world as a more profound place, and gave you sound advice to guide your way through it.