You’ll always be a kiwi if you love our Watties sauce

When my son was born we were pretty sure we would only live in Canberra another year or so. We used to joke about where we would move to. What accent should we pick? Should we stay in Australia? How about the UK: possible work opportunities in Leicester – bit Midlands: back to Cambridge – so he could pronounce ‘th’ as ‘f’? What aboot Canada?

It is actually a serious question for us. Where will our children belong? Where will they find turangawaewae?

Will it be Denmark? Hard to say, probably not. Not forever. And being an immigrant in Denmark is not the same thing as being an immigrant in NZ. Or the child of immigrants.

I know I’m not particularly qualified to write about that experience. But I’m also not entirely unqualified. I was born in NZ, but actually lived the first four years of my life in Germany. We can tell you about turning up in a school environment where the only thing children know about Germany is WWI and WWII. So I know NZ is not perfect. (This is an excellent article on life as a Chinese New Zealander)

It’s hard to deny though that it isn’t better at dealing with immigrants than many countries. The results of the last general election is proof of that. During my language classes I was the only person in the class surprised to learn that there is a specific term used for the child born in Denmark to immigrants, even if the immigrants have become Danish citizens. It seemed bizarre to me, that the country of birth of your parents can determine your place in society. I sat there, pregnant, and realised that even if we stay, in the eyes of Danes my children will never really belong. My daughter, born here, will always be called ‘efterkommer’. That, even stranger, my son’s children would be ‘efterkommer’. That only a child who was born in Denmark to a parent born in Denmark, can call themselves a Dane.

Sometimes I can feel that we spend so much time trying to assimilate to life here, trying to fit in, trying to just get by outside our doors, that we can forget who we are. My children are New Zealanders. Officially. Even if one of them has never actually been there. Sometimes it can be sad, and even slightly daunting to think that if we don’t take them back, take them home, they will not be New Zealanders in the sense that R and I are.

I miss home. I miss watching the light fall on the Orongorongo ranges. I miss the noisy tui and the darting fantails, the kererū whomping as they land heavily in trees. I miss fish and chips, and lamb chops. I miss walking down a street and seeing foods from a multitudes of cultures, skins in a multitude of colours in this country which is white, white, white. I miss all the intangible things. A love for a place that I cannot put in a box and give to my children. It is a love that grows from familiarity. I miss familiarity.

One thing, I haven’t had to miss is the Rugby World Cup. We have managed to watch nearly every game via (legal) streaming. M was at first baffled, as we hardly watch TV with him around. Suddenly there was this ‘rugby’ on all weekend. It’s been lovely to introduce him to what was such a mainstay of my childhood. Just listening to the on-field play takes me back to watching the Hutt Old Boys with my father. M got the hang of the game pretty quickly

‘The men and women jump into piles, and then the referee blows the whistle.’

He is quite taken with the referees. I’m not buying him a whistle.

He does have an All Blacks t-shirt that he loves to wear now he knows what the All Blacks are. He likes to check what the women’s rugby team is called (Black Ferns). He liked seeing some games played in Gloucester, as we have a book about the Tailor of Gloucester. He likes to watch the Haka, he asks every game if they will do one, even though we try to explain only the Pacific Island teams have them. He likes to haka with his father, but ‘only the bit I know…He!’. He likes to watch goal kicking, as he can understand that bit. He likes to eat his tea watching a game, yup television dinners have entered his world. Rather sweetly, he cannot comprehend what ‘winning’ means.

On Saturday night the All Blacks played early enough for M to watch. I made my Grans signature ‘toasties’. M put on his shirt. I tried not to rage as the game was being played, while A slept on me. If you knew my father, you’d understand how hard I found it. At 72min I sobbed ‘we’re going to lose.’ At 76min I woke the baby. At 80min R and I were on our feet. There are New Zealanders who don’t want their country to be defined purely by our ‘rugger thugs’ as they are wont to say. But when a stadium and a nation come together, that collective holding of breath, then the joy of victory, I find that to be a beautiful thing. Watching the cup has bought us pleasure, a sense of home to our life here. Now, if only they played ads for Cydectin at half time.

The smell of baking got stronger and warmer and browner.

Maybe it’s a rainy day, maybe there’s rugby on we want to watch in the background, maybe I’m just too tired to leave the house but I need to find a way to keep M busy. Often my solution is to go to the kitchen and start baking. And in M’s own words he is turning into quite a good cooker.

M’s absolute favourite kitchen activity is to whip out the cookie cutters. I often do a double batch of dough and have some in the freezer ready for another day (see, sometimes I am organised!). He still needs a bit of help, and the cookies can get a bit ripped or squished; the teddy bear biscuits in particular tend to lose limbs during the process.

He can, under guidance, tip measured ingredients into bowls for mixing. He’s learning how to crack eggs, how to grate cheese and carrots, and we even let him do some chopping with a knife. I’ve been meaning to buy him one of these knives for kids but my to-do-list is quite…long.

I love having him help me in the kitchen; I used to love helping my Mum. She was an amazing cook. Because my sister has a long list of food intolerances (way before they became fashionable) bought biscuits were a ‘treat’. Mum somehow found the time to bake goods for our lunchboxes. If Mum made pastry there was always enough left over for us to play with, and maybe even a few raisins to stud it with before baking our creations. We learnt how to avoid overmixing muffins, test a cake was done, and whip up the perfect kiwi pavlova.

It is only now that I have M helping me that I see everything that my mother was teaching us.

‘And now we roll the dough into a rectangle. That means two long sides, and two short sides.’
Click. My mother was a high school maths teacher.
Geometry, measurements and ratios. Baking is basically maths.

Teaching our children shouldn’t be about being perfect. It’s not about instruction, or testing. It should be something we just do. Because children just learn. They absorb everything. They’ll do it whether we consciously teach them or not. Every day, every minute they spend with us they are learning. It’s a scary thought. Then I console myself with the thought that I am not trying to teach my son to be perfect. I’m trying to teach him to be human. That it is ok to make mistakes. That sometimes people get grumpy. That we can apologise afterwards. That we love each other, even though he doesn’t nap, and it’s getting late, and I’m tired, and can he just go into the bathroom and brush his fucking teeth?

After I started writing this (yeah, it takes me a looong time to type one-handed with a feeding baby), I saw an article about how to cook with your kids. I clicked. I’m a good blogger I thought. I’m doing ‘research’. I kid you not, the first three or four bullet-points were all about ensuring your kitchen was safe. Make sure any electrical cords are coiled tidely. Make sure anything sharp is out of reach. Make sure you’ve got everything out and ready, and a clear space for utensils once they are dirty. What are the kids doing while you spend half an hour fretting about what to do with your kettle cord? Playing nicely? My kitchen bench is half-pantry overflow, half dirty dishes, half crumbs (wait, that’s too many halves, what would my mother say?) I’d never get anything done if I had to organise a perfect cooking space first. Besides if I don’t teach my son that knives exist and you really shouldn’t touch the pointy metal bit, who will? So for now, I’m just going to leave it dangerously within reach.

My baking certainly isn’t pinterest-perfect. I don’t buy into the ‘clean eating’ that has become so popular. Our cakes are #loadedwithgluten #fullofrefinedsugar. Partly because sugar, is sugar, is sugar. And partly because while we do OK, it’s just way too expensive to use only ground almonds and maple syrup instead. Who knows what the future will be like for my children; what food security they will have. I imagine they will have years that are ‘leaner’ than others. It’s more important to me that they learn the basics of cooking, so they are able to make a cake for a special occasion or cook a nice dinner to impress a date, than feeding them some ideal diet now.

Sometimes we have spills, and mess. Sometimes it takes M ages to individually place every potato wedge I’ve chopped on to the tray, while I fret because I know he’ll be complaining he’s hungry before they’ve cooked. Sometimes he eats way too much biscuit dough. Sometimes I get exasperated at his insistence he can do everything himself, because he can’t, because he’s three. But we keep getting the measuring cups out, and going back to the kitchen; it’s hard not to enjoy his enthusiasm.

So, I’m grateful my mother took the time to include us in the kitchen. Because even though I don’t remember the cake crumbs and fingerprints all through the icing, or the half cup worth of flour I inevitably left my mother to sweep off the floor, I remember the time, the love, the life skills. Gifts that are worth passing on to her grandchildren.

#nailedit