Twelve Days Sober

The further I remove myself from virtual reality, the more real my world becomes. Achingly real, pointedly connected to the pupil in Ivy's eyes, my young granddaughter, a force I reckon with each time I part her presence from mine, I wonder: what world does she make in her mind?

What legacies am I imprinting her with, what stories do I tell her over time?

I wonder about these things when contemplating the unrecognisable aspects of myself/ourselves. We seem embedded inside the variable depths of turquoise upon the horizon line.  Here, we are living upon extended land within the South Pacific Ocean surrounding Banks Peninsula, an island called "South" of Aotearoa, New Zealand.  Here, encompassed by two lakes and immense ocean whose next landmass is Antarctica, hemmed in by water with no border patrol, I contemplate physical and metaphysical natures, body and soul. Our bodies are here but:

My soul cries out for my granddaughter, Ivy.

Ivy, how will you write/right your world in your mind when I am dead and gone? What legacy will I leave you to live alongside? An ocean of variable depths of turquoise is the story I shall try to describe about how you came to be 'here' with me.

This will take some time but we are time. You are time in your world no matter how time may seem to be supplied, applied and described as an 'other' that is in control of your life... YOU are in control of time because you and TIME are the same thing. How you perceive time will be your story when you understand the importance of time, yourself. On the production of subjective wellbeing (a thesis for my progeny), the first chapter is TIME. My time WITH you was important enough for me to leave a trail (for all time) with you.

Movement. I moved our family: your mother, aunties and myself to New Zealand from America in 2002 for important reasons. Prevailing American culture did not bode well for the indigenous aspects of my nature. I had NO IDEA we would wind up in New Zealand, I only knew within my body and mind that we had to leave America. I was forty-six years old then, sixty-two years now and a sixteen year immigrant who has had to learn how to language her 'dis-ease' for living in her homeland. It was very uncomfortable not being able to say what was wrong with me living and being in America but I can describe it now to some degree but not completely as I am still understanding my own story and will be until my time is over for this body. In that way, allow me to grow and change, too.

[I will continue to write this here for my grandchildren, though Ivy is my subject, she represents ALL my grandchildren and their children and so on....]