Makawe

An Excerpt from Where You Are launching August 8th (NZT) at 10.30am at Te Papa Tongarewa during Photobook NZ Festival Book Fair.

Growing up, we used to have this big grey couch in our sitting room. It was hard and patterned and losing its springs. And behind it, was yellow green wallpaper with distinct 70s patterns that seemed to translate into my clothes. I would probably wear a dress like that now if it was available!

That chair felt ginormous as a child! You could sit in a corner and it would envelop you, gobble you up. My sisters and I used to jump off the arms doing kung fu fighting to an old 45 record playing on the gram. It was that solid, it carried all of us.

It's also where I remember my mother plaiting my hair. I remember the firm, taut pulls to make a perfect plait. Me on the floor, her on the couch behind me. I don't have a photograph of it but not every memory comes in a photograph. Many arrive through feelings, stories, flashbacks, told and retold until they shape themselves, somewhere, in that retelling.

So if I imagine the photograph now - it would be matte, beautiful distilled hues, just like the 70s, taken on a 110 film. Me and Mum in our sitting room, her concentrating on the plait, me looking at the camera with a pretend smile on my face as I navigate having my head pulled. The rest of the room - the tv, the gram, the open fireplace, the windows looking out to the village, these would all be outside the frame.

Maybe the absence of the photograph is more meaningful than the photograph itself. And perhaps its absence helps me remember - to unravel it through my own memory, my own eyes, my own heart.

The image of my mother plaiting my hair, it reminds me of the umbilical cord, a sacred connection of whakapapa. I have an image imprinted of my Kuia, my mother and me connected through many timelines and the plaiting of my hair extends beyond the physical realm and into a space where we all meet.

I think about the intergenerational trauma that we’ve carried - woven, seamlessly together and I know I’m supposed to let this go. I know I can release the tightening of a plait held taut to perfection, but letting go has been a lifetime journey, and perhaps in this journey that my mother forgets, I am remembering who I am.

and this moment with her, is presence for me

a moment of being with each other

just sitting with her, no words needed

The memory of her plaiting my hair reminds me that hair is powerful.

I remember Mum saying - don't cut hair in the dark, don't burn hair, don't burn nails, actually, don’t cut nails in the dark. The head is tapu, is sacred, and hair is part of that. And I remember the story of Māui being nurtured in his mother's topknot. Māui-Tikitiki-a-Taranga, the sacred topknot of Taranga. Hair carries the power to hold aroha, to hold a baby. It is whakapapa made visible.

And you don’t want your hair to get in the wrong hands, because it carries your energy. My sister's hair sat in a bag for a long time once. I don't know where it went to, but it was held on to, not discarded.

Knowing her, she probably still has it!

I remember Mum talking about our brother who was stillborn. And I remember her describing his hair, all she saw when he came out was his big mop of hair. And then he was taken from her. I couldn’t imagine how she felt, giving birth to her son who is no longer alive and then not being able to hold him. I wonder how that affected her, and her life that would follow.

Mum understood hair this way because she was raised in the old ways. And both her parents were fluent in te reo Māori. But, her and Dad didn’t speak much. They understood it though and they loved to listen and dropped in a word here and there.

Kia tere - I remember often. And it was said fast, like the meaning of the word. I love te reo Māori. Simple and beautiful. And sometimes the word looks like the action.

And I remember her and Dad watching Te Karere, the Māori news together, holding on to every word they heard. They didn't speak te reo in sentences, but their memories and hearts remembered. Sitting to watch Te Karere brought them so much joy. Their reo Māori still lived in them. And now I have it in me.

My own hair has witnessed things Mum never saw - the life that came after she passed, the life she had with dementia and the life I thought she never knew about, when I was a teenager and then a young woman navigating the world.

But I know she knew.

And there were moments that she helped me navigate, that only she could. And her hair could tell some stories too.

I remember watching her hair go grey, when she had forgotten to dye it. And what was revealed was a softening. The hair softened, the brow softened, her skin softened, her Te Arawa jaw softened. I saw life come back into her when she let her hair go grey, when she allowed nature to do it’s thing, when she let go of holding on.

I remember seeing her one day with her grey hair and thinking - there she is.

After all these years, she is revealing herself, I can finally see her.

red is for blood

red is for whakapapa

red is for my mother’s lipstick