I’m not sure whether I’ve been clear enough in my earlier statements about my health.
Mostly it’s great, sometimes it’s not.
There are two reasons why, at least some of the time, my body is not quite right. These are:
- simple, ageing (which is never actually simple),
- the brutal way I have treated my body over the years (and still will if I can).
My excuse for (2) is that we didn’t know how to train properly, had no gyms like we have in today, no personal trainers, no university degrees in sport, but the actual truth is, I’ve never actually known when enough is enough.
Even though it could be said that it’s a bit bloody late (read decades too late) I now really understand what we missed out on, at least to some small extent, and I try to educate our young athletes to follow a less damaging path than the one I followed.
Mostly I don’t need to. They’re smart and already know much more I do. They already know all this stuff and that’s outstanding.
I started playing rugby for the Linwood Club Under 5 stone team in Ōtautahi when I was six. That’s 1951. My Dad, a more than capable number twelve at provincial level, decided I wanted to be a front row forward. Oddly enough, so did I. I often agreed with my Dad. I had no idea what being a front row forward meant, but I pulled on the green and black hoops and my brand spanking new, fully leather, ear-sustaining head gear, and tried to do what my six foot twenty-four, cauliflower-eared, bent-nosed, monosyllabic ex Canterbury lock forward Mel Stoop told me.
I think I had no idea.
Not sure he had much of a clue either.
We chased the ball around to the raucous amusement of the crowd and then it was over. Dad said I played well but I seriously doubt whether I had. He was always supportive of everything I did but, I suspect, sometimes gilded the lily so I’d not get too depressed about being pretty damned useless.
From memory, I seem to have been a team reserve quite often.
Didn’t matter, Mum still washed my jersey, shorts, and socks every week, and Dad cleaned my boots as only an ex-military man, used to a regime of spit and polish, could.
I played hockey at school and was actually damn good at it, but I gave it up in favour of rugby probably to please my Dad who never actually asked that of me and would have been shocked to find that this was the case.
I also played cricket at school, but it seems, from memory, that I was pretty dire at that too. I don’t recall getting to bat very often, I never got to bowl (I’m not sure I even knew how), and I fielded a lot, but also not very well.
Sometimes I wasn’t picked in the team at all.
The one thing I was good at was not complaining, and I volunteered for everything.
I didn’t play tennis – I’ve never liked rich people’s sports – but I had a racquet and, solitary kid that I was, I would climb our back fence into the Linwood North School grounds in the evening and hit a tennis ball against a concrete wall for hours on end often until the sun went down
It was enjoyable and I was quite good at it. I often was at solitary things.
One Friday – I’d have been about ten or so, and it was around 1955 – the headmaster made an announcement at assembly to the effect that the tennis team for Saturday was short of a player, so, as has always been my way, I volunteered. I was told to be at Wilding Park at 9am and to report to the tennis teacher which I did. He told me when my matches were and I turned up and played them, then I went home. I have no idea if I won or lost – no-one bothered to teach me how to score – and I don’t recall that anyone spoke to me all morning. When I got home no-one there asked how I’d gone either, and that was that.
Not entirely though.
A strange morning seventy years ago and the memory is as vivid as if it happened yesterday.
It’s fair to say that I wasn’t a natural at this sport business. Nevertheless, I needed it, and I stuck to it.
It was, I discovered, a great way to escape the rigours of social communication and I certainly valued that. If I was outside in the evening bowling a cricket ball up our path at wickets painted on our shed door for two or three hours nobody bothered me, and, as a result, I became a surprisingly useful bowler. I smashed the shed door a few times, never told my Dad, but the door was always fixed by next day and the set of wickets painted on again.
It was never discussed.
If I went to practice with others in the nets at school every evening – I was a quickish bowler by then – I got better and fitter and even got a bat occasionally. In the winter, if I ran on the roads, I got really fit, and if I spent hours at the park practicing goal kicking, even when there was no formal practice. I was left alone and, as a by-product, I became a useful goal kicker.
Much fitter and faster than most, I changed position and played at centre and, eventually, pulled on the ten jersey which I wore for the rest of my career.
While I never made either the First XV or the First XI at Linwood High, I did do well at Linwood Rugby Club and Lancaster Park Cricket Club where I played for teams in grades well beyond those played in by my school. This was deeply satisfying as I’d realised by then that kids from my side of the tracks never made the top teams whereas the kids from Sumner, Opawa, or Cashmere did, because it was all about being socially acceptable and from a ‘good’ family.
I was neither.
I often still don’t ‘fit’, despite my considerable life successes. Not that I try. I was a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, and, at eighty, seems I’m still branded with that label.
Meanwhile, I clocked up the miles on the roads – upwards of a hundred a week – and twenty or more overs every night in the nets. I became strong, fit, and capable, making the Under 14, Under 15, and Under 16 Canterbury representative teams in both rugby and cricket, and Senior or Senior Reserve club and representative teams, before I was twenty.
The training regime stayed though my twenties and early thirties as I represented Matiere, King Country, Taranaki, and Northland at cricket with Northern Districts trials as well, and senior rugby for Ongarue, New Plymouth Old Boys, Ohura, Taumarunui Sub Union, King Country trials, Mangonui, Northland, and Taranaki B at rugby.
I also played provincial level badminton, and squash.
Unfortunately, all those miles on the road ultimately took their toll.
In 2007 I started karate with my whānau.
I’d recently had a total knee replacement so wondered how that would play out.
As is my tradition I took all the classes I possibly could. Tuesday kata class, Wednesday coloured belt class, Thursday technique class, Friday Tai Chi with Sensei Nhi, Saturday class with Sensei Clive, Sunday family class with Senpai Kirk, and, as an observer, Wednesday kid’s class for Finn.
Yes, as an observer.
As usual, I wasn’t allowed to work directly with the kids – I never am, karate, archery, whatever – because ‘we have to look after the children’ and transgender people are known to be dangerous to the Tamariki.
Yep, all day every day.
It always gives me an incredible amount of pleasure watching my son train – in a parent-like way – pushing his body to the limits but always with respect and a deep level of understanding, an understanding that I never had that injuries are simply part of the journey, and they can be fixed.
This body is an extraordinary thing.
They’re certainly part of the journey, but modern science has enabled me to have most of the broken bits fixed, and the damage done by a lifetime of overload, repaired at least partially successfully, so I can move on and do it all again.
The message, however, is clear.
For Cushla and Finn, even for me to some degree, it’s critically important to remember that we need to look after this extraordinary piece of machinery we’re born with and to minimise the damage we do to it, right from the outset.
One area of self-care has worked for me, thanks mostly to Cushla for being relentless in her insistence that I do exactly what she tells me. It’s probably because living with me when I am in complaining mode isn’t pleasant, but she’s really smart so she knows how to manage me to my own benefit.
Thank the goddess.
Many years ago – I know what you’re thinking, here comes another one of Lexie’s rambling stories – I had the pleasure of being programme leader of an undergraduate diploma programme in event management at AUT.
In those early days I had a delightful student by the name of Wai-Sharne. We became friends and have remained good friends over the subsequent twenty odd years even when our journeys grew apart.
Through Cushla’s intervention we have reconnected, and our families spent some quality time together at the beach over Christmas. Wai-Sharne, having spent many years overseas chasing the dream, finally listened to her inner voices and came home to work with her Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei whānau as a traditional healer.
Cushla got me when I was at a low ebb – they happen – to engage professionally with Wai-Sharne’s expert services. She runs a fabulous business called Maiden Tāmaki and I adore the wit of that name. Our whole whānau are now Wai-Sharne’s patients and we are all benefiting from her unique connection to who we really are. She’s smart, and her healing practices are magnificent, successful beyond my capacity to understand, and I treasure her even more now than I did before, if that’s possible. I love you, Wai-Sharne, for your skills and your smarts, but mostly for the way you connect me up with who I am and doing that is totally unique to you.
I am whole in ways I never thought possible.
Nei rā te kaupapa o te reo māori e
He taonga tuku iho nō nga tipuna
he parekawakawa, he mea hirahira e
Toku reo, toku ohooho mapihi maurea
Whakakaimarihi.
(My language is my awakening
It is the object of my affection
It is the wreath that adorns my head
My language, retention is my responsibility
It is of the greatest significance).
dykiegirl 