I’m not sure whether I’ve been clear enough in my 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 not 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 is that we didn’t know how to train, but the truth is, I’ve never actually known when enough it’s enough.
Even though it could be said that it’s a bit bloody late, I now really understand that, at least to some extent, today.
I started playing rugby in the Linwood Under 5 stone team when I was six. That’s 1951. My dad, a more than capable back at provincial level, decided I wanted to be a front row forward. Oddly enough, so did I. I had no idea what that meant, but I pulled on the green and black hoops and my brand spanking new fully leather head gear, and tried to do what my six foot twelve, cauliflower-eared, bent-nosed ex Canterbury lock forward Mel Stoop told me.
I think I had no idea.
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 it. 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 reserve quite often.
I played hockey at school and was actually 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 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 bowled, and I fielded a lot but not very well. Sometimes I wasn’t picked 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 school grounds in the evening and hit a tennis ball against a concrete wall for hours on end. It was enjoyable and I was quite good at it.
One Friday – I’d have been about ten so 1955ish – the headmaster made an announcement at assembly to the effect that the tennis team for Saturday was short of a player, so I volunteered. I was told to be at Wilding Park at 9am and 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 – no-one bothered to teach me how to score – or lost and I don’t recall that anyone spoke to me all morning. When I got home no-one asked how I’d gone 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.
It was, I discovered, a great way to escape the rigours of social communication and I 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 I became a surprisingly useful bowler. If I went to cricket practice in the nets at school every night 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.
Fitter than most, I changed position and played centre and eventually pulled on the ten jersey.
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 and it was all about being socially acceptable and from a ‘good’ family.
I wasn’t, and I often don’t ‘fit’ even today’.
Meanwhile, I clocked up the miles on the roads – upwards of a hundred a week, and 20 or more overs every night in the nets. I became strong and 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, NPOB, Ohura, Taumarunui Sub Union, King Country trials, Mangonui, Northland, and Taranaki B at rugby.
I also played provincial badminton, and squash.
All those miles on the road 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 Wednesday kids class for Finn.
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 level of understanding I never had, but injuries are part of the journey. They’re part of the journey but modern science has mercifully enabled me to have most of the broken bits fixed and the damage done by a lifetime of overload repaired at least partially successfully, but the message overall, for Cushla, me, and Finn, is that it’s critically important to look after this extraordinary piece of equipment and to minimise the damage to it 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 moaning mode isn’t pleasant, but she’s really smart so she knows how to manage me to my own benefit.
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 people as a traditional healer.
Cushla got me when I was at a low ebb – they happen – to engage professionally with Wai-Sharne’s professional services. She runs a fabulous business called Maiden Tāmaki and I adore the wit of that name. Our whole whānau are now patients of Wai-Sharne and her unique connection with 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 that’s 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.
dykiegirl 