1969 to 1972 divides neatly into two periods — before and after Stephen was born.
I wasn’t the usual varsity student, a few years older than most first years and a recidivist dropout with a wife and baby. And we had very little cash.
Still, we had our moments.
We must have come down to Auckland by February 1969, because the University insisted that I start in Term 1 that year or not at all. It feels like we barely had time to move into our caravan and re-home the dog before Heather was taken to hospital by ambulance.
The next four months must have been a torment for her. She spent them in the (now defunct) National Women’s with likely placenta previa, a condition that would put her in danger of sudden, potentially lethal haemorrhaging, and that could possibly require a C-section delivery. In those days, without scanning technology, conditions like this were difficult to diagnose.
I’ve already mentioned our flat in Ruapehu Street, which I rented to be near the hospital. I swear I could have got from there to the hospital car park off Claude Road blindfold. Sometimes I walked.
Hospital visits, study and my job in the IV unit — that was my life. But Heather, poor Heather — back in the place where she’d done her obstetrics training. Under Sisters who she described in some cases, when I asked her, as being “mean as pig shit”.
How did she pass the time? It’s a blur. She read and crocheted. A woman visitor commissioned her to make an intricate crochet bedspread in écru cotton. It was an enormous job, and beautiful. Something we wish we had now.
With the haemorrhage risk behind her she was able to come home to the flat for a couple of weeks before the baby was due.
Then, at 9.00 a.m. on Wednesday the 2nd of July, she was induced. Two days later, on Friday morning, Stephen was born. Heather begged for a C-section but by the time they agreed it was too late, so it was a forceps delivery.
Those were the days when husbands were nowhere near the delivery suite. The waiting room was full of nervous, restless men, often smoking. Sometimes one of the expectant women would come in. I remember being there once, the room empty except for myself and a woman, sitting in a chair, whose waters broke. And finally the nervous walk down to the delivery suite to embrace Heather, exhausted with her little bundle.
On the same day, in lesser news, the US celebrated its independence and the Apollo 11 astronauts donned their spacesuits at Cape Kennedy and boarded the Apollo module for a simulated launching of their lunar mission. We got a commemorative copy of the Herald and some other goodies from the Four Square chain.
A few days later Heather and Stephen came home. We moved from our one-bedroom flat at the front of the house to a two bedroom place at the back. On the 13th we watched on TV the Apollo 11 team land on the moon.
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So there we were, in love, very idealistic, and flat broke. Really broke, with a baby. Not broke in spirit or imagination — the freshness, youthful promise and optimism were still there — just lacking in cold hard cash.
I was working part time in the IV unit, and later I clipped movie tickets at the Embassy. Heather remembers buying eggs. The smallest eggs at the Grocer’s were size 6, but a fish shop on Dominion Road sold pullets’ eggs that were smaller and cheaper. She walked there to buy them each week, pushing Stephen in the pram. She cooked, she baked, she shopped for specials.
I must have done some shopping too because I remember baked beans were 18c a can. We’d fry up some mince, add the beans with salt and a pinch of chilli, and call it chilli con carne. My first taste of spice. For a touch of class you could fry an onion with the mince, I suppose. Or leave the mince out entirely if you were a bit short.
Barry’s Bulk Barn was another good place for bargains. We bought some cheese there once that turned out to be really economical — so strong you barely had to show it to the bread.
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Heather shopped the best she could, planned meals with what we had, and made all our clothes — when she was twelve her Mum and Dad had bought her a sewing machine. It was a top quality Singer and we had it for many years.
This was the industrious woman I’d married! She seemed to treat every idle minute as a challenge. She put her pattern-making skills to good use making a leather handbag for her mother on our kitchen table — cut the pieces by hand, punched holes and stitched them together with waxed thread. Joyce loved it and her friends liked it to. “Two friends tell two friends,” Heather says. Soon she was making a few belts — the germ of a business that’s lasted for more than fifty years. She bought leather from Lea and Arlington’s tannery in Otahuhu, and buckles and so on from a leather supply shop on Albert Street. The tannery went out of business in the early 1990s, and the shop is long gone.
We were part of the hippy mindset — self-sufficiency, sustainability and do-it-yourself. Back to the land. Handcrafts. Self-expression. Drop out and stick it to the man.
Heather’s mother Joyce helped dress us too. And fed us quite frequently — she introduced me to chicken dinners.
She was wholly admirable. Reared two resourceful kids alone after her husband died when Heather was 14. Worked full time at Winstones, getting there and back on the bus. Cleaned the house, baked, bottled and cooked. Then sat down and knitted these beautiful garments. Something we regret is not having a single item that she made. Heather is wearing one of Joyce’s sweaters in the photo with Stephen at the top of this page.
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Later that year we moved to another flat on Marama Avenue, to be close to the Teacher’s Training College. It was a much better place, and we took in a pleasant young girl boarder, a teacher trainee, to help with the bills.
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After we moved Heather took a part-time job at the dental hospital, while I — since I spent so much time studying and writing essays in our lounge — looked after little Stephen.
He significantly tested my child rearing assumptions, which were based on rearing calves on and off for 10 years. I say that with a light touch, but seriously, because I can’t deny believing that as long as children were feeding well and looking healthy you didn’t need to worry about them too much.
Inevitably Stephen got sick. The doctor, who incidentally became quite senior in the profession, came round to see him and told Heather that, yes, Stephen was feverish, but not to worry too much — she should break an aspirin in half, take one piece herself, give the rest to the baby, and see how she felt in the morning.
Reassured, Heather went to work. And I did too, at the dining room table. I checked on Stephen — yes I did — and he seemed… fine. Sick yes, but fine. When Heather returned, she went straight to check on Stephen in the sun-room where he slept, and raced straight back out with him, saying we needed to take him straight to hospital.
I have seen few things more alarming than the sight of his little chest collapsing — collapsing — as he tried to breathe. He spent his first birthday in intensive care.
Heather has never forgiven the doctor, and never forgotten his name.
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On another occasion I was eating breakfast while Heather was doing the washing. We had a horrible little Hoover Twin Tub in an alcove by the kitchen, and she was in the midst of transferring a load of laundry from one tub to the other. And she thrust her hand into the machine before it stopped spinning, breaking several bones in it.
Once again she said that we needed to go to hospital — straight away. And — she says that I said — Yes, just as soon as I finish my breakfast.
I have a few things to say about this. First, that one of Heather‘s most striking characteristics is her impetuosity.
Second, that this is another testament to her high pain threshold.
Third, that I can’t remember saying that, but it does sound like something I might.
Fourth, if you feel judgmental, I got there first.
In fact, she says, there are two things wrong with my washing machine story.
It actually happened a couple of years later, in Glen Eden, not Mt Eden, and I was feeding Stephen, not myself — which makes me feel slightly less guilty. Still, I was born Presbyterian and quite like wallowing in guilt, so I’ve left my version in.
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For obvious reasons I was fairly isolated from university life, but I do remember the quadrangle — busy at lunchtime, with students lounging and chatting in the sun while other students harangued them.
The cafeteria I recall as a gloomy place where we went occasionally to eat cheap food. Since money was always on our minds we were quick to buy a cookbook published by the Student Union for people on a budget like us. Like the Little Red Book and the Whole Earth Catalogue, I wish we still had a copy. It’s where we found the chilli con carne recipe.
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So there we were, in love and very idealistic, and of course still arguing furiously at times — and again, about what I can’t remember. Just two individuals smoothing out our rough edges by tumbling against each other.
And it occurs to me that we can’t have been completely broke because we had people round to the Marama Road flat occasionally for food, music and drinks. We had an oval table where we ate and I worked, dark-stained oak with drop-down wings. I’d hesitate to call those evenings parties, but they were fun, although I barely remember them or most of the people who came. As time passes, the things one remembers tend to reduce to the most significant, with random supporting details.
Like meeting a lifelong friend in Graeme, whom we met emoting in a student drama production at Training College. When we ended up teaching together at Henderson High School it cemented the relationship.
Or like the blue shelf unit in our living room that doubled as a room divider. We’d put Stephen down in a carry cot behind it during those noisy parties — so we could keep a better eye on our little boy while he slept through the noise. That shelf unit came with us to our first houses, then went to the Bindery and then disappeared.
I promise Stephen that his parents were a lot more responsible than I’ve just made us out to be. Still, we had our moments.