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January 22 enoughben is growing up into an boy who constantly amazes and attracts attention. he is exceptionally cute and in my opinion, rather clever. we have a really enjoyable evening routine in our house from about 6.30 to 7.30 which includes ben having a bath, hiding under the duvet, lots of kisses, (sometime a family dance time (remember them, nick?), stories, saying of prayers, cuddles and more. tonight after ben had finished some hiding in our bedsheets he skipped off to his room and said words to himself we would give our own lives to know were true. after all the fun of the previous twenty minutes, he danced of to bed announcing 'happy boy'.
we adore you, dear ben. January 11 passedi never planned to have any reaction to the news of sir edmund hillary's death. so it came as a surprise to me this morning when i felt kinda low. so i got on stuff.co.nz and tried to find out more. there wasn't any more to find out. he had died. that's all there was to it. i read the tributes and found tom scott's words to be the saddest. here they are: we will never see the likes of sir edmund hillary again. he was a great human. so that's it. we're all out of great humans.
sir hillary and i shared very little. nationality, gender, marital status, have both seen the himilayas (from different angles, i should add for the sake of accuracy), a love for nepal. it was amazing what he did. climbing to the top of that mountain like that. he was the first to do so. i however, to use eh's own words, know a few bastards i'd would like to knock off. this however is not to my credit whereas his tramping certainly was. as my brother nicholas noted, life is full of twists and we can't always see them coming, especially from a distance. it is incredible that no one had (reportedly) got to the top of everest before. (great name for a mountain because that is EXACTLY what i'd want to do as well on completion of my decent. incidently the dear nepalis call it sagarmatha) one reason for this might be that, as you know, nepal was closed to foreigners for decades until just a couple years before the british climbing team of which edmund was a fellow, tried the climb. some of the very first in were british ladies who'd been living for years in india close to the border with nepal. the prayed their socks off everyday for an opportunity to be allowed in and share their secrects with the locals. and provide healthcare. when the proverbial doors were opend they proceeded to walk from india to kathmandu. a journey i can personally testify to being both beautiful and painful. by bus at least. maybe i too should have gone by sandal. (i will also add that people had been attempting sagarmatha for years. thirty i believe.)
it is sad that he died. really. he was deeply loved and, like tom scott said, very important to the world. he was not perfect. but he was great. there are many such people in the world. like the plastic surgeons who sent their children to my classroom each day in nepal. they might have been back in europe earning six figures plus for their skills, but exhanged such a life for one of cows in the driveway, diesease in the water and a ground level toilet.
i felt homesick the other day. i was drinking cider with a mate at the pub and we were talking about how exciting helsinki is (not) having both been there in our lives. i then paused to ask myself which city i like the best out of all the world. wellington was the answer. i thought so again just two days ago when we had a lovely, lovely, lovely day weatherwise. blue sky (rare as chicken's teeth out here), a gentle breeze, a dozen or so white and fluffy clouds and a temperature that was probably in the mid twenties (like i was last time i lived in wellington). basically my homesickness came from remembering that in such weather one should really be at one of the bazillion great cafes in wellington drinking and eating with others.
i'm not sure of a clever line to finish with. |
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