Porches of Solitude
The first person I meet as I walk up from the car park toward St Joseph’s Church at Hiruharama is Sister Anna Maria Shortall. She was walking down to the church to check that everything was in order for the days visitors. She is one of only three Poutiriao (guardians, nurturers, protectors, caretakers) Sisters of Compassion in the Hiruharama community at the moment.
She has a kindness about her that is both unobtrusive yet deeply present. You feel it emanate from her like the breath of fog that forms on cool mornings over the awa’s (river) surface. Her mauri or breath of life greets me warmly, like an old friend. It’s turned down volume slipping easily passed my deference. It has a saintly almost angelic quality about it. I’m also immediately struck by the quiet strength of it.
I feel it must come from her place of prayerful supplication and an even greater love of God. Bore from a calling, I think but don’t know, where she knows beyond any reasonable doubt what it is to sit on a Porch of Solitude and never feel alone nor feel loneliness as some in the world do.
We sit, both Craig and me, on our own porches of solitude looking out over the valley and the houses in the small settlement clustered around the Patearero Marae (Patearero meaning slippery tongue) eating our Molenberg chicken salad sandwiches. The sun tickles an aromatic sweetness from the apples on the tree directly beneath our gaze. I stare at them for ages those green apples on a tree.
Apples growing on a tree up here at Hiruharama. The locals give me funny sideways looks when I say that out loud but you have to understand, I’ve lived in a major overseas city for over a quarter of a century. There’s something startlingly honest about that picture in front of my eyes.
They’re not perfect like shop brought apples these ones, some suffer from apple scab, apple rust that causes unattractive, raised lesions, bumps and scars on the apple. Rots cause ugly, brown decaying spots on the fruit. The apples on the tree here have been bitten into by some intrepid caterpillar who knows when he’s onto a good feed! Life’s like that too, bites deeply into us.
I notice the kindness of Sister Anna Maria’s eyes, the alertness in them. I notice eyes, they tell me a lot about a person. In particular they tell me a person’s life. They show me a way inside them, inside their real selves. I gaze into people’s eyes often and ask their eyes to tell me the story that’s been left unsaid. I tread softly, always.
Our sandwiches are followed by coffee from a thermos, Craig’s thought of everything. As I feel the coffee’s fingers spread warmly down my throat, I find myself breathing the air in deeply, feel it fill my airways with life-giving, soul refreshing goodness and I feel grateful. Grateful for my life, grateful for the privilege of living.
Grateful to be sitting here with my friend Craig in this living autumnal canvas. A truthful palette. To my right, a quince tree. A soft reminder of my mother. I’m alive I am and the paradox is not lost on me. Come, sit with me a while.
