Whānau, Whāngai…

Brother Jess standing, with (from left) Adrienne, Chris Ann, Charmaine, Deborah, Barbara

Charmaine’s journey….

I have been on a journey too, this month, but a very different one from Tanya’s.   I’ve just returned from a week  in Sydney and surrounds, spending time with my birth family.

Many of you will know that I have two families.  I grew up knowing I was adopted, and believing that I was a much loved and wanted child, with Grace and Laurence Pountney.  When I was in my 40s I learnt my birth parents, Pat and Brian Tapper, had married after the war and I had six full siblings- five sisters and a brother, living in Australia.  Mum Grace and I met them all in Sydney in 1986, and I have been to Sydney several times since as well as hosting many of them here in Aotearoa.

Both families  have given me much love and support over the years.  But I also acknowledge the grief and pain which is a part of every adoption story.

 For Pat Godman,  a 17-year-old whose great love Brian had gone off to the war and who had no way to support a baby, there was no choice, and she has lived with the grief of that all her life.

For my adopting mother Grace, she lived with the fear I would be taken off her again, because she had had that experience with the first baby she and Laurence adopted.

Both women lived with grief, and fear, and anger, which made it hard for them when they eventually met again in 1986.  Over the years, however, and thanks to the warmth of my siblings who welcomed Grace as well as me into their family, the tensions subsided.  Grace said to me the night before she died in 1997, “What a good thing you’ll have your family in Australia for when I’m gone.”

As for me,  I have had to learn a lot about my own relationship issues, separation anxiety, and the need to belong. …

My sister Adie had organised a Tapper family gathering, so it was a good opportunity for me to catch up with some of my extended family at a big Saturday lunch, as well as to stay in turn with some of my siblings in their very different parts of Sydney and its surrounds, and to visit my mum Pat, who now has advanced dementia and is in resthome care.

So I’ve spent time with Barbara and husband Barry on the North Shore, surrounded by her garden with water features, fruit, flowers and ferns, with Deborah and husband John in the Hunter Valley in their newly renovated home on their vineyard, with Chris Ann and husband Graham on their Colovale lifestyle block in the Southern Highlands, with Adie and Keith in their 8th floor central city Sydney apartment, and with brother Jess at the family gathering.  Always lovely to feel so welcome, and always sad to have so little shared history…

 About 70 Tapper family siblings, cousins, partners, children and grandchildren arrived to enjoy the social room, gardens and pool associated with Adie and Keith’s apartment building, with a delicious shared lunch (all my family  love food!), lots of catching up (likewise talk!) and an accompanying slide show bringing back memories of past reunions.

My visits to mum Pat in Sydney, who will be 95 next month,  were an emotional rollercoaster.  Good to see her so well-loved and cared for by my sisters and the staff of the Donald Coburn Dementia Unit, and maybe even vaguely knowing who we were, or at least feeling comfortable with us, and always enjoying her meals and snacks.  And, of course, deep sadness at her limited mobility, and her memory and speech limitations.  And for the inevitable loss of a second mother…