Eighteen

Obsidian splinters lodge in your heart.

They tear at the greenstone landscape of your mind.

Through the falling fragments comes striding another Tama Mahana.

You, the one who says you loved your father.

But all the same, you left him, the family, the farm, Waituhi and your Ringatū upbringing.

You left them all when you were eighteen. Off and away, just like that. You had managed to do well at high school and had some qualifications in your pocket. How was this possible? In the mornings you and your sisters had a one-hour hike from the farm (or half-hour horse ride) to Waituhi to catch the school bus; you had the same walk back from Waituhi after school. Your weekends and any hours you had to spare were helping Mum and Dad on the farm. Your summer holidays were spent shearing with one of the Mahana gangs, 5 am to 5 pm every day. When did you study? The question really was did you ever have time to study? And the answer was no.

Like everything else you aspired to, you did it by sheer determination … and charm. You turned fifteen, sat School Certificate and passed. Your whānau put on a big celebration party at Takitimu Hall at Waituhi. The hākari coincided with the Ringatū 1st January ritual at the Kapenga, the Passover. Your success was their success. Your success was Mum and Dad’s success. You’d have thought you had nothing to do with it. And Dad must have invited every shearer, roadman, opossum hunter and freezing worker from Ōpōtiki to Nūhaka. People kept on congratulating your parents:

Mauriora, they said, pumping Mum and Dad’s hands. You did it!

You left, first of all, for Gisborne. You got work there, which seemed to all intents and purposes to be the fulfilment of the expectations the iwi had of you.

It was a job at the Māori Land Court, which was a judiciary service for owners of Māori land and one of the most important businesses in town. Te Kooti Whenua Māori held records of land titles: what had been alienated; what had been sold when and how. This was the kind of information any iwi needed to get land back. You went from cleaner to lowly research clerk, but you wouldn’t be one of those forever.

Mum and Dad were proud that all could see that by your Pākehā education you had positioned yourself to provide them with services Māori really needed.

But you were also a young man who had come of age. After a year, you asked Mum and Dad if you could go flatting in Gisborne rather than stay on the farm because that would make it easier for you to get to work. What you were really wanting, however, was to escape from them and from Waituhi. You had begun to mix in a completely new Pākehā environment and you were enjoying the mates, girlfriends and partying. Your physical self hungered to break free, not just from your parents’ prohibitions but from the expectations of the iwi.

You wanted to be you. You didn’t know who that was, but you had to find him. You didn’t want to be the Waituhi boy or Ringatū boy anymore.

Dad, can you blame me? you asked your father. There’s a great wind of change blowing through our country, through New Zealand as a whole, and I want to make it in Te Ao Pākehā now.

Sometimes, Tama, you have to stand against the wind.

If you do that, Dad, you can be uprooted and blown away.

Then bend with it, Son, and let the wind blow over you. Stay here. Don’t go there.

Before their very eyes the old people saw you changing. They said: This is what happens when our young go into Te Ao Pākehā.

Ngā mea whakatō mō wai rā? Mō Hātana.

You started to go head to head with Dad. In trying to make you see sense, he only pushed you further away. And you, the other Tama Mahana, stepped out from his obedient farmboy, Ringatū and Waituhi self. You could no longer hide or disguise the fact that you had developed a personal ambition. Everything that your parents had feared would happen was happening.

And so you decided to chuck your job and the ambitions of the iwi.

I’m going to Wellington, you told Mum and Dad.

Te tōrino haere whakamua, whakamuri; the spiral not only went forward or backward, it also went outward.

Your mother said: Te Aō Pākehā will eat you up, it is gluttonous.

And Dad said: Pākehā life is seductive, I won’t be around to keep you safe. If you do this thing, don’t expect me and Mum to support you financially.

He quoted from Te Paipera Tapu:

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

You flinched because he had invoked, in one proverb, all the karakia of the Ringatū that you had grown up with. Those kupu floating like birds between one member of the faithful and the other, sitting in the meeting house in the night.

I won’t lose my soul, you answered between clenched teeth.

But Dad wouldn’t give up: What is the point of winning the Pākehā world’s accolades but in the process losing sight of the people’s kaupapa? You have forgotten what’s important in Te Ao Māori.

You suddenly realised why Tāne, god of humankind, had separated the parents, Papatūānuku and Ranginui. It was so that he could stand between and breathe.

You took a huge gasp, flexed your muscles and heaved your father into the sky. You would not allow him to stand in your way, your ara.

What would you know about what’s important in the world? you asked him. All you know about is mātauranga Māori. And all you’ve been is a seasonal worker and a knifehand at the freezing works who was so busy slitting sheep’s throats you wouldn’t recognise what’s happening around you until it shat in your face.

It was a terrible thing to say. Dad came roaring at you, fists raised and, before you knew it, you were fighting.

Mum and your sisters began wailing.

Tama, Mum cried, apologise to your father.

Damned if you were going to let him criticise what you wanted to do with your life. His expectations of you might have been right for him and the son he thought you should be, but they were wrong for you, for the son you wanted to be. You wove around each other, throwing punches, blocking, trying to get between the other’s guard. Suddenly you saw a shocked look pass over your father’s face at what was happening. He began to go on the defensive instead of attack. He began to retreat — but did you care? You should have known what he was doing.

When your father finally put down his guard and opened himself to the blow that knocked him to the ground, you should have known this was an act of love, an act of acceptance. Your fists smashed through his defences and he went down.

Your mother slapped you hard. Your sisters began to rail against you. You lifted Dad from the floor and sobbed on his shoulder.

Dad, you’ve brought me all this way through my life, and I thank you and Mum for it. But you’re going to have to let me go. Where will I end up and what will I become? Kāore ahau e mōhio. Will going to Wellington be a mistake? It could be. But I’ve got to follow my own ara. Please Dad, stand aside. Let me pass.

And so you went to the Windy City and laid up with cuzzies from the East Coast who lived in a flat in Wilson Street, Newtown. They were a rough-living hard-drinking crowd who worked on the council rubbish trucks during the week, got their pay cheque on Thursday and partied until Sunday when the booze, easy women and money ran out. You absolutely loved it. You were free, you didn’t have to worry about anything other than to live life the way you wanted to.

So, don’t make out, Tama Mahana, that you are the good guy, the hero.

You got into a fight with one of your cuzzie bros, so they kicked you out. You went to stay in Upper Hutt, where you worked in an automobile-assembly factory. From there you criss-crossed Wellington, your life was one long nosedive through the Hutt Valley, Porirua and Wainuiomata. You either flatted or stayed with rellies. But not for too long with relatives because you knew that they would tell Mum and Dad where you were living, and Dad would come down to try to convince you: Come home, Tama. Please come home.

You wanted to keep one step ahead of the posse.

Guilt kept you on the run.

You kept in touch with Rīpeka, but nobody else in the family. You told her that an opportunity had come up for you. Jobs were being advertised in an international trucking company. You applied as a driver, but when your interviewer saw that you had good academic qualifications, he said: I think we can do better than that for you, Laddie.

That’s how you met Jim Ralston and began working in the company’s freight office as a despatch clerk.

One day, the telephone rang. When you answered it, your mother said to you: I don’t care if you don’t want to speak to me, but please don’t do this to your father.

She put him on the phone:

Will you forgive me, Son? he asked.