Helping

Over the years since Emiel died I’ve travelled often to the property at Glenorchy feeling both a desire to be on this piece of land surrounded by mountains and a sense of responsibility to complete what Emiel started and make it into a beautiful place to come to.

We arrived last evening. It being summer the sun was still up, and, as usual, the first thing I did was walk about and check out what had grown in the garden and how the fruit trees and others were going; this despite having left here only three weeks beforehand.

I have gotten fairly philosophical over the past few years, finding that if I didn’t allow myself to think about all that I felt needed doing in the short time I’m here and instead just pottered from one task to the next as my mood dictated, I often got things done and left feeling that there just might be a little less to do next time. Sometimes I even did nothing! But most people would tell you that that was never for very long.

But in my recent efforts to be more conscious of what’s really going on in me I got up today, went out to where only three weeks ago there was, with a little imagination, quite a pretty little garden, and attacked with anger all the bracken that had sprung up and was choking what was left of the plants that hadn’t been eaten or trampled by visiting wildlife. And, not satisfied with that, I moved onto further dismantling a wire enclosure I’d built only a few years ago to protect chickens and their chicks from the ever-present hawks circling above.

Why dismantle? The chicks were gone, the weeds were high, the construction was built by an amateur working without advice or experience and the hope was that the same wire would be of more use protecting plants in the garden. Will I never learn??

It seems not. Eventually the anger gave way to grief, meaning that the fury went out of my self-talk of ’why does everything I do not work out the way I want it? Why do I have to do everything all by myself? Why can’t I get on top of all this? And so on.

And the childhood memory came of my making a chicken coop when I was about 12 years old from the scraps of building material under the house that my dad said I could use, because I desperately wanted to keep chickens (which my dad later obtained for me). And I recognised the connection between my anger and grief at not getting help with this childhood venture – my father being busy working hard to provide for us all. I could see that same loneliness and frustration, and determination to prove to the world that I can do what people tell me I can’t do, and underlying that, the awareness of the lack of a parent who was available to help me fulfil my desire.

Why ruminate on all this? I can see why I go to the local woodcraft group where there are all these older men only too happy to help me with advice. They are temporarily filling a hole of need in me. But the need returns as soon as I leave. I recognise that I have a strong need to lean on competent capable men who will show me what to do and help me, but also that many men will pick up on the angry feeling ’I can do this all by myself’ which I am only starting to see I have been emitting all my life. No wonder it’s impossible to please me!

And the way out? Well I know the theory: continue to feel that childhood grief that started it all. Practically, for me that means a different approach to my time in Glenorchy. Instead of keeping a lid on my sense that there is too much for me to do here and it’s all too hard anyway, I can just let all my frustration out – there’s plenty of physical outlets here for that! And see what happens.

Maybe one day I can put a sign on the gate – "No help needed here" !!