Love Actually — Auckland Airport Reunions
I wrote 179 airport reunion columns for the Herald on Sunday between 2007 and 2010. I made a brief comeback in 2012–13 and wrote another 25 columns for the New Zealand Herald. ‘Love Actually’ set out to find the backstories behind those mad, marvellous, maudlin scenes of reunion and farewell at Auckland Airport. Real-life theatre in 400 words. Plus a photograph. This was my last column (above). Following are a few favourites.
Maraetai matriarch Sylvia Faithful, 80, mother of three, grandmother of seven, great grandmother of eight, glances up at the Auckland airport arrivals board — her son Lloyd, 54, and his wife Jean, 65, landed half an hour ago — and tells me about the time she first met her daughter-in-law three years ago.
“I’s heard a bit about her from Lloyd — he was rather smitten you could say. But I hadn’t met Jean — hadn’t even talked to her — when she called me up out of the blue one day and said, ‘Do you mind if I come over? I have a parcel from Lloyd.’
“So she did, and of course I liked her right away. She’s such a warm person. Then five minutes later there’s another knock, but this time at the back door. And there’s Lloyd, who as far as I knew was in Australia (Jean had dropped him off up the road you see).”
A quick potted history here. Lloyd, who has two adult daughters from his first marriage, moved to north Queensland in 1996 to work as a fork hoist driver. Jean, formerly a hairdresser, had also lived in Australia for most of the past decade (though she was living on the other side of Auckland to Sylvia at the time of her ‘surprise attack’). Bar what his mother dismissively refers to as “a few different lady friends… nothing serious,” Lloyd had been single for 20 years. “So it surprised me when he met Jean,” Sylvia says. “But he just said, ‘Mum. I don’t what’s happened. But I’ve just fallen madly in love with her.’”
Sylvia Faithful: Lloyd had been single for 20 years so it surprised me when he met Jean. But he just said, ‘Mum. I don’t what’s happened. But I’ve just fallen madly in love with her’.”
That was in 2004. They married a year ago last February — at a charming ceremony at Lloyd’s sister Jan’s Patumohoe block — and then took a campervan up North for a week for their honeymoon.
Jean had been feeling a bit crook and so had some tests when she got back to Australia. She had pancreatic cancer. Three operations in 10 days followed, but to no avail: this particular cancer has a four per cent survival rate and though Jean’s fought bravely, she doesn’t have much longer. Says Sylvia: “She has come home to die.”
And so she and Lloyd will stay at Gulf Harbour with Jean’s son Steve — he’s also part of the welcoming party, along with Lloyd’s siblings Jan and Paul — and get in some quality family time. “Jean’s a very caring person,” Sylvia says. “And she likes life.”
I see what she means when, on cue, the couple materialise. While Jean looks tired, her smile would light a city; her man wears the grin of a King. They look so happy and so… meant to be that you find yourself praying for a miracle — and taking comfort in the fact that, after half a century of searching, they found true love. That’s some consolation, but it’s still bloody unfair.
The pink placards, set off with similarly-coloured feather boas and balloons, give you a text-messager’s take. “Welcome home Tracy” says one. “Europe. 10,463km. 4 NZ Breast Cancer.”
Fortunately, the welcoming committee — father Kevin Kite, mother Jenny, sister Michelle, grandmother Val Kemsley, assorted friends and a stepmother — can give me the back story. It starts off in late March when 32-year-old Flight Lieutenant Tracy Kite (she crews an RNZAF Orion) set off from West London. Evans Cycles Chiswick had donated a Pinnacle Stratus to the cause and the bike, christened the ‘Princess Delores’ and bedecked with Aotearovian decals, was ready for work.
To Venice, then, where the journey began in earnest. Over the next six weeks Tracy did all the big names — Bologna, Genova, Florence, Rome, Naples et al — as well as gorgeous little towns well off the main tourist beat. She averaged 80kms a day, though there was a mad 162.7km slog one day from Taranto to Gallipoli (a mammoth effort considering her bike was lugging two leaden panniers). When she crossed into Croatia on May 26, she’d already clocked 3659.5kms.
“Welcome home Tracy” says one placard. “Europe. 10,463km. 4 NZ Breast Cancer.”
Back home, her anxious family — Kevin had said he’s sponsor her to the tune of 10c a kilometre — followed her progress on her blog (http://tracyscyclingtour.blogspot.com). “Every second or third day there’d be an update,” he says. “And when she finished in a country, she’d list its good and bad points.” So Italy’s pros included salumeriaàs, pasticciereàs and “CIAO Bella”; cons the ubiquitous “googling, creepy Italian men!!!”. “The things I will miss about Croatia” included sea, lavender and “swimming everz daz”; the downsides “men in speedo’s!”, nude sunbathing — “therećs onlz so much one can take!” and “the switching of the ‘z’ and ‘y’ on the kezboards (well actuallz, this is probablz more for all zour benefits)”.
There are poignant moments, none more so than when Tracy’s granddad passed away when she was in Slovenia. A slightly rumpled photo of him and Tracy’s grandmother is up on the blog: it’s a lovely Kiwi veranda shot, from a time when there was a barbecue on every corner, and L&P ran cool and deep in every river.
But Tracy pressed on — through Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, then France. One snapped spoke, four worn-out tyres, six flat tyres and two pumps later, she was done.
And now she’s home — hugging her grandmother who, quite unexpectedly, has come up from Hastings. She’s raised $10,000, had truly the adventure of a lifetime, and is back to work on Monday.
Sally Harvey distinctly remembers the day, 26 years ago, she met her husband Vernon. She was a senior nurse at St Bartholomew’s in London — Barts — the oldest (and indisputably, grandest) hospital in the world. He was the “tall, energetic, dashing doctor” who swept past, clipboard in hand, a stethoscope hanging Cloonishly around his neck. “You’d always just see the last little bit of that white coat going around the corner. And you’d think, ‘Oh. Drats! I’ve missed him!’”
“I quite liked him.” She considers this a moment. “Actually, I really liked him. And I think he quite liked me. A couple of the patients seemed to notice: they’d say things like, ‘Dr Harvey. Isn’t the Sister lovely?” And he appeared to get quite flustered.”
It was, she says, a rapid romance, helped along by her future husband’s misfortune. “Shortly after we met, Vernon broke his leg skiing. And he’d say to me, ‘Sister. Have you got any nurses who could help me carry my notes?’ (he was on crutches you see). And I’d say, ‘No, no. Allow me!’” Sally laughs wickedly. “It was a wonderful excuse to walk across the hospital square with him.”
He was the “tall, energetic, dashing doctor” who swept past, clipboard in hand, a stethoscope hanging Cloonishly around his neck. “You’d always just see the last little bit of that white coat going around the corner. And you’d think, ‘Oh. Drats! I’ve missed him!’”
Vernon asked her out — for a walk along the Thames and a glass of wine — and then a year later, the couple moved out to New Zealand.
“He had worked here a couple of years earlier. In fact, it was here Vernon decided oncology was what he wanted to do forever. So he specialised back home — and then he was offered the job in Auckland.”
New Zealand, Sally says, would be very good to them. She got a job at Green Lane Hospital. Sons Oliver, now 19, and Nicholas, 17, were born. And Vernon would go on to become the Head of Medical Oncology at Auckland Hospital.
As we wait for the good doctor, returning from a conference in Manila (he’s been gone five days, Sally says, “but it seems much, much longer”), we talk. Sally’s good company — an eclectic conversationalist who sounds (and looks) a little like Kim Hill. For the next half hour, her eye on the gate, we discuss life, health, disease — cancer and motor neurone disease mostly — and the politics of medical scarcity; we talk photography (a lifelong enthusiasm of Vernon’s) and cooking (a lifelong passion of hers). She gives me an excellent recipe for roasted asparagus, pumpkin and feta, drizzled in mandarin olive oil.
But we come back to her beloved Vernon. “He’s a very good person,” she continues. “He’s a shy man, and an extremely humble man — in fact, it’s one of the things I love most about him.
“Twee as this sounds, I think it was just meant to be,” she says, smiling. Twenty-six years they’ve been together now — Sally’s 53, Vernon 10 years older. “We’ve been lucky –we’re probably much more in love now than when we first got married.
“He’s just a very lovely man.”
It’s been a tough week for Sandie Simons. The petite, pony-tailed 37-year-old mother of two travelled up from Wellington yesterday and is at Auckland Airport, blond Mini-Mes Sam and Ariana in tow, to pick up her sister, Esther Hasler, 35, who’s flying back from Sydney. Tomorrow they’ll bury their flamboyant aunt, Eva Hasler, who died in her sixties — no one seemed sure of her exact age — after a long illness.
For as long as she can remember, her father’s sister has been a fixture in her life. Back in their native Switzerland, Sandie’s family lived on one floor of an apartment, Aunt Eva and hers on the next floor. The extended whanau ran a hotel together until, in 1985, they emigrated en masse to New Zealand. “They wanted a change of lifestyle,” says Sandie, who was 15 at the time. “Somewhere warmer. With more time for the family.”
The two Hasler enclaves settled in the same suburb — Rothesay Bay — and the same street. It sounds like a contented life — Sandie the third of five kids became a phys-ed teacher, a Mum (and also the South Island figure ice-skating champion!) — but you get the sense her Aunt found things a little dull. As Sandie tries to explain why, Sam interrupts her.
“She writ heaps of books about herself,” he says in a singsong voice. Sandie cracks up. “It’s true. She did. She had a very interesting life: she was a very, er… outgoing character. The sort of person who wanted to have action in her life all the time.”
“She was extremely attractive — men really liked her.” And Aunt Eva, bless her, loved recounting such tales in her books.
Such as? “I don’t know if I could tell you these things,” Sandie smiles. But she laughs when I ask her if the books were at all scandalous. “They are quite racy. But you have to take them with a grain of salt because she liked sensational stories.
“It started right from when she was a child. She was born during the war — she was German so she was born in a bunker. She started dramatic and kept going like that.”
The author certainly comes across well in her work. “In her younger days, she was very popular,” Sandie explains. “She was extremely attractive — men really liked her.” And Aunt Eva, bless her, loved recounting such tales in her books.
It was hard, Sandie continues, for such a spirit to be first homebound, then bedbound by the cancer that would kill her. She looks away wistfully. “Oh, but she was a character all right.” You just have to read the stories.
Think of it as a surprise attack. Any moment now Sheralee Morris will walk through Auckland Airport’s arrivals gate, head for the shuttles only to be intercepted by Samantha Morris, her 18-year-old daughter who’s supposed to in New Lynn tending the locks, split ends and dark roots of Westies (of which, more in a moment). That’s the plan, anyway.
As the younger Morris waits, scarcely able to contain her excitement, I’m given a bit of back story. Seven months ago, Samantha moved to New Zealand from Toowoomba (pop 95,000), the country town 130km west of Brisbane. There is a Kiwi connection — Samantha’s parents are both New Zealandians and she lived here she was little — but it was an apprenticeship at Scissors, the New Lynn hairdressing salon, that brought her home.
Her first impressions? “It was cold. Really cold.” She says she’s getting used to it but as she waits in her tee-shirt and jeans, sunglasses atop her head, I think she has some time to go.
She has missed her family — of course she has. They’re very close she says: three, four times a week she emails her father (a policeman with a sideline in scaring off Samantha’s suitors) and pretty much every night, just after 8pm, she calls Mum.
Sheralee was fighting cancer and had just finished her last round of chemo. “She’s in remission now,” Samantha explains. “Part of this [two-week holiday] is to celebrate that.”
They’re more like sisters she tells me. When she moved, her Mum came over for the first couple of months to help her settle in. It wasn’t just for Samantha’s benefit: 48-year-old Sheralee was fighting cancer and had just finished her last round of chemo. “She’s in remission now,” Samantha explains. “Part of this [two-week holiday] is to celebrate that.”
She’s disarmingly open about the situation, no hint of self-pity or angst. Just optimistically looking ahead. “Mum’s really strong. She knows what she wants and she’s willing to get it. But at the same time she’s really caring and puts everybody else before herself. Her and I fought heaps when I was little — we’re both really stubborn — but we’ve become very close. She’s my best friend now.”
She laughs. But where on earth is Sheralee? Flight EK432 came in well over an hour ago now. Samantha can’t text her because that’ll ruin the surprise and so she waits. And waits. Until Sheralee texts. She’s in New Lynn — the flight arrived half an hour early — wondering where her girl is. Bugger! With a smile that’d light up Mangere, Samantha’s off.
For the past three weeks Stuart Williams has slept on the floor of a 15sq/m cabin teetering on the banks of the Thames. “No power, no phone, no toilet, no running water,” the 43-year-old chippie says, grinning. “Hardly salubrious but character building I suppose.”
You won’t find the Broadness Cruising Club in any brochures, or on most maps. But google satellite’s shots of the club in Swanscombe (just outside London) show a wilding industrial wasteland — a decommissioned lead plant — that is home to three hermits, including Stuart’s father, Alastair Anderson, 66.
He pulls out a picture of his old man to show me. “From better times,” he says. Alastair has emphysema and terminal lung cancer: when Stuart arrived, he couldn’t walk (he had blood clots in his leg) and hadn’t eaten for a week. Stuart’s mission was to nurse his chemo-ravaged father back to some semblance of health, at least enough to survive a flight down under.
“I got Dad walking again… he put on weight, filled out his cheeks. And we got to know each other as father and son — and as mates. I came to understand why lived as he did.”
If the tale so far sounds unbearably grim — and we haven’t mentioned the 20p cans of baked beans yet — then Stuart is quick to point out the lighter side of his stay. There were the other members of the colony — Jack, 85, who’d bike to his local, 10 kilometres away, three nights a week, and Nigel aka The Mole, an odd fellow who only ever emerged at night. There were also several part-time hermits — Ian, a bloke in his 40s who dropped off a thawing frozen meal each evening; eightysomething Stan, who brought drinking water daily and fed the cats; and Den, another octogenarian with mild Alzheimer’s who was in charge of the club’s books.
Then there was the business of sorting out his father’s stuff that included three car wrecks, two old army jeeps, a Bedford truck and Triumph motorcycle. It was, Stuart says, very hard: “We burned his life up. Anything we couldn’t fit into a 20kg suitcase — tax records, letters from old girlfriends, his green velvet suit from his dancing days — went into a 44-gallon drum. No rubbish collection — it was all we could do.”
But they made it. “I got Dad walking again… he put on weight, filled out his cheeks. And we got to know each other as father and son — and as mates. I hadn’t seen him for four years; before that, I hadn’t seen him in 10. I even came to understand why lived as he did. He loved the sea, loved seeing the boats going past. He said ‘There’s serenity in isolation’ and I now know what he means.”
Amidst the bustle of Auckland Airport’s arrivals, not a place noted for spiritual contemplation, stands a small woman of manifest serenity. When a Milly Cyrus clone pushes past her, shrieking 100 “Omigods” at the sight of a returning pal, she smiles. Meet Sister Marguerite, 45, formerly of Kerala, South India, now a Little Sister of the Poor in Auckland.
She’s here to meet Sister Rosarii who’s coming across from Melbourne on a 10-day retreat. A sabbatical of sorts. While we wait, I learn a little about the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Quick facts: There are 2,700 Little Sisters around the world, serving 13,000 elderly people — of all creeds — in 202 homes in 32 countries. They have a home in Dunedin and the 10-sister, 50 resident St Joseph’s in Herne Bay, where Sister Marguerite works.
They describe Jeanne Jugan as their “Mother Foundress”. This first Little Sister of the Poor, from French Revolutionary times, was, they say, neither beautiful nor notably talented, but was gifted with an extraordinary heart. “One cold winter night,” the Little Sisters’ website says, “she met Jesus Christ in the person of an elderly, blind and infirm woman who had no one to care for her. Jeanne carried the woman home, climbed up the stairs to her small apartment and placed her in her own bed. From then on, Jeanne would sleep in the attic.”
“Our life is centred around looking after the old,” Sister Marguerite explains. “We welcome the needy elderly into our homes and form one family with them. We care for them with love and respect until God calls them home.”
Looking after these people teaches you about life she says. They were young, once; they got married; they brought up a family, then became grandparents. Now, Sister Marguerite says, they are vulnerable. “Some of them are very sick — terminally ill with cancer — but the way they accept it is heroic.
“Our life is centred around looking after the old. We welcome the needy elderly into our homes and form one family with them. We care for them with love and respect until God calls them home.”
“When I came to the Little Sisters 23 years ago, it was hard. Because I’d never really come into contact with death, I was scared of dying. And it often happens in our place because many of our people are very old.
“But as the years pass, you accept. That dying is part of life.
“We take three vows — poverty, chastity and obedience. And the Little Sisters take an additional vow — the vow of hospitality. So when the time comes we prepare them — we sit with them when they are dying. We’ll sit with them right through the night — we make sure there is a Little Sister there. We are there with them always.”
Now we also discussed mundane matters — I asked Sister Marguerite if she missed home, cricket (and Sachin Tendulkar), and also if nuns go swimming in summer (they go to the beach, apparently, and some of the bolder ones dip their toes in), but she gently brought the conversation back.
“We know that when we do this we give our lives to God. And it’s very rewarding — you get back much more than you give.”
Sometimes, amidst the exuberance, the huff and puff, ‘omigods’ and welcome homes, it’s the quiet ones you notice. As excitable citizens pack arrivals, Merle McHugh, 71, is a portrait of gracious repose. She stands somewhere in the middle, waiting for her sister and brother-in-law to come through the gates: Elaine Parkin, 73, and husband Reg, 75, have just spent seven days in Brisbane.
Reserved, even wistful, Merle’s a hard nut to crack: she tells me a little about a childhood in Mt Albert and Orakei — she, the middle girl of three — but then rather more on her lifelong best friendship with Elaine. They’re close she confides — they text most days.
While they live a three hours apart — Merle in Remuera, Elaine on a 35-acre block just out of Kerikeri — they catch up regularly. Merle often heads up to her sister’s for Christmas; not so long ago, she tagged along with Reg and Elaine on a South Island campervan tour. It was, she says smiling, a reminder of the Tauranga Bay days.
“We used to go up every year to their farm at Tauranga Bay. My husband, Leo, and I had a campervan and we’d go up for six weeks from Christmas, right through January. We had three children — Phillip, Adele and Tony — and Elaine and Reg had four — Heather, Geoffrey, Rosemary, Murray. Seven cousins in all.
He and Leo would go out, collect oysters and catch fish and cook them on a piece of old corrugated tin. “Good times, Merle says. “Those were good times.”
“And they had a ball. We had a net up — they’d play volleyball. Ride motorbikes. And play cricket — hours of cricket.
“We’d go for walks. The farm backed on to the Whangaroa Harbour: Reg would take us by tractor to the back of the farm and we’d have picnics. He and Leo would go out, collect oysters and catch fish and cook them on a piece of old corrugated tin.” Merle, pauses a moment, then looks away. “Good times,” she says. “Those were good times.”
She last went up three or years ago she thinks. No, hold on — she recalculates and realises the last traditional family holiday was in 1995–96. “Gosh, time flies doesn’t it?”We all went there. My husband was still alive then, though he was very sick — he had cancer. But he wanted to go back again. One more time — we knew it’d be the last one. 1996. We went up to Tauranga Bay every year for 43 years.
Good times she says. Great memories. And she often reminisces about them with Elaine and Reg — she may again today.
“It was a spur of the moment trip,” Renee Young tells me. “My sister Janelle took her best friend Hannah to Vanuatu. To Hideaway Island. Lucky eh? But Janelle deserved it. She really did. She’s worked so hard — and it’s been a tough 12 months. Really tough. For all of us.”
The ebullient 21-year-old lifts wriggly nine-month old son Cooper to her hip and starts on an story about birth, life and death, a story that has Janelle, 24, in a prominent role.
A story that begins with their mother’s fight with cancer. Sue Hipper, “a very dedicated district nurse for 25 years”, was diagnosed with a brain tumour in late 2006. She lived to see Renee marry childhood sweetheart Mike. And she also lived long enough to see the birth of her first grandchild.
“Cooper’s a little miracle,” Renee explains. “Mum was very sick by then. She was unable to walk — she was in bed pretty much all the time. We were looking after her at home — I was with her (during my labour) until I went in to the hospital.
A story that begins with their mother’s fight with cancer. Sue Hipper lived to see Renee marry childhood sweetheart Mike. And she also lived long enough to see the birth of her first grandchild.
“Mum knew what was going on. She wanted to cry but couldn’t because of the steroids she was on. She’d couldn’t talk but she could still see. And as I left for the hospital, I looked back and saw she was looking out the window with just a hint of a smile.”
At 10.10pm, after a 14-hour labour, a rather hirsute Cooper was born. Mother and son were back home by midnight. “I wanted Mum to have the first cuddle,” Renee explains. “We thought she’d lost her speech by the time he was born but she managed to say two words. ‘He’s beautiful’. We could just make those out. They were the only words she ever said.”
Two months later, on January 19, Sue Hipper died. But not before she’d held her grandson again and, in the months before, passed on some mothering tips to Renee. They’re not a big family — just Janelle and Renee now — but they’ve always been there for each other.
“My sister and I are very close,” Renee continues. “She’s fun, outgoing… a bit out there. She’s a hairdresser. With a heart of gold.” The plan for tonight, then?
“We’ll head home to Hamilton. And I think I’ll have a glass of Lake Chalice sav with my sister. Talk about her trip I guess. Hear a few tales.” And drink a toast to Mum.
“We met diving off the Great Barrier reef five years ago,” Dan Glew tells me. “I was doing a divemasters course and part of the requirement was to teach a class. Angie’s class. She was a kind of a natural so I poked fun at her a little bit — took the mick. I thought because she was so good she’d be fine with it, but she took it the wrong way and just stuck the rods up of me (gave our man Dan the fingers!). And that was our first, um, connection.”
Realising they’d be stuck on a boat together for the next five days, the chipper English sailor prepared for the worst. But Angie, perhaps realising that boys only tease the girls they like, thawed: Dan was given another shot. How did you battle your way back I ask? “I’m still doing it at the moment,” he says, brandishing a bunch of yellow lilies.
Now the path to true love is seldom smooth: the two got together on the boat and then, for the next 18 months, did the long distance thing. Dan, a second mate aboard a luxury launch, would fly home to the UK on his breaks: Angie, a doctor, would fly out and meet him in Palau (or some other exotic locale) on hers. Finally, in May 2005, they were able to get together properly, living in Australia for a year, and then back in the UK — in York — for two more.
And then last November, Dan, now 31, and Angie, 33, made the move to New Zealand. To Cambridge: Dan’s working for Flight Centre while Angie works as a GP in Putaruru. They’d found The Good Life — at least until Angie’s Mum Val got sick in February.
“Breast cancer,” Dan says. “As soon as they saw it, they fast-tracked the operation. That suggested to my wife that was pretty serious. So she’s gone home to look after her Mum and help her through chemo and radiotherapy.”
“It’s been pretty hard,” he admits. But our man’s not one to mope: he’s soon telling me about that rarest of genres — the fabulous mother-in-law. “Val’s just lovely,” he says. “She’s very patient. Very friendly. And wise — she’s been through quite a lot of hard stuff in her life.”
She can also, he whispers conspiratorially, drink him under the table.
Anyway! Val’s only 52 and — I’m happy to report — should be around for grandchildren duty. “They thought it’d spread quite a lot,” Dan continues, “but it seems like it hasn’t.”
