The Kiwi has been spread thin since returning from Aotearoa. All the hours in a day mean ZIP really! I am sure it is a time management issue. I shall make a mental note to consult the head rice crispie. There has been a little writing, a little biz, OH...The Art In the Yard fest was a blast. I finished and started a project for Altered Art. A tribute to my dear Dad. It ought be in the mag an issue or two away. This was the first undertaking of this kind for me...a tribute. I stared at the large toasted tin which I knew was going to be the vessel. I sat there a long time looking at the tin thinking about my Dad and was temporarily stunted. You see... My Dad is already in a box, of sorts, sitting atop the TV in the lounge back home in New Zealand. There he sits surrounded by family photos. A pic of him in a suit taken at ANZAC day one year looking rather solemn as he is obviously remembering his mates no longer alive. We put some of Dads fave sweets around the box as a sort of tribute and it is unspoken that they just sit there, despite most of them being also some of the family faves. We raise our drams of scotch to him each night I am back home and we toast Dad and the Auckland Blues or NZ Allblacks when there is a rugby game on. Mum whispers good morning darling and goodnight each day. One could think it rather grim that a rather smaller version of Dad is still there, but as a family it does not bother us. We have all heard of weirder scenarios, like the folk who just let their loved ones sit in their fave chair where they died and take on that sort of dried up look about them. Or store their dearly departed in the chest freezer and then pray for no power outages. So in the bigger scheme of things, the Stubbs clan is not all that weird. Dad will be interred when Mum has had enough of this place and leaves us. That will be THE sad day. Anyway, back to my Dad project. Nothing quite seemed good enough and I think that is why I pondered and procrastinated. I didn't quite get to the point of dial-a-therapist but if it wasn't for the wisest of the crispies within, I could have. The worst thing was, ugh, I had a deadline. Welllllllll...The Kiwi is not the best with deadlines and I felt the pressure to perform. That, mixed with the emotions regarding Dad, meant I wasn't going anywhere fast. I had many ideas, I could picture a look yet there was no way in hell it was all going to fit in a tin. I accepted my temporary state of being and continued to create in my head. I knew I needed a picture of him, I knew I was going to stamp an Amaryllis Lilly on the back as Dad grew them and most family members have a generation of bulbs going back to my late Nana Tyndall, so I just had to have a stamp created for YanKiwi, It was a given. I knew I had an old article from the New Zealand Herald written about the battle at Monte Cassino in Italy during WW11. Dad was a truck driver during the war herding troops and supplies from A to B and of course it was a significant time for him as a young soldier. I had to somehow fit that in there. I continued my quest to gather symbolic bits and bobs and soon realized I had the bones, so to speak. I just had to start the assembling. Again I was stopped in my tracks. Eventually, I just let myself feel the feeling and did it anyway. My goal was to feel the feeling and create. I touched a lock of Dads hair and bent to sniff it hoping to smell him but couldn't. I smiled at the picture of him taken next to his prize Christmas Lillie's and pieced together my project by feeling all the feelings within. It was ok to feel. I soon had completion the day it needed posting. You all won't get to see much in the mag, at best their will be two shots and the whole enchilada won't be visible. All you really have to know is it is a tribute for my Dad, from me to him.
