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| Jane Flowers's
Success Story |
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A HANDFUL OF ATTITUDE
As I looked out at the Southern Alps, thousands of feet below, I must confess I was terrified.
“Well, this is it girl. A new life,” my husband murmured into my ear. I nodded; too full up to speak my mind. I didn’t want a new life. I had been happy with the old one and what was I doing on this plane somewhere over the Pacific anyway?
I don’t even like flying, yet I had just spent what seemed like three whole days strapped into economy-sized seats. It is hard to feel enthusiastic about much when the plane is approaching through a wintry gale and a different world waits. A world where we have to make a new life, adapt to a new culture, find jobs and try to be focussed, try to be positive.
My husband was in his fifties and a bit old to be starting afresh. I was a useless shattered wreck. My son moaned about missing his friends back home in Zimbabwe. We made a bumpy landing that frightened me. I cried.
I cried a lot that first year in New Zealand. My family wept as though bereaved and in a way we were. We had lost our homes and our families, our friends and our beloved pets. There were new insecurities. The pension was gone, swallowed up in air tickets; the cold was biting and we were ill equipped, layering up with inadequate clothing. There was the uncertainty of work permits and residence and learning new skills.
I learned about attitude in New Zealand. One of the first Kiwis I ever met told me right off that life in New Zealand is all about attitude. Kiwis have a lot of attitude. My son has it now. These days he is probably the most attitudinistic Kiwi around!
Our new lives started on a dairy farm down in Canterbury. Other people who have started out in Dairy complain farm work is too hard and demanding. Hard – yes! But it certainly builds character. It also keeps us very fit and healthy. Nearly three years down the line we are still involved in dairying as contract milkers and raise calves every year through to weaning.
When we look for lucky breaks, I think we tend to await some spectacular event or happening in our lives. Mine very nearly crept on by without me even noticing it. I was posting a letter. The chatty lady at the counter asked if I was writing again. Once, I had mentioned that I freelanced back in Zimbabwe for a while. I was touched that she remembered, but had to tell her that I could not possibly afford a computer. In a blinding flash she had me on my way to a nearby store and an hour later I was the proudest hire-purchase customer in town.
Perhaps my priorities were a bit wonky at the time, but my family stood firmly behind me. It did not matter that we needed a bed and were sleeping on mattresses on the floor. We ate on the floor because the computer took up all space on our only table. That was OK. I was going to write again. I was going to take New Zealand by storm and pretty soon magazine editors would be banging down my door asking me to write columns.
I milked cows and fed calves and milked some more cows and dead on my feet I wrote. I milked cows and checked the post box and filed my rejections.
Fed up with the white beast sitting on the only table in the house, I ranted at it and swore it was time it paid its way. Then I announced, with my newly found Kiwi attitude that I was going to write a book and get it darn well published.
I wrote for three solid months into the wee hours. Every time I felt homesick or down or just the hell-in, I wrote. When I saw my family coming in muddy and exhausted through the calving season I vowed to write us into a new life. I kept at it. “It’s All About Attitude!” I shouted my new mantra at the cows. I screamed it to the pine trees. I was going crazy! I finished the book.
Thank you New Zealand.
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