Oliver & Sam last week

I managed to capture a special warmth between my son Sam and his son Oli

I'm at risk!

It hit me the other day, there is another person close to me who I would die for if there was something I could do that might prevent his being hurt.

I was holding my grandson Oliver, and I realized that the net of those who I care deeply for has spread.

Now, I don’t know what the odds are of my being killed by putting myself in harms way as a substitute for someone else, I imagine the odds are very low.

But it has just hit me that the odds of this happening have to increase the more my children breed.

Do my children realise what risk they are putting me in if they think of having children?

Oliver is the only grandchild so far – I think I have a good chance of not meeting an unfortunate end protecting him – but I need to talk to my children about what they are doing to my chances of a long life if they have any more children, for I know that if an out of control car was heading towards anyone in my family circle I would do what I could to protect them, even if that meant shielding them from the worst of the impact. I wouldn’t think about it – there wouldn’t be time – I would just do it.

I know I would give my life for any of them because to a degree I already have.

I am sure that my life has already been shortened by a few years through the fear and anxiety I have suffered as my children have weathered the storms of life.

When I am not thinking of my life ending prematurely, because of out of control motor vehicles careering towards them, I figure that a few years less life at the end of my life when I might be frail and more incoherent than I am now might not be the worst thing – so I suffer this possibility accordingly and hope for a good number of years yet.

But the addition of Oliver into the family circle has got me worried. I am now at risk!

Edmund Anscombe at Otago University

Photos by Mart the Rev

As mentioned earlier in a blog, my great grandmother's brother was an architect. One of this masterpieces was the archway at the University of Otago where I earned degrees in Arts & Theology in the 1980's.

The Stewarts of Warepa

Here's my great-grandmother on the Stewart side - Eliza who gave up a fairly straight-forward life in Dunedin as a painter to be farmer's wife and mother of seven. I think I can name them all... Gilbert & Eliza, Winifred, Grace, Alice, Nora, (I'll have to come back on this!) & Lloyd my grandfather. Lloyd was born in 1908 - he looks about 8 years old here - thus the picture was taken around 1916.

Alice McIntosh was the one I knew the best. She lived in Balclutha and was the last survivor in the family. Alice also painted (as did Nora) and I have two of them. Alice was a character who drove everywhere picking up hitchhikers and visiting the extended family. I attended her 90th birthday some years back.

Those who have been

This week the church youth group had a as our guests a couple who are into genealogy in a big way. The question 'who am I?' is addressed in part by how we have been shaped by those who have been before us.

It kind of reignited my interest in my forebears. So far I have got the birth, death and marriage dates of the two generations prior to me (not that hard really) and I'm slowly working backwards. I don't know many of the names of my great grandmothers & g-fathers, but have some idea on a few of them. One of them has a little bit of notoriety - Eliza Stewart (nee Anscombe) was a reasonably talented painter. Half a dozen of her works are stored in the Hocken Library in Dunedin and she is listed in a publication and on the web. Her brother Edmund was the famous one - he was a significant New Zealand architect, designing many buildings (including churches) in Dunedin and Wellington as well as being the designer of the 1940 NZ Centennial Exhibition in Wellington and the 1925 NZ & South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin.

One of the delights of looking back was finding out (after she was named) that my daughter Hannah had a great-great grandmother with the same name. Hannah Dawson died in 1946, I'm off to find out where and when she was born and what her maiden name was.