That game was a constant presence in my childhood. We used to be taken along the road in Otahuhu to watch Dad’s rugby practice: it was almost unbearably romantic to be out after tea in the cold dark air, our breaths turning to smoke. We would run up and down the huge grassy stepped slopes gazing down at the lit paddock where grown men threw themselves in the air crying out unintelligibly – “ho...o...eeeaah”. It was complete and beautiful.
Later, Dad got us to run up and down the lawn, passing the ball across in front of us. I knew he wanted us to love it as much as he did and I wanted to too - but it didn’t work with us three girls and he gave it up in the end.
Still later, one of the boys on the rugby team he coached at Boys High died after a game; I think from a broken neck. Dad came home and wouldn’t talk, he went into his study and shut both the doors leading in that direction. The terrible wordless feeling of grief and horror got attached to the game in my mind and when I had sons without even thinking about it I actively kept them away from that game.
Even so, I got reconciled to it when I saw what pleasure it gave my parents as old people. No matter how vague my Dad was about daily life, if a rugby game came on TV, he would scrunch up on the edge of his chair and exclaim ‘get it out wide, get it OUT!’, living the drama of every move and turn of the play. Mum too would know all the players names and enter into their predicaments on and off field with passion.
So when it came to the World Cup, there were lots of strands... I participated to the extent that I did partly for Mum and Dad who didn’t make it. I could imagine their comments, their enthusiasms and Mum’s lively curiosity about Auckland’s transformation. On the opening afternoon, I went down to town partly to be able to report on what was happening, even in my mind, to my disappeared parents! How strange... and what was happening was even stranger as the streets filled up, the toilets at the station stopped working and it became impossible to move.
I had arranged to do a meditation that afternoon out at Ranui, something which really pleased me, it seemed oddly perverse to be going completely in another direction. Yet the train track would take me past Eden Park and so I’d be able to catch a whiff of the flavours even in passing; so it turned out as I took my seat with great relief and escaped that overcrowded waterfront. There were many people bound for the Opening Ceremony, some carrying silver pieces of card with them and conversing excitedly at the tops of their voices. All ages, all sizes, all ancestries crammed on to a little carriage, where flags and colours communicated jubilantly to one another.
After a luminous and tender meditation, I heard that the trains were disrupted. I walked to Ranui Station in the dark, adventurous, and a bit nervous about whether I would get home. At the station, a security guard stood amid twenty or so young people. The young ones were so excited! I felt so sad that we don’t have more occasions like this where they can go downtown to free entertainment and feel the whole society affirming their playfulness. (When I said this later to a friend she said sourly ‘You know they just went and got completely pissed, it was chaos in town!’ I don’t want to be unrealistically starry eyed – but I still think that it would be great to have more public festivity that teenagers can have fun at!). I talked with the security guard from India about this, the lack of fun provided for young people by NZ culture in general.
A sturdy young Māori man caught sight of me sitting there and did a double take – at a white haired Pākehā woman out by herself I guess on that most sociable of nights. “Oh – kia ora whaea!” I answered with kia ora and then a friend of his carrying a tino rangatiratanga flag muttered “Kei te pehea koe?”
“Kei te pai ahau – me koutou? (I’m good and all of you?) He did another double take and started laughing. I commented on his flag and how I liked it (also in te Reo Rangatira). They stayed near me on the platform, didn’t talk any more to me but now I felt warm, not cold.
A group of young Pākehā girls tiptoed onto the platform in their incredibly high heels. They were gorgeous, sleek, slim with long clumsy legs and heavy feet. They looked at me but didn’t speak and moved on down to the end of the platform furthest from the young men. So we waited. And waited. Finally a train came past in the outward direction – sigh of relief, this meant that we were going to at least start into town, when it turned round and came back in ten minutes. Sure enough, ringing of crossing bells, bright headlight in distance, we all jumped up and ranged ourselves along the edge of the platform.
At long last, here we are in a carriage. I sit near the middle of the carriage, the boys behind me in a big group eight or nine of them now. At the other end of the carriage the six girls sit close to one another. And so we start off. At the next station, three Pasifika girls get on and sit on the lengthways seats just across from me. At least, I think they are girls, also done up in high heels and short skirts, but when I look more closely, I realise they are fa’afafine, boys acting as female this (perhaps every) evening. Their strong wrists and jaws give them away as they sit in a row, looking at their reflections in the dark glass opposite. One of them smoothes and re-arranges her fringe, unceasingly, obsessively. I also gaze, fascinated, mesmerized, looking away whenever one of them catches my eye. I don’t want to be intrusive but I delight in this repeated gesture with all its self love, defiance and insecurity. I think how symmetrical this carriage is, with the female and male ends of the carriage and us queers in the middle!
Every now and then the most exuberant boy, the one who first spoke to me, starts to half sing half yell “Ooh ooh shake your booty!” over and over again and some of the others join in the chant half heartedly. As this grows at one point, the tallest, slimmest, smartest girl gets up and starts doing a spiralling bending dance with the railway carriage pole. All of us, the whole carriage erupt into laughter. I am deeply gloriously happy, we all are! As we rock on through the dark, I think, yes, this is MY rugby world cup moment. Thank you Aotearoa...
