The Unfolding Thing

A ubiquitous NZ symbol is the Koru, an unfolding fern frond (www.otago.ac.nz/minds/courses.html). The Koru appears in greenstone/pounamu jewelry, in artwork, etc. While any overseas trip has to be about renewal, and while it is borderline-trite to claim it for ourselves, there are many new beginnings here for us. Our baby will learn to walk and talk here. The older boy, Estin, 7, has made new friends and learned to introduce himself as "Easton". MAC has made friends from the UK, from Capetown, and of course lots of home-grown Kiwis, and has exposure to "heaps" of newness at her job with the Dunedin City Council. Work has been a revelation to me, a rediscovery that vocation and avocation can be the same. I've put up a Koru painting in the labs (shown here, a painting by Natasha Tuck) as a bold reminder of that. At home, and especially in wintertime, we need each other as a family as we have few friends and (thankfully) the phone doesn't ring continuously. And that's new for us, having so much in the way of family and friends back home that we grew away from relying on each other. In all, this koru/unfolding thing works pretty good as a symbol for me.