A long life of endless curiosity

My 99-year-old cousin died, and was buried last week in the rural town she knew as well as the lines on her own face. Neither I nor my cousins can expect to live as long, or to weather quite as many disasters, human and otherwise, as she did. It was an inspiration to see her still standing upright under the blows life dealt her, bow-legged and determined, usually smiling, and still driving, until alarmingly recently, every day.

Moving and independence are probably vital underpinnings of anyone’s life in an old age of any quality, and I doubt many people have as much grit as she did. There was a way to sit in her car and drive, even if it involved carefully placed cushions, awkward movements, and tolerating pain.

Driving with her opened up a past few people can remember, because she carried the map of the Wairarapa with her, every paddock, fence and tree, peopled with friends and family long dead, with roadside apple trees, sheep dogs, former homesteads, and with horse tracks now invisible to anyone’s eye but hers. She rode on horseback many miles before she got a car, and I’m told wrote off a few of those. I never heard from her about that.

She talked about the dances she and her aunts, almost the same age as her, went to in the countryside, walking home in their best frocks as the sun came up. She talked too about the man who loved horses as much as she did, and whom she promised to marry after the war. He left her his horse to take care of, but he never came back, and she married another returned serviceman. That didn’t work out well.

Like all her generation in my family, her education was brief, but she was endlessly curious. Local archaeology, growing orchids, rock hunting kept her active. Housework didn’t. She loved a funeral, would travel miles to attend one, and I hope would have been pleased with her own.

Information about the family poured out of her, so much that it was impossible to take it all in. I never knew her grandfather, born in the 1860s, but he’s vivid to me in her memory of sitting with him when she was small while he roasted whole onions in their skins in fireplace embers, sharing them with her.

Already my own childhood seems remote and unreal, so much has changed. If my cousin passed on any wisdom she was lucky; kids are not greatly interested in what you learned at a time that doesn’t exist for them. What she did pass on was her example, bearing up and making a life.

I can’t claim to have any great wisdom to pass on, or her courage, but I do have some hard-won tips to freely ignore:

❚ Don’t buy shoes that aren’t instantly comfortable.

❚ Don’t buy clothes a size too small. For any reason.

❚ Don’t make decisions when you’re drunk. Better still, don’t get drunk.

❚ The best marmalade is made with Seville oranges.

❚ Cheap chocolate isn’t worth it.

❚ Hard kiwifruit will ripen in a paper bag with an apple, folded shut. This can take a fortnight or more.

❚ Hard pears ripen on a warm windowsill in about a week.

❚ Meringues need to stay in the oven after they’re cooked. Turn the heat off and leave them overnight. Recipes will never tell you this.

❚ Don’t put fresh nectarines in the fridge unless you’re sure they haven’t been chilled before. They turn floury.

❚ Lipstick is necessary.

Of these, this last may be the most important. Possibly even at 99.