Lost & Found
Losing something, then finding it again, is one of life’s great joys.
There is a pair of my mother’s earrings – garnets I never wear - which even so are precious to me because she’d lost one of them not long before she went into hospital care, and I found it after she died.
It had bothered her (and therefore me) that it had disappeared. Finding it again – “Look, mama!” I’d said out loud when I’d spied down the back of a bookcase – had been like being given a whole new pair of earrings, only better.
Sometimes, things come back to you that you didn’t even know were missing.
On Friday I popped into the TVNZ building in Auckland, a place I used to visit a lot for work but haven’t been for a while. As it happens, Radio NZ has just moved in there so I have reason to go again - every few Fridays I have a chat on air with on Nine-to-Noon host Kathryn Ryan about the week’s weirdest news, usually with Te Radar but sometimes with one of the other co-hosts.
For my first visit to the new location, I was with Donna Brookbanks, a close friend so, after we came off air, we stopped at the café by reception for a coffee and a catch-up.
While we were chatting, one of the receptionists came over with a package. She said it had arrived at TVNZ in early May addressed to me, and someone had told her I worked there sometimes so, without having a forwarding address, she’d held onto it on the off-chance I might swing by. And today she had noticed my name pop up on her system when I signed in at security.
Inside was a letter from the daughter of my childhood speech and drama teacher and, in perfect condition, my Trinity College of London Speech and Drama Certificate from 1972. Grade II, passed with Honours.
I believe I may have squealed with delight. What a fabulous thing to have. I had not at all thought of it as “missing” but, now that I have it, it’s a real treasure.
I would have been eleven years old and in my first year at Levin Intermediate, and the exam would have happened in Palmerston North after a nervous drive from Levin, and there would’ve been a reward of cake and iced chocolate at a café afterwards.
I remember my classes with Mrs Parrington so clearly, walking up to her beautiful brick house after school, the warmth of the room we would sit in, and how carefully she would write poems and pieces in my Speech and Drama exercise book. I still have the book on a shelf in my office filled with her handwriting and notes.
Many of these poems and readings have stayed permanently in my head. I use her “Please ask Peterson, the plasterer, painter and paperhanger to purchase pink paper for Pat’s room” as a vocal exercise to get rid of explosive “p’s” when I am doing voice work in recording studios for radio and TV commercials. Technicians have been impressed with the skills and tools Marie Parrington instilled in me all those years ago.
I have written to her, told her how grateful I am for the lessons, and for making me feel I could do things, that I have loved making a life out of performing and writing, and feel lucky to have been encouraged to do these things by people like her.
And I am having the certificate framed for my office wall.