Origin Stories
The Mills Family, Paekakariki circa 1984.
Where did you begin? I think most of us have many points of origin, little moments that set us on a path that could only lead to right here, right now, rather than a singular significant event that changed everything. I could write about the white guy with the afro, lead guitarist of The Naked Ape rock band, smoker of weed, builder of houses and culverts and bridges. And his exotic trainee teacher girlfriend, who he wooed with his badass backing skills using the steering knob on his Valiant Wayfarer ute. She probably would have been found swooning over his manly gymnastic agility as he walked untethered along the ridgepole of a roof in construction. He was wild wilful and popular (her words), and she was fairly fresh out of boarding school, desperate not to go back to the relative isolation of her home on D’Urville Island. That’s not the only reason she decided to be with him. He turned out to be an incredibly devoted and steadfast husband. He still is. The Valiant got stolen and tossed over a cliff out Makara way. For all his wild ways, he was ready to settle down. She was only seventeen and desperate for fun. It was a bumpy ride. I came into the picture just a couple of years later, eight months after their slightly disastrous wedding, one month earlier than anticipated, skinny firstborn daughter of these two hippies. Maybe being born to quite wayward parents set me on a path. Maybe it was something else.
Another formative moment could be the day I was given a camera to use to document the athletic sports day at Fiordland College, where I was teaching the senior English classes at the time. I don’t think there was any particular reason I was chosen for that duty, but it was absolutely a revelation to have access to both equipment and a captive and vibrant subject. I realised how much I loved finding a shot, on that day, and on the others I repeated that task. It led to the end of high school teaching, and the beginning of a photography school education.
I could also recall the moment that Jonathan asked me to marry him, on Lyall Bay beach in the sunshine and wind. Or the terrifying joy of the day that Nino was born, cementing my evolution into motherhood. However, if I’m really distilling the events of my life to find one defining juncture from which my compass found a true North, it’d be a conversation I had with mum, while we were driving to Pukerua Bay one evening, in the latter part of 1991. I was nearing the end of the fourth form at Kapiti College, considering the subjects I would choose for school certificate, and in my mind, the trajectory of my life. You see, I had choices. I was comfortably excelling in maths, science, English. I was really devoted to art. P.E. was never on the table (in that subject, I was and remain, hopeless), but effectively, I was thinking about whether I’d aim for something like medical school or if I’d take the more compelling but mysterious path of art and adjacent arts subjects. I still remember the inflection in mum’s voice when she said to me ‘Well, do you want to be rich, or do you want to be happy?’
Rich or happy?
You see, mum knew me best of all. She’s inherently creative in her own right, and she understood (while I was yet to) that choosing a career direction that would lead away from creative expression would be pretty unsatisfying for me in the long run. We knew I could choose whatever I wanted, but her best advice was to follow what I enjoyed, rather than what I thought might be a route to success. She gave me licence, in that moment, to follow exactly the desires of my heart, and not cave to the pressure of society to be striving for financial wellbeing. I’ve never really mastered that last bit. We do ok, but I’m far from savvy when it comes to investments or expressions of wealth. I’m generally dreaming about spending what we earn on photographic equipment or art supplies (or that one-day house in the countryside). What I do know is how to find happiness in the little miracles I see when things fall into place. There’s always the caveat that I reserve the right to be cranky and ungrateful when I’m feeling particularly perimenopausal, but generally speaking my bucket gets filled with quite small things. When a great idea comes to me in the shower, or on the road to the supermarket, or in the deep hours of the night. An idea that is both simple and complex, layered or fragmented in ways that scratch my perpetual creative itch. That kind of miracle is the small hit of dopamine that I rely on to surf over the humdrum bits of everyday life.
Superherores generally seem to have somewhat tragic origin stories. Events that catapulted them into a new identity. I guess ordinary folk, myself included, have much smaller, maybe more incremental turning points. I think I’m still the same little girl on the inside - product of two loose seventies lovebirds who went straight-ish when they found Jesus, and raised their girls to be whatever they wanted to be. Now I’m attempting to pass the same legacy to our boys, maintaining a mindset that keeps the options wide open, and that holds kindness and creativity above money and power.