Our Luna is seven today...
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And what a journey she has had us on!
She has enabled me to experience time sitting between generations.
A time when I am the daughter of my mum,
the mum of my daughter,
and the grandmother of her child.
And when you sit in that space, you begin to think differently.
You start looking at the living generations and realise just how much they reveal about the
generations who have passed and all that has gone before us to bring us here.
Our Luna brings together whakapapa from across Te Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa and the United
Kingdom, carrying all that has gone before her through both sides of her family.
When she was born, it was the obvious things we looked for. Whose hands did she have?
Whose eyes did she see through? What sounds gave reference to the voices that had
spoken before her?
And as she grew, it became about whose movements we were seeing, whose mannerisms
were appearing, and how the combination of tenacity from both sides of her family was
showing itself.
We began to hear her own tones, mixed with the inflections, expressions and words of times
gone by.
Then she ventured into the schooling system and into a wider world of learning and social
environments.
And I found myself recognising something deeper.
I felt the voices and movements of people I feel so strongly connected to, but whose skills,
knowledge and abilities had somehow skipped my generation.
Her flows and movements are so precise, yet so fluid. There is something in the way she
carries herself that makes me certain the blood that flows through her has been cultivated
over decades, generations and lifetimes before her.
And then there is the reo that flows through her. Allowing us to not only feel, but to hear the
tones of our tūpuna.
I find myself standing in awe most days seeing how much she carries of what has gone
before.
And through her they pull my own reo forward through the barriers I have held for so long.
And I hope that, in time, the moments we spend singing together will allow the power of our
oral vibrations to dismantle those barriers for good.
Perhaps through her, I am finding a way back to a voice that has always been mine.
So today marks seven years of Luna teaching us, guiding us and, in so many ways, bringing
us home.
It is also the last time she will mark her years as the only mokopuna of this generation, with
another little one about to draw breath and join the fold.
She holds so much.
She carries so much.
And she reminds us that what we see in the generations coming is not new.
Its the re-emergence of what has always been there, mixed with the combination of lines.
waiting for its time to find its way forward.
Find its way home
And for that I am truly grateful.
For through her I get to hold my moko and my tūpuna in one x
Rā whānau koa, Luna.
He taonga koe a ō tātou tūpuna.