Poppies

A little story...

A few days ago I found knitted poppies for Anzac Day. I bought three on the spot and sat down with the boys and told them about my Nana.

My Nana collected poppies. She kept them in a battered tin. Dozens of poppies in all different shapes and sizes. Crepe, knit, cotton, plastic, cardboard, paper…

My favourite was a silk poppy. She told us that before they were mass produced, people made their own poppies or shared them around. Designs changed, whatever material was at hand was used. We loved Nana’s poppy collection. We loved Nana. Still love her. The love has nowhere to go now, so we just carry it around.

I tried to tell the boys about the collection. I tried to get them to understand the excitement I had at their age when Nana took out her poppy collection. How I’d hold each one gently in my hand, trying to choose a favourite that changed every year. She called them Flanders Poppies.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

I try to keep Nana alive for them. I tell stories about her all the time. But I can’t explain to them how sitting at her feet and leaning against her legs was the safest place in the world for me. How she smelled like lavender soap. How her skin was so soft and we all wanted to rub her sore arthritic fingers with cream.

I carry her with me in other ways. I whisper “Mama loves you” to my babies as they fall into sleep, and it’s Nana’s voice. Nana loves you. Nana’s baby - no matter your age. Always Nana’s baby.

I tell the boys she would have loved them so fiercely but I don’t think they understand. She’s a photo on the fridge to them. She is once removed from them - Mama’s Nana.

I wish I’d known her better. I am so hungry to know her. I wish I’d known her life before us. Before she was Nana. I wish I’d known her mother-to-mother. It’s as if she had a secret life, a life I never knew existed - because to me, she was Nana and that is all. As children we couldn’t fathom that she might continue to be when we weren’t in the room.

I was greedy for her time and love and energy. And I know now that that is motherhood in all of its exhausting glory. You are never truly known by your children, we don’t always understand what a gift that is.

Madame Anna Guérin was known as “The Poppy Lady from France”. She sold poppies, handmade by widows, to support survivors of World War I. Poppies were always made and sold by women. War Mothers of America and Women’s Auxiliary clubs did all of the heavy lifting in so many ways.

Anna’s poppies were bought all around the world until they weren’t. But Aotearoa was loyal to Anna and continued to buy her poppies right through until 1928. Never missing a year. Anzac Day was never meant to become Poppy Day. It only happened because Anna’s 350,000 poppies were delayed arriving by ship to our country. On that ship was 16,000 silk poppies too. One of which my Nana had in her collection.

In 1931, New Zealand began producing its own poppies, made by disabled veterans in Tāmaki Makaurau and Ōtautahi. But still, women made poppies. In 1936, a Wellington ladies’ committee made 20,000 poppies.

They’re now mostly paper. It’s rare to find a cloth poppy, rare to find one that’s hand-made.

I take the knitted poppies and pin them to the boys’ shirts and they stand tall in front of the mirror. I see Nana in my round face, so similar to hers. I hope tonight I will dream of her again, somehow break through so she can see my boys through me.

I buy a tin of Anzac biscuits at the supermarket.

The tin is perfect, the same shape as Nana’s.

This is what I will keep my poppies in.