ALL ABOUT ROWENA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 207, 11 June 1943, Page 14

ALL ABOUT ROWENA

Who Was Resourceful

(Written for "The Listener’ by

M.

B.

N later years, when reporters would come from far and near to interview Rowena’s mother on the subject of Rowena’s childhood, Rowena’s mother was unable to think of any tendency manifested in early life which marked out Rowena as being any different from the ordinary run of children. Which, of course, showed that Rowena’s mother herself was a somewhat exceptional person. In point -of fact, the only thing she remembered «vividly about Rowena as a baby was her regrettable habit of sucking all solids given her through her feeder, or in default of this through the hem of her best frock, And, thinking this hardly to Rowena’s credit, Rowena’s mother forbore to mention it. Actually, this was perhaps the first indication given to the outside world of Rowena’s extraordinary resourcefulness, for reared as she was in. days before parents were practised in Plunket’ principles, Rowena ensured by this somewhat messy means that she) received her full quota of Sieved Solids.

T five Rowena went to school, But perhaps because staffs in, those days were less open-minded than they are to-day, Rowena’s resourcefulness did not receive its due meed of attention, except in the section headed Conduct, and then it was obvious that the Headmaster thought she would have been better without it. Little could he guess how Time would confound his ill-con-sidered opinions, and that one day he would boast at a Rotary Club luncheon that it was under his nurture that the seed of Rowena’s outstanding quality had begun to put out leaf and flower. But we anticipate. Like Shakespeare's Rowena’s genius was late in flowering. Not that this worried either Rowena or any of her friends and relations, for like the world at large they were unaware

that Rowena was a genius. And she might have gone to her final restingplace unhonoured and unsung but for the stupendous accident of the second World War. tk * * N September, 1939, Rowena was 53, the mother of six grown-up children, three boys and three girls, all of whom were married and had families of their own. Her husband had done quite well in h:. profession, and Rowena was mistress of a large house and half an acre of ground. And the cares of the house and garden and her increasing number of grandchildren filled Rowena’s time very satisfactorily, particularly as son after son and son-in-law after son-in-law was drafted to camp and Rowena’s services at the houses of her six off-spring were increasingly in demand. And so busy was she with her domestic duties that it was not till the war was entering its third year that Rowena realised that she was standing on the threshold of her life as a Career Woman, It all began with the shortage of elastic. Rowena had not till then been particularly Elastic-Conscious, -as her own children had been reared in the Button-and-Bodice era. But now her ears rang with the lamentations of her six daughters and daughters-in-law and the concerted wails of her 14 grandchildren, all of whom were of an age to need elastic at waist and knee. Rowena pondered on the problem throughout one sleepless night. At four o’clock she fell into an uneasy slumber. At 4.30 she tose, and, Lady-Macbeth-like, made her way into the garage. At 4.45 a.m., her husband discovered her on her knees beside his bicycle having almost finished her task of cutting his rear tube into narrow ribbons. He led her, still unconscious, back to bed. In the morning he gave her the other bicycle tube, merely remarking that a one-tyred bicycle wasn’t much use anyway. \ Ey * * news of Rowena’s sensational Elastic Replacement Discovery swept the country. She woke from her sleepwalking to find herself famous. There were pictures of all the grandchildren, seemly at waist and knee, in the illustrated papers. She was inundated with letters from Grateful Mother of Ten and Pro Bono Publico. But this early public adulation was as nothing compared with that which resounded from one end of the country to the other on the publication of a small pamphlet by Rowena "How to Acquire Bicycle Tubes Suitable for the Production of Elastic Substitute."

Rowena, who had thought her days comparatively full before her skyrocket to fame, now wondered what she could have done with her vast areas of leisure. She rose at six each morning to deal with her correspondence, consisting mostly of letters from harassed householders with pleas to wring the heart. "I can’t buy safety-pins and I have triplets two and a-half months old. What should I do?" "I have been trying to make a substitute for Angora baby wool from the hair of our black Persian cat. How can I get it white?" It took Rowena half an hour’s hard thinking to provide a solution to each of these problems of war-time shortages, so it was usually well after midnight before she fell asleep at her desk. Her husband ate out, Among her more memorable discoveries of this period must rank that of a’ mustard substitute and the publication of a memorandum on "The Preparation of Pork Equivalent from Milk-Fed Veal." x * * UT at last the war ended, and it was borne in upon her that her Life’s Work Was Over. For a few brief years she had done her part to make war-time living more bearable for the inhabitants of New Zealand. Now she must go back to a life which, however admirable in itself, was, civically speaking, negligible, She wept into her pre-war linen handkie. When her husband came home for his first meal in five years, he found no welcome smell of cooking. Fhe house was in darkness. He switched on the light in the kitchen. There was Rowena, her head on the table, weeping unrestrainedly into a pork chop. The recipe book was open at Vegetarian Cutlet. "You see," she sobbed, "if I hadn’t any meat at all I could make a Vegetarian Cutlet, and if I hadn’t a pork chop I could make what tastes like one, but I’ve got a pork chop and I can’t think what to turn it into!" In vain her husband strove to comfort her, but to no avail. In the end, they made do with bread and butter, and, kept awake by partial starvation, Rowena’s husband spent a long night trying to find a solution to Rowena’s problem. The doctor he consulted diagnosed Nervous Breakdown, and _ prescribed Ocean Voyage. The very next week, Rowena and her husband embarked on a luxury liner for the first stage of their trip round the world. a * * T was somewhat unfortunate that in. spite of rigid Allied supervision, the post-war Japanese mine-sweeping sere (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) vice had failed to account for a solitary mirie Lat. 10 degrees 15 mins., Long. 174 degrees 42 mins., and even more unfortunate that the Oceania happened to be a few degrees west of her usual trade route. In 15 minutes there was nothing to. be seen of the _ ill-fated vessel, but fortunately, owing to the speed and efficiency of the crew in lowering the lifeboats, the entire personnel of the Oceania found themselves in well-equipped dinghies drifting rapidly from the scene of the tragedy. Before nightfall, all the lifeboats, by some miraculous providence, were drawn up on the beach of a _ conveniently situated tropical island, with all amenities of palm trees, lagoon, fresh water, and abundance of food and shelter. That evening, everyone dined on turtle steak, cunningly prepared in accordance with Rowena’s instructions, and everybody agreed that it was almost indistinguishable from New Zealand lamb. After that, there was no question but that Rowena, in spite of the Captain’s more obvious claim, should be regarded as head and guiding spirit of the little community. As the weeks and months went by, hopes of rescue grew fainter, and by the end of a year on the island the little community had settled down so completely that they desired nothing more than to be left undisturbed in their Island Paradise. For, thanks to the resourceful Rowena, they were assured of all the little extra conveniences, such as coconut fibre blottingpaper, and palm oil tooth-paste, and shark’s tooth hair-clips, which make all the difference between civilised living and merely pigging it on a_ tropical island. And Rowena herself was happier than she had ever been, even at the height of her career as Director of the Department for the Amelioration of War-time Living. For now she was fulfilling herself both as Career Woman and Matriarch. For before the year was out, she found herself surrounded once more by gurgling foster-grand-children, and once more she was called upon to direct her ingenuity to finding substitutes for the all-important nursery requisites of elastic and safety-pins |