MEMORIES: Mary Singleton playing the piano at a party pre-motherhood.
MEMORIES: Mary Singleton playing the piano at a party pre-motherhood.
When Mary Singleton turned 80 this year, a friend sent her a card that read, 'you grew up in another millennium, without Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter or even smart phones. What did you do?'
"I'll tell you what we did," said Mary, from her Raumati Beach home, where she has lived for 19 years and where much of her new memoir was produced.
Mary's memoir Was That Really Me? launches at Paraparaumu Library this month and takes readers through her colourful life as a teacher, pianist, traveller, solo mother and political activist during the 1960s and 70s.
From helping to introduce the term 'solo parent' in New Zealand, to co-founding Amnesty International New Zealand and visiting a pre-tourist Bali where she met a prince, Mary's life could be described as unorthodox.
As well as an encounter with a lion in the Kalahari, Africa, the memoir details Mary's 15-month stay at Wellington Hospital after contracting tuberculosis (TB) as a teenager, and introduces readers to a string of eccentric flatmates.
Highlighting her passion for working with youth through music, the memoir also describes her disappointment at having to give up piano at 50 because of Occupational Overuse Syndrome (OOS), which led to much of her book being created using voice recognition software.
Many other snippets stemmed from years before, which she had written and stowed away.
"Some of the personal stuff would've been considered outrageous in my youth but nowadays wouldn't be regarded as remotely naughty," said the mother of one.
"There've been seismic changes socially in my lifetime and I'm proud to have been at the forefront of some of them."
Born in 1937 and brought up in Island Bay, Wellington, Mary lived a typical suburban childhood during World War II.
When she was 15, her sister died aged 31 in childbirth and, shortly afterwards, Mary was diagnosed with the then-life threatening TB, believed to have been caught from her piano teacher.
"I spent four months in a big old-fashioned Victorian ward at Wellington Hospital, before being transferred with a lot of others to Otaki's sanatorium."
While there, Mary met an older woman who became a significant role model in her life, the late Rona Bailey, who invited Mary to visit her once they were out of hospital.
Rona, who became well-known in New Zealand as an icon of left-wing politics, studied with pioneers of modern dance in New York and co-founded Wellington's New Dance Group in 1945.
"She got me involved in things like protesting nuclear disarmament, as well as modern dance, which developed my passion for working with kids in dance, music and drama later on."
Rona was later the only divorced woman Mary knew in her early life, other than herself, until she founded Solo Parents Incorporated in 1965.
A solo mother from the time her daughter was 15 months, Mary established the group when the term solo parents did not exist in New Zealand, or the Domestic Purposes Benefit.
"The group did a lot of political campaigning and writing and we got to meet the then Prime Minister Keith Holyoake for morning tea to put forward our case.
"It also led to me meeting somebody who became a really close friend, Cushla, and with whom I did lots of really fun things that I write about, including holidays in the Marlborough Sounds."
Workwise, Mary taught at schools in Wellington for around 20 years, including a year teaching stint in Sydney and then England.
She moved to the then-quiet rural streets of Kapiti in 1998 , which she has "not regretted for a moment".
"I was in Africa and was looking at the sizes of the huts that whole families lived in and thought I didn't need as much space or as many things as I had.
"So I came back to Wellington and within six weeks, found this place I live in now, after friends introduced me to the delights of Kapiti."
Shortly afterwards, she became greatly involved in music and drama on the coast, directing productions for Kapiti Play House and managing the Kapiti Concert Orchestra, before co-founding the Kapiti Youth Orchestra.
"I eventually had to give them up because of ill health, but I'm really proud that we gave an opportunity to young people to develop their musical skills and work in a happy learning environment."
Mary, who had a few short romances, said it was not until she was about 40 that she identified as a feminist.
"When I was younger I did a lot of things that my contemporaries weren't doing but I was as ignorant as the next person.
"Looking back, there was an interesting episode when the solo parents group had a big dance and Cushla, another friend and myself ran the thing.
"There were men and none of them asked us to dance and I asked one of them why, and he said because the three of us were seen as strong women.
"They weren't looking for strong women, they were looking for wives.
