“What do you mean?” one says with a wink. “Santa does.”
Next door, people dine alfresco at Postmasters, a cottage-turned-café named for its original nineteenth-century inhabitant. On the other side, a man sells ice cream from a stand. I exchange the jacket I was wearing for an apple from my backpack. The weather is warming—not exactly summer to me, but it smacks of spring. I think that airport shuttle driver was wrong.
We walk to the end of the main street, then to the nearby banks of Bush Creek, a tributary of the Arrow River and home of the derelict Arrowtown Chinese Settlement. Stone huts from the 1860s dot the land, a reminder that the town began during the Otago Gold Rush and swelled to a thriving place of residence. Chinese immigrants made their way here, along with Europeans and Californians, then were dutifully persecuted and heavily taxed until the 1940s (New Zealand formally apologized in 2002). Our kids run in and out of the huts, and we imagine frontier life raising a family with fingers crossed in hopes of striking it rich. I am aware of what little Kiwi history I know.
Nearby, an original police camp building stands as a graying wood cabin, parked authoritatively along the river in overstated protection from the original foreigners. Cottonwood trees sway in the breeze, towering above the shanty. They shower puffs of cotton with drops of seedpod on the ground, and the grass is blanketed with tufts of spring snow. The kids sing “Jingle Bells” and toss the snow in the air.
Arrowtown charms, but my mind wanders to our guesthouse. I want to bake in the patio’s sun and imbibe the perfume of roses. My body and soul want to pause the sightseeing, to instead soak in glory. I need to stop and smell the roses. We all do.
I think of Vanessa’s comment in Melbourne, and I calculate that I have indeed spent more than two thousand hours nonstop with the kids, not counting sleep, spiritual direction sessions with Nora, a few hours at random coffee shops to scramble for work deadlines, and thirty minutes when I had LASIK surgery on my eyes in Chiang Mai. I study my kids’ hairlines, scrutinize the freckles dancing across their noses, and marvel that I played a role in creating their bodies. Their quotidian observations slay, make my brain stand on its head. I vie for their moral resolve.
Parenting is hard because of diapers and time-outs, the slog of sounding out vowels and the drama of mailboxes missing party invitations. But it is hardest because it is a mirror. It is life staring me down. It is the echoes of my inner childish voice reverberating from my children’s; it is the denial of me going first. It is my flesh and blood unleashed, encased around another personality, another will. It is the continual death of my basal impulses for the exchange of extraordinary. It is fighting traffic for gymnastics class, early-morning sandwich cutting, late-night math drills. It is perpetual togetherness while circumnavigating the globe.
At the guesthouse, Kyle grills and I make a salad. We eat on the patio, and the kids perform a play they’ve rehearsed in secret. We applaud wildly. Then baths, pajamas, my turn to read a story. The kids climb into bunk beds in the room with blackout shades, hours before the sun sets at ten. I retreat back outside to Kyle, and we open a bottle of wine. I wonder at the sky that resembles early afternoon. We talk about the kids, how they’re doing, marvel at their traveling prowess, comment on Tate’s confusion with fractions, Reed’s challenge with phonics. We laugh at something we read on the Internet. We watch a cat video. I think again about my kids and my mother-heart swells.
Then the two of us change into our pajamas, open our windows, climb into bed, and start Lord of the Rings on a laptop. The mines of Moria and the river through Rivendell are right outside Arrowtown.
Three days later, we leave town. It is the first time I sob about leaving a place. We vow to return one day.
To make our week in New Zealand financially doable, we must spend the next half in a campervan, crawling our way back up the south island. In Queenstown, I found a bargain deal that required schlepping a campervan back to Christchurch, and we could make the trek however we wanted. The only two real options were the east or west coast, which in New Zealand is akin to choosing emeralds or rubies. We opt for west because we are West Coasters, and west is best, as West Coasters are wont to say.
After we leave, I read the weather forecast: clear skies east, nonstop rain west. We duck through a rain forest, and a torrent of water pours for two days. The kids play with Lego bricks for forty-eight hours in the campervan, and we drive from campsite to campsite. We make meals of cheese and crackers from the kitchenette. Muddy footprints stomp up and down our minuscule hallway. I paid extra for an Internet router in the van, but it can’t endure the weather, so I’m unable to work. Kyle steers our mammoth ride around windy wooded corners through peals of water, and through the downpour and windshield patter we shout our thoughts about life post-travel, ideas about where we might relocate, what our work will look like a year from now. We bellow our dreams.
The native Maori tribes of New Zealand christened the islands with the name Aotearoa, which means “Land of the Long White Cloud.” No one knows the official origin of this name, but it is birthed from beauty, from gazing at its landscape. New Zealand is one of the least densely populated countries on earth. Here, flowers and sheep and cattle crowd out humankind. Creation reigns. A smattering of men, women, and children are graced with the privilege to walk on it.
This week, we have cheated on Italy and France, on Thailand. Our hearts splinter over a new lover. We board our plane back to Australia with a sigh in our hearts and a promise to rendezvous with her again. Kiwi dirt banked along clouded cerulean water has caked into the tread of my shoes. I choose not to remove it, a souvenir from God’s oeuvre. I will let it depart on its own, where it may.
8
AUSTRALIA, AGAIN
Australia feels like returning home. For three weeks, we have permission to take off our sweaty, itchy vagabonding hats because we are house-sitting for friends currently on vacation in Canada. We will hole up in the Sydney suburbs and take care of chickens. Heading here, I suspect, will be like waking up from a complicated dream, where your surroundings seem familiar but still slightly off-kilter. This is a regular home for a regular family, and yet it isn’t ours.