We went off the edge of Australia 27 May. Or now, I will say, May 27. Back home, dammit. I will say "renting" not "hiring" and finally, I will go directly to the proper side of the car. I don't miss the Panadol capsule Corolla, though I did get weepy when I took the Redfield Rugby and Campion College stickers off the back as we handed the car over to Wayne and his wife Angela, who were our answers to prayers.
We hadn't sold the Panadol thing, and so I decided to do what Achilles did and go to Our Lady and put my arms around her knees in ancient supplication for her prayers....I asked for someone to buy the car who needed it, who would really like it--and pay what we needed, not necessarily what we wanted. The next day, Wayne showed up. Wayne and his wife have never driven before; they have lived in Vietnam, and in Australia now, they saved up enough money to buy our car. When Angela saw it, she jumped up and down, squeaking, and she hugged me. "I love it," she said, "it is so cute. Cute." Angela told me, looking sideways at Wayne, "Now that we have this car, we can have our baby. You need a car to have a baby here in Sydney."
We decided to call Sydney "Pusstown." "Puss" as in liquid, not as in kitten. I decided that I just cannot live in Commonwealth countries. Just never works. Comedy is setting in now; I guess it has been 30 minutes since tragedy.
But we were waved off with love: thank you, friends, friends who came by in groups the last day and filled us with love; friends who took us to the airport even in morning traffic; friends who behaved more like family. They are the real Australia for me, and have made it all worth it. That is the Australia I love, not the beaches or the tea shops, though those were nice things.
Three hours after leaving Sydney, we landed in Auckland for a short stop in New Zealand. You know, thinking in more shallow ways, New Zealand is awesome. They have trolleys with back-locked wheels. I immediately liked New Zealand for that, even felt fuzzy about the nation. Oh, "carts" not "trolleys."
I did decide though that I am going to stay with "biscuits" for "cookies" and "muffins" or "scones" for "biscuits." Just because the Commonwealth nomers for these things make more sense. "Biscuits and tea" I loved and will refuse to forget them.
We landed in Auckland in the evening, and suddenly, the stress level went down. Even the airport was quiet, and green, like the countryside. The first thing we saw was one of the huge stone dwarves from the Lonely Mountain.
We got our Jucy campa van--a Hiace, which I absolutely love driving. Yes, it was green and purple with a stupid sexy lady on the side. It just screamed "tourist" but maybe that is still good, since we're still American drivers at heart. We took the thing out, like a boat out to sea, the Sea of Adventure in the land that really, really, is Middle Earth. It is so green, and blue, and lovely...it has all the seasons at once, it seems, and we hit it in late fall, when the trees were golden and orange.
We got to Hobbiton in the late afternoon, on a day when that sea light slants sideways and makes everything a more intense color. It was a magical afternoon, and we got to the Green Dragon for pub food and ale as the lanterns were being lit. It was like being in the story.
We felt as if the healing was starting, I think; the kids' joy at being at such a wonderful place was a balm for all the ruptures.
The next day was rainy, and misty, and we spent time in the mysterious Rotorua mountain area, where little valleys everywhere put off steam clouds from hot springs, fissures in the green overgrowth. In a secret valley surrounded by small farms and high hills, we heard Mass at the Tyburn Monastery with the nuns, in what must be one of the most remote-feeling places in the world. Edmund Campion died at Tyburn, and we felt a connection with him there. It was dark, but not empty; it was poor, in a sense, and silent, but the silence and the darkness that is so full that one cannot but recoil in one's nature from it at first. It is challenging and daunting that the nuns live this life, this hidden life in this beautiful but unbearably quiet place. Once again, just like at the Clark monastery in Wyoming, I felt like an intruder into the heart of the Church...their work is so hidden, so deep in some way, that it feels almost meaningless--but that is because my sight is so used to clutter. I cannot see in the dark.
In the Waikate Valley, we soaked in hot pools and looked up at the stars which are intense like light shining through holes in black velvet, coming in and out of crystal view as the steam clouds pass overhead in a prehistoric rhythm. We drove down through mist to Taupo and met Jamil Scarberry from Seattle at an Austrian-themed pub; we spent the night at the Top 10 Holiday Park, which we decided was an alternate universe, with the giant pillow play thing and the light pattern game and the giant chess board. They were playing Star Wars for the Queen's birthday celebrations. What?
It was cold in New Zealand at night, so cold, and this intensified the alternate universe experience, because it was May 31. By day, the fall colors were out, and the cold wind swept across the sky, dancing with bright white clouds.
The next day was spent at Rotorua. Sophie and I explored the dark forest with a group, high up in the trees, crossing across the rich greens and chocolate browns on 50 m high zip lines. Our group, headed by the relentlessly positive Anna and Jenny, had Kyle and his girlfriend, a few kids and their reluctant-to-zipline mom, and a guy from Yorkshire who joked about being off balance because one of his buttocks must be heavier than the other. He kept us all laughing as he hugged trees and flipped upside down as he zipped. The longest zip was a 220 meter flight in the sun. It was marvelous, and young and old and middle-aged, we all turned into children with the delight of flying and having little NZ birds eating out of our hands. The van ride back was boistrous and chatty. On the way there, we'd been shy strangers.
Ana, TJ, and Thaddeus meanwhile went bungie jumping at Agroadventures. Thaddeus came down, as Ana said, like a huge fat bird with tiny wings flapping. The kids did Zorb balls, a ride inside a giant ball down a green hill.
I noticed the lack of commerciality, the personal touch, the absence of crowds and lines and rules. We ate pub food in The Pig and Whistle watching the Glasgow rugby tourney. I love rugby. Love it. New Zealanders seem like hard working, hard playing people, and there just aren't that many people there in this young, volcanic, emerald green land.
The highlight, though, for me, was the Zealong Tea Estate. Long ago, in the deep winter of Wyoming, I copied an old painting I thought of as a picture of walking out of the dark of death to a home waiting; it is of a cottage flanked by cypress trees, in the setting sun, surrounded by intense colors, with blue mountains in the distance. The Tea Estate made me feel as if I'd walked into that picture. I'd painted New Zealand. We had high tea with smoked salmon sandwiches and petit fours, and tea in an elegant Chinese style (infusion cup with lid and hot water to hand on a flame). The teas ranged from 'pure' to 'black' and 'aromatic' with delicate but obvious tastes of honey and smoke. I looked out over the tea fields, through a pergola with vines (that strange New Zealand green but cold winter), and it was one of those moments that you could understand staying eternally in one spot. The beauty filled the senses and overflowed easily, like smooth brew, into the soul.
That night, we just couldn't take the Jucy campa anymore, so we got a hotel and had a good night's sleep.
The next day we boarded a huge Air New Zealand plane with Hobbit characters all over it. I could not see anything of my last look at a Southern Hemisphere land.
Arriving in the US was strange. For me, I got deep anxiety, some kind of old, and deep anxiety, and I haven't figured that one out. Sometimes our feelings and the reasoning of the heart are more accessed by the body than the mind. It just might take some time.
Or maybe I'm just jetlagged.
My parents and Aunt Maryanne met us at the airport waving American flags. We were all looking around to see what was the first thing we noticed that was familiar. It was family for me. For this Third Culture kid, familiarity is truly relative.
In an odd twist, my dad booked the same hotel and restaurant for us that Thaddeus and I had booked when we went, in excitement and hope, out to Australia for our interview. A strange, and somewhat sad, circle, but somehow comforting, a kind of closure; a gift.
But there was some fun from God in it, too. My cinnamon oil ("Your stuff always smells like a kit for embalming," Sophie says) leaked and all my clothes smelled like cinnamon. That stuff is so strong that all the people in the hotel shuttle were wondering what candy factory they'd walked into, probably feeling sick. Smelling like intense cinnamon, we walked into the restaurant where there were literally buckets of cinnamon fireballs on every table. Never seen that before.
We drew rabid interpretive crayon pictures of our experience in the washing machine that was the last six months, on the paper bag paper table covering as a kind of debrief, and we enjoyed the big American portions for less money.
It was nice just feeling like in most situations I just knew the ropes; I didn't have to endure that timid "Hi. I'm obviously American and so of course do not know exactly how this works and will most likely annoy you at any moment now" feeling. That's nice.
My dad put his arm around me at some point, and said, "Look forward now."
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