A Homecoming...

following a sketchy foray into Boganville

Forgive me, dear readers, it’s been two months since my last newsletter. During that time, I began most days with the thought that this might be it – the moment when the fog rolled back and motivation stirred – but no, false alarm; at each day’s end I fell into bed, promising tomorrow would be different, until the day came when I gave myself permission to give up. Friends, I hope you will agree that I had reason enough.

You see, twelve days ago, the movers arrived to pack up my household. I was leaving my home and, after a couple more days staying with a dear friend – no hardship there, you might think – I would move into a brand-new apartment in the sleepy village of Waikanae, about an hour’s drive from Upper Hutt, where I’d been living for the past four-and-a-half years. Again, no privation. Anyone who knows the place will tell you it’s gorgeous; a forty-kilometre strip of settlements, threaded like a string of pearls along the Kāpiti Coast, a district cradled between the Tasman Sea’s blue-green expanse to the west and the majestic Tararua Range to the east.

Fun fact: Kāpiti with a macron means cabbage in Māori, but the offshore island of Kapiti that dominates the western horizon, and means belonging, has no macron. A few years back, the local council chose to add macrons to all its indigenous place names to help with pronunciation. Hard to say if that worked, but not all the locals agreed with the move, showing their displeasure by blacking out the macrons on Welcome to Kāpiti District signs at each end of the district.

It's been disconcerting, as if I was in limbo, neither there nor here, one foot in the place I was leaving, with tasks still to perform and obligations to fulfil, and the other foot itching to plant itself in new soil, take me on thrilling adventures, open my eyes to new vistas. I dreamed myself walking that coastline, perhaps even scaling the dizzying heights of the Paekākāriki Escarpment, with its twelve hundred steps, or bathing in the coastal waves, sampling its delicacies, and inhabiting its attractions.

Here's where I must confess, I turned my back on this place five years ago, for reasons that now look sketchy at best, and crossed the eastern hills to a cottage in a bushy riverside community that I imagined would be my forever home. And so it seemed at first. Even though the process of subdividing a block of land and building my dream tiny house, just as Covid struck, was brutal, I loved how it turned out, especially the deck my son built, with me alongside, pretending to be on the tools. The timber expanse was three metres wide and twelve long – the entire length of the house – with ranch sliders opening onto it, from which I would wander from bed to the outdoors drawn by the tuis warbling in my private totara tree, or later recline in the covered area to read, write, and dream.

Once was on the tools.

Not even the first winter’s chill could blight my delight as I planned next steps for landscaping and planting the front garden. My two dogs loved it as much as I, racing each other from front to back and round again, before collapsing, sides heaving, on the toasty Kwila decking.

Clouds gathered, unnoticed. Poppy started throwing her right front leg towards her ear as she walked, creating a hitching jig which made it impossible for her to climb the steps to my door. The vet was nonplussed but called it a sprain and prescribed steroids. A week later, I came home to find her on the floor of her cage. She’d lost control of her bowels. Then, after cleaning her up, I put her on the grass to run herself dry, and she toppled onto her side. I swooped in, picked her up for a cuddle, then returned her to the grass. She wobbled in a circle and fell over again. We took our last road trip, and I came home alone to her inconsolable sister.

For two months, we grieved; Rapeti in her bed, I glued to my couch. Apart from obligatory and unsatisfying daily trips to the park, we went nowhere. Life was bleak without our stroppy, somewhat unpredictable mate. Grief hollows you out, then passes on, leaving you changed in ways not fully comprehended at the time. Rapeti and I emerged from mourning with a stronger bond, tinged with lingering regret for what was lost, or at least I liked to think so, ruffling Rapeti’s silver fur and whispering, “Who’s the best little dog in the world?” Meanwhile, in my mind’s eye, Poppy sits on my other side, head tilted quizzically, as if to ask, “What, about me?”

Then, after evading its clutches for more than three years, the virus struck – on a ship in the Mediterranean, somewhere between Sicily and Corfu. There were a couple of bad days, and then it was over. My travelling companion and I high-fived each other and dashed off to climb the Acropolis. Now I understand why the experts advise resting up. In Singapore, on the way home, I crashed and stayed that way for the next two years, give or take a series of fake recoveries and desperate relapses. I was scarred but not beaten. Even so, it was time to choose. Stay put, and risk burdening my family with painful future decisions, or choose a path I had sworn never to take. Even as I write, my gut curls around itself, and a wave of unease raises goosebumps.

Retirement living. Even the words are an affront. Out for dinner with a group of younger friends, I’m asked about how my move to a retirement home is going. No, I say, laughing, it’s an apartment, like any other such, on a street, in a village. Yes, there’s a care facility and dementia unit onsite, but that’s just insurance. Listen to yourself, I think. They’re not fooled. You’re on a one-way street to a dead end. My smile is painted on, a clown mask, a disguise even I can see through.

Later, I recovered my reason. Received wisdom is that you should move to your last home before it’s forced on you. After several weeks of planning, selling, cleaning, cursing and lying on the couch screaming, “What are you thinking?” I accept. Imagining what life might be like in my eighties – alone in a house needing maintenance, the garden pressing in, green tendrils pushing through floorboards, reaching around window frames, thorns plucking like something from an old-fashioned fairy tale – I know this is right. It’s not what I had imagined for myself, but that’s because I didn’t know then what I know now.

It had been one damned thing after another, starting with the virus, then its aftermath of medical misadventure, and culminating with losing Rapeti to kidney failure. These setbacks stole my sense of humour and the optimistic streak that always struck me as a bit Pollyanna, until its absence turned me querulous. I talked about it to anyone who’d listen, and I listened to their advice. Get out more, they said. Treat yourself. No amount of chocolate and cheesecake budged the black cloud. Gratitude lists and prayers didn’t pierce my gloom. I began leaving the blinds down to block out the weeds out front and cobwebs dripping from the deck’s eaves.

Now, I recalled my son once saying Upper Hutt was “just like Hamilton”. Had I missed the red flag or refused to acknowledge it? After escaping the river city I’d wound up in almost by accident, where I’d raised two children and ended a marriage, I always referred to it as Boganville. What on earth had possessed me to move to its southern facsimile? My nights were haunted by the roar of boy racers stalking each other through suburban streets, and my days by visions of animal print onesies roaming supermarket aisles.

A whole new existence.

And then, all at once, I knew. I needed less; less land, not so much admin, fewer decisions, and much less stress. After a couple of false starts and an almost-about-turn, I found my groove again, standing in an unfinished apartment in a boutique retirement community framed by towering nikau palms on the lower slopes of an emerald escarpment looking west towards Kapiti Island.

“It’s lovely,” I say to the saleswoman, forgetting the first rule of real estate, then remembering it didn’t matter. I knew the price, and it was within budget. “I want it,” I said. Now all that was left was my house sale, in a stalled market, with no one buying. Hand it to the Higher Power, I said. Then took it back again. Rinse and repeat, driving myself nuts in the wee hours until I got desperate enough to lob the problem at the ceiling and let it go for good. Everything worked out, and here I am, ensconced, unpacked (mostly) and standing on the threshold of a whole new existence.

Forgot to mention earlier – nod, nod, wink, wink – that I’d been driving back to the coast each month for my writing group and failing to notice that every time the dinosaur hump of the island reared up from the sea to fill my windscreen it felt like a homecoming. Truth accepted, my fears evaporated. I still have no idea, but a friend called, bubbling over with joy after moving to a different village earlier this year.

“I haven’t met a single person I don’t like,” said the pickiest person I know. “And there’s so much going on it’s hard to choose.”

“Really,” I said, failing to disguise my scepticism. “What changed your mind?” Last time we spoke, I’d come away feeling despondent over her flattened mood, and now, here she was, remade.

“The kids talked me into a visit, and the complex was so attractive and the apartment so modern compared to my dump…”

Later, replaying our conversation, I reflected on the ways of my Higher Power, which turns me in more positive directions through other people’s voices, if only I bother to listen. Now, twelve days in, I begin to feel more settled. Today, as I walked the beach, there was a faint stirring of joy. This is what I came for, and it does not disappoint.