Quakingly beautiful

It is the afternoon of the first day of school, my first real quiet time in this house. And the quiet has been broken by my first real earthquake in this house—which gets the blood moving, although didn’t rattle the dishes at all. To see about this little (4.8) earthquake, you can click here (but this will be good only as long as it’s the latest quake—a day or two, probably). Now that the shaking has stopped (the house stopped shaking rather quickly—it took me significantly longer to stop shaking), and before I have to pick the kids up from school, I can sit here in the hammock chair on the front porch. From this most comfortable spot, I can look at the garden and hear the birds, and, over the hill of my neighbor’s house, I can catch a glimpse of the South Island. Of New Zealand (for those of you who, like me, have a hard time remembering where I live).

And even as I say that I have a hard time remembering, I have to remember that it’s getting easier and easier to feel like we live in New Zealand. Our vacation ended beautifully, the drive home somehow being more lovely than the drive there had been (when has that ever happened? But in this case there were a whole host of mountains to see from the other direction). We drove past lovely volcanoes with their snowy tops obscured by the clouds, then through a desert area where I kept expecting to see saguaro cacti among the scrub brush, and finally across rolling green farmland (I think there’s a blog yet to come about the integration of cows and sheep here). And then, as we neared familiar towns, we saw lovely mountains in the distance, and, to the west, the sea. Our first glimpse of Kapiti Island brought a surge of feeling—and it felt like home. Michael and I looked at each other, surprised. That’s Kapiti—so we must be home. And as we neared those lovely mountains, we realized that they were our hills, the hills I look at with such admiration each day. Turning into Paekakariki, we drove through the handful of shops and down to the beach, the sea packed with people (er, dozens of people, anyway) on a beautifully sunny Sunday afternoon. The sea, the steep green hills now flecked with yellow late-summer flowers, the ramshackle cottages along the beach front—all of this is every bit as beautiful as anyplace we’ve ever been. And we live here.

It is amazing to come home to someplace as beautiful as the place where you’ve been on holiday. Michael and I get up early and walk Perry on the beach each morning before the children wake up. We see the beach at high tide and low, with roaring waves that scare the dog and the gentle placid lapping that looks more lake-like than oceanic. We marvel at the color of the blue sky or at the hundreds of greys in the clouds. We laugh as Perry remembers how much he likes to go in the sea (which he seems to daily forget and then remember with puppy-like glee). (A tui—loud flying, lovely NZ bird —just flew past me to land in the pohutukawa tree which is nearly out of flower. There’s a tui in my pohutukawa. Go figure.) Naomi will come after dinner, with something of the nine-year-old frenzy, and interrupt the washing of dishes because, “The light is really perfect right now!” And then there is the scramble to rush out the door, tumble down to the beach—fleeces on, dog leash attached (momentarily, until we get to the beach), sandals on (ditto). And we sit and watch the sky turn pink and then orange and then fuchsia. If I turn away from the west to throw a ball (or look at the reddening of the clouds in the east), Aidan will call out to me in distress, “Mommy, you’re missing it!” I now have an idea of when Venus rises—and when it sets. I follow the tides. I think about the direction of the wind. I’ve never been so connected to the natural world in my life. It mellows me, slows and deepens my breathing, puts any number of things into perspective.

Now I’ll put on sandals and a light fleece (am in shorts and tank top tody—words I never thought I’d type here) and walk the 5 minutes uphill to school to check on the kids' first day. It may not have been their first day in school in NZ, but it’ll have been their first school earthquake…

Back from school—didn’t need the fleece at all. Aidan had a good day; he said the teacher was just as strict as reported, but just as nice, too. It’s a much better start to his year than the last couple of weeks of school in December. I’m relieved. I can’t give much of an update about Naomi because she, of course, is off at someone else’s house. She seemed cool and collected, though. While I was waiting for Aidan to get out of class, I talked to a new couple, newer than us, from South Africa. They’ve just moved here, and their seven-year-old daughter was having her first day of school ever (they start at 7 in SA). The mother talked about how hard the whole thing had been on the children, and how sad and difficult they had been. Then her daughter came out and burst into tears. I was expecting that kind of drama, and was never expecting what I got—two happy kids describing their first day of school as “great.” And now that the kids have begun school, this next phase of life begins. If only our furniture were here to enjoy all this beauty with us...

The pictures from today:
Michael, on the side of the road on the way home from Taupo, just ordinary beauty here.
The kids in their first-day-of-school picture, and one of Aidan walking up Ocean Road to school (it's a 5 minute walk, but a lovely one) with Kapiti in the distance
And sunset last night (sorry about yet another sunset picture but they really are all so different...)