Home to stay

Ah, back on the train again. I’m looking out at a front moving over the sea—a thick black cloud line overhead and a sharp line of blue over the south island. The sea is grey and stormy here, small waves but choppy and steely grey. Kapiti sits, folded on itself, to the north behind me, and the South Island peers at me from the white-clouded horizon. I wonder if any commuter has ever been so delighted to get back to the commute after too many weeks away.

And it has been too many weeks away. On the plane coming home last night from Christchurch, I realised that I had slept in my own bed 6 nights in April. I’ve worked at my job in town two days. I’ve walked my kids to school 4 days this month. I came to New Zealand to breathe more, live more, travel and work less. How am I doing?

Yesterday I spent the day in Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island. I was doing a focus-group day for the Teachers of Promise study at NZCER. It was fascinating. The study of promising teachers (who have been identified by their teacher education program and then again by their principals as “the kind of teachers you’d like to keep in the profession”) is in its third year; I’m obviously quite a newbie on the scene. Nine teachers, in their 5^th year of teaching, who live in the Christchurch area, all took the day off of school yesterday to come and spend a day together—meeting one another for the first time, thinking back on their past and forward to their future, and mostly wondering how it is that we (we= anyone who cares about teaching and learning in schools) might keep teachers like them in the profession. And in many ways they are just like the teachers I have worked with for years. They are passionate and smart and ideological and they have lovely things to say. And I feel very much in the swing of things. And then they’ll talk about some acronym I’ve never heard about or burst into Maori and suddenly I am a stranger in a strange land. And I skirt that feeling all the time here.

It is interesting to notice how different NZ is from Australia, how much more familiar Australia as it compares with the US. Forgive me, my Aussie friends, but Australia and the US are first cousins, where as NZ, often described as Australia’s “little brother” is actually related only by marriage, not by blood. Here, when someone stands to give a Maori prayer and talks (in Maori) about how we give thanks for our ancestors and for the mountains and the rivers and the seas and the plants and the creatures which bring us life (or something like that), everyone says “Amen” with great gusto. Here the cars are little and round and the coffee is organic and free trade. Here the cities are small and people aspire to have sheep in their yards. In Sydney, the traffic is slow, the cars are expensive, and the people are urban. [Just now a flock of birds—maybe 100, flying over the Porirua harbour—skimming the surface of the water in a V formation, flying over the tucked heads of the sleeping Australian black swans.] In NZ the landscapes are loud and the birds are quiet. In Australia, the landscapes are lovely but much more familiar (sort of upstate New Yorkish—magnificent but not so foreign) and there are rainbow coloured parrots in the trees. In New Zealand, there are no cute furry things to distract from the colours of the trees, from the textures of the hills. In Australia, I’m constantly scanning the horizon for kangaroos (which give me a thrill each time I see them moving across the landscape), the trees for koalas (which I’ve never seen). Here the pace is slower and the clouds move more quickly.

Walking down the path to the train station today, I find myself feeling the relief of being home. The dogs and kids I pass on the path to the train are familiar even if I don’t know their names yet. I glance at those waiting on the train platform and feel pleased that so many of them are drinking cups of coffee from the new coffee shop at the train station (Robert, who runs the shop, has been somewhat worried about business). I get on the train and feel the little surge of happiness that comes from a window seat on the sea side.

Last night my plane was delayed because of fog hugging the airport in Wellington. We were told before take off that we might not land—that we would fly to Wellington and attempt a landing, but that we would give up if it weren’t safe and head back to Christchurch. We spent all of the short flight in nervous anticipation. The pilot informed us that two planes in front of us had attempted a landing on the north runway and both had been unable to land and diverted elsewhere. We were going to try the south. As we came down for the landing, the fog was so thick that I couldn’t see the wing next to me, only the glowing light at its tip. And then, just as I was certain that we would have to give up, we got underneath the low clouds and Wellington and the harbour spread out below me, lights glittering from houses scattered up the hills and into the valley. We landed smoothly to the applause of the full planeload of passengers. We were home.

My New Zealand journey has had something of that flavour. This has been a foggy month of travel and confusion, and I have felt seriously ungrounded. I haven’t talked to my dad in three weeks. I have 600 emails in my inbox. I haven’t sent in my receipts for my trip to the US or to Australia, and my wallet is bulging with currency and taxi receipts from three countries. I am a traveller, living from a suitcase, shoulders sore from carrying too many papers to entertain me during inevitable delays. Ah, and now, just now, my i-pod plays "My God is a Rock in a Weary Land," and we have come through the tunnels to the Wellington Harbour where the rain has cleared and the sun is gleaming white on the houses on the hills, on the ferry at the dock, on the container ship being unloaded. I’m here, train in the station. Home?

PS Thanks for the complement about the pictures, Uncle John. Our camera is new—and its two most impressive features are that it is little and fits easily in my picket and it takes those lovely tiny videos. It’s a Cannon sureshot. The pictures today are of the kids at a winery in Napier.