Dreamy

I’m beginning this on the train home from work, Michael’s massive laptop covering my lap (and a seatmate’s, if I had one). My laptop didn’t make it this morning but I can’t resist the chance to sit and think here, so Michael generously donated his to the cause (he’s in town late tonight).

It’s a magnificent day here in Wellington. I’m slightly warm in my merino long johns and pants, and the sky is bright blue with rolling huge white clouds. I’ve rearranged my office at work (for the sixth time, I think) and now it’s perfect. I can sit at my computer and gaze out the window as I type and see a small strip of harbour framed by hills from one window, and a lovely white city climbing up a green hill out the other. In that space I do work I enjoy surrounded by people I like and I think, this is not such a bad way to spend my time! (Here, leaving the city on the train past blue sea and green hills catching white cloud—that’s not a bad way to leave work, either.)

And, content as that sounds, I’m struck that in the last three days I’ve woken up from dreams that have made me melancholy, dreams of being here and being far away from everything. Three nights ago, it was a dream that Rob came back to live with us again. There was a surge of delight at the coming of an old and dear friend, and the overwhelming sense that now we’d be less lonely since he was around. When I woke up, I believed for a minute that we had spent the previous night rearranging the furniture and getting his room the way he wanted it, and then a flood of recollection that he was still on the other side of the world with all of our family and old friends. (Aidan, on hearing the dream said, “That’s the best dream ever! What’s the opposite of a nightmare? A goodmare?”) Two nights ago I had a dream that my uncle Tom got married (only my family will realise how odd this dream really is) and that I was helping out at his wedding. At the end of the wedding I found something I had been searching for, and I realised with a start that there was no time for me to buy it New York City—for I was about to get on the plane—and there was no way there would be one in New Zealand. I had this moment of anguish thinking that I had moved to the edge of the universe—and then I woke up. And last night, the third in the series, was of my phone ringing and it was Dad and Jamie on a video call showing the graduation party of Christopher, an old family friend. Others in his family—who have been deeply important to me over the years—moved in and out of the tiny frame on the phone, and I felt both welcomed into the scene by virtue of our virtual connection and also a million miles away. Or 8600. Or whatever. I woke up crying.

So clearly my subconscious is working to make sense of a world where I can be happy here and also missing people there. My children are working on it too. Yesterday Aidan said something about wishing and moving, and I bent down to hear him better, assuming I’d hear something about his wish to move back to the US—a theme that shows up rarely since our return but was prevalent in our last days in the US in July. “I wish that all our family would move to New Zealand,” he told me. “You’re wanting them to move here? You don’t so much want us to move back?” I asked him. “Why would we move back there?” he asked. “This is the most beautiful place in the world! They should come here!”

(And here I am in Porirua harbour the late afternoon sun slanting and making me squint and a Maori longboat with six paddlers streaking through the water. Ahhhh.)

These two days at work have been fantastic. My return to New Zealand has been picture perfect. People at work seem glad to see me; I get to have coffees and lunches with people I enjoy. I get to feel like I add value to important work and that I’m helping make the world a slightly nicer place for wonderful people. I love my new house with an aching longing generally reserved for vacation spots that I get to visit—and I get to renovate it and then move into it and wake there every morning and go to sleep there every night. I am right now sitting on my commute home and peering out at the snow-capped mountains of the South Island of New Zealand. Who ever thought this would be possible?? AND it’s unlikely that all the family and friends I love will move here too; it’s inconceivable that the job I loved at GMU will suddenly appear on a new campus in Wellington. To live here is to be torn in a conscious or subconscious way. And right now, if I get to see my family and friends while I sleep and see these sheep-covered green hills while I wake, that might be as well-rounded as it gets.

******

I finish this in front of the fire, Michael finally home, kids tucked into bed. I came home, threw the ball for the dog while I watched the sun go down and turn the spray on the crest of the waves pink with delight. I talked with Dave, the chippy who will work on our house, and got the typical, “No worries,” response. Then the kids were delivered home, screaming at each other, and throughout dinner they told me stories of woe of how much they wanted to move back to the US. Then, after dinner, Naomi got excited about going to a NZ sleep away camp, and Aidan got read me his book from school and talked about an art contest he was entering. Misery passed, contentment entered in. And so it seems we all live in a house with a view of the joys and difficulties of living on the other side of the world.