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Countdown New Zealand Day 11

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This is a series of posts that will log some of my thoughts in the month leading up to my moving back to New Zealand.

We’re going home.

That’s a thought that runs through my head but makes no logical sense. No, we’re going about as far from home as we could get without arriving in Antarctica. But no one can tell a person what home feels like to them. No amount of history or past experiences can define what the heart yearns for, can tell it what to call home. Home is not defined by where we grow up, or where our friends and family currently reside. Home is a mystery that lies within us that is difficult to unravel.

Home is the place I’ve been searching for my entire life.

I believe we can make just about any place we can carry our body home so long as we can meet our basic needs there. For me, many places feel like home. I have a home here in Western North Carolina, as well as along its Outer Banks. I have a home on the fringe of the land and sea in Southwest Florida where I found my partner for life and a sense of peace within me that I theretofore never knew existed. There is a part of me that calls that meandering line of people traveling across Northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago home.

But something about New Zealand feels different than these other homes. I think I knew it in 2012 upon first visiting there. The simplicity. The vastness. The endless sea and sky. It feels like the last place on Earth, and in terms of humankind’s inhabitance of it, it almost is.

There is no explaining why Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand) feels like home. It is foreign to my upbringing and my eyes in innumerable ways. And yet when we drove away from Auckland after arriving there two years ago, I felt like I was home.

So I pack away the things that will make the long journey. I dream. Soon the day will come when a plane will carry me far across the sea and deposit me back in a place called home.

Countdown New Zealand Day 12

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This is a series of posts that will log some of my thoughts in the month leading up to my moving back to New Zealand.

Cape Romano, Florida

Like drops of water on a heating skillet, the piles of things scattered across the floors of the house are finally beginning to coalesce. If only they would just evaporate. Most of it I don’t need or even want. But there is attachment. A gift from a trusted friend. Letters from a past life lover. Wedding presents long-stored but never displayed or utilized. Art projects that remind me of how creative I once was.

I read about people who live with very little, even going so far as to erase the hard drives of their computers once a year so that they can start fresh. I know that living lightly brings me joy and freedom. These objects merely reinforce a sense of self that is constantly in motion despite the constraints they attempt to impose on it. They represent a me that is no longer me.

I want to let the waves of change wash this sense of self away, as they inevitably will despite the efforts I make to stop them. I want to be able to shift and change like the shoreline, the storms radically reshaping me, and the calm winds of summer smoothing my contours again. But the self is a beach house, standing in defiance as the waves methodically wash its foundations out from under it.

Countdown New Zealand Day 13

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This is a series of posts that will log some of my thoughts in the month leading up to my moving back to New Zealand.

I’m ready to get on the plane. We’ve fully entered the transition zone, my least favorite place to be.  It feels like we are neither here or there.  We will be moving from bed to bed  from now until we land in Auckland. Routines disrupted. Personal space diminished. All of these things knock me off balance. And still I worry about what could go wrong between now and take-off. Covid-19 has taught us all how fast the world can change.