A man named Gerry McNamara who was aboard the US Air flight 1549 that landed on the Hudson River wrote (and I paraphrase) that his take home lessons were 1) Cherish you families as never before and go to great lengths to keep your promises, 2) Be thankful for everything you have and don't worry about the things you don't have, 3) Keep in shape..you never know, and 4) Wear practical clothing.
I have been avoiding writing because so much has happened and so much is unclear, and I keep feeling the need to pen "Everything I Need to Know I Learned Going Ashore in the Dinghy".
Hannah and her boat pals laze idly in the green of the placid Whangarei River, tied to pilings or double-rafted to the dock, looking more like animals in a barn than sea-going creatures. They become almost floating RVs. No one goes anywhere except a few bends down the river to haul out, and we can barely feel any rocking unless it is windy. I close my eyes and remember being at sea in this pulsing, breathing being of a boat. We ourselves are also less salty, restaurant-fed, and filled with terrestrial sensations.
New Zealand has proved unexpectedly captivating. We have both known people who migrated here but returned shortly to the US, tired of the weather or a certain reticence in people. It is hard to begin to name what has caught us...the extraordinary helpfulness of everyday people...the always near, often empty beaches..the surf breaks where you undo an electric fence and cross a muddy pond on a farm to get there..the first-class medical care..the well-maintained two land roads and one-way bridges that cover the country (except for lots of dirt roads)..the nuanced political process of moving forward in the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process, dealing with Pakeha (descendants of white immigrants) and Maori relationships and sovereignty...the vast, unsubsidized farms...the robustness of the food in the Saturday market...the sense that personal judgment and responsibility are not faulty lost causes...the beauty of the kauri and totara trees and ferns... We dream about someday in the future being here again.
In December Steve and I flew back to the United States to see family and friends in a whirlwind tour, picking Nolan up at school and proceeding to LA, Bozeman, West Yellowstone, Thermopolis, Livingston, Billings, Boston, Harwich, Seattle, Dee, Los Olivos, LA, Sydney, and Auckland. To see everyone was universally delightful. I was still there for the inauguration and packed into Seattle Town Hall in the morning to see history. The one piece that the reporting I saw missed was the worldwide celebration. People from an Australian holiday park owner to a Iranian who is a senior adviser in the Kiwi government tear up a bit when they say how grateful they are for an Obama presidency. We found that the US, in spite of the fact that we passed through some most beautiful places, often made our eyes hurt. Unlike the shock to one's system after returning from a poor country to a rich country, this was about returning from the out-of-doors to that particular constructed world. And in the US, life is often a commercial event, unthoughtfully planned, driven by mindless avarice, content with the delusion of being "the best in the world".
That said, we are going home, to a home. Nolan is just in his first year of high school and I want to make a non-mobile, non-floating home for him to come to and to be able to participate in his life at school. Everybody asks if there is not some other way, involving cruising part-time, cleverly dashing back and forth on planes for school holidays, etc. The answer we have come to after trying extraordinarily hard, is no. For one year, yes, but not for the next three. So Hannah is on the market, the broker's big "For Sale" sign making our hearts ache. We are looking for work and a quiet rural place to live in the western US.
So here it goes...
1) Anyplace is improved by arrival by sea rather than by land. Be it reeking of tuna guts or fragrant with fruit and flowers, whether one has come across an ocean or just a bay, arrival by sea recapitulates humankind finding a port in the storm. Every single time, one comes home. Even if one has never been to a place before. And the people who live by the sea already know the people who come from the sea, no matter what their differences of class or nationality.
2) The Maori concept of balanced interdependence between people and land is true, however easily it may be forgotten in a shower of annual audits, alarm clocks, pollution, too busyness, scheduled get-togethers, and oblivious complexity. The Maori word "whenua" means land and placenta. It is in our bones now. It is not about mere stewardship.
3) Setting sail is compelling, sailing home invokes uncertainly and ambivalence and greater challenges, once one has been out. Only after sailing so far was I able to savor reading Homer's Odyssey. The author Norman Fischer analyzed the drama of Odysseus and his son Telemachus in ousting the suitors in Ithaca: for "the force necessary to purify and occupy our own house...the wisdom and craft of age need the innocence and desire of youth to be effective". We hope we don't forget. We are not finished with sailing: the RC Louise, our beloved 32' Rhodes Chesapeake, awaits our return and will be sure to keep us "setting sail" and thus allowing us to return home.