God writes straight on crooked lines, or maybe it was the other way around
— Jon Fosse, tr. Damion Searls
My grandparents moved to Waiheke when I was three years old. As often as we could afford, my mum and I - and often my dad, and later always my two siblings, too - would make the trip from Scotland to see them here on this island in the Hauraki Gulf, next to Auckland city. At school in Scotland, when assigned a morning exercise to describe a favourite place, I conjured my grandparents’ small spot on the inland ridge, with the creek running down the bottom of the gully and the turquoise beach with the Catholic church and the lemonade ice blocks twenty minutes down the road. Places live inside you. Close your eyes and think of that place and you will always be at home in the world. That’s what the teacher said, and she was right.
After my grandmother died and my grandfather became sick (and more in between, but that’s another story), we moved to be with him on the island, and we lived there for a time in the little wooden house on the inland ridge. I enrolled at the local school and found a friend in the one other person that also liked to get their homework tasks completed and out of the way at lunchtime. We were too bewildered by lunch games of bullrush and preferred to stay inside, away from the sun and shouting, pleased to have the abandoned classroom to ourselves as a momentarily peaceful kingdom.
School here was nothing like back in Scotland. The bare feet shocked me, and the absence of a provided lunch, as well as just how far behind the curriculum was, with so many photocopied worksheets and so few interesting questions or explanations for things. Our teacher sat behind her desk a lot. There were more instructions than discussions. In the presence of the other teachers she brightened and stood to talk to them with sparkling eyes. When the adults left the room she looked at our class as a mob to be corralled. And maybe we were. Now I look at my classmates’ behaviour as an inchoate fury at the arbitrariness of the boring busy-work tasks, or maybe a confused rail against the daily denial of our young yet real personhood. At the time the classroom was just a sensory assault to be endured.
I couldn’t wait to get home to the little wooden house and take my little brother down to the washing line or sing songs with my sister or read my book in the neat annex room with the sliding door. My bed was a pullout couch and I liked the way it sagged in the middle, like a gentle hammock. There was no cavity or insulation between the ceiling of the living area and the floor of the upstairs room, so my siblings loved to find holes in the knots and pass strings through the floorboards to each other. From the annex I could hear birds bathing and tumbling down the slanted corrugated roof, and I imagined that to them it was a giant slide. The tight spiral staircase completed the feeling of the house as a playground. I got through a lot of books from the Waiheke library while living there, exhausting the kids and teen sections then getting a different kind of education from the general fiction collection.
We went back to Scotland and then, later, back to Waiheke - this time to a house of our own: a damp bungalow near the causeway, and near the schools. This time more of the teachers seemed to keep the sparkles in their eyes when they looked at us children, and I found my loud classmates funny rather than scary. There was something electric in the air when we all laughed and the teacher laughed, too. He enjoyed us and he enjoyed life and we were all okay. One day my sister nominated me as her hero and invited me to be her star guest at her class expo. Another day she insisted on marching metres ahead on our morning walk to school, wanting nothing to do with me. From reverence to repulsion, we were extreme, and I didn’t hate it at all. The changing weather of strong feelings could find full expression and everything would remain basically okay.
As an adult I’ve kept coming back to live in this place, whenever it has been possible or necessary. I thought I would grow out of the split feeling between Waiheke and the northeast coast of Scotland. Sometimes it tips more one way than the other, but they both feel like home places. Too many of the houses here on the island have been bought up as holiday accommodation, and it’s criminally hard to find long-term rentals. The road where we currently live has some neat and humble houses that would make great homes, but instead they sit empty during the week waiting for wealthy weekenders to come from Auckland. I stalk house sale histories and find that ‘values’ have tripled in just the past ten years. The ferry service operates to profit from visitor volume rather than simply to provide steady and affordable public transport. A lot of people project fantasies on to this place, and there are a lot of architectural vanity projects on the beachfronts and clifftops.
I feel like the story of this place has run away from me. I’ve worked at the school with the electric teacher - he was still there, and the kids still loved him. I’ve continued to gain a different kind of education at the library. I’ve walked every day to the beach with the Catholic church, which in winter turns from turquoise to steel - a sight the holidaymakers are not around to see. Ordinary things. Special things. It is painful to be squeezed out of a place that is a home place. It is not inevitable, but it is not uncommon. Each week on the community page another mother puts the feelers out for somewhere that she and her children can rent. Maybe, like us, she arrived by the accident of an activated bond and, by shared electric laughter or lengths of string through floorboards, has come to know this place as a home place. Places live inside you. Close your eyes and think of that place and you will always be at home in the world. I still agree, but we all need the four walls, too.
Above: the turquoise beach with the Catholic church.
Above: crossing the road, kawakawa in hand.
Above: not-our cat
Above: Kiwibank, Oneroa.
Above: PO Boxes and the ghosts of abandoned public health measures.
Above: Board and batten bus stop and an evening ebike.
Above: I hated this mural when they painted it on the Red Cross building, but it has really grown on me.
Above: Blackpool streets are named for birds and trees. Tyres on Tui [Street] is a classic.
Above: Neither of us has had a haircut in a really long time. The summer sun has done a lot of bleaching.
Above: I love this mail box.
Above: My turn! Me and my empty ice cream cup.
Above: Give me the phone back, see you next month!
x H
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I was only a relief teacher that one time. It was a total pleasure turning up with my mug of tea to attend your unattended class. We had a quick chat...you and your classmates were ploughing through the usual Level 1 NCEA work. Hope I was reasonably battery-powered alongside your electric teacher. I love your writing and look forward to it every month. Much love Miss MacBride