In the eight months we spent in New Zealand the closest memory I have is one of always being cold. In my fingertips, in my toes, from the moment we landed, in the station wagon we’d live in for three weeks, damp too, and finally we moved into a beach cottage just south of Dunedin in a town called Ocean View. It was quaint, and we could tell it was “small,” but still it was the largest space we shared in those infant days of our life together. The views went out to the sea, and it was beautiful everyday. But cold. I’d never quite stop feeling that.
Just before Christmas, we left Ocean View and moved north of Dunedin to a town called Port Chalmers. The water still surrounded us, but with different character altogether. We were atop a hill, in a small port town, and we looked across the harbor to the Otago Peninsula. A few small islands in between. We got closer and closer to ends of the world where it felt like nobody else goes. By then it was starting to warm up. New Zealand summers could not be any warmer than mild at best, but there were a few days when it wasn’t crazy to think of swimming.
One day in particular, an extra warm one when you feel your skin glowing and you could do anything, fly through the thick air if you wanted, we took our towels and drove further north up the only road in to and out of Port Chalmers. We went as far as we could go, to a little beach on a sandspit, and now that it’s two years later I need to look on a map to remember its name. Aramoana. It’s almost surprising, seeing it on a map. It almost shouldn’t belong anywhere drawn or documented, but alive merely in memory. We sat on the sand. Waded in every now and then. A few families around. Barefoot. It felt like a movie, even then, like time was moving at a slower frame rate. We went home after a few hours and had a modest lunch. Sandwiches with our last few pieces of bread. I layered potato chips in mine, and felt like a child again.
I could not say then that I was happy. It was not a loud, immediate happiness. But, I felt then as I feel it now, it was unbearable how content that day was. How quiet.
