MURIWAI BEACH, NEW ZEALAND
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I Skype with my mother and father once a week on Saturday morning New Zealand time/Friday evening Florida time, in the window between the baby’s first dinner and his bath and second dinner. My mother and I discuss our weeks, which for me is a review of the following: how well the baby is sleeping, what new issues the baby is having with feeding, whether the baby has rolled over yet (he hasn’t), and what P. and I have been cooking and eating for dinner. When I update my mother on these things I realise how small my life has become, though during the week, while I’m living it, it doesn’t feel small, it feels busy and full––every minute is accounted for. I’m sure that if I had time to think about my life, and how much it has ground to a halt, I would be in trouble. For better or worse, this has always been one way I’ve managed my depression––by keeping moving. Even if that now means literally keeping moving with the baby in the stroller or the pack, doing loops of the neighbourhood, trying to get him to sleep.
My mother’s weekly update is mostly about school: whether or not she has a new batch of reports due, whether or not she has lost yet another planning document to the wily Google Docs, the health of the school’s vegetable and worm gardens, how many pairs of pirate pants she has to sew for the school production, how many weeks before the next holidays begin.
Much of this content will be repeated next week. Having been so far away from my family for so long, I have learned that this is one of the definitions of family, and I find it immensely comforting.
Now my father joins the conversation. First, he has something to say about the local bird scene: how long the tūī have been spending in the bird bath, how fat the kererū are getting, how long the fattest kererū has been hanging out in the cabbage tree, how many sparrows are on the front lawn, how many sparrows are sitting on the kitchen window sill, whether or not the mynahs are back nesting in the eaves of the tool shed, an analysis of all the birds’ various songs.
Next, the weather: “It’s a clear, still day here,” he says, as he turns away from the iPad screen to look wistfully out the window. “There’s no wind, it’s perfectly calm.”
The three of us take a moment to meditate on this––my mother and father to soak it up, while I remember what Muriwai Beach is like on this kind of morning.
Once he has got these things out the way, my father turns the rest of our conversation into a show and tell. He’s still thrilled by the novelty of Skype, so it’s important to him to make the most of being able to see each other. Unlike my mother who often struggles to keep herself in the frame, so very often I’m speaking to just her right arm, the duvet cover on the bed, or the ceiling fan, my father wants to see me and his grandson, and for me and his grandson to see everything.
Tonight he wants to show us a new porcelain teacup he has bought from TradeMe. “It’s for High Tea,” he says with an excited look in his eye. High Tea is something he does with the other old retired dudes who live nearby––they sit on the deck in the afternoon and watch the kererū in the cabbage tree, while they sip whisky from tiny teacups with their pinkies out.
The new teacup is very small and very fine. It’s a shimmery midnight blue with gold details around the rim and handle.
“That’s a nice cup,” I say, and I mean it.
“Yes,” my father says.
My mother has nothing to add.
Next my father wants to show me something he has been building. Last month it was a portable smoker, which he designed and built from cedar. This month it’s a slow drip coffeemaker that he has constructed out of wood and various vessels he found lying around the kitchen. The wood frame stands two feet tall. It looks like a very craftily designed high school science project. This is not the first time I have seen it, still, I act surprised and excited by the fact that one of the parts is an old Heinz ketchup bottle, the red plastic kind with the nozzle that screws open and shut.
“I hope you washed that out properly,” I say.
“Oh no, oh no,” my father says, “jeez.”
“Oh god, tomato-flavoured coffee,” my mother says.
While we’re all saying our bits, my father is moving the iPad screen up and down and around his construction, so I can see it from all angles. As he’s doing this I get a glimpse of what look like buns rising on the kitchen counter.
“Are those buns?” I ask.
“Yes, they’re rising,” my father says.
“Your father is making buns,” my mother says.
“What kind?” I ask.
“Just regular buns,” my mother says.
“Plain buns,” my father says.
My father doesn’t want to talk about the buns––he wants to keep discussing the quality of the coffee he’s making with his contraption. This week he started experimenting with ice instead of water, so the coffee filters through one drip at a time as the ice melts. It’s probably worth mentioning here that my parents love coffee and they already own and use every kind of coffeemaker there is: espresso, stovetop, Chemex, they even have one of those Nespresso machines, so when my mother agrees that this new kind of coffee is delicious, I believe her, despite still being hung up on the presence of the ketchup bottle.
Now I notice my father has had a haircut. “You’ve had a hair cut,” I say.
My father runs his hand through his hair, which has thinned in the last few years, but is still plentiful and lively, a cool white. “Yessss,” he says, drawing out the “yes” in such a way that I know there’s something to come.
My mother starts giggling.
“I got it cut at a new place down the road,” my father says. “The God Barber.”
“The God Barber?” I ask.
My mother is both nodding and shaking her head.
My father takes a deep breath. “The God Barber,” he says again, as if he’s reliving something painful. “They were playing music over the stereo that had a heavy beat, and that was spouting the benefits of using cocaine.”
“Really?” I say.
“I kid you not,” my father says.
“It’s a good haircut,” I say.
My father nods solemnly. My mother has left the screen to turn on the coffee grinder. If there’s one sound that I associate with mornings in the house where I grew up, it’s the loud whirr of the coffee grinder, though it has changed in tone and speed over the years as various grinders have been retired or died.
Now my mother and father have returned to discussing the local birds, as a tūī has showed up for a bath. They take turns describing how it’s puffing itself out and turning around in the bird bath, how much fun it seems to be having. I don’t need them to turn the screen for me to see the bird for myself. When I’m feeling homesick, these are the things I picture: the long morning shadows on the front lawn that point to the bird bath where the tūī is taking his morning dip, the coffee grinder whirring into action over the distant roar of the sea, my parents gazing out the kitchen window while they eat their toast, drink this coffee, and now this coffee, and exclaim, “What a handsome chap,” “He is, look at him,” “He’s having a good bath,” “Hello there, how are you today?” “Where are your mates, where’s your family?” “Are they joining you soon?”
The last time I went home, all of this was exactly as I remembered it, though this swimming pool was new to me. It’s only five minutes of easy walking from my parents’ house, but I had never visited it before. It shares a paddock with some horses. It’s twenty-five metres long and heated. It’s covered in what looks and feels like a very large greenhouse. The light inside reminds me of the small private pool where as a very young child I learned how to swim. It has a good, strong chlorine smell.