not a love story

This isn't a love story. It's whatever type of story you want it to be. 

The sky always seemed bigger in New Zealand. Wider, more expansive. Seeing a sky that blue always made me feel like I was living in a fairy-tale, a make-believe world too beautiful, too pristine to be real. 

There were other things that seemed make-believe too. Fruit grew everywhere and was freely picked–in the yard, at school, over a fence. Prim's mom once gave us a bag of oranges so big we couldn't finish it. I liked to go to Rayven's backyard in Tauranga and fill baskets with feijoas. There was a mandarin tree that hung over our driveway in Hamilton, and when they grew ripe, I picked one every time I walked by. 

When we'd drive through the Kaimais, we'd stop at the spring by the side of the highway and fill up bottles to last us a few days. We had water at home, but this water was better. "It's probably the freshest water on the whole island," Rayven said. 

Across from the spring, on the other side of the highway, there were always four chickens hanging about. It was the same four chickens every time. 

"What are they doing there?" I asked. 

"They live there," Rayven said. 

"But who do they belong to?"

"No one. They belong to the land."

"But how do the chickens know they live there? How did they get there? And how do people know not to take them?"

"I don't know, Kait, calm down, they're just chickens."

"It's just that in America someone would have claimed them by now. In America, things always belong to someone."

In America, ownership is everything. 

Maybe I'm being too narrow-minded. There probably are places in America where you can drink fresh spring water and where fruit trees are shared freely and where chickens can claim a highway as their home. There are many different types of American lives to live. But my own American life was urbanized. I grew up in a city with no wildlife, in a desert that's been in a drought for 20 years. In a place where we get our oranges imported in from California. 

*****

As an urbanized family, when we needed food, we went to the store. 

When Aupi needed food, she went to the ocean. She smashed oyster shells right there on the beach and ate the insides. 

"What did you do?" I said the first time it happened. I stared down in horror at the shell. "Did you eat that?"

She laughed. "Yes."

"But–why?"

"Because it's food!"

My mind went to the worst-case scenario. Oh my gosh. OH MY GOSH. Aupi's dead now. She doesn't even know where that oyster has been. The ocean is polluted, and there's chemicals in there, and the oyster was probably infected with something, and now Aupi's been poisoned, and now she's gonna die, and it's basically my fault. What am I supposed to tell her family? That I killed her when we went to the beach? That I murdered her??? Wait. Don't freak out. It's chill, it's chill, it's chill. We're at the beach. We're just vibing. Don't say anything. It's all gonna be fine. It's chill, it's chill, it's chill !!!

I'm very familiar with worst-case scenarios.  

But indeed, everything was chill after all. The oyster wasn't poisonous, and Aupi didn't die. 

Another day I came home to find a frozen pig thigh on our kitchen table, and there she was hacking away at it with a blade as wide as my palm.

"What is this?" I asked. 

"Oh, my dad brought some meat."

It's chill, it's chill, it's chill. But I can't keep it in this time. I start laughing. "Aupi, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen!"

I told you I was urbanized. 

*****

Sometimes life in New Zealand felt like a dream, one where I wasn't fully asleep, but not quite awake either. And sometimes it felt like I had pressed pause on my life back in America, like everyone was frozen in time, doing nothing except waiting for me to come back. And when I did come back, everything would be the same. 

And then I began to get confused–which was my real life? My life in New Zealand? Or in America with my family?

The confusion grew more pronounced the longer I was away. I felt stuck, numb, encased in a gray cloud of muddled thoughts. Thoughts I couldn't even separate. I wanted to go home. 

But I also wanted to stay. 

Some days it felt like my heart was splitting in two–loving all of these people all over the world and not being able to be with them all the time. 

I remember looking at Hemi one day and suddenly saying, "I don't know how I'm supposed to leave you."

And then I did decide to go home, and a few days before I left, I came out into the kitchen and saw Rayven and Peka sitting there, and I just started crying.

"I'm fine," I said. They stared at me. "I'm totally fine. I think I'm just having separation anxiety."

Then we started laughing. I'm dying right now just thinking about it.

"You know when Kait does that thing where she starts crying and then she starts laughing and you don't know what to do because you can't tell the difference between them?" Hemi once said. "She does that a lot."

It's true. I do. 

*****

I'm home now. I still get confused sometimes, but it's about different things now. I keep getting in on the wrong side of the car. Do I pay for gas first or do I fill up first? Why is the grocery store so big? Why can't I find anything? Why does the chocolate milk suck? Why are there 50 different kinds of mustard? WHERE IS THE AIOLI?

Why is everything so bright here? Why are egg yolks yellow and not orange? Why is the butter white and not yellow?

I call trash rubbish and am given strange looks. I say mean and oi far too much. I use kia ora as a greeting. I've only just recently retrained myself to stop. 

When did my brain shed its American identity and evolve into a Kiwi?

But there are other things that feel normal, things that will always seem right no matter how long I've been away. It feels natural to drive on the right side of the road again. Animal fries still exist and taste just as good as I remembered. Mom still stocks the fridge with Diet Coke and Pellegrino. There are Christmas lights everywhere in December. The Bellagio fountains still dance to Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli, and the gardens are still decorated for Chinese New Year. 

And for the first time in almost a year, my lungs feel clean and strong, and I can breathe well. The desert air is flat and dry, and no wetness gets caught in my throat, no cough hovers at the end of my laugh anymore. 

I find myself wondering what Rayven would think about everything here. If she would think the roads were too wide, if the drivers were crazy. I wonder if she'd get overwhelmed by the stores too. I wonder if she'd like the food. Or enjoy the free refills. 

I don't know how I'm supposed to leave all of you–I almost said it many times. But once seemed like enough. 

Time passes slowly, and then happens all at once. Like a dream. Then it stops. And begins again. 

"Come back home soon," Rayven said to me. 

Maybe this is a love story. How I moved to an island and loved all of them.