July 2015 | Back Home

At 287 Plymouth Road, fantails flitter from bamboo to banana leaves, chestnut shoots to cherimoya. They dance above mounds of horse poo and decomposing twigs, following a man in his mid-50's on his daily stroll.

Nonchalantly he wanders through spindly peach and hazelnut trees, sprawling wild kale and pumpkins, clambering raspberries, fiery pink sorghum and the hundreds of luminous droplets of the tamarillo tree.

Always a few centimetres out of reach in their ceaseless inquisition of the Homo sapiens, the hyperactive little bundles with tails the size of their bodies tip and tumble through the air.

Above the party, fat Kereru lurch from one spindly tagasaste branch to another, their massive wings whipping the salty air – 'whoosh, whoosh, whoosh'. Their beady eyes peer down at him past their plump bellies. (In the summertime, they are often drunk off juicy harakeke berries. One flew into the kitchen window once, off it's face. Shattered glass everywhere. Now, they are subdued, peaceful).

I follow the sun as it trails around the old house. It peers in through paint stained windows from rise to set. I shiver, realising the time isn’t yet 3pm and already it’s begun its descent down to the ocean floor.

(Or should I say, we're too rapidly spinning, tilting away from this magnificent source of light, life. Our star. How grateful I feel for the messy, gassy perfection of our universe.)

It was over nineteen years ago when we moved here as a nice family of a mummy and a daddy and three young children. While that was to all change dramatically just months after the move, the house has remained; the cobwebs strung up about the dusty toolshed, the dark hallway my remaining brother and I played dodgeball in, the matching floral couches and cushions that saved us from hot lava, the doors you have to shove your bodyweight behind to open for the neighbourhood cat, the now-retro plates I once found embarrassing, the eternally dripping kitchen tap.

In this six-metre-square room on the sunset side of the house the 2001 Dell computer is still humming, an old Yanomami paper-mache figurine I made at school when I was six peers down at me over the CD stack, 100% Millennium Hits, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Lazy Sunday, the Black Seeds silently gathering layers of dust.

Nowhere on earth feels so familiar.

And I wonder, why do I not feel different? Why do I not feel something, when I sleep in the very room that once contained all my dreams, hopes, fears? Why am I not brought to my knees when I visit my now-overgrown 'secret spot' down by the river I would escape to and cry and write melancholic poetry? When I see the nasturtium-covered stump of my horse chestnut tree, whose beloved limbs are now scattered across this new permaculture-food-forest that's taken over? Have I not changed?

And why, despite being thrown between feelings of guilt for not being 'productive' for my 'real life' and relishing in waves of utter comfort do I have a tendency to want to hide out away from the world each time I'm here? Why do I not rush to contact a dear friend with whom I spent countless delightful days running across the neighbours farms, climbing trees, having midnight feasts and putting on fashion shows?

I moved away from 287 Plymouth Road when I was sixteen. Hardly spoke to my dad for the few years following. It was a difficult time in both of our lives, and the angst, blame and anger stained this place for me, made it ugly.

These days, as I meander through all the new growth that now envelops the property, I wonder if perhaps it is okay to be a hermit, to want to share special, quietly transformative moments with the place I've despised in, loved in, fought in, been sick in, learned in, cried in and grown in.

For when I look at my dad now, his quiet satisfaction as he potters around his garden - his sanctuary - replanting lavender and searching for tomatillos, I feel okay with the bit of hermit within me. At peace with it. For I see something we've always shared, that I've fought for a while now but am coming to embrace.

My dad is the most loving person I know. He may have never received a guidebook instructing how to handle an opinionated teenage daughter as a single father, but he's always cared, and always been searching for his own bliss. And his bliss has always been here - his place to tinker, create, and simply be - at home.



Check out my new website, Inside Lives, for stories and images that celebrate how us colourful human beings find refuge, joy and growth within our homes.