Adventure Mom

Surf’s Up Me, Donna, Paula A) Just past 9 am on a cloudless, yellow-egg-sun day, I meet my friends, Donna, Paula and Michelle at the car parks near Leisure Island. The Mount is already starting to sizzle: it’s 22 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit) and rising. Already, I want to jump in the water. Even without a wet suit, which I’ve borrowed from Pete, I’m ready for the sea. I strip to a string bikini while standing beside my van. I pull on the wet suit, which fits perfectly. Pete says he bought the black neoprene suit many years ago when he was thinner. Works for me. Donna provides a land lesson before we wade into the water.             “Draw a line in the sand, like this,” she says. “This is your center line, like the one on the surf board. You’ll need to balance on either side of that line.” Michelle watches while Donna, Paula and I lay in the sand, feigning balance while performing mini-windmill strokes with our arms. Michelle’s a physio (physical therapist) and has a c

Great Lake Taupo Relay 13 Women, 155 kilometers, 1 naked guy Mt Jogas (not pictured: Naked Guy) We Start at W hat  Time? It’s 2:30 am on a Saturday, and the Mt. Joggers team is waiting for our lead runner, Jackie, to charge the hill. 12 of us mill outside our rented Price-Rite van, looking at watches, chatting to other runners. One man says his team name is Ho Chi Mihn, after the city in Vietnam. We decide “Mt Jogas” isn’t exciting enough. “How about Angry Bitches?” I ask a couple of my teammates. “We could be the AB’s.” [just like the New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks]. AB’s is a joke, of course. Even in the middle of the night after little or no sleep, we’re not angry. We’re excited to take part in the 17 th Great Lake Taupo Relay. 13 of us, all women, will run 155 kilometers around New Zealand’s largest lake.  450 teams comprising 4,000 runners are pounding pavement with us. “Look out – she’s fast!” shouts Debbie out the window to a man running beside Jackie. The van ambl

Ten Ways to Leave Your Lover New Zealand Our days are numbered. You know this acutely when you’re leaving a place you’ve lived. You prepare for goodbyes, for letting go of the city’s (or country’s) particular beauty; for releasing stuff and summer and the bubble of this-is-where-we-are-in-our-lives-right-now. It’s the hard head work your life has already trained you for, whether you chose the training, or not.  You’ve done this before – here’s how to do it again. 1)   Take another look Once you know the plane tickets are bought, or movers arranged or the new job starts on a certain date, everything in where-you-are-now-land looks different. The palm trees that had started to seem ordinary start swooping and swaying again in interesting ways; the Pacific Ocean moves from supporting character to one of the lead roles in your mind’s landscape when you realize that soon, these waters will roll hundreds of miles from your doorstep instead of five minutes’ (or less) walk. Barefooted chi

2 minutes of Silence at Tay Street Café A server with a blond ponytail walks over to shush two women who continue chatting past 12:51. ‘Oh, does it start now?’ a 20-something with alabaster hair and dirt black roots asks. Yes, now. No music, no chatter, no sounds from the espresso machine. Two minutes of silence at the time the magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck Christchurch last year: February 22 nd , 2011. 185 people died. Thousands of homes and buildings were destroyed. Aftershocks continue. Christchurch, April 2011  I stop tapping my keyboard and look around the café’s back room, which is drafty and reminds me of a garage, with its large, louvered front door and ceiling resembling aluminum siding. Ahead to the left, a table of 70-somethings hold court. Two men, their bald heads feathered with wisps of gray hair, sit across from each other, arms folded, while two women sit beside them. One woman sports butterscotch-colored, close-cropped hair. She wears a navy and white striped to

Boobs in Paradise Another Ordinary Day in Aoteroa *Some people and place names changed I’m holding the underside of my friend’s arm while a doctor plunges a needle into her breast. I’m not looking at the needle. Must-not-look-at-needle.             “Do you faint at the sight of needles?” Dr. B had asked.             “No,” I said. “Because I never look at the needle.” I had sat beside my late husband, Sean, two years ago, while nurses and technicians pierced and poked him.  His four-and-a-half month hospitalization featured daily testing. Everything was checked and re-checked. Despite aggressive, expensive medical intervention, Sean died in-hospital due to complications of surgery. All the kings’ horses and all the kings’ CT machines… Call me skeptical, ungrateful – call me whatever you like – anything except “patient.” I’ve been stuck with more syringes than you can shake an IV pole at.  Far more than the average 41-year-old. By age 30, I’d already endured dozens of scopes and sc

Murder House (MUH-dah House) The deed is done              “I don’t wanna go to the dentist. It’s gonna hurt,” says Fiona. I can hardly deny my eight-year-old the truth, but I can tiptoe around it.             “They’re going to rub medicine on your gums to numb them,” I tell her. “And they can put your tooth to sleep with a needle.”             Fiona gasps, “I don’t want a needle! No!” Oops. I shouldn’t have used the “n” word. Fiona starts her high-pitched screeching if she thinks a needle exists in the next room. When I got the kids immunized in preparation for dragging them round-the-world, Fiona cried as the nurse swabbed her upper arm with iodine. You would’ve thought someone was whacking off her limb with a rusty saw, yet the needle lay feet from Fiona’s body. New Zealand is not the place for dental work for a squeamish, sobbing little girl. I learned after bringing Fiona to a dental clinic during the Christmas school vacation (otherwise known as summer holidays) that sch