52. Our Tipuna Made It So
Roman
The drive didn’t help as much as I’d hoped. I went out afterward and had something to eat, but could barely register the taste. And when I got back to the house again and couldn’t tell whether Summer was home, or Delilah, either—that didn’t help at all. I checked my watch. Nearly nine. Thought about it, and texted Summer, You OK? Because I needed to know.
I’m fine, she texted straight back. Back at the house. I heard you come in.
I wanted to ask, “Want to talk?” but didn’t. If she’d wanted to, she would have. So I worked until after midnight, then shut my laptop and went to bed.
One o’clock. Two o’clock. Three. I may have slept in there, but I don’t remember, and by five, I’d had enough. Out of bed once again, smelling Summer on the sheets despite myself, remembering how she’d looked into my eyes, the softness on her face, the gentleness in her hands.
Doing my aikido practice, breathing in and breathing out, centering myself. I couldn’t make the world turn at my command. All I could do was prepare myself to meet it. A quick shower, turning the water to cold at the end and bracing myself for the onslaught.
If the first thing didn’t work, you tried again. I needed to take Summer and Delilah to the airport at eight-thirty, but I had time. A stop for a coffee, and I was driving again. The other direction this time, because avoidance didn’t solve anything.
I drove to Katikati.
Six-thirty, and the sun a half-hour from rising, the pale fingers of dawn barely lifting the dark curtain to the east. Across the sea, nine thousand kilometers of emptiness all the way to Chile, but I knew already that I was insignificant, that we were all nothing but specks in the web of time and space. If I wanted to matter anyway … well, that was what the philosophy was for, and the practice. You felt, you breathed, and you let go. All you had was the moment.
I knew all that. It still wasn’t working.
Katikati Haiku Pathway, the sign by the I-Site said. As good a place as any. I parked and got out of the car, then took the sealed track down beside the river.
The haikus were carved on boulders. I walked and read them and did my best to decipher the meaning in the dim light, but most of them were lost on me this morning. Obscure, I’d call them. I’d be able to think about windmills today. I wasn’t doing so well with the rest of it.
The bridge across the river, the view gray and fog-blurred, the trees like ghosts, the murmur of water in my ears. My hands in the pockets of my hoodie, my hair damp with mist.
Another gray rock looming up before me.
Clouds seen
Through clouds
Seen through
- Jim Kilcan
A three-dimensional puzzle. To understand it, you had to start at the end. The fog lifting a little beyond the river, and the day slowly brightening. And, yes, there were clouds up there, beyond the fog. Wisps of things. Ephemeral, here for a moment and gone again.
I didn’t have enough philosophy for this. I walked fast back to the car, put it in gear, and drove.
It was polite, that was all. Respectful.
Around the curves and up the hill past the paddocks and the kiwifruit trellises and the little orchards, the separate patches of green that represented somebody’s home, somebody’s peace. The sky glowing purple and pink and electric blue, and the rays of the rising sun appearing behind me, on the flat horizon where sea met sky. Pulling into the driveway by the little white house, and finding a car there already. Big and black, a Mercedes SUV of the larger type. Not a car you saw much of in New Zealand.
I had a feeling I knew whose it was. The lights were on in the little house, though, and I got out of the car. Walked up the track. Knocked softly at the door.
The door opened. Hemi Te Mana. Not in shorts anymore. In a charcoal suit and white shirt, his hair razor-sharp, razor-perfect, his face shaved close. Leaving today, like me, and unlike me, already ready for it.
“Kia ora,” he said, the deep voice noncommittal, the dark eyes direct. “Haere mai.”
“Kia ora,” I said. “Came to say goodbye.”
He didn’t answer, just opened the door, and I walked through.
The old man was in a wheelchair at the kitchen table. A baby cried in a room beyond, and a woman’s voice spoke softly, soothingly. Hemi sat down beside the old man, who was lifting an egg-soaked toast soldier to his mouth with a trembling hand. When he saw me, though, he put it down. And smiled all the way to the filmy old eyes.
“Roman,” he said.
Something ached hard in my chest. Something I hadn’t known was there. I stood, breathed, and waited for it to let me go. When it didn’t happen, I sat down across from Hemi and said, “I came to say goodbye.”
“That’s good,” the old man said. He looked smaller today. Shriveled and insubstantial, as if he were barely here. As if the breeze could lift him up into the mist.
“I don’t much like surprises,” I said. “I like to plan. I’ve generally fought surprises all the way, trying to hold to my road. It’s been a struggle, acceptance.”
The old man didn’t say anything, just looked at me, and Hemi did the same thing. I’d started, though, so I went on. “I didn’t want this, either. I didn’t want to want … more. Told myself I wasn’t cut out for family life. But …” I took a breath and said it. “I’ve learned something, maybe. I’m not really part of your whanau, and I know it. I’m not really Maori, either, and I know that, too. You can’t be what you’ve never known. But I’m still glad I came. Maybe I can have … more. Maybe I can try.”
The old man watched me some more, and the seconds ticked away. Finally, though, he stirred and said, his voice raspy as sandpaper, “You are stronger than you know, my son. You are strong enough for this. Hemi—what Rawiri Waititi said on Waitangi Day. D’you remember it?”
“Yes,” Hemi said.
“Say it, then,” the old man said.
Hemi’s voice rolled out, quiet and rich and deep. “You may not know your maunga. You may not know your awa. Your awa and your maunga know you. You may not know your reo. But your reo knows you. You may not know your marae, but your marae knows you. You are good enough because our tipuna made it so.”
The chills ran down my legs. Down my arms. Along my scalp. Your mountain, he was saying. Your river. Your language. Your meeting place.
Our tipuna made it so.Our ancestors.
“Our tipuna,” Hemi said, “are your tipuna. Our marae is your marae. Our awa and our maunga are yours, too. Whether you know it or not, whether you accept it or not … they’re yours. And Koro is yours, too.”
The old man was looking at Hemi now. “You make me proud, my son,” he said. “You make me proud.”
The tears were at the backs of my eyes, the emotion blocking my throat. “Thank you,” I said, and knew it wasn’t enough.
“You are good enough,” the old man told me, “because our tipuna made it so.”
The ache in my throat, in my chest. The tears coming, relentless as the dawn. I felt them there, trembling on my lashes, and said, “I need to leave this morning. Almost this minute. I have a meeting.”
“I know,” Koro said. He reached for my shoulder, and I reached for his. I laid my forehead, my nose, gently against his. I breathed with him, and when I sat back, tears were rolling down his furrowed cheeks.
He told me, his voice wavering, tremulous, “When Ranginui and Papatuanuku, the Sky Father and the Earth Mother, were separated, that terrible act brought the light into the world. They looked into each other’s eyes and saw their beloved’s beauty reflected back, and the tears they shed gave birth to Rehua, the god of the highest love. Love and pain—they can be the same. They can be terrible. But if you don’t love because you are afraid of pain, you turn your back on everything that’s best in the world. Everything that matters.”
“Murimuri aroha,” I said.
“Murimuri aroha,” he answered. “My son.”