What We Walk With

I caught myself saying something this weekend that I didn’t really mean. I said that, if I could, I would forget everything about New Zealand except for this moment. As if I could wish it all away, which I can’t.  As if I wish I could wish it all away, which I don’t.

I would not forget the Indian man who owned the one candy shop in Wellington with occasional stocks of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. He had the posture of a polite bobble-head doll and he came around to lean against his candy counter every time he saw me come down the front aisle to see if the precious stock had been delivered. I would not forget the way he shrugged his shoulders without taking his hands out of his pockets, or Post-It note that he stuck to the side of his cash register with my name written on it. “Emily W.” he scribbled with a penmanship that made my name look like it might be a Bengali word, right above “peanut butter cups,” which might be the most American phrase ever.

I would not forget adorable, goofy, gorgeous Andred asking incessantly, “Are you happy?” in his gleeful Kiwi intonation, and I will always remember being so charmed that I could only insist, “Yes!” even if it was a lie and even though there were so many other things I would have rather told him.

I would not forget filling empty apple juice quarts with tap beer at Pak ‘N’ Save for NZ$3, even though I always ended up at StarMart the next morning to buy a new quart of apple juice to nurse my hangover.

I would not forget possum flu, because as painful and frightening and revolting as it was, it makes a damn good story.

I would not forget that Bon Jovi came on the fussy NZ radio just as I took the wheel on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road for the first time.

I would not forget sitting up in the night to feel the world trembling all around me during my first, and not my last earthquake.

I probably would forget the torment of the daily walk up to a campus in the world’s most hilly city in a body that was not my own, a body weighed down by a world-class binge of emotional eating, a body that I wanted to crawl out of as I practically crawled up the hill to class in Kelburn.

But I would not forget the day I dragged that unfamiliar body through sleet and alpine winds, over crags and pinnacles and across eroded plains covered only in clumps of razor-sharp grass. I would not forget crouching in the pitch black bush after thirteen hours on foot, waiting for my own tears to fall, only to have the legs that I couldn’t bear to look down at pick me up and carry me forward, leaving the priss who has been ridiculed and who has ridiculed me on her knees on the side of a mountain in the Tararua Range.

I would not forget the ill-fated experiment of a chocolate bar filled with kiwifruit-flavored jelly, though I would never bring myself to taste it again.

I would not forget getting to know my dad in the sounds of a mix CD that he had made for me, but to which I had never bothered to listen. When they play one of those songs at my wedding, I will not remember listening to it as I walked alone along the harbor. I will remember that I could hear my father telling me to be brave, to stick it out, that he believed in me.

I would not forget planting trees on Mana Island. I will think of them often; I hope that they are growing.

The truth is, as well all know, as Jim Carey and Kate Winslet showed us on a cold beach in Montauk, memory counts for something. It’s supposed to stick and we’re stuck with it. Like a melted peanut butter cup. Like kiwifruit jelly in your teeth. Like a possum in a water tank. Like your dad’s wise words in your ear. I remember feeling stuck in New Zealand. I also remember what it felt like to escape. I walked away, a little weaker and maybe a little tougher, all for the memories that stuck with me. If only I’d stuck a little closer to Andred.