Breathe

After many hours flight and as we neared NZ, Spook sneezed. Then I heard him sniffling a bit. He was wearing his headphones and couldn’t hear me so I pointed to his nose and made sympathetic signs indicating that I was sorry to see he was getting a cold. He yelled indignantly “have you smelt your OWN breath”

There followed a look of black affronted horror on my face and a 20 minute boose that no amount of apology could erase until I’d recovered from the humiliation.

When we stepped through customs and into the Christchurch airport foyer I became overwhelmed by tearful emotion. This had nothing to do with accusations of bad breath and everything to do with an unexpected sense of loss and connection.
We were picked up promptly by our Lucky Campervan company which turned out to be the luckiest thing about them. We’d gone budget to give us more spending money on the trip but it turned out that we were lucky they gave us one at all and we’ll be lucky if we can get it to drive all the way around the island and back to their yard again. We were lucky they gave us one pillow (misnomer) and one fork and knife even though it was to be fitted out for 2 people. We were lucky it made it up Burke’s Pass to the High McKenzie Country and the tail back behind me was lucky I was willing to pull in every 5 mins to let them pass.
We delved into our inner Granny and Papa Munro and understood that nothing stands in the way of a good adventure. As long as we could brew up a coffee by the side of the road and Spook knew how to access the engine, then the one fork and knife and perhaps a Kirby grip, would be all that was required to get us to where we needed to go.
To get to our daughter.