She brings the salad (green beans, red peppers, garlic, pine nuts), we drink red wine, talk about how what is given — land, a heart — is forever, this year, next year, sometime, never, how one falls in love and why, what was it really that changed my world.
There were days when I thought if I explained the position clearly it would all be okay — now I know better. I fell in love with a principle, I say.
But — she’s my moko after all — so I say it began, it began … the laughter, the tears, one day, one moment, one beat, I looked out — all these kids playing in my backyard — and whammo it occurred to me that if we lived there my kids would be classed as coloured, there would be none of this here business, cowboys and Indians and a Chinese sheriff, a Māori good guy (he had the hat), Pākehā/Māori Indians behind bushes or round the corner or up the woodshed roof chucking plums, sometimes just the stones, and yelling gotcha …
I hope you don’t mind me asking? She places the lightly fried haloumi on top of the salad.
Everything starts with a moment and that moment leads to a letterbox with Fuck off Bitch on it and that leads to Fowlds Park and Patu! and who cleans the toilet and why don’t we say anything when he hits her — and why why why and then why not why not? Simple.
One moment leads to another moment to this moment when she leans back on the couch, we sip wine and she does not ask was it worth it, Nanny?
So — so — I say — it’s the salad, the mix of chemistry and context, the after-taste of moments, some bitter as rocket, heady as mint or wry as chives — your choice, my choice — dressings of oil, vinegar, rue or rosemary.
I regret nothing, I say. Nothing? Nothing.