This is where it ends and begins. Here on the railway station, Gisborne, waiting for the train to Wellington. Here begins the first step into the future, the first pace from the past.
The platform is crowded with people. They gather in small groups talking to one another. A well-dressed woman, standing with her husband, smooths her dress and pats at her hair. Kissing his mother, a young boy looks around hoping nobody has seen. Laughing loudly, a group of young male apprentices tease the girls they are leaving behind. A child sits reading a storybook, tracing the lines with a finger and silently mouthing the words.
Rows of cars line the barrier to the station where a green pickup truck pulls to a halt. A father opens the back door to get his schoolboy son’s suitcase and together they rush to the booking office.
I watch from the car park, but soon I will make my way toward the milling crowd. I will step into my carriage when the express gets here, sit at the window and look out upon the platform. The train’s whistle will blow and people will start to shout farewell. The bell will ring and the well-dressed woman will wind down a window so that she can say goodbye to her husband on the platform. And then the train will move away, along the railway tracks as they cross the road from Waikanae Beach into Gisborne. Red lights will flicker on and off at the crossing and the traffic will stop:
Let the train pass.
I will journey away from Gisborne. But I will leave my heart here, to be reclaimed when I return. This is where my heart belongs.
This is where my life begins.
This day, too, is dawning. The morning is brisk with the wind. The sky is crystal clear and the air crisp with frost. The morning mist still lies low over the harbour but, rising above it, is Kaiti Hill.
Today the maunga incises a sharp edge into the sky and sparkles with a serenity not yet destroyed by the waking city below. The noise and haze of the business area and surrounding suburbs still lies close to the ground. However, although the strong sound of the sea still dominates, there’s no doubt that Gisborne is slowly awakening. Already, traffic bumps across the railway lines at the crossing and rushes toward the business district. A cyclist weaves amid the speeding cars and, along the pavement, office girls hasten to work. For them, today is like any other. Nothing will upset the tempo of their hours. But, for me, this day is the first. Tēnei rā to be lived alone and in sadness, and followed by inexorable others. Thousands of days to be touched, claimed and lived and, this one, beginning on a railway platform, is the first of them.
From afar, comes the roar of the express. On the platform I see the stationmaster usher people back from the edge of the track.
Amid billowing steam, kei te tata mai te tereina, the train arrives at the station.