I have called myself a writer since I was eight. It took many years of navigating life as an undiagnosed neurodivergent with a bad case of impostor syndrome before a dying friend made me promise to start writing seriously. I did. And I haven’t stopped since.
I am on the board of our little local library, am part of a delightful book club (now four years strong), and my idea of the ideal Saturday night involves editing and wine.
I have lived in a war zone and in communes, in cities and the wilds, writing through it all. Now I live with my son and an assortment of rescue animals in a little house on a hill looking out over the sea in Karekare, New Zealand.
It’s been a wild life. Which means I have no shortage of material.
I’m sitting on a pile of work. Here are a few:
Latest pieces:
For the love of figs
The dark
The monstrous sound filled the dark every evening. Followed by a sharp intake of breath into small lungs, and a pleading cry,
“Mama, help”.
My son’s bedroom was tucked up into the treetops. An aerial kanuka womb.
The neighbourhood morepork loved to sit on a branch with its view over the garden, bush and out to sea. Trouble was, that branch was right outside my son’s bedroom. It grew parallel to his bed. Take the wall away and he could have reached out to ruffle its feathers. I thought of it as a guardian. My son did not. To my scared-of-the-dark son this morepork was as big as its call in the deeps of the night.
This bird loomed large in his imagination, the fear crowding out the facts read out from beloved bird books and gleaned from museum exhibits. Never mind that mama had a tone of reverence when speaking of moreporks, this one was a monster.
He drew it one day. Toweringly tall, dark maw for a mouth and red eyes. Nothing I said dislodged this misbegotten monsterhood. I began a concerted effort to create some ease into our evenings. The kid was already what I conservatively called sleep challenged. The night of the zombie morepork movie playing in his head was not helping. Every time it called *more pork, more pork* into the quiet, I would scoop him up and rush to the window, or lean over the deck with a powerful torch searching all her favourite haunts. We made it a game, rushing off regardless of what we were doing. Food left uneaten, bottoms left bare, baths abandoned, books left open.
Weeks went past. Nothing. Or rather, many creatures and moments but no morepork sighting. We marvelled at the faint luminescence of the great puriri moth, the squeaks and chirps of geckoes, the rumbling of frogs from next doors pond. We were held spellbound by the wind shaping the rangy kanuka tops and the moons dramatic lighting of the night-time world. All this helped to demystify the dark. But revealed no morepork. Not even a glimpse.
I moved from actively trying to dissemble the fear to resignation and the cries for help became a part of our evening rhythm. An unwelcome visitor. An unliked family member at Christmas you had to tolerate but couldn’t wait for them to leave.
Months passed with him refusing, absolutely, to sleep in his own room with intermittent dashes to peer suddenly into the mirk, eyes trying desperately to focus after the artificial light of our human inside world. Then a year. The edges of the fear less jagged, the cries less frequent but definitely still there. Until one night. We were up late with guests and the little guy couldn’t sleep. It was a small house and loud voices were carrying straight up into his open window. Eventually he came out onto the deck. Right as he clambered onto my lap, in that silence -the one where adults readjust their output to the unexpected presence of sleepy small people- a morepork called. Loud. And close.
I felt my son’s body tense as someone grabbed their headtorch from the table, clicked it on and directed the beam up into the kanuka stand. Up near the treetop bedroom, was a tiny, puffed up, big-eyed morepork, looking like she just rolled out of bed and most indignant about the torch beam in her face. She looked so comical that the table erupted into laughter. As I shook with the joy of it, I felt the tension in my boy seep away, his limbs settling into mine. I looked at him. His eyes moved slowly from the morepork’s to mine.
The words I put to his look were ‘THAT is what I was afraid of? That cute little poofed up ball of spitfire?’
The bird took off, slow wingbeats rippling the air, head swivelling, gaze seeing what we could not, then disappeared into the darkness toward the frog sounds. Small arms went around my neck and a calm voice said,
‘I think I’ll sleep in my room tonight mama.’