Strange Attachments

She heard her email alert ding.  The latest message in the inbox held one attachment.  When her eyes met the magical unopened box on the screen Hazel’s heart raced, feeling something she hadn’t felt in years and years.  Excitement.  Pure raw giddy excitement. She liked this feeling, she missed it.  Hazel thought about how close she was to finally laying her eyes, her feet, her being on the land she always wanted to meet. 

 She double clicked the box.  There was the magic ticket.  The place, the people who had become her secret destination to find her way to, her exit strategy no one knew was brewing.  

Her kids had left home to go to college, to live their own lives. Her friends had left her long ago when she became “the divorced mom”. Long ago she gave up wondering why women, other moms in particular, thought they would catch divorce like the flu.

She had worked lots of different jobs through the years to make ends meet- a philosophy degree she found amounted to little more than the rather low wage sort- but she kept trying and going.  The perpetual trying to not much availing was what was doing her in.  Once her kids didn’t need her anymore, she realized all she was good at was surviving.  Making ends meet. Holding things together.  Insert quip that could accompany a coach’s halftime speech or Bear Gryll’s Man vs. Wild show and this was how Hazel was accustomed to living... survival living rather.  

With no one to find the daily mettle to ‘just barely make things work’ for anymore, the rules of the survival game suddenly changed.  Hazel’s pace and rhythm at home and work changed. She felt like she was moving in slow motion.  It was like an identity crisis while being utterly lost in a swampy empty nest.  Maybe it was grief, maybe she was just weary from all the heavy mettle of things.  Maybe she missed the noise and the constant challenge of conducting order from chaos and parental quandaries. 

Somewhere in the monotone mood and silence she nightly came home to now, the interchangeable existential crisis and lethargy turned into Kiwi show streaming.  She found New Zealanders captivating and compassionate companions added to her evening routine.  The streaming at some point continued into her sleep.  After a third, maybe fourth, obscure New Zealand Film Commission find, Hazel's dream life was immersed in the Kiwi vernacular. She started waking up thoughts of a Tongariro walk and smiling at random times of the day thinking of Taiki Waititi ingenious inventions, like Lily and Jarod glumly bickering in Eagle vs. Shark.  

She would be driving to work, pop another piece of Nicorette and daydream of the landscape her computer screen offered glimpses of. Just the thought New Zealanders being there, the land being there, made her feel a little more sane and free. But it was just daydreaming.

Then it happened one morning when Hazel was getting ready for work that in lieu of her typical combo of coffee and inner soliloquy filled with impossibilities verging on self-pity, she heard a different voice clear as a bell with the accent she grew to love so much, “Why not Hazel? Come on. She’ll be apples.”  (Loosely translated: everything will be okay.)

Hazel opened her computer.  She started the search. Why not? And how much, from here to there?  

That was the morning Hazel thought she could see a different scene play out, not just be in the audience. But in her own story.

Their knack for honesty and unique storytelling resonated with her inner dialogue.  With their blunt, but beautiful, awkward, dark and quirky humor, Kiwi film characters became collectively like a long lost friend to her, like a symbol of a hidden gem to find, like a pen pal one is eager to meet someday (albeit pre-world wide web days).  

No one knew of the strange attachment growing, the connection forming, but Hazel had an inkling her people were there, maybe they would ‘get’ her.  Maybe they would chuckle at her dark humor, her awkwardness she’d always been just fine with but had caused her mostly suburban counterparts unease for as long as she could remember.  Even her siblings maintained quizzical looks at her random banter.  Her kids got her, chuckled and appreciated the absurdity that accompanied her philosophical meanderings- but even they had their limits at right about age 16 (she didn’t take it personally, she knew this developmentally appropriate occurrence affected all parents since the beginning of time, the eschewing of mom as cool, funny person.  A timeless, universal tragic comedy one thinks will never happen which inevitably does).  

She knew she had to start saving up.  Whatever it took, she’d find a way.  Perhaps her life depended on it. And added to that, she was running out of series and films, the screen would soon fall short the goal of taking her there.

Hazel quit Groundhog Day cold turkey.  The search engine kindly informed her of the ticket costs, and other details needed to put together like a patchwork quilt.  She printed out papers and put them in a labeled green folder. She posted up yellow sticky notes with affirmations and mindfulness tricks to hold possible returning inertia at bay, she put all reminders in plain sight-- the plan.  Action.  No more streaming and dreaming.  

She started working evenings.  Hazel cleaned her car, got an oil change, an app, and ubered. She offered her family who were scattered around town above average pricing for house cleanings.  Not many, but a few, took her up on it feeling heroic as they assumed they were saving her from her doldrums and lonely nights, her less than stellar budget and single status life.  They paid her even a little more because it made them feel good to help the existentially struggling Hazel, despite her domestically challenged skills.  She knew their misinformed motivations, but didn’t feel the least bit patronized and blessed their assumptions with glee, thanked them wholeheartedly while cleaning their toilets- while thinking of landing in Auckland and zipping up to the Bay of Islands.  Little did they know where their overpriced cleaning service money would soon go.  

Hazel saved and saved. By day she worked her 8 to 5, nothing-to-do-with-philosophy-job, by night she drove strangers- some who were so inebriated wouldn’t recall the secrets and make out sessions left in her Ford Focus the night before.  But nothing could take her focus off the road ahead.  Her body that was perpetually lethargic not so long ago moved with ease and meaning.  Forward motion.  She kept going as if Taika was talking to her, directing her in a new scene, creating a new story.  

She double clicked the attachment.  One way ticket from Nashville to Auckland.  She leaned back in her chair and smiled.  No more streaming.  Hazel started packing.