SummaryA 2009 Memoir and Local History Competition entry.Main Body
I am a sook!
My reputation as a brave leader came seriously into question on that day our family climbed Mauao for the first time. Perhaps my siblings were too young to imagine the horrors my nine-year-old mind conjured up: bodies crashing onto rocks hundreds of feet below the precipitous track.
A body, mine, washing to and fro like kelp between the jaws of the black rocks. Those beautiful shiny, black rocks where the Rānui had been wrecked. The rocks that looked so picturesque with the foaming waves breaking on them.
All the family, except me, seemed to behave with unbelievable nonchalance.
" Look at the fabulous view!" Mum exclaimed.
“Yes, and that's Tūhua out there. If that island could speak she'd have some stories to tell," said Dad.
Couldn't they feel that giddy drop into space? I tried, I really did, to dismiss the dire images. I tried to place one bold foot at a time on solid ground but the track became steeper and on a bend I could only see the insubstantial sky. I was alone where the big, black-backed gulls mewled and soared. I could no longer trust my feet. I dropped to my knees. Ahead of me the feet of my family climbed solidly. A slow trickle of shingle was displaced by their soles. I crawled, seeking hand-holds.
"Look at Catherine," they cried.
There is one more admission I have to make. One event more terrifying even than that childhood climb.
The catacombs of Rome. Of completely losing it in that underground cemetery. Those stifling tunnels. Those recesses for graves. Was that a whiff of quicklime? There was a kind man who brought me smelling salts when we emerged.
Usage
AcknowledgementTe Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries