Ode to Auckland

Auckland held the two of us in a state of awe. We drove - very well, she drove; I sat in the passenger seat, the closest I have ever come to the action in my long non-driving life - across the isthmus on a recent Thursday afternoon, in the smoky light of winter, father and daughter having nothing better to do than hang out with each other in traffic.

- Steve Braunias

I was so happy. Our outing felt like a family holiday. We chatted about travelling to England together one day and I imagined that we were already tourists in somewhere like Cornwall or Yorkshire. In fact, we were headed for East Tamaki.

Auckland has it all, as in it has all the sticky mangrovial creeks you could ever want, creating a giant kind of wetland interrupted by housing. No, she said, she never gets homesick. She loves Dunedin. She wears Speights jerseys to Highlanders games - she was shown on the big screen at one game, cheering, an avid blonde fan raised in West Auckland on the Te Atatū Peninsula. I suggested we drive out that way or maybe Henderson. She suggested East Tamaki. Her cousin Nina told her it had great op shops. I would have said yes to anywhere. I am forever haunted by thoughts of parents who never see their kids, who don't know their kids - the scariest word in the English language is estranged.