No one ends up in Waiau Pa by accident

No one ends up in Waiau Pa by accident. A small dot on the edge of South Auckland near the coast. A town you’ll never pass through unless you come to stay, or to fish, or to come back to after a long time away, having grown and expanded while it stayed fundamentally the same. A town where the earth holds memories and dead animals, and you know your all your neighbours’ names.
Waiau Pa is the type of place where you have to keep naming bigger and bigger towns nearby until a point of reference can be grasped. The main street is a primary school, a petrol station, a hammer hardware and Four Square. It’s a place that people circle back to, though I’m not sure I ever will. 
Before roads came to the Waiau area, the Manukau Harbour to the north was the highway; waka first, and then, when the Europeans arrived, small steamers. Māori tribes came to fish and gather food, and there are four old pā sites where they would stay. Later, the harbour became a bombing range. An aerodrome was developed at the end of Seagrove Road during WWII as part of national defence strategy, and Americans moved into the area for a short time. The aerodrome is abandoned now, the site of a horse stud. 
During the 1990s, when I was a kid, Waiau Pa was brimming with adventures birthed from boredom. We climbed trees and rode horses up to the Four Square for ice blocks, swam in ponds and built huts that collapsed in the wind. I often wonder if you carry your childhood with you, for better or worse, the foundational years of your youth etched into your skin. At times it brings success and determination, at other times you want to shake it out of you and be done with it.
Part of my childhood was alive with animals and nature; a blind Collie who fell off the deck and ran into clotheslines; horses standing under trees as we swung down from branches on to their backs; entrepreneurial roadside stalls with a customer base of three cars driving past at 100 kilometres an hour; the sun, setting bright orange and pink behind the Awhitu peninsula, and an ocean lapping at the end of our driveway like a gateway to the world.
I still love the ocean, having grown up with an ever present view of it. In my current life, it’s on the other side of the country and the water is much colder. It is now a freezing place to wade into to overcome a shrinking comfort zone, but it feels the same as it did when I was young, riding my horse through it.
The name Waiau Pa translated from Māori is river of swirling currents. I oscillate between good and bad memories of my hometown. While part of my childhood overflowed with animals and nature and fun, another part of it contained pain. I was born with a cleft lip and palate. I spent time in and out of hospitals, seeing doctors and orthodontics, skipping school for appointments and operations, being poked and prodded, sliced open and stitched up. And I often wonder what the difference is between the people who orbit close to home or the ones, like me, who find themselves constantly flung from it.
I recall the exact moment I wanted to leave Waiau Pa. My Aunt had come to stay from Canada, opening a door to the unknown, stories of places far from home. And I felt a strong desire to see more than just the quiet world around me. Waiau Pa had done nothing wrong, with its weekly Tuesday night fire drills, its many unmarked roads, the constant bird song and animals grazing nearby, but perhaps that was the issue, there wasn’t enough friction there to brush up against. I needed to push myself out into the world.
This led to a decade of movement, swapping jobs, cities, friends, wanting the world to change me, backpacking through countries where the air is hot and the beer is cold, the nights roll into morning because there’s no responsibilities, where the music is vibrant and the people, strangers. Unlike in a small town, where everyone knows everyone. There’s so much freedom in anonymity. You can feel who you are in any moment. Which is what those who travel seek; the freedom to know themselves.
I’ve always loved movement, whether nature is moving around me; the rustling leaves, the hiss and rush of waves; or whether it’s me. I often find myself swaying on my feet or fidgeting with my scarf, needing to shift and change, just like the ocean. I’ve been contemplating the circular nature of life lately, and whether we should all eventually find ourselves back at our roots. Whether being far from home is a form of escapism, or whether some of us purposely uplift our roots to gently put them down elsewhere.
We used to sit on the hot black seat outside the front door of Four Square and eat traffic light popsicles.  A new Four Square stands in place of the old one now.
Megan O’Neill is the author of a recently published bestselling novel The Mess We Made (Hachette, $37.99), available in bookstores nationwide: “Quin and Henry meet as kids and quickly become inseparable… They are high-school sweethearts until one night, one bad decision shatters everything.”