Steve Braunias: An age-gap, long distance love story

We should all leave airports on foot and immerse ourselves in the true, bracing life of our destination, says Steve Braunias. Photo / 123rf

Hey, she texts.

Hey you, I write back.

And we phone, and FaceTime, and send photos, and the days go by and the nights too, and so do the weeks. We love each other. We are seldom in the same room. It really hasn’t been what either of us would exactly describe as the summer of love. No one seems to have had a good summer anyway - the bad weather got so bad that it was front-page news, and a weatherman gave a statistical analysis of the absence of summer when he told a Herald journalist this week, “So we’re at about 28 per cent of what’s normal.” So is our romance.

Last year we probably broke up about 250,000 times. Such drama, and such a drag. I’m too old for all that kind of thing, but one of the central vexing issues of our romance is the possibility that I’m – gee, really, do you think? - too old for her. We often laugh we have chosen the worst time in history to conduct a romance with a wildly inappropriate age difference. We are always laughing at something.

To live in different cities is to live by the calendar. She was supposed to visit just after New Year but got sick on the morning of her flight. Seriously sick, with talk of going to hospital – she tried to see her doctor but the first available appointment was in late January. “That’s not much use,” I said. She loves me on account of my dazzling insights. “The thing about you two,” a well-meaning friend told us, “is that it’s a meeting of minds.” More laughter.

We last saw each other sometime before Christmas. Things had been somewhat fraught for a while before that, as in pretty much all year. So much fighting, so many declarations of dying love. She always reaches for the same door-slamming word: “Done.” As in, “We’re done.” And, “I’m done.” But we keep talking, and I’ll ask, “So is that actually it? Are we done?”

Our romance is a tale of two airports. I grew very fond of the ritual of landing in Wellington post-lockdown when the airport bus service was cancelled and you had to walk to a nearby suburban street to wait for a bus. People complained about it. They said it was lame. I loved that walk, in rain and wind, in fresh Wellington air. We should all leave airports on foot and immerse ourselves in the true, bracing life of our destination. I always travel with a bag of powdered Bavarian Cremes from Dunkin Donuts at Auckland Airport. It takes every ounce of effort to not scoff them all on the plane but such is love, such is the happiness it gives me to watch her eat them in bed.

Just before she got sick, she sent a video of herself at a pool in a bikini. I was with a woman friend when it arrived. She said, “What’s that?” I showed her. It was really very seemly, nothing lurid, just a few seconds at the poolside. But to be hot is to look especially hot in a bikini. “Gosh,” said the friend. “She’s a sexpot.” It was a closer assessment than the meeting of minds.

It’s a romance of contrasts – old, beautiful; crazy town, Auckland; parent, not parent; mana wahine, whitey – but when we see each other, it works, it’s spectacular, it’s just another happy couple. There are complications. I can complicate a walk to the dairy. It’s our great fortune to be in love but maybe one day we really will be done. It didn’t feel like that just before Christmas. The streets of Wellington were snowing with the sweet white powder of Bavarian Cremes when I knocked at her door.

Hey you, she said.

Hey, I replied.