Eva Bradley
OVER the years I've dedicated a lot of column inches to quoting people far more brilliant than I in order to push my point with polish.
A little while ago, however, I found myself in the unique position of having my own words quoted back to me while being introduced for a public talk. Apparently, all on my own, I came up with this little pearl: Life is like a fine-cut diamond. The stone never changes, but its beauty and brilliance is defined by which facet you choose to look through at any one time.
As I stared out of the rain-streaked window of a timeshare stuck in an 80s time-warp (as timeshares are inclined to be), I thought to myself that Turangi, like life, is just like a diamond.
Depending on who you are and what's going down, the small service town tucked between the western edge of Lake Taupo and State Highway 1 is either the most exciting or most boring place on earth.
Pregnant and accompanied by a 2-year-old and his elderly grandparents, I was finding it hard to see or appreciate the finer facets of Turangi.
Having spent large swaths of the first few days beside the toybox in the public library and information centres, the highlight appeared to be a trip to the indoor heated swimming pool complex, where Edward's trepidation around water saw us restricted to the three-foot-deep baby pool. The less-than-attractive sight of my beached body flopping about in the shallows almost certainly ensured we had the pool to ourselves.
Our days consisted of dawdling round-trips to the playground, which was only a block away but took an hour to reach, given the necessity to inspect every stone, puddle, stick and grimy bit of well-trodden chewing gum en route.
Edward, meanwhile, was so excited by this new world outside his own familiar one you'd have thought we'd taken him to Disneyland. He and I were quite clearly looking through different facets of the diamond. Expectations also define how we see a place. In Turangi's defence, mine were exceptionally low. Any place that featured the helping hands of grandparents and the prospect of an afternoon nap sounded like heaven.
But I'm a fickle human and prone to looking past what I've got and wanting more. After wondering why anyone in their right mind would want to stay in Turangi, I tried to see it through the eyes of the youthful backpackers spilling out of buses at the bus stop beyond the window.
To them, Turangi was a launching point to adventure and adrenaline. The gateway to the Tongariro Crossing, bungy-jumping, rafting, skydiving, fly-fishing, skiing and every other awesome thing you can't do when you're pregnant. The closest I got to Turangi's beating heart was when I discovered the adventure tourism operator sold great coffee and had on-loop footage of rafting adventures on wall-mounted TVs -- all that was needed to light up my son's eyes and have him jabbering about his "rafting" adventure for the rest of the day.
As the rain continued, my fear of seeming ungrateful for the break won out over my desperate desire to escape. Amazingly, my mum turned out to be harbouring the same small-town lassitude. The next morning, our bags were packed and we were on our way home early.
The hoped-for love affair with Turangi had failed to float but, as we sped away, I vowed to return another time when I could be the person Turangi needed me to be: wild, baby-free and hungry for adrenaline.
I'm sorry I couldn't make it work for us, Turangi. It wasn't you, it was me.
�Eva Bradley is a columnist and photographer.