We sit down at Gate 16 with a comfortable 30 minutes to spare before our flight from Auckland to Fiji. I slip my fingers into the pocket where I keep my passport; a thoughtless, reflexive gesture. Not there. Hmmmn. I last used it 20 minutes before, at Customs. I check another pocket, then another, then the whole backpack. The first thrill of anxiety crawls up my spine.
Cal’s Aunt Carol, an Iowa transplant who ended up in Alabama, had a saying: “Honey, nobody wants to hear about your vacation. All they want to know about is your horrifyin’ experiences.” We just completed a rich, rewarding month of adventuring in Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. And I have so many stories to tell. But, with props to Aunt Carol -- and to get it out of my head -- this is the story I'll start with. Lost passport, short version.
Auckland is the most spread-out airport I have ever been in. You walk roughly a mile between the domestic and international terminals, and then another 25 minutes from Customs to the gate. Once I'm sure the passport is not in the backpack, I run to the place I know I last had it—a water station about 100 yards back. I run to every other stop I made: a food kiosk. A restroom. All the way back to Customs. This running is illogical, as I remember having the passport in my hand at the water station. But in my rising panic, I keep running, blindly. I have always had a fear fantasy about this. It started in childhood, being an airline brat. “Keep track of your travel documents,” I can hear my Dad’s voice say. “If you lose your passport, you are a person without a country.”
Over the next four hours, after watching our flight depart for Fiji, I learn many things. There are approximately 4,000 people you need to talk to when you lose your passport. Approximately 3,995 will not be able to help you. At least 3,500 of them will say: “Oh, love. Check your bag again. I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.” Every information kiosk will be closed. Every airport security office will be closed. Every airport help phone will either not work or ring endlessly, unanswered. When you dial a New Zealand number with an American cell phone you will get that shrieking tone, and the Kiwi version of “your call cannot be completed as dialed.” The American Consulate in Auckland will be closed on the weekend (this is Friday night) and you will have to wait til Monday morning. One other thing I learned: if you have cleared New Zealand Customs and been granted entrance to Fiji, you are not allowed to be in New Zealand anymore. I could not legally walk out of this airport.
In my work with my grief clients, we often use a technique called reframing. When you are spiraling down some rabbit hole of distress, anxiety or self-recrimination, is it possible to change the tape running through your head? I try this, here in the Auckland Airport. This is a high-class, first world problem, I tell myself. You are at the end of a glorious trip. Lost passports happen every day, to somebody. There has to be somebody in this airport who can help us figure it out.
My success at re-framing? Pretty much zero. I HATE losing anything, I am putting Cal through a trauma, and I have possibly cost us our Fiji stop altogether. I am off the charts upset with myself.
After swings and misses with Air New Zealand, airport security, airport police, passport control, and the first three people we talked to at Customs, an angel named Mark showed up. I think he is a customs agent, but in my distress, I get nothing more than his name. He walks us through the process: reclaiming our bags (whenever a passenger checks a bag but doesn’t get on the flight, they have to hold departure of said flight out of security concerns. So to other passengers of Air New Zealand flight 958 from Auckland to Nadi: Sorry. I caused you that delay.) Mark interviews us, fills out forms, questions us closely about where we’ve been, where we are going, what we’ve bought, what we have in our bags. Our suitcases are examined carefully.
“OK, you are now legally allowed to be back in New Zealand,” he announces cheerfully in that fun Kiwi accent that makes everything sound like a lark. He is courteous, professional, kind. He tells me “80 percent of the time, passports that are dropped show up. You’ll probably get it back. Just don’t call your Consulate yet. You don’t want it cancelled.” He gives me phone numbers to keep checking its whereabouts, and suggests I do it from a landline at the hotel—easier than a cell phone. He suggests we stay in the Novatel, a spendy place, but right across the street from the terminal. It will be more convenient for you, he says.
Sometime later—two hours? Four? Time has taken on a weird warp---we are out on the curb trying to figure out where to sleep. My phone rings. It’s Mark. “I have it. Someone just turned it in.” Apparently, a Qantas agent scooped it up right where I thought I dropped it, a minute or two before I missed it. She got busy with work and turned it in a couple of hours later. We quickly arrange a new flight to Fiji first thing in the morning, and call ahead to re-jigger our connections there. We are back in business, baby. The last thing I do on New Zealand soil: send Mark a heartfelt note of thanks. This kind of thing probably happens to him a lot. To me, on this day, his kindness meant the world. We are not going to lose Fiji after all.
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The pristine island of Manolo, about an hour by boat from Nadi, is a place of unreal beauty: turquoise waters meet the graceful curves of white sand beaches. Palm trees sway in the soft, warm trade winds. As we arrive at the dock, a group of local musicians welcome us with song and native instruments.
The Fijians are a serene, smiling, musical people. The ubiquitous greeting bula! – multipurpose for hello, welcome, greetings, glad to see you, and cheers—rings out through the palm trees. Pretty soon, we tourists are using it, too, unself-consciously and without irony. In this place, it seems natural to wish wellness on everyone you meet.
I always wonder if the people who live and work in these places resent those of us who come to visit, spending money that we have and they need. If there is resentment here, it does not show. They are proud of their paradise, and want to show it off. The level of service is hard to get used to. Cal is encouraged not to pour his own diet coke into the glass of ice—“I will do that for you!” and we don’t move our own lounge chairs to adjust to the sun—there is a helper for that too.
Agnes, a beautiful woman with a winning smile, checks us in and walks us to our bure, the Fijian word for house. She says she loves working in this beautiful place, with its provided housing and choice of schedules. Jobe, who handles our bags and later drives us in a golf cart to the next village, is also grateful to be here. I ask about his family, and learn that his wife and three small children live on Taveuna, three days’ journey by bus and
boat from Malolo. Is that hard? I ask. He seems to seriously consider the question. I do not think about that part, he says. When we leave, I write them both thank you notes and empty my wallet of all the American dollars I have left—worth more than twice what their Fijian currency will buy.
On Manolo, there are dozens of things we could do—sailing, snorkeling, kayaking, bicycling, visiting the floating bar offshore. We do none of these. Instead, we eat, sleep, read, swim, stare at the clouds, drink fruity little drinks, watch the palm trees sway and the boats sail by. The sun sets a fiery red, and a sliver of a moon rises, encircled by clouds and accompanied by Venus.
In the strange, karmic way of the universe, I realize, all of this turned out the way it was supposed to. The month of high energy adventuring Down Under. The lost passport, and the recovery from that ridiculous, self-inflicted wound. Gorgeous, peaceful, dreamlike Fiji. Meeting Agnes, Jobe and the rest. Considering lives so different from my own.
When Agnes oriented us to our bure, it took a while because there were so many amenities. The plunge pool, the garden, our own private stretch of beach, our kitchen, our luxury bedding, our climate controls, our indoor and outdoor showers. It’s a long list.
At the end, she pointed to a coconut sitting just inside the front door. It was painted a bright, shiny, fire engine red.
“This,” she says, “is your privacy coconut. You put it outside your door when you need quiet and peace. It will give you what you need.”
For our entire stay, every time I come and go, I look at that magic coconut -- so completely different from a Do Not Disturb sign. Can you really give me what I need, I ask it. Banish lost passports and contentious elections and shocking bereavements and the many griefs of this world? And, when I sail away from here, the sweet strains of a Fijian farewell echoing after me, can I take you with me?
We all need a red coconut, I think. Something to set our boundaries, keep the world at bay, re-discover the still point at the center. I will need to remember this when I get home, I think. I will paint, or find, a red coconut of my own.
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