I was speaking with a friend in Florida this afternoon and she asked what she so often asks:

“So where are you today?”

I thought about it, I asked The Man.

“You know, I have no idea. And what’s even worse is neither does Tony, and he drove us here! We’re somewhere less than half a day north of Wellington on the coast of the North Island. That’s the best I can do!”

She laughed at me, “That’s awesome. I love that.”

The sad, or happy (depending on how you look at it) fact is that it just doesn’t matter that much.

We have nowhere to be and nowhere to go and everywhere to explore with all the time we want to explore it. We have alarms set on our clocks to remind us when we have to turn up in the cyber world for someone else’s convenience. It works. Most of the time.

So, I’d love to tell you where we are, but I have no idea.

We’re camped on a beach with an endless rush of incoming tide and sand the colour of a good chai milk tea. It’s one of those beaches that collects things, and begs for us to leave tax preparations aside in favour of a long walk in late afternoon sun.

Today was a productive day because the appropriate gift to send my tiny nephew finally presented itself. Of course I’m knitting sweet things for his impending baby brother, but he’s three and he won’t care a bit about knitting. What he will care about is having something to DO to fill all that time that Mama will be “wasting” nursing the baby. What his mama will care about is having him usefully employed rather than dismantling the house while she’s out of service for half an hour or so at a time in 24 hour rotation.

I’m going to send him a science experiment, and a piece of the wrong side of the world. The idea presented itself as my hands slowly filled with treasures: white pumice, black pumice, charcoal pieces tumbled into perfect black-pearl pebbles, iridescent and unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Tiny pieces of sponge, tidbits of driftwood of various sorts, and shells with ruffles that look like they’ve been added with a tiny piping bag out of buttercream icing. Small bones and scraps of exoskeleton. What three year old boy wouldn’t love a bag full of beach detritus and the challenge to sort it all out: what floats? What sinks? What is animal, vegetable, mineral?

My big kids are getting in on the fun.

They love their little cousin, Kai, he’s kind of the family mascot and we were reduced to tears of laughter watching him, via Skype, take his tiny toy chainsaw and pretend to cut down the logs in Grammy’s house. He does a remarkably accurate vocal impersonation.

They remember being Kai’s age and having Uncle Josh ship treasures from his round the world sailing journey with postcards describing black pearl farms and islands with turtles and African drumming. Of course the card I remember most was the one Gabe, at about five, came bouncing in the front door with from the mailbox: “Look Mama! Uncle Josh sent us a clown!” He was so excited and wanted the card read out immediately. I took the prize from my bouncy boy, examined the Thai hooker on the front, smirked, and flipped it over to read. “Hi Kids, I got this card for free….” Indeed. A clown. I owe Uncle Josh one or two.

So we’re collecting interesting things and little treasures, washing them, cleaning them, adding a drop of glue to the hinge of shell pairs to fortify their strength, and stitching a little bag to go around them. It’s fun to imagine his chubby little hands unpacking it all on the other side of the world. If only we could be there to wear him out for his Mama and hug the new baby close too. Instead, we’ll send tangible love and sunny beach afternoons in solid form.

The camper is dark.

It’s been transformed into a spaceship and we’re worrying about the radiation levels being dangerously high as we move toward the derelict ship orbiting Saturn’s moon and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010 comes to live in the Kiwi darkness. Daddy has been speaking to the children about camper life as it relates to astronaut life: considering all uses of power carefully, paring down unnecessary waste and movement, paying attention to keeping all potential projectiles tied down and put away. Today, as we prepared to take on provisions he made the kids giggle by yelling into the belly of the vehicle, “Open the pod bay doors, Hal!”

We may not know where we are in the universe, but at least we know where we’re going: Next stop, Wellington!