About Sliding Down the Pohutukawa Root
by Kara Larson
27 pages
/ 11500 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-576-9, 1-60370-576-7
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Amiri is nervous enough about taking Graeme and his niece and nephew to his dad's place out in the country. He gets along with his dad, but he's not sure he wants to subject his lover and their fragile new kids to how he grew up. They go from the frying pan to the fire when they arrive in the country with the kids, the dog and a chicken, only to find Graeme's family there as well.
Between fighting with Graeme, trying to make his nephew understand how much he's loved, and his big, boisterous family, Amiri thinks he might just have a breakdown. Can he survive the trip back to his roots, or will Christmas be a disaster?
Sample
"We'll ride in the car when we get home, Uncle?" Lani asked for the twelfth time that morning. "How long does it take to get to Whangarei?"
"Three hours," Amiri answered patiently, even though they'd gotten out the maps last night and traced the route up to Whangarei Heads, to the old family farm. "We take the Northwestern Motorway…"
"To Helensville and Wellsford," she recited, bouncing from foot to foot and waving her hands in what Wiremu called her "happy flap." "Then we take SH 1 to Whangarei."
Amiri ruffled her soft black curls as they reached the Old Lady's drive. "If you knew all that, why did you ask me?" Logic and Lani didn't always go hand in hand, especially with the approach of a meltdown. She was mercurial, to say the least, not only struggling with trying to understand how the world worked, but how to voice how she felt about that. He knew it frustrated her, and he knew how bright she was. In the past year, she'd definitely started coming out of her shell, but there was still a long way to go.
Now Lani gave him the "Duh, Uncle" look, rolling her eyes with the patience of a teenager. He couldn't wait; those years were just around the corner. At least Wiremu would be out of the house by then.
Before she could answer, though, they both spotted Wiremu and Graeme waiting for them at the end of the gravel drive. "Wiremu!" she shrieked, flying toward her brother. "We're taking the Northwestern Motorway to SH 1, and we can't stop at the loo 'til Wellsford!"
"Best use the one here before we go," Wiremu said, ducking Lani's frantically waving hands and propelling her toward the front door of the Old Lady. "We're waiting on you."
Sure enough, the Ute was already packed to the gills. Graeme had strapped the double kayak to the rack and the third row of seats was already folded down to make room for the luggage and the chook's cage. Amiri's replacement, the locum doctor hired for his vacation at the surgery, was going to be staying in the Old Lady -- it saved the surgery the cost of putting the locum doctor up for two weeks -- and she refused to look after chickens.
"If I wanted the country doctor life, I'd locum somewhere out in the wops," she had said, voice full of disdain when Amiri mentioned the chicken situation.
So Dapple and Pepperpot were going with them on hols, all the way up to Whangarei Heads. One more reason why Amiri hadn't wanted to take Mr. Pony. His dad was going to laugh enough once he saw the contents of the Toyota Landcruiser. It was probably more 4x4 than they needed, but with Graeme's new interest in kayaking -- something both kids had taken a liking to -- and the need to haul bikes and a box of plastic ponies and chooks with them on holidays, it made sense. Especially since groceries for four -- even if one of them only ate beige food -- took up a lot more room than groceries for two.