I woke up on an island this morning, and while technically I do this every morning in Wellington (you know, living on the North Island/ Te Ika a Maui and all) waking up on Matiu/Somes is always a bit different. A bit more. I woke up to the sense that my previously warm side had been cooling a little, and realised my nephew Matiu had rolled closer to his Mum, who was closer to our Mum, who was closer to our Dad. Five mattresses were spread across the lounge floor of our iwi house and four people took up three mattresses while the fifth (me) was on the fifth. The uninhabited fourth mattress was what was letting the cold in.
There they were, chatting away, my immediate family: Dad, Mum, Megan, Matiu... Matiu started calling out to me "Auntie Lala! Aun-tie Laaaalaaaa!" and I rolled over towards them all, tangled up in blankets and pillows. We all lay there, chatting, and Matiu was in his element: he was surrounded for a rare moment by all four of us in one place at one time and he announced: "this is a cuddle train!" A cuddle train? He explained that we were all close to the person next to us, and this meant we had a row of people who were in a cuddle train. Proximity and connection. Warmth.
A cuddle train. These are the things I'll remember when I'm in Toronto. Not in order to make myself sad, but to keep myself warm.
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