\u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d I said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t see.\u201d<\/p>\n
She gave a small, kind smile \u2013 that quiet Kiwi kind of smile that forgives before you ask.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not your fault, love,\u201d she said softly. \u201cThe cat shouldn\u2019t have crossed the road without looking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her voice wavered, but there was no anger \u2013 just grace. We\u2019d interrupted her afternoon, yet she was the one comforting us.<\/p>\n
After a moment, she turned back toward the house, walking slowly behind the fence where her son had gone. Before disappearing from view, she lifted a hand \u2013 a small wave that somehow felt like goodbye.<\/p>\n
For a while, no one spoke. A t\u016b\u012b started up again, the breeze moved softly through the trees, and a thin veil of geothermal steam rose from a drain, catching the sunlight before it faded away.<\/p>\n
We eventually walked back to the car, both quiet. The road shimmered behind us, and life went on \u2013 as it always does.<\/p>\n
That evening, the sunset over the lake glowed the same soft golden as the cat\u2019s fur. I could still hear the woman\u2019s voice \u2013 gentle, forgiving, impossibly kind.<\/p>\n
Whenever I pass that same street now, I find myself slowing down \u2013 almost without realising it. There are new houses and tidier gardens, but the memory of that ginger cat \u2013 once loved, once home somewhere \u2013 always returns, along with the image of the woman who forgave two strangers on a quiet summer afternoon.<\/p>\n
As I move through this town I call home, with the warm air rising in gentle steam, I often think back to that day \u2013 how kindness can appear in the unlikeliest moments, soft but steady, like breath returning after sorrow. It doesn\u2019t take away the loss, but it changes its shape, turning hurt into something gentler, something that stays. Like the mist that drifts through Rotorua, forgiveness has no sound, yet it lingers in the air \u2013 quietly, completely, as if it had always been there.<\/p>\n
Rotorua\u2019s Lifang Chen shares her experience as a Chinese New Zealander living here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d I said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t see.\u201d She gave a small, kind smile \u2013 that quiet Kiwi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4619,74,88986,88990,88988,9213,88985,2550,88984,88991,1345,88987,302,5511,13207,20261,6804,20829,37113,2225,130,111,139,11552,69,1118,90,5202,28142,6653,1327,88989,213,88992,7563,210,10419,1316,102,1965],"class_list":["post-128305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-act","tag-after","tag-afternoons","tag-bark","tag-cicadas","tag-dogs","tag-earlysummer","tag-even","tag-forgiveness","tag-hardly","tag-home","tag-hummed","tag-its","tag-just","tag-lake","tag-lazy","tag-light","tag-locals","tag-looked","tag-loss","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-notice","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-on","tag-part","tag-quiet","tag-reflects","tag-rotorua","tag-shimmered","tag-sports","tag-sulphur","tag-those","tag-through","tag-trees","tag-when","tag-with","tag-writer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}