A Homeschool Day

After our first training session with the swim team yesterday, this is what our Home School day looks like. What a shock to the boys' systems! Little to no activity for over a month, then WHAMMO, straight into training for an upcoming swim meet. They take their swimming very seriously here and the boys swam 4000 yards last night (that's nearly 3.7kms!). Not really a surprise that they're both shattered today.

Clicking my Ruby Slippers

Funny Go Home Welcome Mat (Photo credits: www.xpressmats.com)

Recently, I've read a few posts on home sickness and the malaise that seems to afflict more and more of us these days as we negotiate an increasingly smaller world and greater itinerancy. It seems serendipitous as I begin my own journey into new lands that these posts have popped up in such a timely fashion… but perhaps there was more design in their appearance than I'm allowing credit for. Or maybe it's like when you buy a new car - just before you buy it, you don't see a single one of the same make or model, but the second you drive your brand-spanking-new cool-mobile out of the dealership, the exact same make and model and colour are EVERYWHERE. Maybe seeing posts about home sickness and a sense of place/home has more to do with my own sensitivity to those feelings at the moment.

It's true that I'm struggling this week. The last few weeks haven't been as bad because there have been other distractions. Initially, we had just arrived and the shiny-newness of everything was charming. We approached everything with wide-eyed wonder and childish awe. LomL had leave and we traipsed about in a fog of jet-lag, insulated by a cloak of holiday-ness (that's the one you only wear on special occasions, the one that lets you feel like you can completely relax and let your guard down). We did holiday things, went to holiday places and LomL was excited about showing us all the attractions. Then he went back to work, and the boys and I were still in holiday mode. We didn't stress about school work, or even getting into a school, we didn't fight the fact that there was no routine, no plan for the day, we hadn't yet begun to flounder.

Towards the end of last week, it finally hit. That empty feeling in the pit of your stomach. The feeling that you're hovering, suspended, in limbo. You can't go back, and forward doesn't seem to have a clearly visible path.

Now you have to remember that I grew up in a migrant community in Australia. My parents arrived in Australia in their 40s and it was their fourth "permanent home". They'd spent the majority of their early years in India (yes, my mother was born in Burma and spent her early childhood there, but for the most part, she was in India and it's the place she still holds in her heart as home). They'd married in India, then set up house and had children in Singapore. Then there was the big move to Brunei, where they'd stayed for 15 years, where I was born, where they'd seen my siblings off to boarding school. That really had been the place, I think, that they'd settled in. I've never asked them, but I suspect that Brunei had been the place they had come to believe they would always stay. They had spent so many years making a home and a community there, they had become involved in community life and had strong friendships. So the move to Australia, after being so well established, to start home, hearth and community again in their 40s, was not easy. I lived that life in full Technicolour, Dolby Digital surround sound. Their sense of never fully settling permeating everything. Their longing for "home" but never really knowing where that might be, seeping into every aspect of our daily lives. I still maintain that's what gave me the itchy feet, the longing to travel that I have to this day.

The only time I ever saw them completely relaxed, completely "at home" was when they were in their own mothers' homes or their siblings' homes. There, when everyone reverted to the roles they had established in childhood, my parents became themselves. My father was the eldest brother, waited on by his sisters, teasing and laughing with his brothers. My mother, the respected sister-in-law in my father's family, was quickly dragged into the kitchen or asked for advice. In my maternal grandmother's home, the roles were similar. My mother reverted to the child she had been and I caught glimpses of her as a teenage girl, giggling and sharing secrets with her sister, adoring her mother. My father in that house, became the man of the house. He was the one my grandmother insisted be consulted over every decision, usually to the exasperation of my Aunt, who was the primary bread-winner of the household and was used to making all the decisions during the remainder of the year. Her nose would get regularly out of joint when my father arrived on holidays. It must have been so frustrating and demeaning for her. She earned the money to keep the house running, she made all the decisions when we weren't there, she had to deal with all the things that went wrong on a daily basis, yet my father would sweep in and my grandmother would turn to him for advice. He didn't do it purposefully or to slight her. It was just the way those relationships worked. They could all have been more graceful and gracious in hindsight. But hindsight is blindingly clear and free of emotions that plague the moment being lived.

So having experienced a childhood in a migrant community, where all around me were adults coming to terms with their feelings of displacement, their changing worlds, you'd think it would be easier for me as I go through a similar transition. I suppose the one advantage I have is that I know with unwavering certainty that the "home" I long for no longer exists. It has changed. Even in this short time, it has become a different landscape. I saw it with my parents. They would travel annually to India, expecting the idealised place of their childhoods, expecting that people would be the same, have the same reactions, speak in the same ways, offer the same respect. They would be annually disappointed, and strangely, a little surprised. They would return to Australia, griping about the changes, the way people spoke, the way the young dressed, the changes they couldn't reconcile, but still feeling out-of-place in Perth.

They became a cornerstone of their migrant community in Perth, more displaced people looking for a sense of belonging, a sense of family and community. This community I grew up in left me confused about identity. I didn't feel the same sense of displacement as they did. I didn't feel the same loyalties to India or an idealised life there, as they did (I suspect no-one of my generation felt that either). But equally, I didn't feel truly Australian either. I just felt different. Different to the first generation migrants I was surrounded by, and different to my Australian friends. I believe that nobody feels that sense of national identity in the core of their being until they have left the country. I know that the times when I have felt most Australian, most like I belonged, are the times when I have been away from Australia, on holidays, or now in establishing a new home. Those are the times when I have reverted to familiar stereotypes of Australian-ness, my accent growing stronger, my use of idioms growing more frequent.

But knowing that everything has changed in the place I once called home, doesn't make it easier to separate myself from it. It does spur me on to create a new sense of home here and that's a promising start. In the interim, however, it's still a matter of dealing with feelings of being adrift, harbourless and a little tossed about on unfamiliar waters, no land in sight yet, forging forward, heart in mouth and resolve firmly in hand.

Just Another Brick (in the) Wall

Old school books (Photo credit: justmakeit)

So, we've been in Houston now for one month and life is slowly starting to take shape. The house thing seems to be working out and stars are pleasantly aligning. The school thing is slightly more problematic and I'm going to have to bite the bullet soon and make a commitment to home schooling. So what's my resistance? For B1, it's chemistry. Seems like a small thing huh? Nothing too dramatic, something that could be easily negotiated. But it's my sticking-point. How do I go about accessing chemicals? How do I set up a functioning lab? How do I break him into a local school for chemistry classes? And the worst part is that I'm suffering a migraine today, so it's all just that little bit too hard, little bit overwhelming.

But that's not the only thing holding me back. In the state of Texas, home schooling is an interesting adventure. There is no registration and no accreditation. Home schooling is considered in the same vein (legally) as private schooling, and in Texas that means you can pretty well do anything you like, including nothing at all. There is no monitoring, no moderating and no registration of home schoolers. If I wanted to fill the school days with making balloon animals, that would be ok by the state. Now I know what you're shouting: but you would never do that! You'd have a riot on your hands from the kids! Both you and the boys would be bored senseless in seconds!! Yes. You're right on all counts, but here's my point, that's the home school community I'm working in; unregulated, unmonitored and in the most part unqualified. The majority of people in Texas who are home schooling are doing so for religious reasons - because the school system isn't providing enough (or orthodox enough) Christian education for their children. That's not our primary reason for home schooling. It's not even waaaaaayyyy down the bottom of our list of reasons. It doesn't even make the list.

 So? I hear you ask. Well, it raises the issue of who my children would socialise with. I don't want to isolate them here. That defeats the purpose of bringing them all the way here. I want them to make friends and build a community. But if the community of other home schoolers has almost nothing in common with us, how do I effect those friendships?

Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic at the moment. Perhaps that's a reflection of my own lack of community here. It's hard to make bold moves like home schooling when you have no social support systems, no clue of curriculum and little idea of where to obtain resources… and you have an impatient personality. I have always been the kind of person who has an idea and wants to effect it IMMEDIATELY. The notion of slowing the pace down is an anathema.

For now, we wait to hear … and my nails get chewed to the quick… and my migraine gets worse...

First Impressions: Food Labelling and Ingredients

It's our second day in Houston and I'm trying to be vigilant about making observations about our new home. My love for food and all things foodie is well known by now. Ok, so it borders on obsession, but hey, everybody's gotta have a hobby. So it's no surprise that one of the first points of difference I notice between Houston and Perth is the food.

Yes, it's true that food is generally cheaper in Houston; both restaurant food and fresh food/provisions. If you think about it, that's not surprising. Perth is isolated. Remote even by Australian standards. The capital city of a state that's 3.63 times the size of Texas, but containing a population of just less than 2.5 million people (with about 1.8 million of those people living in Perth and its surrounding suburbs). It's big in terms of land mass, but teeny tiny by world population statistics. And it's far far away. There's a distance of 3301km (2051mi) between Perth and Sydney. That's a long way to transport goods. Add on the comparatively high labour costs in Australia (I'm not griping about the wonderful wage structure negotiated over time by unions, or the taxation system that allows those in need to continue to subsist in something approximating adequacy, but it's a fact that it adds to the general costs of living), and you have high prices generally, with particularly high prices in Perth. But I digress. This isn't meant to be a comparison of the socio-economic structures of Houston and Perth. It's about food.

We hear media reports on a reasonably regular basis about the quantity of additives and preservatives in food in the US, and of the rates of morbid obesity. Watch Dr Oz or The Doctors for more than 5 minutes and there's bound to be some discussion on the unnaturally high levels of chemicals in food, the increasing weight of the populace and how Americans should all be turning towards whole foods or raw foods. It's easy to sit in Australia and think we have it better, our food is higher quality, with fewer additives. It's easy also to assume that if you move to the US, you will have limited (or no) choices about what kind of food you can buy. This impression is exacerbated by shows like Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. And I'm certainly guilty of thinking all of those things: the US population is generally fatter, the food choices are limited and there's little or no access to good quality, organic fresh foods. So imagine my surprise (and delight) when I discovered that that's simply not true... well, not true in Houston anyway.

There are plenty of good food alternatives. There are large (warehouse sized) stores that house fresh food markets - Central Markets, Whole Foods Markets, HEB and Trader Joe's for a start. There are also plenty of what we in Australia would consider supermarkets - Kroger's and Randall's come to mind. Yesterday I stopped in at a Kroger's for some ingredients for dinner. This is a store that's about the size of a Woolies or a Coles, but it's the Houston equivalent of a small suburban IGA. Even here, the choices were astonishing. There must have been 25 different varieties of plain/all purpose flour on the shelf. And here's the important part. Each one of those packets of flour was clearly labelled with the ingredients and processing of that flour. You know immediately what grain the flour is made from, what other ingredients have been added to the flour and whether or not the flour has been bleached. You know from the labelling on the packet. That's not so in Australia. Some packages have labelling, others don't. Most have labelling that requires you to spend 40 minutes reading packages before making a choice and some require a higher degree in chemistry to decipher the baffling ingredients.

So, this is what I've found. Yes, there's a lot of talk in the US about the ingredients in food. Yes, there's a problem with increasing weight and morbidity as a result. Yes, we all need to be more attentive to what we're shovelling in our mouths. No, things are not better in Australia; food labelling is not clearer (actually it's more obfuscated and confusing) and choices are actually more limited. If carbon miles are something you consider when buying food (as I do), then you're more able to make informed decisions in Houston than in Perth. Not all supermarkets in Perth label where food is sourced from, or whether it's organic (as confusing as that term is - I mean really, the debate that rages over what constitutes organic is migraine-inducing).

Perhaps there is more to be concerned about in the US. Or perhaps there's more concern because there's more information already available from which to make a comparison. I'm not sure yet, but it does bring another perspective to the argument.

Bidding Farewell to our Home

Our household contents have finally been packed up and removed. I watched the last of the boxes be loaded onto the truck, ready for shipping to the other side of the world. And it felt ok. The emptiness of the house didn’t really strike me. There was still so much to do. The mess left behind still needed to be dealt with. Besides, we’d recently had all the carpets in the house replaced, so it had been emptied of its contents just a short while ago. This didn’t feel any different.

B2 and I got to scrubbing while B1 was spending the day with a friend. We vacuumed, we cleaned cupboards, we cleaned bathrooms, we dusted, we picked up all the last bits of rubbish. Then B1 arrived and helped with the last few things. When we were done, I went from room to room, closing blinds and doors and saying goodbye to this home. I hadn’t expected the wracking sobs building from my gut, or the fat wet tears streaming down my cheeks. They took me somewhat by surprise. I thought I had rationalised it. After all, it is just a house. A building. A place to stop and rest. Why this sudden emotion?

B1 came in to find me in the kitchen, patting the countertops and sobbing. He hugged me, asked me why I was crying and said “but it’s just a house”. That’s when I was able to articulate what I was thinking and feeling. This was not just a house. This was the first home that LomL and I had ever owned. It was the home where both my children lost their first teeth. It was the home from which I sent them off to their first day at school. It was the home in which I home schooled them. It was the home from which they started at their new school, the one in which they had both been so happy. This was the home in which magic had been woven and letters from the Toothfairy, the Easter Bunny and Bilby and Santa had been received. It was the home where both children learned to ride their bikes, fell, grazed knees/arms/faces. It was the home where they learned to be pirates and climb trees and make fortresses out of branches. This was the home where a hundred parties were thrown, a thousand arguments were had, a million meals had been cooked. This was the home that both LomL and I had celebrated our 40^th birthdays in, where both the boys had achieved double-digit birthdays. This was the home from which both LomL and I had completed yet another tertiary qualification. This was where new friendships had been made and old ones renewed - friendships that transcend time and continent.

This home had housed us, the dog, chickens, geese, goldfish, rabbits, guinea pigs, frogs, bobtails, monitor lizards, gallahs, corellas, black cockatoos, herons, wattle birds, magpies, 28s, red-caps, splendid wrens, bronze-winged pigeons, tawny frogmouths, kookaburras, geckos, spiders and the various “pet” insects the children captured. This was the home in which I learnt so much about Australian indigenous flora and fauna and ecology. This was the home where we truly established ourselves as a family. And cleaning her felt like performing the last rites. It was my gift to her for having housed us so well, for having allowed us to grow. It felt very like my final gift.

 

Oh, I’ll go back before we leave the country. There are still things to be done. But last night was my farewell to her. I leave her with wonderful memories and immense gratitude for our time there.

I knew him

Penny (Australian) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Old Harry lived in a house near the end of the car park of the doctor’s surgery two doors up from our house. I don’t remember anymore what his surname was. But he was old. We moved to the suburb when I was 7, and Old Harry was already a shuffling old man, perpetually in his chequered house coat and slippers, suffused with the smell of old age. You know that smell. Dead skin cells and unwashed hair. It defines old age. As a child, my nose seemed particularly attuned to it. Like a bloodhound, I could smell when Old Harry was near. My nostrils would prickle and I would curl my nose and top lip with the pungency of it. Recently, I noticed my own hair has begun to emit the same odour. But I digress.

Harry was a friendly and lonely man. His only son had attained some prominence as a minor politician and was busy making a life for himself with his own family. I know so little about Harry. Children are rarely privy to the mysteries of old age, and it had never occurred to me to ask him what had happened to his wife. The egocentric world of childhood doesn't encourage that kind of curiosity about people. Those questions are for the socially aware and curious middle-aged. They are the questions I would ask him now.

Back then, I was content to know that Old Harry was the friendly old man who would periodically shuffle across the blistering heat of the bitumen car park to our back door. That was enough for me. That and the fact that he called the neighbour who lived behind us “Girl Gallagher”, despite the fact that she must have been well into her 50s or 60s by that stage. Mrs Gallagher was also on her own and had spent most of her life in that suburb. She may well have spent most of it in that house. I don’t remember any more. Old Harry remembered her as the child she must once have been and insisted on referring to her as a girl. I recall hearing him talk for the first time of “Girl Gallagher” and the sense of shock as I realised who he was talking about. For a 7 year old, a woman in her 50s or 60s is as far removed from girlhood as the Earth from the Sun.

Harry would wrap his dirty chenille housecoat around him, slip his house slippers on his feet and amble painfully over to our back door step. He would wait at the bottom of the steps that led to our back door till he could see someone moving around inside. Our back door would invariably be open. This was in the days before home invasions and burglaries. It was a more innocent time when doors were rarely closed, let alone locked, cars were never locked and you knew everyone in the street. It was a time when children played in the dirt lane way till they were tired and hungry, then landed at any one of the houses in the neighbourhood for a glass of milk and some afternoon tea. It was a time when the two old ladies who shared a house at the end of the lane way, whose children were married to each other, would take in playing children to feed them cake, teach them a little piano and send them home with armfuls of silver beet.

Old Harry would wait patiently at the bottom step, regardless of the weather, until he saw or sensed movement from the dark, cool recesses of our home. Then shyly, quietly he would call out till one of us came to the door to chat with him. He would keep us talking until politeness kicked in and we invited him in for tea. He would drink his tea with relish, but it was never the tea he came for. Harry was seeking company. I imagine now, though I couldn't then, that he had reached the age when partners die, children move on with their own lives, friends of the same age have moved away or shuffled off this mortal coil and the neighbourhood he knew had changed so radically that it was no longer recognisable.

Looking back on that time, I see how remarkable Harry was. A man who had lived his life in the same suburb, who had seen the deprivations and loss of war, who had known only a white, middle-class society would seek out our company. How strange we must have seemed to him. The smells of unfamiliar spices emanating from our house, the flavours of foreign sweetmeats and savoury treats served with tea, the sounds of ghazals and hindi movie music pouring from the record player, the sight of my mother swathed in her sari or my father pottering around in a lungi. All so removed from anything he could previously have experienced. Yet Harry would settle himself into a seat at our kitchen table, nurse his tea and seem content with simply being surrounded by the noise and bustle of our family. I am grateful to have known him. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to reflect on Old Harry and his quirkiness.

Exhaustion

Exhausted. Just exhausted. The morning was characterised by some phenomenal dream that had me thrashing about. I have no memory of the dream itself, but did wake to find my pillows perpendicular to each other and items from my bedside table flung unceremoniously across the floor. I wonder what it was that had me so agitated?

I went to bed irritated and don't doubt for a second that that was what triggered the dreams, but the actual content of the dreams completely eludes me. Whatever it was, it had me flailing like I was fending off some monstrous beast.

Sleep has once again become an issue. It had been controlled for a while with the advent of regular swimming, but it's been nearly two weeks since I last swam any laps and I'm climbing the walls. Motivation is hard to find and lethargy curls its sinewy fingers throughout the day. My eyelids grow heavy and my brain grows dull. I hear the buzzing return of tinnitus and know that there's some low-level infection working its sinister magic on my immune system.

It's a vicious cycle this exercise and sleep business. I exercise, I sleep well and wake with energy. I don't exercise, I sleep poorly and fitfully and wake exhausted to my very bones, unable to muster enough interest or ability to complete even simple tasks.

My day has consisted of completing online forms and sending emails. Another contributing factor to the lethargy. Instead of revitalising me, it has made me long to curl up and sleep. My head feels filled with cotton wool and I cannot wade through the viscosity of it. I know there are tasks to complete, but have no will to summon. I suspect the weighty burden of all that needs to be done is also adding to my paralysis. I find myself near catatonia every time I consider the enormity of what remains to be done.

I'm sure there's a solution. I daresay it's a simple one - perhaps a reversion to my trusty lists is what will snap me out of this. The cotton wool in my head makes thinking clearly seem like trying to swim my way through a swimming pool filled with treacle. Every time I think I'm making progress, the sticky, gooey morass of impending deadlines and tasks yet to be done drag me inexorably to the bottom.

Still, to quote my favourite southern belle, "tomorrow is another day".

First Encounters

So here we are on our orientation trip to Houston, preparing for the big move over at the end of the year. We have a one week orientation to the city and surrounds and it's our opportunity to see if this is really something we could do.

We had always talked about living outside of Australia at some point in our lives, preferably while the children were still young and able to make the transition relatively easily. Over the last 10 years or so, we have considered and rejected many possibilities for overseas postings. LomL works in the petroleum industry and that pretty much limits the number of fun places we're ever likely to live in the world through his work.

A few job offers have come up for Mauritania. Ones we did seriously consider for a minute, but the thought of living 24/7 in a gated, barbed-wire, electric-fenced community and taking the kids to school with an armed driver, really did very little for my peace of mind.

There were job offers for Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Both involved living in gated compounds and, for me, living a very restricted life. Singapore came up once or twice, but we couldn't see that the life would be better for us than what we had.

Eventually, we got to the point where we began to resign ourselves to a life lived in the same place. This may not seem a big deal to most people, in fact, I can see how it would be a comforting thought to many. The familiarity and comfort of all you know, all you have ever known surrounding you. The problem for us, however, is that we're essentially restless and adventurous souls. LomL came to the realisation the other day that this is the longest we've ever lived in one place since we've been married; 9 years. Recently, I had a very dear friend tell me I'd done a lot of brave things in my life. It has never felt like that. We've always just faced the challenges and lived our lives without consideration for how hard things were - without ever really considering that things were hard. I think that because of that, we've managed to have fun and make wonderful friends in some of the most unlikely places.

Still, after 9 years in the same place, doing pretty much the same things (with a little overseas travel thrown in), one does tend to become rooted to the spot. I don't know whether familiarity breeds contempt, but in my case, it has certainly bred complacency. One does tend to give greater importance to petty worries and irritations than they deserve, because life is overwhelmingly carefree. What that parent said at the last school event suddenly gains far more importance and weighting than it should in my mind. I worry over what this person thinks, how that one was affected by my words or actions, I worry about whether I'm advocating enough or too much for the children at school. I worry about minor, silly things that deserve no time or space in my consciousness, because, frankly there are no big worries. We are surrounded by family, by friends, by support systems and by unnervingly familiar ways of working and living. I find myself growing roots out of my toes to the place we live, the places we shop, the places we visit. I appreciate less what's around me, and take for granted more all the advantages we have. I complain more. I become more scared of doing things and going places. And I become lazy about fighting those parts of my personality that I don't particularly like. There's no need. I have family that love me. I am surrounded by a wonderful network of friends that love me. Why change? Why even be pleasant or make an effort?

While my initial reaction to the prospect of moving permanently to another country was fright and anxiety, it really didn't take much thinking to know it was the right thing to do for us. The children are both young enough not to be adversely affected by the change and old enough to be excited by the prospects of a new adventure. LomL is going to a new, more exciting job that has effectively been created with him in mind. And I, I am going to a new place. A new house, a new community, a new way of living. I don't have to worry about learning a new language or be super cautious of cultural sensitivities. I do have to learn a new way of thinking about distances and temperatures and other measurements. All in all, there's some new stuff to learn, but quite a lot of what awaits is familiar. But the best bit of all? It's a huge opportunity to reawaken my adventurous spirit, dust off some cobwebs and push myself to be less introverted and more social. That excites me.

Another day in Paradise...

So, today I've escorted a random, but super friendly, neighbourhood dog off the property, only to then  break up the ensuing dog fight between random-dog, dog across the road and Shadow the wonder dog. Polly from across the road and Shadow both decided that random-dog had no business visiting us.

That was quickly followed up by having the drains professionally unblocked of tree roots... again... and now there's an unholy stink outside but I can't figure out whether it's from the drain-unblocking or the major road works going on. Oh yes, and we've had the window-shaking rumble of heavy machinery all day as the road we live on is systematically dug up and widened.

Now it's suddenly gone dark and cold and is pouring with rain, so all the washing I've done has to go in the dryer. Sigh. This is not quite how I envisaged spending school holidays.

"The time has come", the Walrus said...

My recent trip to India invoked a flurry of reminiscences. Memories of childhood days, passed idly in my own company, wandering through the ample gardens of my grandmother's home, talking to myself and creating games, visiting the cows or finding abandoned kittens and puppies come flooding easily to my mind. Delightful memories. Though at the time, I didn't see it in quite the same light. I remember the intense sense of loneliness and boredom. Being the youngest in that family was no fun. I listen now to the tales of childhood holidays that my siblings tell. Stories of times spent in the joyous company of cousins, uncles and aunts. Times when gangs of cousins would gather together and get up to no good. Times when the house was filled to bursting with family, laughter and noise...and the many arguments that ensued.

My cousin remembers a time when they all played cricket in the upstairs hall at the ancestral home. Inside. The hall was huge and when the families gathered, this was where the children would congregate to sleep, reacquaint themselves with each other, tell stories, gossip and play. I imagine the excitement. I can see the hall filled with them all, their younger selves. I hear their voices raised in argument, jokes and storytelling in a variety of languages. I hear the giggles and squeals as they delight in each others' company. But they are not my memories. Simply my imaginings of their memories.

My memories are quieter, lonelier. Perhaps even tinged with a little sadness. My memories are of wandering that very same hall on my own. Of the stillness and silence that surrounded me. Of feeling the presence of ghosts and spectres, but not fearing them. My memories are of dusty rooms filled with decaying mounted deer's heads, of oppressive heat in the middle of the day and a silent house as the adults all slept off their lunch. My memories are of sitting in the windowsill of the upstairs room, staring through the ornate wood-barred window and imaging a tale of a princess trapped in her tower. The silence broken only by the call of the postman, the dog barking or the cows lowing. In my memory, there was a permanent heaviness in the pit of my stomach. Nervousness? Loneliness? I don't know. But discomfort certainly. I remember every inch of that garden, of the house, because for me, that was my company. The garden became my magical forest. The place where a thousand adventures befell me. The house was my plaything. Immense and elusive, keeping her secrets well hidden, but tantalising me with the hint of a hidden secret if only I cared to look.

Tamarinds, Alor, Indonesia (Photo credit: GlobalCitizen01)

I remember the exquisite tang of tamarind plucked from the tree, tingling my tastebuds into life. Followed quickly by the sharp slap of fresh green peppercorns, snatched from the vines that entwined the tamarind trees. Saliva fills my mouth as I recall the sourness of the bilimby pulli stolen from the trees on my way to the outside bathroom. Even that bathroom evokes a great sense of joy in me. The time spent waiting in the kitchen with the servant as she boiled the water for my bath. Her remonstrations that I shouldn't touch the pot because I was just a child and I would burn myself. Watching her heft that heavy pot past the well to the bathroom, and then return to the well for cold water for me to mix with the hot to achieve the perfect temperature for my bath. I remember those bucket baths with great affection.

മലയാളം: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I remember also the servants who, with extraordinary patience and kindness, would incorporate me into their daily tasks. Each of them assigning me a job that they would oversee with great gentleness. I remember laying tamarind, chilli and pepper on great white sheets, weighed down in the corners by large stones, out in the bright hot sun to dry. I remember having to shoo the crows who would try their cunning best to steal the drying goods, and claiming a stalk of tamarind or pepper as my reward. I remember learning to light a fire with nothing more than the husk of a coconut and a long metal tube, of nursing those early flickering flames into a healthy fire. Of the smoke that would fill my eyes, nose and lungs. The ring of the servant's laughter as she guided my feeble efforts at fire-lighting.

I spent a long time in my life feeling sad that I had missed the joy of the company of my cousins. I felt somehow cheated of that companionship, that consolidation of our relationships. Now, I choose to see the great gifts I was given by those wonderful people who worked for my family. Their patience, their kindness, their love are what sustained me through many lonely days spent over many years of Christmas holidays. There was so much that I learnt from them. So much about the simple things in life. So much about hard work. And most importantly, so much about generosity of spirit and pure love. For that and for the many joyous days of my childhood, I hold them deeply in my heart with gratitude and thanks.

A Segue into Memories of Childhood

Seeing Dasamaama, memories came flooding back. This uncle, ever-present through my childhood visits to the ancestral home, and his sister were my saviours from boredom. They were the ones who would come home after a long day at work and insist on taking me away from a day spent in my own company wandering through the ample gardens, making up games as I went. Thinking of them evokes memories of orange ice-cream in a neat square on a saucer, a walk along the beach with roasted peanuts in a newspaper cone. The simple pleasures that defined the bulk of Christmas holidays of my childhood.

But he is old now. At 81 he's no longer fleet of foot, striding impatiently far ahead, dark skin gleaming and muscles rippling. Always lean, now he looks gaunt. My heart feels heavy. This may be my last goodbye with him and I don't feel ready to make it. Are we ever ready?

The first day passes in a haze of sweat and heat and bustling in the kitchen. Fish cutlets for dinner, a bridge too far for Dasamaama. His stomach can no longer cope with even that, let alone the scorching chillies of the past. A restless night, antacids the outcome. The second day was better. The opportunity to reminisce with him, to tell him of our potential futures. Not all our futures are rosy. Dire and depressing, hard to bear for the young, necessary to hear for the old.

Already the passing of his younger sister is playing on his mind. Now I have added to that with news of his even younger nephew. But we are old now, he and I. The days of my childhood exist only in my memory. As the song goes... those schoolgirl days, of telling tales and biting nails are gone. Childish thoughts evaporate like mist and we are forced to face the stark, grounded and cruel reality of our own mortality. With immense sadness, I sought his blessing and parted, perhaps for the last time.

The time has come,

For closing books and long last looks must end,

And as I leave,

I know that I am leaving my best friend,

A friend who taught me right from wrong,

And weak from strong,

That's a lot to learn,

What, what can I give you in return?

If you wanted the moon I would try to make a start,

But, I would rather you let me give my heart...

C is for ... Cardiac and for Cancer

Towards the end of 2011 events conspired and I was tested for my mettle. A number of trials appeared at once at my door and I had to find the reserves to cope and carry on. Just as I thought it was all over, my brother was suddenly and dramatically hospitalised. He's diabetic. He'd been managing this illness through diet and exercise and we'd all thought he had a handle on it. Even he thought so. But it is inherently human to become complacent, I think. Just as things begin to go well in our lives, we pay them less attention. And so it was with him. He paid less attention to what he was consuming, though still keeping a careful eye on his weight and continuing to exercise well. The result, however, was that he was whisked off to the emergency department suffering from congestive heart failure.

A dramatic, worrisome and tiring three weeks followed as he was treated and prepped for a quadruple bypass. My mother was teetering on the brink of going out of her mind with concern - seeing your child (whatever the age) in hospital, near death, is never an easy thing. As she said when told of his predicament, it was supposed to be her in hospital with her children hovering around the bedside not the other way around. We trouped through those weeks, emotions running high, energy running low. Visits to hospital blurred into one another and I fell into bed exhausted most nights. Coping with the sudden mortality of my brother, negotiating my own life around taking my mother to and from the hospital every day because I was concerned she shouldn't be driving in her emotional state, all took its toll. Eventually the surgery was conducted and he came through it. Not well. His recovery was slow. Much slower than it should have been. He spent longer than anticipated in the ICU. And he didn't bounce back to reasonable health as predicted. Instead he declined. He lost more weight, looked more frail and began to feel more despondent as his own mortality and the-things-not-done in his life came into stark reality. And we all became intimately, if unwillingly, familiar with medical euphemisms and language.

Shortly before Christmas he was hospitalised again. Nobody knew why he wasn't recovering on schedule and to the enormous credit of the doctors at that public hospital, they were not satisfied with simply letting him go home and cope. A litany of tests, and they truly were testing of him, were run. He was anaemic and nobody could work out why. There didn't appear to be any firm source of bleeding and every procedure to account for his blood counts came up negative. In the meantime, he became more and more frail and less and less hopeful. His talk soon turned to the possibility of no recovery, of leaving his family, his wife and young sons, without him. His mind went to dark places and struggled to see any light or hope.

Then Life played its trump card. He was diagnosed with cancer. Not any run-of-the-mill, relatively-easy-to-treat cancer, but a variety that was aggressive, insidious and rarely seen in this country. Again the various doctors swung into a flurry of action and he was quickly put onto surgical lists, treated as best as possible for his anaemia and readied for the inevitable extirpation of the tumour. Remember this is not ancient history. This is not told from the perspective of temporal distance. This is recent, nascent and unfolding. The day before his surgery, he sounded more calm, less breathless and better than he had for months. He was comparatively upbeat and appeared to have made a crucial decision in his own wellness. And I do mean "wellness" not illness or health. He underwent his surgery two days ago. Shortly after surgery, he was awake, sitting up, chatting and finally looking like he should have two months ago. He appears to have turned a corner. The road ahead on this particular journey is both long and arduous. Recovery will be slow and pot-holed, but his new-found positive attitude will, I believe, help to smooth the way.

I feel like I finally have back the brother I lost through life, circumstance and finally terrible, testing illness. I'm hopeful that he'll seize this opportunity at life and do all that he wants. And I'm intensely grateful for the lessons it has taught me.