Category: Life

I love everything Oliver Burkeman writes. From his books (Help, Power of Negative Thinking,
Antidote and Four Thousand Weeks) to his articles in The Guardian and his not-so-regular newsletter aptly titled “The Imperfectionist.”

I particularly like his quote about making choices.

“When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness. We are terrible at predicting what will make us happy. The question quickly gets bogged down to our narrow preference for security and control. Enlargement question elicit for a deeper intuitive response.”

This is something I have done time and time again, chose ‘growth’ over ‘complacency.’

This is the reason I have chosen his quote to get back into writing on LinkedIn again. I am challenging myself to write and draw 100 insights with a splash of humor.

“My mother tried to kill me when I was in her womb.” revealed the red-haired woman in checkered multi-colored fleece jacket.

The year was 2005. I had joined the life-story writing group run by a local writer. Each week we were writing a story from our life. This week’s topic was “a most striking memory from your childhood.”

Aida (not her real name) wrote that her mother wanted to get rid of her even before she was born.

She was made to feel unwanted in lots of little ways. She never had new clothes, only the hand-me-downs from her siblings.

She was not allowed have bath first, only in the used water after her siblings had theirs. 

She was not sent to the private school like her siblings did, only to the public school.

Her mother made it clear since she was a child she was an unwanted child and called her “a failed abortion.”

Aida was born in Scotland to an alcoholic father and a stern mother. To date, she didn’t know why her mother didn’t want her. If her mother was a loving lady, one could assume that she wanted to spare her the beatings from her father. But she wasn’t. So Aida had to bear both — her father’s beating and her mother’s hatred.

All through her childhood, she tried to stay out of the house as much as possible, often eating at neighbors’ places. 

She learned to stay content with whatever little affection she got from her maternal grandmother, who was a much nicer human being than her mother. 

Since she didn’t have any toys of her own, from a very early age, Aida learned to amuse herself with the things other people discarded. The habit continued all through her life. She would often pick up discarded grocery lists from supermarkets and bring them to the writing sessions. “Have a look at this; why would you need three types of shampoos.” She would chuckle. 

After the Life Story Writing course, we all kept meeting in my home for the next 15 years, writing stories from our lives. It was then I had the opportunity to learn a lot more about her.

She was a teacher in her early life. Later she went to nursing college and became a nurse. The kind of nurse you would want on duty if you happen to be a patient. She did what was right by the patient, not what the book said or the young inexperienced doctors told her. 

God has given Aida more empathy than any other human being. Maybe that’s why she picked the kind of husbands she did. You know the ones who need “fixing.” Her first husband was a psychopath; she though she could change him with her love.

She couldn’t. He threatened to kill her and their three children. Aida migrated to Australia to escape from him. He followed her even though they were divorced. Her children were so traumatized that they all died in their fifties.

Aida lost all three of them within five years. She endured the pain of burying a child three times over. 

She married the second time and picked a man who has Asperger Syndrome. He is a seventy-year old child who can’t feel any emotions. 

Yet she keeps going. “I have decided to let life take its course,” she told me the other day on the phone. 

Each Monday, I ring her to check on her and send her food. We play a little word game where I ask her, “How are you?” 

And she responds, “Parts of me are okay.”

“Which part?” I would ask.

“Oh, my eyelashes and my toenails.” 

And I would laugh. Aida has advanced arthritis. He can’t even lie on the bed and sleeps sitting on a special chair. 

“How are you today, Aida.”

“Still present.”

“What’s special?” I asked her yesterday.

“Well, today is my birthday. I am 85 years old.”

“Happy birthday, dear friend.”

So much for a failed abortion, I thought. Both her mother and father diedd a long time ago, her psychopath husband long gone, even her traumatized children relieved from their ongoing suffering, Aida is still present.

Here is one of her poems which she wrote in one of the writing sessions in my home:

Her life was not her own since when 
She kitted fine but catty then. 
Next, she became his own wee hen 
A foxy lady by some men. 
A bitch as well as least by ten 
Hang on, my story you can’t tell,
I need to set things straight & yell
‘I’m too hot to handle!
Hot as hell!’
I set men on fire, might as well.

Life seems pleasant for a time,
Fair, fat and forty well 39′
Children grew up, the world sublime
And then all hell makes a paradigm
Shift, and I hear the new dictate.
‘Change, change, change you can’t escape.’

And I’m now a slave to this new estate.
I’ve become a dragon that men hate.
A dragon of a brilliant red,
Of fiery breath, it has been said.
I flash my tongue
‘You are so lazy,’ ‘Get out of bed’
Dragons don’t tolerate
Lids off toothpaste, and they hate
Toilet seat up, wet marks on floor
Near the toilet, they abhor
Hair in the bathroom sink for sure
And underpants left on 
you know where you lazy sod
Don’t sit in your chair like an ancient God

I’ve grown and changed, and now I’m done
Mother Nature you have had your fun
Leave me and my poor body alone.
Leave me at peace in my own wee home.

©Aida June 2014

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For the last five days, my house was a whirlwind of excitement. My older daughter was visiting the UK after two whole years of lockdowns and travel bans. Younger daughter came too, from Melbourne, along with her husband, and for five days, I became the mother I used to be before they left home.

This afternoon when they left, once again I was left with the empty house, a lot of mess, and the sound of their laughter still echoing in my ears.

Where have the thirty years of my life have gone? I still remember when we brought the first one home from the hospital. Overnight our life changed. My husband and I left the country of our birth and have been living in Australia for more than five years. All this time we have been saying, we will go back to India. Even after five years, (ten years in my husband’s case) we didn’t feel connected to the country we were calling our home.

It changed within months. 

Suddenly we had so many memories attached to the place. The hospital where our first daughter was born. The two-bedroom apartment we brought her in. Our first owned home, where we moved two months later. The child-care and kindergarten she went to.

The second daughter arrived three years later, and we developed roots in our adopted country. 

I stopped talking about going back; instead, our family migrated to Australia. First, my husband’s parents came, followed by his brother and family. Then came my parents and my brother and his family.

No longer we felt alone in a country where we couldn’t even get Indian groceries in the eighties. Our children gave us the reason to settle down and enjoy life.

For the past thirty years, I have been a busy mother, a devoted daughter-in-law, and a patient wife. My husband and I have built a home that always has an open door for family and friends. 

I didn’t cry; when my daughters left this afternoon. Neither did I try to clean the mess they had left behind. Instead, I had a nap to allow my sixty-year-old body to recuperate from all the excitement it had in the last five days. Then slowly, I went from room to room to inhale the scent my kids left behind.

My home is empty again. Not only my home but most of our friends’ homes too. Houses that were once bustling with young children, their friends, birthday parties, sleep-overs, and video games and music have just two or three people living in them.

The house has gone quiet again. My husband has gone back to his computer and my father-in-law to the TV. I came to the kitchen to prepare dinner but realized that the fridge was full of leftovers that would last us for at least a couple of days. So there is nothing else to do but catch up with emails, Whatsapp messages, LinkedIn posts, and Medium articles.

An hour later, I realized what excellent role technology is playing in the lives of empty-nesters. Was it not for writing on Medium, I would have gone mad during the 24 grueling months of lockdowns and isolations?

And now, when the children are exploring the world and living their own lives, I am leaning more towards my online friends for social connection.

It was nice to know that my online friends on the other end of the world are patiently waiting for me to embrace me back into their circle as soon as I was ready.

The first article I read on Medium was from Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi where she told a story to illustrate that we can have meaningful connections online.

A friend, who I don’t know in real life and lives on the opposite side of the globe, checked in with me every week post my surgery. He didn’t have to. There was nothing he got out of it. He didn’t upsell me into buying anything.

He just did because he wanted to.

At the time of typing this, his son is in the hospital and I’m unable to reach him for three days. I don’t even have his number, because we’ve only communicated via DMs.

I don’t have to worry. I’ll probably never even meet him.

But I’m human, and I do. And that’s the connection you should strive to achieve.

People who I call ‘friends’ didn’t check up on me. Gym buddies who live 5 minutes away didn’t text me, leave alone meet me. But this person did. And for that, I’ll always hold him highly in my heart. — Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi

“We are humans,” she wrote, “and human stories get us together.”

“See, humans connect with each other on the simple things in life.” she wrote. 

It was as if she was talking to me directly. Never before had I shared my family life on the internet, and she was urging me to do exactly that.

I know there are many empty-nesters in the Medium community. They can understand what I am going through. I already feel better, having written what I am going through. 

With the help of technology, I am connected to countless people all across the world. Without them and my writing, I might have drowned in self-pity and loneliness.

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“Where are you going?” My husband asks before I leave the house on a lazy afternoon during the Christmas shutdown.

“I don’t know. Somewhere.” I step out of the door, still unsure where I was heading, then, as an afterthought, added, “Probably will go and sit under a tree.”

I walk off with car keys and a water bottle. This year we had decided to stay at home during Christmas break and do nothing. Five days of doing nothing and I have had my fill of doing nothing. I needed to get out of the house.

But where? I sit in the car and wonder. Other than shopping centers and tourist attractions, there are very few places to hang out. I want to go somewhere quiet. Somewhere where I can be alone. I let the car take me where it wants and before I knew it, I was on the Redhill.

The car park at the top of the hill has only a few cars. That is encouraging. I get out and take a walk around the building at the top. It is a restaurant but closed for Christmas break. I have been to the Redhill before, mainly with visitors, to show them a bird’s eye view of Canberra. But never took a walk around the hill.

At the restaurant’s back, a bit away from the road, there is a BBQ table. It is empty. I sit there and take a deep breath. The view before me is sublime and serene.

The suburb of Redhill is spread in front of me, covered with mature trees in varying shades of green, interrupted here and there with rooftops. The Redhill primary school and Canberra Grammar are peering out through the dense eucalyptus trees.

At a distance, plains of Canberra airport, followed by vacant land divided at random with rows of pine trees. Low hills surround the valley marking the boundary of Canberra. Far away on the right, I can see houses of Queanbeyan, a town of New South Wales, considered almost a suburb of Canberra.

The afternoon breeze has its own sound and presence. It is hot and cold at the same time, bringing the aroma of local vegetation. It also brings the constant buzzing of the cars from the Hindmarsh Drive. It makes the pages of my notebook flutter and makes my pen and glasses fly away to the ground.

I have found the isolated spot, I tell myself. Who would come here in such a heat and during Christmas break? Half of Canberra has gone to the coast. The rest is in shopping centers.

But I am wrong.

A girl, wearing a striped t-shirt and pair of shorts with earphones in her ears and a water bottle in hand, climbs from the Mugga Lane side of the hill. Moments later, a family of four comes from the other side. The dad is carrying the younger boy on his shoulders while the daughter is walking with the mum.

Another man approaches from left, panting and sweating, in a white t-shirt and a blue cap. He crosses the family, exchanges greetings, and keeps going down the same way as the family.

Near the bench where I am sitting, bull ants patrol around the mount they have created by digging the soil. A bird calls somewhere from a tree. A fly is following me, buzzing annoyingly.

I get up to take a walk along the perimeter around the top. The rock sticking out from the ground has many black and white layers showing a formation geologists talk about. A bush of massive Aloe Vera, pine trees, several varieties of eucalyptus, and many more natural bushes.

Footsteps behind me are crushing the gravel. Somewhere down the hill, someone is playing cricket. I can hear the bat striking the ball. There is a big rattling sound at a distance, like metal sheets unloading from a truck. I wonder how clearly the sound traveled with the wind. I can hear things from miles away.

A signboard tells me how Redhill got its name. Red Bottle Brush was planted here due to Walter Burley Griffin’s interest in color in the landscape. In 1916, the designer of Canberra, Burley Griffin, directed that the hills around Canberra should be replanted according to the mass color scheme — yellow flowers and foliage for Mt Ainslie, pink for Black Mountain, white for Mount Mugga Mugga, and you guessed it red for Redhill.

Redhill was the first hill subjected to the experiment. It was planted with red Bottle Brush plants. It was hard to maintain such a vast area and weed out the other flowers. The experiment failed miserably.

In 1917 Mr. Griffin thankfully changed his mind and urged that the Canberra hills be restored to their natural state.

Different birds are calling from around the trees. I hear a peculiar sound from the bush in front of me, like a newborn baby. I can’t find the bird, though. I hear a Kookaburra and I spot it. It flies in from the left and lands on the top branch of the gum tree. It lets out few more cries, announcing its presence. I see a flash of red between the gum leaves; moments later, it changes its position and becomes clearer. It’s a Red Wattlebird.

A butterfly swirl pass. I follow her with my gaze and notice there is another near the metal fence.

I hear two sets of footsteps behind me. A young boy of late teens and a slightly older girl walk past me. They are deep in discussion.

“Love is crazy, dude!” Boy in a black t-shirt and blue jeans declares.

“Love is good. Love is nice.” Says the girl with a canvass bag on her shoulder and a water bottle in hand.

“Love is crazy and good!” The boy says thoughtfully and the girl laughs.

“Maybe.” She responds.

Suddenly it all makes sense — nature, the wind, the trees, the birds, the people. I touch my lips with my tongue. They are dry with heat and wind. I drink some water and crave tea. I am ready to go home now.

Dated: 29 December 2015.

I live in Canberra, which is the capital of Australia. It is known as the bush capital. It is a beautiful place. I will write more about it in the future.

Photo by Hugo Kneebone on Unsplash