Home Sweet Home.......

"The family - that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to."

-Dodie Smith

The plane touched ground and waltzed slowly on the runaway but my thoughts were already racing towards home. As it was way past the kids bedtime, I had made arrangements to be picked up from the airport by a friend. I arrived to a very silent house.....I unlocked the door and stepped inside and could feel my face muscles arranging themselves into a big grin at the thought of having arrived home finally. After living in closets the last 16 months ( ok :) that was an exaggeration....but what can one expect from university accomodation ), the mere fact that I can stretch my arms without bumping into any walls widened my grin further !!!!!

I raced to the bedroom and flung the door open to see the family blissfully sleeping. I tiptoed to my husband and nudged him awake.......I still could not stop smiling, I could not believe I had come home. After months of restlessness prior to going away, the periods of indecision, the time away, the hectic periods of study, home seemed a long way to where I had been. But not anymore......we hugged and kissed and I lunged forward to hold my still sleeping four year old in my arms. I could feel the tears tugging at the corner of my eyes.......all this time, what I had missed the most was hugging my kids. I could not wait to inhale the baby smell emanating from my son and when I heard his sleepy voice utter "amma" ( mom in our mother-tongue Tamil), the tears fell freely on my cheeks. I hugged him tight and showered him with kisses and guess I knew he was fully awake when he went on to ask me "what have you got me?"...........my little brat has been plaguing me with a long list of what he wanted ( which was mostly Ben10 variations) while I had been in Sweden and he could not wait to lay his hands on what mummy would have got him.

With him in my arms, I sat there gazing at my girl, still sleeping amidst the ruckus and the lights switched on. My seven year old sleeping beauty never ceases to amaze me. I guess most parents never fully get adjusted to see their babies grow up so quickly. I still remember holding her as a colicky and quite a high maintenance baby :) in fact I had named her mini "frowning glory", a title that I gladly passed on from my own college days. But seeing her now blossom into this lovely, charming and concerned individual makes me wonder if she really is my daughter and that no babies had been switched at the hospital :))

I had a very protective childhood with my parents hardly letting me out of their eyesight. Being their only child, I was always their utmost priority. However here I was going after my own career aspirations leaving my kids to fend for themselves.......guess this is something that I would never easily forgive myself for. I think they were very brave to be away from their mother at such a tender age and I hope in the coming years I will be able to make up for their lost time with me.

But for now, I am revelling in the warmth of their tiny bodies and forgetting my fears of the future, safe in the haven of their embrace.

Going Home...

"In the end, it's not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away."
- shing xiong

I am watching this glorious sunrise while flying over China. It would have been an unremarkable experience for any other person. But for me, who had spent the last few months cooped up in Umea, a small university town in northern Sweden, this is as good as it can get :) I believe in symbols and signs......what better than a sunrise to denote the new beginnings I was flying home to !!!

Let me introduce myself. I am 34 yrs old, of Indian origin who has spent the last decade making a home in Australia. I had been away from home the last 16 months on a pursuit of a remedy for my midlife crisis which is what I believe I went through :) I gave up a lucrative career of being a senior software engineer in order to pursue a Masters in Strategic Project Management in Europe. What some people would have called a self-absorbed, egocentric and perhaps irrational wild-goose chase, I believe this was something I had to do to comprehend what I really wanted in my life, for myself.

Like most other people with mortgages to pay and kids to raise, I had been getting out of bed the past twelve years and going to a job that was merely a job and not my vocation. Not that delving into project management would change things for me, but I believe somewhere when I took the decision to pursue this course, I also decided to change the status quo. I took the risk of giving up on good money and security and decided to invest in my dreams perhaps at the cost of my family's well-being but at the end of the day, what mattered was that I decided to take the first steps to change what was not working for me.

I had the blessings of my husband who by the way has always been enthusiastically canonized by my friends for the simple fact that he lives with me :) I owe him a lot for giving me the liberty and the much needed support to pursue my dreams. However I believe it was my kids who bore the brunt of my decision. It had been an agonizing and heart-wrenching decision to leave them behind as my course entailed not staying in one place over the 16 months but moving to different countries within the EU every semester. Seeing that this nomadic life would not have suited my kids aged 6 and 3, I left them behind, but content that they were in the excellent hands of my hubby and his family.

I have been visiting home in between during my holidays and talking over skype almost every day, but distance and time have not been kind to me and my family. I cannot erase the fact that I had been away for a long time and have missed out on a lot of things related to my kids. I am now heading back home for good, in fact have already been cooped up for the last eight hours on my flight from Helsinki to Hong Kong.

I do not know what my future holds for me but for now, I am planning to take it one day at a time. I started this blog so I can start on this second phase of my journey and record my re-union with my family, my job hunting, my kids growing up, the everyday happenings in my life, and so on. It perhaps might be just a record of events to the average blog reader, but to me, it is my life that is happening on these pages and there are always plenty of moments to be treasured (and to be blogged as well :))

So welcome to my blog and get me started on this new adventure......what I call "Life" :))