Tag: Family
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INTO THE LAND OF MY GERMAN ANCESTORS
I had visited Germany on numerous occasions prior to living here. And every time I visited I felt an odd sense of belonging. As long as I didn’t open my mouth to speak, I even felt German. I felt comfortable and at home. And in a way, I was indeed home. Half of me is German. My father is half German and my mother is half German. For 15 years, I have been trying to piece together the jigsaw puzzle that constitutes how I came to be. While researching my father’s…
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THE FATHER/SON ADVENTURE DRAWS TO A CLOSE
DAY 26. Tbilisi International Airport. There is nothing more important in my life than my wife and son. And nothing more valuable to me than having quality time with Padma and Joseph. Padma and I have had 24 years of quality time together but having quality time with Joseph has been elusive. It isn’t easy being a father. For 20 years Joseph has probably only known me as the mean old ogre who is always yelling at him to get out of bed, finish his homework or take out the rubbish.…
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JOSEPH’S GUARDIAN ANGEL
Day 24. Tbilisi. Getting sick while on holidays isn’t much fun. But falling ill in a foreign land where you are language challenged is downright terrifying. So when Joseph started vomiting last night I had a far bit of cause for concern. Joseph’s body started revolting around 11 pm and he made hourly dashes to the toilet all night to spew. I suspected food poisoning but I knew I had eaten exactly the same food as Joe that day and I felt fine. In the morning, I messaged Hans in Switzerland…
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MY FATHER ON FATHER’S DAY
I barely knew my father, but the fragments I held—eccentric brilliance, deep-sea dreams, fleeting moments in Alaska—still shape how I think about fatherhood. He lived wildly and inconsistently, burning bridges and chasing ideas. In the end, I was just a lightbulb in a long line of missed connections.
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GRANDMA AND SINCLAIR LEWIS
I was filing away some of my grandparents’ papers the other day when I spotted a short letter addressed to my grandmother, Cecile Belle Adam, in October 1940. It was a simple letter about missing a dinner engagement or similar and it made me start wondering why do we bother keeping such old correspondence. Then I looked at who sent it and immediately thought: Could it be? Could it be THE Sinclair Lewis? The Nobel Prize laureate for literature? Not a chance, I thought, and filed it away. But it was…
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VALE SIMBA (1995-2016)
It is a tradition in Australia to throw a party on your 21st birthday. So we thought it would only be appropriate that we throw a party in April when our cat, Simba, turns 21. We were going to invite the neighbours and friends who looked after him over the years and we’d wear silly hats and sing songs. We wanted to celebrate the life of the family pet who gave us so much joy for 21 years. We won’t be throwing that party. Simba took his last breath today. His…
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AN EAGLE SCOUT
Day 7 of 7: Challenge on Nature Photography. Eagles, Amery, Wisconsin – 1973 For the past six days I have shared my appreciation of nature with you. For my final day in this nature photography challenge I’m going to share a personal story about how I developed that appreciation and my concerns that today’s generation doesn’t share that love of nature. I’ll bend the rules of the challenge a bit. I said at the beginning that I was more interested in writing stories than showing my pics. So I’m not going…
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FAREWELL INDIA
We were overwhelmed by the number of family members who came to the airport to bid us farewell and a safe journey home. Ravi and Minny left Gudur before dawn for a three-hour journey to the airport; Chandra, Sampath, Uma, Kumari came from afar the previous days and Usha, Santhosh, Raju and Sujatha came from Chennai. They all came to have one final chance to say goodbye. Imagine taking a six-hour round trip like Ravi and Minny did just to say farewell at the airport. We arrived to the airport early…
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A WEDDING IN KAKINADA
Padma and I jumped out of bed at 7.30 as we were told a car would drop by at 9.30 to pick us up and take us to the wedding. Lots to do to get organised. But we must have been so exhausted that we had forgotten we were in India. It was more like 11 before we finally left the hotel. No one seemed concerned that the wedding was set to start at 10, so I just sat back and enjoyed watching the street scenes of Kakinada as we drove…
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