I was eleven when my family left Finland and migrated to Australia. At that age, I could not possibly grasp the full weight of what was happening. To me, the biggest wonder was that I was about to fly on an aeroplane for the very first time. There was excitement in that, the kind only a child can feel, bright and uncomplicated. And yet, beneath it, I sensed something heavier moving quietly through us all. I knew this was no ordinary journey. I knew, too, that the leaving was especially hard for my mum.

Some memories from that day have softened with time, but others remain as sharp as ever. I remember holding tightly to my dad’s hand. Even now, I can still feel the comfort of it. In a moment when everything familiar was being loosened from my life, his hand felt steady and sure. He felt like something I could hold onto while the whole world shifted.

We sat quietly on the plane, looking out the window, each of us taking in those last glimpses of Finland. The land of our beginning. The land that had held our language, our seasons, our people, our memories. I did not yet have the words for what it meant to leave a country, but I could feel that something immense was taking place. I think children often understand more than we realise, only without the language to name it.

Now, when I look back, I find myself thinking so much about my parents. What must it have felt like for them to sit there, side by side, leaving behind the only country they had ever known? What thoughts filled their hearts in those final moments before takeoff? What sorrow did they carry quietly within themselves, so that we as children would not have to carry it too? There must have been so many unanswered questions. So much uncertainty. So much responsibility. And beneath it all, there must have been exhaustion too, the kind that comes when you have stretched yourself to the edge of what you can bear.

And yet, to me, they seemed calm. I remember that. They seemed peaceful on the outside, even if their hearts were anything but. It is only now, looking back with older eyes, that I understand how much strength there must have been in that quietness.

Then the plane began to rise.

And as Finland slowly slipped further and further from view, a song began to play through the loudspeakers. It was Jukka Kuoppamäki singing Sininen ja valkoinen, Blue and White. Out of all the moments from that journey, that is the one that has never left us.

I did not need to understand every layer of the song to feel it. It entered the cabin like a farewell and a love song all at once. It spoke of the blue of Finland’s sky, the blue of its lakes, the white of snow, the white of the bright summer nights. It spoke of the colours of freedom, but to me, in that moment, it also felt like it was naming something even more tender than that. It was naming home. It was naming the beauty of the place we were leaving behind. It was reminding us, just as it disappeared beneath us, what it was made of.

I turned and looked at my mum and dad.

They were sitting there on that plane, being carried away from their birth country, from the only land they had ever lived in, towards a vast and unknown future in a country they had never even seen for themselves. And there were tears in their eyes.

I think that was the moment when something opened in me. Not full understanding, not yet. But a glimpse. Just a glimpse into the enormity of their decision. Into the heartbreak of leaving. Into the courage that must sometimes walk hand in hand with grief.

For so long, I remembered that day mostly as the day we flew to Australia. But the older I get, the more I see it differently. Now I see a mother and father leaving behind all that was familiar, carrying their children toward a future they could not predict. I see love wrapped in sacrifice. I see sorrow sitting quietly beside hope. I see how much was lost, and how much was risked, in that one journey across the sky.

And perhaps that is why that moment still moves me so deeply.

Because even now, all these years later, I can still see my parents’ tear-filled eyes. I can still hear that song rising softly through the cabin. I can still feel my small hand holding onto my father’s.

And somewhere inside me, that little girl is still there, sitting by the window, watching her country disappear into the distance, not yet understanding that some departures never fully leave us, but live on quietly within us for the rest of our lives.