My 90-year-old dad is slowly slipping away. Day by day, the flame in his candle grows dimmer, and I find myself watching that light with a grief too deep for words. There is something so heartbreaking about loving someone for your whole life and then having to stand quietly by as they slowly fade before…
Category: Migration
The Other Way Around
Here Down Under, everything always feels a little bit the other way around. While the northern hemisphere is welcoming Easter in springtime and Christmas in winter, we Australians are doing our own upside-down version of things — Christmas in summer heat, with sunburn, salads, and trips to the beach. Then Easter arrives with cooler mornings,…
Stay, I Pray You
Last night I went to the theatre to see a live production of Anastasia, and from the moment it began, I felt myself being drawn into it completely. The costumes were exquisite, the music beautiful, the whole production tender and deeply moving. It was one of those rare performances where everything seemed to work together…
The Silent Clock
Where do the years go? They slip through our hands so quietly, and yet they do not disappear. They live on within us, just beneath the surface, waiting for the smallest thing to bring them back. A scent. A sound. A glimpse of light. And suddenly, time folds in on itself. Sometimes it is the…
A Bird with Two Homes
Some journeys are so vast they seem almost impossible, and yet they happen quietly, without fanfare, written into the lives of those who simply keep moving between one world and another. That was what came to mind when I read about the small migratory birds that leave the Arctic coasts and the Nordic tundra each…
The Strength of a Bridge
Some days it rests quietly within me. Other days it rises gently to the surface — not asking for attention, simply asking to be acknowledged. I was eleven when I stepped off a plane into Australia. The sky felt impossibly wide. The light sharper. The language fast and unfamiliar. I sensed very quickly that survival…
Grandfather Clock
There is a particular kind of solace that lives in my family’s old grandfather clock. It hangs on the wall downstairs, keeping time with its steady, gentle tick-tock. On days when life feels brittle — when I am frazzled or unsettled — I pause and listen. The sound wraps around me like a lullaby. It…
Family Recipes
Food has a way of carrying us home. For me, that home begins in a sunlit kitchen where the scent of fresh bread mingled with simmering soup, wrapping itself around everything like a warm embrace. I can still hear the gentle clink of utensils, the soft hum of the oven, and above it all, my…
Nineteen- Fiftysix
In 1956, in the steady gentle rhythm of Helsinki life, my grandfather began each day in the little home he shared with my grandmother on Näkinkuja. I often find myself picturing those mornings so clearly, as though I can almost step into them. Their home was warm and snug, and already full of the familiar…
Roots & Wings
For those of us Finns who live overseas, identity is something tender. It is more than where we were born or where we live now. It lives quietly within us — in our language, our memories, and in that ache for something we can never fully leave behind. We may build our lives far from…
Apples of Gold 