We may never know how far one thoughtful gesture will travel through another person’s life. As a thoughtful Mother’s Day gift, my daughter took me last night to an evening of candlelight, music, and dance. It was one of those gifts that reaches far beyond the moment itself. My tired soul received it with gratitude…
Tag: Migration
One Day in September
A new life is built by meeting one unfamiliar moment at a time. The morning after arriving in Australia from Finland, my family went for a walk from our new home at the migrant Midway hostel in Maribyrnong. I suppose we wanted to see this strange new country we had landed in, to step out…
The Magic Word
Delivery matters, but warmth does not sound the same in every language or culture. To an English-speaking ear, Finnish can sound a little blunt. The words do not always arrive wrapped in softness. They are not dressed up or sweetened unnecessarily. Finns tend to say what they mean and mean what they say. There is…
I Found It!
Our roots help explain who we are. When my brother and I were children, we loved playing hot and cold. One of us would hide some small object, and the other would become the hunter, searching, guessing, listening for clues. The closer the hunter came, the louder and more excited the cries would be: “hotter……
Timeless Treasures
Some people belong not only to our memories, but to the story of who we are. When I was a little girl living in Finland, I had a friend who was woven deeply into the fabric of my childhood. Her name was Tiina. We lived only a few hundred metres from each other, and we…
Treasured Simplicity
The deepest sense of home comes from feeling known without needing to explain who we are. Some places do not simply hold memories. They hold parts of us. That is how Finland feels to me. Not only as the country of my birth, but as a place where something deep within me still recognises itself….
Blue and White
What we experience as children, we often only truly understand as as adults. 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…
Apples of Gold 