landslide

stevie nicks might have had meant it to be an abstract song with obvious references thrown in here & there. she wouldn't have known how much it was going to resonate with other people, let alone how many variations would eventually spill out of what it actually conveyed.

that's the beauty of songs you love. you find solace within to help through the times. you allow it to be whatever you want it to be. it's only yours to keep. this is mine.

it's the small things i miss the most..

...his voice sounds excited over the phone. he doesn't repeat everything for once but retells me the cricket match, which sri lanka won against canada just days ago. i don't want to spoil the moment and tell him i'd seen it online, so i play along. i like when he gets excited about something. he doesnt hold back, just let his words flow easily. he's always been like that. i remember how we would all watch cricket matches gathered around the tv. just hollering at the same time,running to the bathroom or grabbing a snack in between the short commercial breaks and dashing back just in time before an over is started. and the times how he wouldn't let us jinx our players as if they could hear us through the tv. and the sheer joy in his eyes after a nail biting win.

i miss those days. i miss seeing him in moments like that. what i wouldn't do to just relive those moments...

forgiven....

when i was little, there were a lot of things going on in my family that i really didn't understand. no matter how much i would try, i just couldn't wrap my little head around it. sometimes i would ask my sister but being just an year older than me, she was often just as clueless. when i finally became old enough to understand the reality of the situation, i despised everything i found out. i wanted no part of it, just wanted everything to go back to normal like our neighbours around us. not an easy thing to do when you grow up in a small urban town where people like to be in everyone else's business. i remember the stares we would get when we walk up the street to get on the school bus.funny how i could read people just by a casual stare directed at you. something i'm still remarkably good at even now. i digress. more than anything i despised him. i was angry that he didn't care what it would mean to us. why couldn't he be like our friends fathers who were just normal and devoted? but there were a few times i would just soften up & feel bad for him too , because somewhere in the back of head i knew the whole situation was killing him inside and it couldnt be easy to have everyone else judge you.

over the years i learnt a lot & even have gotten around to forgive him for everything. i don't mean to be heartless when i say this but..although he's sick today, he probably has it easier than any three of us because he can't remember most, if not all of it. he's being showing signs of Alzheimer's, a common form of Dementia which he was diagnosed soon after the stroke.
it's like when you patch up a messy wall with some soothing wallpaper to cover the dirt,but you always know what's behind it but glad that wallpaper is masking it anyway . today i'm worried sick about him. when my cell goes off late at night, my heart jumps every time, fearing the worst.or i would just suddenly wake up middle of the night thinking i heard the phone ring when it hadn't.

well i guess that's just how life works. as much as you'd like, it doesn't come with a manual. you learn as you go along,picking up pieces. more than anything, i have learnt that when people we love make choices, we don't always understand them. their actions may hurt us but we can go on loving them just the same. it isn't a matter of comprehension. it's forgiveness. it's simply that.

seeing ants....

..tiptoeing a trail of some uninvited ants under a kerosene lit lamp with my Dad. yes, now that I think back, that has got to be my earliest memory of my childhood. It was just after sun down and my Dad had found the ants crawling into a space in the kitchen and wanted to show us. I was probably around 3 years old, and my sister, barely a year older. I don't think we had electricity (or running water) in that house. Being so small at the time, I don't really remember all the details but it was very small with a built in lattice front porch. We were just thrilled to see the ants crawling patiently one after the other, and we just couldn't hide our excitement. Were they red or black ants? I wish I'd remembered, not that it matters. As we got closer to the end of ants trail, the flame of the lamp burnt the inside of my sister's arm. She probably winced in pain, the memory is so vague & it's all patchy in my head so I don't remember everything now. She carried the scar well into her teens it would ignite our conversations over the ant story all over again. It was something we always connected without any effort, those moments were hard to come by especially when we were both teenagers.We fought an awful lot :(

The only surviving pictures taken in that house are neatly stashed away in a family album back home in Sri Lanka. My mom dressed beautifully in a Saree and looking so young & pretty & slim, my dad in pants & a button down shirt and my sister and I dressed in look-alike dresses sitting on the bar in our lattice front porch, with the biggest grins we all could muster. Now it feels like a lifetime ago....

feeling mundane..

...things have been bottling up inside me since i was about 10 years old, i'd explode if i don't do anything about it. i guess i never learnt how to deal with my problems head on. i would just shove them in somewhere behind my walls. kind of like..well..if i dont think about it, it does not exist. but now, so many years later, it's taking a huge toll on just about everything in my life .

well..it all started out when news about my father's infidelity unravelled in our family. although i may have been about 7 or 8 yrs old, i remember the pain & the tears very well. i remember a lot of hushed out conversations between my mother & her family & friends. the alleged woman was an unmarried neighbor from right across the street, literally. as kids, we were fond of her and called her aunty. i knew things were bad when i saw my parents fighting over this and my mother crying most of the time. but my father came back home every night as if nothing had happened, being just a kid then, that was good enough for me. sometimes my young mind would wander trying to find answers that make sense, but it always left me sad.

my escape from all this was, school. i love my school days. i knew i can be a different person in school. none of my friends knew anything. i dared to tell even my closest friend, who im still friends with. if someone found out, i would just die of shame.

looking back i realize, i never really talked about it with anyone. i have an older sister but she & i never really got along. being just 11 months apart, we were constantly fighting over random things. but there were plenty of good times between us too, but somehow we never really overcame our common pain. we were brought up in a typical conservative environment as you would find in just about any city in sri lanka. discussing personal family matters were considered a taboo. so we pretty much kept things to ourselves. back then we didnt know any different.

im sure things have changed now, i see my nieces & nephews are more outspoken & demanding.

..to be continued..