Sometimes when I want to run back home and get into my cozy bed still lying the same way, may be waiting for me and expecting me to be back, I remember the day when I left my place and started my journey to a new country alone. My daughter’s last question when she left for her cousin’s house was ‘Ma when would I meet you again?’. I could only say ‘very soon’ and the car left with her. I saw her moist eyes and still she was matured enough to hide it from me. I have been very lucky to have a girl like her.
I did not want her to see me leave and hence we planned to send her to her cousin’s house with my mother. I could leave her at home and leave for a different place just because of my mother. She has been growing up and been taken care by her grandmother since she was born.
The most precious person in my life is my daughter. She has been suffering from chronic breathing issues and cold allergy when she was one year old. The place where I stay is very congested and polluted. So, the reason for me to leave the country and take advantage of the kind of work I do was my daughter’s health. She was doing quite well in school and her extra curriculum. She became a swimmer at a tender age and started competing with others. But still we had to leave the country to save her. She had to be nebulized every two – three months and was always on medication. She is a very active child but still when I used to see her in pain, I used to feel so guilty. I lost my father to COPD which is a chronic lung disease – the cause being the same pollution. And then when I decided that I can’t take any more risk and I have to save my daughter.
We came in iterations. First, I came in with a job which was an extension of what I was doing back in India. May be that’s the beauty of the kind of work I do. I can do it from anywhere and everywhere in the world. I found a place to stay in next. I could write a thousand words on how I found myself an apt 😊. I have checked almost around thirty apt till I zeroed in on the one I stay. Somewhere they said there may be bed bugs, somewhere rodents or may be fungus/molds in the carpet. My daughter as I said before had breathing issues and hence couldn’t risk taking such apts. My brother was very helpful in guiding me through this apt hunting and settling down and finally he found this apt for me on Google where I made an appointment for a watching the very next day. I came, viewed, and booked by paying then and there. My brother stays in Minnesota.
My daughter came with my mother after 2 months. I still remember her smile when I received her at the airport. Kudos to my mother who with all her serious health conditions brought my daughter safe and sound after covering such a long journey.
My mother was new to the whole system and came from a conservative background. But the fighter in her helped her survive here for six months taking care of my daughter so well. I used to leave for office early in the morning and all day she would feed my daughter, helped her with her studies and spent time with her. I would come back, and some days took them out for may be a ferry ride or a library visit or may be just eat out somewhere. I didn’t have a car here and she tried against all odds to never ever complain about it. Both my daughter and mother were normally used to a very lavish life back home with two cars and maids and nannies and drivers. So, the struggle here was new to them. Neither did my daughter nor my mother ever grumbled, and I would always remain grateful to them for that.
My husband joined us five months later. He does the same kind of work what I do and hence got the privilege to come here and work from home for the same project for which he was working from our native place.
We all had been trying hard to cope with the life here ever since we have started staying here. We lived in a very big house as joint family with thirteen people staying together. This is very new for us to stay just by ourselves with no relatives around. We have been born brought up married had children worked loved and lived in the same city all our life. Not only we miss the people there but also the place itself has a melancholic effect on us and we become nostalgic about it. Though in the new age we can do video chat to whoever and wherever we want to but still we miss everything back home. We don’t know when we can go back to visit our place and may be not before we settle down properly here. There is still so much work left here to do. Find ourselves a place of our own to stay, a car or may be just settle down the way we were there. That will take a lot of time and till we reach there we must struggle a lot. Hope we will be able to achieve what we want one day or maybe not. But still this will always remain a wonderful journey with lots of memories to look back when we grow old or when my daughter moves on to a life of her own.
