Y's summer so far

Y's summer has been busy. She recently completed her "Behind The Wheel" course and has her official driver's license!! She has been lobbying to take the car to school next year (junior year, 11th grade), and I have been holding the line at 'no.' She started her internship with our school district some time ago, and so far it has been going really great. This is the first time the district has inducted high school interns, and they have been giving them some good projects to work on. I think she will learn a lot.

Y recently won the 1st prize at a local poetry contest. She had submitted on a whim, after I informed her the first prize was $100 :) She hasn't been writing consistently, which is a pity, so it takes a contest or an assignment for her to get over her writer's block. She wrote a poem about social media, which I guess resonated with the judging panel. Here is the poem: 

Post Me Into Memory

I share a thought,

a broken shard of something larger,

held just right to catch the light.

A caption that has been trimmed and rehearsed,

but meant to look effortless.

A photo of my breakfast,

but what I meant was: I am still here.

A sunset flick,

but what I meant was: I wish this peace would last forever.

We chase the dopamine in digital echoes,

Likes captured like fireflies in a jar,

briefly bright,

yet always fading.

But there’s something raw

in this endless reaching-

some deep, human emotions,

woven into pixels and code.

See me. Remember I was here.

It somehow seems like the oldest thing of all-

carving stories into the cave walls,

etching names into the bark,

longing to be forever.

Apr-June 2025

Once more, life gets in the way of posting regularly on the blog. It appears that most of the bloggers with whom I started my journey have let their blogs die out. Some have moved on to other platforms. I miss reading their musings. It used to be therapeutic for me to read about someone's life, struggles, challenges, and joys. Even if we had never met, I could relate to that person being in the same stage of life as I was. I could commiserate, comment, and lend a semblance of moral support even from hundreds or thousands of miles away. 

Since March (last time I posted), I  started a new job. We have traveled quite a bit (so what's new!). We spent Spring break in Belize, Central America. The Memorial Day long weekend was in Bethany Beach, Delaware, just a few hours' drive away. In June, and our silver jubilee anniversary and S & I took off for a bucket-list trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks while Ads came back from college to hold fort and babysit his sister :)  Ads has a year-long internship in Madison, which started in May, so he has been on campus for the last few weeks and will not really come back "home". However, we have been seeing him quite often; last weekend we went to Madison and spent a weekend with him, followed by a couple of days touring colleges for Y in Indiana. 

It has now been exactly 7 years since we landed here in the US. I went back and read my post from 2018. So many changes since then! So much growth, joys, setbacks, and challenges. Ads who turned 13 mere weeks after we arrived is almost 20 now. Y will graduate from high school in two years and already has a summer internship, which keeps her very busy. All my friends are in the middle years now (I read somewhere that the middle years are the years between being hip and breaking one!), dealing with teenagers, high school and college schedules, empty nests, and ageing parents. Some divorces and near-separations too :( 

I am rapidly approaching the 50-year mark myself (in my head, I'm still 30!). I keep myself busy with work, giving back, trying to stay fit, and my lovely Carnatic music classes. We have had several group performances this year and are practicing for a few more as the festival season draws near. 

Before we know it, 2025 will also be firmly in the rear-view mirror and I will once again be scratching my head wondering where the time went!