Pictures of cherry blossoms in full bloom flood my heart with joy.
If I’m scrolling on Instagram and find a picture of cherry blossoms, I definitely stop in my tracks to take a look at these beautiful flowers.

In 2020, we had booked our tickets for Tokyo. One of the items on our agenda was to see the cherry blossoms. However, our plans got waylaid due to the pandemic. The Japan trip still hasn’t happened.

Just a couple of days ago, my friends from Seoul (South Korea), posted pictures spring time. Cherry blossom trees in full bloom, beautiful flowers strewn all over.

 

                                                                               Geetu 

 

 

                                                                                          Mrinal and Chandru


A few days later, I watched an episode of a Korean Series on Netflix (Business Proposal)
One of the scenes portrayed Namsan Tower (a landmark in Seoul), surrounded by…
You don’t get points for guessing this one! Cherry blossoms in full bloom at spring time in Seoul.

 

I was awestruck by the beauty yet again. This time it hit me like a bolt.
I had lived in Seoul for 11 years.
Both my kids spent their early years there.
My daughter, Tanya was born there.

But I didn’t remember the cherry blossom season. I didn’t remember walking the beautiful streets covered with cherry blossoms.
What I craved for, had been present in my life. But I was oblivious at that time.

Why was I oblivious to so much beauty? How much of life do we bypass, because we’re not present?
My mind was filled with just getting through the hours of table top work with Mohit. My life at that point, revolved around trying to teach him words and sentences and taking data on how many words I was able to teach that day.
Perhaps, I was so involved in my own pain, that I didn’t notice anything else outside of me.
I was in grief, in crisis, but I didn’t know it, then.

Because I didn’t pay attention, it wasn’t encoded in my memory either.

These beautiful pictures that Mrinal and Geetu posted, will stay in their memories because they took pictures/ videos to remember the good times they had. 

 

Changing tracks here.

 

Years ago, I had met ‘Kartik’ with his parents. They were visiting Mumbai and I invited them over. At that point, Kartik was 26 years old, on the autism spectrum.
I remember that Kartik connected well with all of us. He asked where he could sit at the dining table and seemed very independent. After the meal, he and his dad looked out of the window and discussed the Arabian Sea and it’s location on the map of India.
(Our home overlooks part of the magnificent coastline in West Mumbai)

I was impressed. I asked his mother how this came about.
She shared that they were on the verge of admitting Kartik to a residential center in the US. Somebody recommended the RDI Program to them and their lives changed.
They experienced a huge turn around- to the extent that they gave up the idea of the residential center. Kartik had showed huge improvement and was able to live alone with little assistance from them.

I continued to press forward to ask Kartik’s mother more details.
One sentence will stay in my mind forever.
She said they clicked pictures to highlight the events of the day.
They reviewed these pictures every night.

Kartik’s parents had been encoding memories for him. That helped him tremendously.

It all makes sense now.
If I could be oblivious to my life all those years ago, I can understand how not experiencing or encoding memories can have an effect on our children.

A few points stood out for me from both these experiences.

1. Be present
2. Enjoy the experience
3. It’s important to be emotionally available
4. Encode the experience
5. Pictures, videos, selfies will all do
6. Review these with your child
7. Build beautiful memories

 

I’ve written a few more articles on encoding and creating memories.

Please do go through both these articles to gain a better understanding of encoding. I’ve gone into depths about how you can encode memories.



Luckily I’m much more present now than I was in my Korea days.
I certainly don’t want to sleep walk through the rest of my life. So the cherry blossom pictures served as a good reminder to continue to be present and make memories.

 

I look out of my window and look at the spring time blossoms out of my current home.
I’m now aware that there are 3 beautiful blossoming trees in my building compound. Once with peach flowers, the other with white flowers and the 3rd with orange and white flowers.

And I find myself saying to Mohit, “Those flowers look lovely. I like the orange/ white ones the most. Oh, and there are those lovely yellow ones, just blossoming too.”

He looks at me with a light in his eyes. And a knowing smile.