Life gets Complicated

Blog 16 of 30

Masterpage was growing and doing well. My team was vibrant and smart. But my personal life was getting complicated. My father-in-law died and my husband and I had moved in with my mother-in-law.

It was hard enough making that change. Everything was different overnight and the whole family had a lot of adjusting to do. It was a lesson in give and take, a lesson in putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and a lesson in compromise.

For me the most difficult part was I no longer had the office and home together. I had to drive across town every morning also co-ordinating the dropping of children at school. As long as the home and office were together it was easy, but now we had to open the office each day and have meals prepped for the children who still came there after school. It meant packing the 101 things the children needed during the day and carting it back and forth.

 I would drive up every morning after dropping the kids at school and at the end of the day after providing the children tea and snacks I would wind up, bundle them up into the car and drive home. There were times they were whiny, cranky or did not want to leave. It was a long and tiring day for all of us. Sunderarajan my driver had sadly succumbed to cancer of the liver. I had grown to rely on him a lot and his death was very hard on me. For years later, I struggled to find a driver of his calibre and was mostly unsuccessful.  

Luckily the good Lord sent me Vijaya. She was a bubbly, laughing and cheerful young woman who helped me hold things together while I ran back and forth between home and office with the kids.  She would help with the cooking, keep the place clean and watch over the kids and me. She was quite willing to bully me from time to time when she felt I was not taking time to eat or to look after myself. She was a strict disciplinarian with all of us and the kids loved her dearly as she would play silly games with them. There were times I would be overwhelmed but a yelling from Vijaya always had me laughing. She married a few years later and I lost touch with her. She came back briefly to meet me once, but she had lost her vitality and cheer. She was such an intelligent girl that I wish her life had been different but sadly it was not to be.

After a few months of grumbling about driving back and forth, I learned that I had to make the most of the situation. To my advantage I had almost a couple of hours of time with the kids in the car each day and I decided to make it fun. We would sing songs and I would tell them stories and talk about school, life, and the world – at least the parts about the world and life that was of interest to two young boys. Years later when this lifestyle changed, I missed the lovely long drives with the children in the car when I would have them all to myself. It was before mobile phones so there were no distractions, it was me, my kids and just a long drive across the city.

Thankfully Masterpage was doing well, and I was earning a healthy income at a time when my husband was building the family business. In fact, I was dealing with so many clients, I found less and less time for creative work, and got more and more involved in administration. I was not very happy about it, but more on that later.

Change was in the air. It was a good lesson for me – to adapt, to think differently and not get too comfortable. Today, looking back it is almost a pattern. I had to change and adapt my thinking every few years on a variety of issues. But it kept me mentally nimble and agile and I learned that there is an opportunity everywhere. You just have to recognise it.