As I pushed my daughter’s stroller on the way to her daycare on a crisp morning last week, a yellowing maple leaf fell to the ground in front on us. I picked it up and showed it to her, her tiny hands gripping the leaf as she tried to comprehend my words. “Look!”, I said, “This tells us that the weather is changing and we are leaving summer behind. Autumn is upon us!” She adorably tried and failed to pronounce “Autumn”, saying different variations of the word “Om” before she got it. She happily clutched the leaf to her chest, no doubt wanting to show it off to her friends.
Where I come from, there are only two seasons - hot and rain, and even the rain feels hot sometimes. But the end of the monsoon in Mumbai leads into a time of the year where festivals abound and we rebuild our sense of community. With Navaratri, followed by Diwali, we reinforce our bonds with our friends and families and remind ourselves that life has meaning only when it is shared.
So moving to a country with four distinct seasons was a source of great consternation. The disappearing sun and the smell of decaying leaves in late September made me melancholic, and in the absence of the familiar festive atmosphere of home, I started equating autumn with the end of possibilities and a period of deep hibernation.
But as the years passed, I realized that while autumn in the US and Canada didn’t lead to an outward period of celebration like in India, it was an incredible opportunity for inward reflection. As the trees shed their leaves, carpeting the ground in glorious piles of yellow, orange and red, we too shed our old selves year after year. We leave behind the pieces of ourselves that were useful up to that point and start building ourselves up for the year that lies ahead. For me, the most significant ‘shedding’ of my life happened during an autumn just like this one.
About two years ago, as we were preparing to welcome our daughter into our lives, on my regular morning walk, I looked around and realized that while my life in the US had been good thus far, I never felt the sense of freedom that America prided itself on. I was about to enter my 13th year on a work visa and a green card was at least a decade away.
How many more autumns did I want to endure with a shadow of uncertainty hanging over my head? Did I want to live another autumn with the possibility that losing my job would mean I had 60 days to get another one or go back to India, a place I didn’t recognize as home anymore? Did I really want to spend a majority of my adult life at the mercy of US immigration policy? Or should I take a leap of faith and pursue freedom elsewhere? That was when the vague idea of moving to Canada took concrete shape. And while there is still a long way to go till I am a Canadian, I still feel free. I don’t worry about the future the way I worried in the US.
When I handed that maple leaf to my daughter, I was showing her the sign of the changing seasons but deep down, I was also handing her a symbol of the freedom that came from a choice I made another autumn a lifetime ago. I chose to leave a lot of money on the table when I left America, but when I look at my daughter and hear her laugh and I laugh with her, I realize it’s a choice I will make every single time.