That's it then...

Without as much as a whimper, without even a farewell, my course calendar heaved its last breath. Through a series of text messages, a late night phone call, and some posts to Moodle, I gathered that there are no more classes now, we are done. 

Goodbye, good luck, the end. There is a certain anticlimax to this arrangement, somehow. Perhaps, I had expected fond farewells, much back slapping and many hugs. Maybe I have been schooled to think of goodbyes and see-you-laters to be a production of sorts. Yet this is not always the case.

Sometimes, it is a gentle letting go of the hand once held, a drifting off of the binds once held dear. Yet that is not to say that there is no connection. Heartstrings are invisible and like cables lying buried deep under ocean floors, they buzz with thought and thoughts. They keep us connected and they keep us in discomfort, that is a good thing.

What have I learned?, I wonder as I settle into another phase of writing, submission and the anticipation that will come with a thesis proposal being submitted for review. 

I cannot list the many things that have made me who I am today, yet I know that there has been a change, a transformation in the way I think, see, interact and speak when I address inequities. Much of it due to the ideas shared and the wisdom of many that has percolated into my being.

When I hear negativity bring directed to the absent through comments such as ' these kids have never been shopping to the Bay' and 'OMG, these parents have no Canadian experience', I no longer charge in to make it okay: I merely sit with the words and write them down in the pages of my mental space. Someday these words will find the literature to name the sentiments that are being voiced. Someday, those other minds who have toiled long and hard to dig deep, will stand beside me as I go deeper. 

And until then, I continue to celebrate a phase of moving on: after many take out dinners, after countless, text messages to children left at home on their own, and a dream chased over 25 years. 

In my Konkani, my mother tongue, we don't that we are leaving: We say " yettaaan", that means, I will be back , I shall return, I am right here, round the corner. I shall come back.

In this sentiment of my Elders, who taught me to think in many tongues and speak the truth with courage, I say Khuda Hafiz to this time at York University. 10 years since applying for the B.Ed programme, it's been a great voyage.