Note From The Founder: When Life Gives You Tangerines

At the weekend, I watched When Life Gives You Tangerines on Netflix, and it’s one of those quiet stories that’s somehow louder in your head days after watching. It made me uncomfortable in a way I didn’t expect, not because it was tragic or shocking, but because it was honest. Painfully honest about how much our early years shape us, even long after we think we’ve outgrown them.

It made me think about my own childhood in a way I haven’t in a long time, not the big memories, but the quiet, mundane ones. The odd comfort of hearing my parents talking downstairs while I lay in bed. The specific smell of the house after my mum cooked something with onions. The strange confidence of knowing someone would always be there to pat you to sleep when you're sick or sign your permission slip.

You assume your parents are permanent. Indestructible. That the rhythms of home will just keep going. It’s only much later, after you become a parent yourself, that you realise how delicate it all was. How temporary. How precious. 

As I watched the show, I found myself missing my parents, not just as they are now, but as they were then. When I was little and they were still in the middle of their own becoming. When they were figuring it out and probably just as tired, confused, and hopeful as I feel now. About the victories they quietly celebrated and the losses they hid from us because that's what parents do - they keep showing up, even when their hearts are breaking a little.

That thought made me pause.

Because I’m now on the other side of that equation. I’m the one creating the background noise, the smells, the safety nets. My kids are soaking it all in, forming memories they won’t even know they have until decades later when something random, like a bowl of tangerines, cracks them open.

And the truth is, parenting can feel so transactional in the day-to-day. Make lunch. Brush teeth. Break up the argument. Get them to sleep. Repeat. But when you zoom out even a little, you see that what we’re actually doing is laying down the emotional scaffolding they’ll carry for life. We’re not just raising children, we’re becoming part of the cement, engrained in the fabric of their story, in ways we’ll never fully see.

There were parts of the show that were hard to watch. Maybe because, when you're a parent yourself, you start to understand how vulnerable life really is. You see how easily things can slip through your fingers. How parenting is just a long, beautiful exercise in letting go - of your expectations, of your ego, of your desperate hope that you can protect your kids from everything. 

So maybe this is just a reminder for myself more than anyone that these ordinary days aren’t fillers. They’re the core material. And they won’t last. The time we get to be their everything is short, and it doesn’t come back around. Parenting is messy, life with kids is messy, but the biggest takeaway from watching this, was that so much magic weaves it way through the cracks of a messy life. It's hard to see in the moment, but looking back it's all there. 

If you’re a parent reading this and feeling tired, distracted, pulled in too many directions, I get it. I’m in it with you. But maybe tonight, we all sit a little longer next to them. Ask a question we don’t usually ask. Let them ramble. Say yes to the bedtime story even if we’re already running late. Not because we should, but because one day, they’ll remember the feeling of being listened to and of being loved in a way that didn’t have to be earned. 

And maybe that’s what lasts.

With love,

Roshni