Latest news with #memories
The Guardian
13 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
Why do I still see my siblings as the people they were in childhood?
I am spending a lot of time at my late mother's house, sorting things out, wondering why she had so much asafoetida and thinking about the past. Every time I'm there, my sister asks me to water the garden, and I never do. Then she says: 'Please, just do the window boxes, otherwise the plants will die,' and I still don't. 'I may come and take the potted plants away, or you could take some, if you want to kill them in your own house?', she says, and still I ignore her, because I don't know anything about gardening. So it follows that, being my sibling, she doesn't either. No amount of evidence to the contrary – her own, frankly magnificent garden – can convince me otherwise. This is a two-way street. She is a fashion designer and exquisite draughtsperson – which I, also, after many decades, have yet to wrap my head around – but she can't drive, and if ever she is a passenger when I'm driving, she is on red alert, pointing out things – mainly other cars, pedestrians, trees – as if, without her intervention, I would plough straight into them. Our brother is a skilled decorator and, when he uses words such as 'primer' and 'dust sheet', I can't help looking at him as if a cat is talking. He is a photographer by profession, and, even if we point the same phone at the same object, he creates images that are unfathomably deeper and more pleasing than mine. I look on this not so much as a knowledge base he has that I don't, and more like an act of hocus-pocus. My other brother is a maths teacher, my other sister is a physicist, and I cannot describe how fanciful I find it that they may really be doing these jobs. Obviously, I have to pretend to believe it. I don't even know whether you get wired in childhood to think all knowledge is equally distributed because otherwise it isn't fair, or that every fine difference in skillset is just a question of whoever is younger catching up. But no amount of adulthood can overturn it. Anyway, I couldn't help but notice that, after it rained, the garden looked amazing. It's possible my sister is right on this one thing. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
Entrepreneur
a day ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Rashmika Mandanna Launches Fragrance Brand 'Dear Diary'
Inspired by her popular digital series of the same name, Dear Diary reflects Rashmika's deep belief in the power of fragrance to capture moments and emotions. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Indian actress Rashmika Mandanna has launched her fragrance brand Dear Diary, a personal and emotional olfactory journey inspired by memories, identity, and self-expression. This venture marks a significant step in Rashmika's career as she extends her storytelling beyond the screen into the realm of scent. Inspired by her popular digital series of the same name, Dear Diary reflects Rashmika's deep belief in the power of fragrance to capture moments and emotions. Each scent in the collection draws from her life from the comforting aroma of her mother's body lotion to the earthy essence of Coorg's coffee estates. "For me, fragrance is memory," said Rashmika Mandanna. "Perfumes bring back special moments that might otherwise be forgotten. With Dear Diary, I wanted to give everyone a way to carry their stories with them to connect, to feel comforted, to feel a warm hug, and to express who they are, unapologetically." The brand features three debut fragrances, each drawn from pivotal moments in Rashmika's life. National Crush celebrates her affectionate title from fans with a vibrant, joyful composition. Irreplaceable reflects personal growth and self-worth, inspired by the moment she chose her first tattoo. Controversial channels resilience and the strength to stay kind amid public scrutiny. Dear Diary has been developed in collaboration with The PCA Companies, a global brand accelerator known for their success in the beauty and fragrance industries. Their partnership was key in shaping the brand's identity and ensuring it remained authentic to Rashmika's vision. Crystal Wood, CMO at The PCA Companies, shared, "When we first connected with Rashmika about Dear Diary, we immediately recognised the authenticity of her vision. Her love for fragrance, her gratitude for her community, and her kindness before all shaped a brand that felt honest and powerful." Meticulously crafted using ingredients such as jasmine, pink lotus, sugarcane, lychee, and passionfruit, the fragrances celebrate India's rich olfactory heritage while offering a modern, global appeal. In a fast paced market filled with trends, Dear Diary claims to bring a quiet sense of meaning and connection. The fragrances are now available with prices starting at INR 599.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Tell us the song you avoid listening to and why
With festivals upon us and the tunes on high, memories will be made to music this summer. But what if that is a bad memory? We would like to hear about the music that evokes a negative memory for you that you'd like to reclaim. What song do you prefer to avoid and why? Have you tried to associate it with better memories? And why does reclaiming that song matter to you? You can tell us about the song you prefer to avoid because of a bad memory using this form. Please include as much detail as possible. Please note, the maximum file size is 5.7 MB. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. If you include other people's names please ask them first. If you're having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The rise of Alessia Russo: a tale of talent, training and a moment seized
Above all, she remembers the beach. She would wake every morning to a view of the sea, spend her days splashing in the surf, playing football on the sand with her brothers. They would talk into the night, eating and drinking, the waves crashing below them. These are her earliest and most treasured memories: Nettuno, the coastal town an hour south of Rome, where her nonna still lives and which Alessia Russo still describes as her favourite place in the world. The story goes – and so fondly is this story recounted in the Russo family that it has long since passed into lore – that one day Alfonso was up from Sicily, visiting Rome with a friend, when he saw a girl stepping on to a train at the railway station. No, not just a girl. The girl. Two fairly major issues: he didn't know her, and it wasn't his train. But Alfonso was a true romantic, the train was about to leave the station, and above all he knew that some moments in life just need to be seized. Turns out she was an English girl called Patricia, visiting Italy on a school trip. Problem number three: he didn't speak English. But a fellow passenger was able to translate for them, the pair got talking, and after a fashion they fell in love. After another fashion, and they ended up getting married. Seven decades later, their granddaughter will play for England against Italy for a place in a European Championship final. We are, in large part, who we once were: our bloodlines and our stories, stones carried along in the river. Perhaps this is even more apparent in women's football, a sport in thrall to the journey, a collective inheritance passed down from the pioneers and the dreamers who built it in the shadows, to the ballers and the icons who play it today. Russo's career has been built on her own talent, her own hard work, her own dedication and ambition. But it has also been shaped, irrevocably so, by forces wildly out of her control, by decisions taken before she even existed. So Alfonso moved to London in the 1950s, where he fell in love with the Busby Babes and established a lifelong passion for Manchester United. His son Mario played non-league, coached local kids, reared his two sons Giorgio and Luca in his own footballing obsession. And so by the time Alessia came into the world, in a sense her footballing life had already been built around her: endless games in the back garden, football on the television, blue box-fresh Azzurri shirts to wear for major tournaments. Indeed, Mario still supports Italy in men's football. But come Tuesday night, he will be a Lioness. Of course Alessia sounds English, wears the England No 23 shirt, plays with English brawn and guts. But sometimes when she gets animated, you see her hands flailing and gesturing with a quality that can only be described as 'you know, quite Italian'. And as much as Tuesday night's game in Geneva is a job to be done, it will surely also stir certain memories and emotions, the multivalent loyalties of those she loves, of those who came before her. Parents Mario and Carol. Grandparents Alfonso and Patricia. Uncle Bob and aunt Teresa, who died before she was born but after whom she takes one of her middle names. For all this, after the drama of Thursday night in Zurich, the chaotic penalty shootout against Sweden in which Russo later admitted she briefly lost track of the score, England will be deeply grateful for a simpler game in Geneva. Russo was slightly annoyed with her performance on Thursday, bleakly aware that had she taken one of the chances that had fallen to her in extra time, there would have been no need for penalties. But it was scarcely her fault that she was exhausted by that point, having spent more than 90 minutes grappling and chasing, forced to wait until the 93rd minute for her first attempt on goal. It was a measure of her patience and work ethic that she was still able to contribute in other ways: holding the ball up, running the channels, leading the press. But England's job against Italy will be to get service to their most potent goal threat, to surround her with bodies and runners, to prevent her being isolated against a team that will have no issue defending for long periods. Sign up to Moving the Goalposts No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women's football after newsletter promotion Italy are not to be underestimated, even if it remains hard to gauge their true level. Norway were truly abject against them in the quarter-finals, but Italy also held Spain to their lowest expected goals of the tournament in a slightly harsh 3-1 defeat. The speed and the precision of their counterattacking suggests a strong degree of tactical drilling, with Arianna Caruso and Sofia Cantore the perfect foils for the great Cristiana Girelli, who at the age of 35 remains as devastatingly elusive as ever, still arguably one of the top six or eight pure centre-forwards on the planet. Italy 1-5 England, 27 Feb 2024, Algeciras The Lionesses started preparations for the Euro 2025 qualifiers perfectly, with a dominant win over Italy in south-west Spain. Lotte Wubben-Moy gave England the lead inside the first minute and Lauren Hemp scored twice to put England 3-0 ahead after 34 minutes. Le Azzurre got one back just before half-time through Michela Cambiaghi, but England cemented their dominance with second-half goals from Ella Toone and Rachel Daly to round off an impressive performance. England 2-1 Italy, 19 Feb 2023, Coventry England made it two out of two wins in the Arnold Clark Cup, thanks to two Daly headers either side of Sofia Cantore's 62nd-minute equaliser. Italy could not contain Daly, who in addition to her goals, hit the crossbar just before half-time. The Lionesses broke the attendance record for a sporting event at the CBS Arena, drawing a crowd of 32,128. England 1-1 Italy, 7 April 2017, Stoke England were held to a frustrating draw in their penultimate home match before Euro 2017. Italy scored with their only attempt on goal, which came from Valentina Cernoia minutes after Jodie Taylor opened the scoring in the 70th minute. The Lionesses dominated Mark Sampson's 50th match in charge, with a whopping 23 shots to Italy's six. Eze Obasi Russo, too, is beginning to enter that conversation, even if she has been forced to wait for the recognition her talent deserves. And of course there are parallels here too with her upbringing, the way her brothers would make her go in goal in the garden, the way she was forced to leave Chelsea in search of regular football, the way she remained second choice to Ellen White at the last Euros, the way she remains weirdly underrated by a lot of non-Arsenal fans, despite being probably two wins from being a very decent Ballon d'Or shout. Alfonso died a few years ago, before Alessia's career really began to take off. He had Alzheimer's disease, but even as his faculties began to desert him this lifelong football fanatic could still remember the teams he played for as a teenager. And this of course is the eternal power of football: its ability to cut across generations and borders, its universality, its enduring ability to teach us basic lessons about life. The train is leaving the station. Nobody knows what happens next. But some moments in life just need to be seized.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
How I'm Learning to Outlive My Mother
Whenever I miss my mom, I reach for my favorite photo of me and her. We're sitting on the steps in front of my childhood home in Massachusetts, cuddled up next to each other. I'm three years old and proudly wearing blue clip-on earrings to match my white puff-sleeve dress. My mother is flashing a smile that takes up so much space, it's sometimes all I can see. Happy photos like this one, which is protected in a heart-shaped frame, decorate the shelves in my home office. The sadder ones — taken after my mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer — hide inside my desk drawers. They're out of sight, but the truth is, they're always on display in my mind. They sit alongside the many journals in which my mother kept track of my childhood accomplishments and made predictions about my future. 'Mallary's going to go places with her writing,' she wrote in one of them, believing I would one day become an author. 'I'm so proud of her.' My mom passed away from cancer when I was 11, before she could see me graduate middle school, let alone go off to college, pursue a writing career, get married, and have kids. She was just 40 years old when she died — the same age I am now. As I begin to outlive my mother, I've been pondering questions that lack easy answers: How do I venture into this next phase of life that she never got to experience? What are the lessons she taught me (and didn't get to teach) that I want to pass on to my own children? And how can I continue to keep my mom's memory alive? On my 40th birthday, I told my 7-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter why this particular birthday was so significant. They've heard me share stories about my mother for years, but this was the first time they learned how old she'd been when she passed away. 'Just because your mom died when you were 40 doesn't mean you're going to, right, Mommy?' my daughter asked, making my heart sink. 'Oh no honey, I'm not going to die at 40,' I reassured her. 'My mother was sick, but I'm not. I hope to be around for a loooong time.' My words were tightly woven together by years of convincing myself that I won't die young. And yet I know the unpredictability of life could unravel these words at any point, rendering them a lie in my children's minds. I hope my words remain true, but the reality of mortality seems to loom larger now that I'm 40. In some ways it's a relief to have outlived my mother, because it feels like a sign that my fate will not follow hers. But I also find myself wondering: How much longer do I really have? Grief expert Hope Edelman once told me that when you begin to outlive your deceased parent, you are 'crossing the silent threshold.' When experiencing this rite of passage, she said, it's normal to grow fearful about dying and/or to experience mourning anew. Edelman recommends honoring the silent threshold by naming it and recognizing what surfaces. If growing up meant living without my mother, then I wanted to stay in the past forever. I've been recognizing it by going through the photos in my desk drawers and exposing the hard truths behind them. There's one in particular that I keep returning to — a picture of me looking happy as can be just five days after my mother's death. I was at my first-ever middle school dance, smiling and looking perfectly poised, like a ballerina about to do a pirouette. I thought I was supposed to be 'strong' and 'resilient,' so I tried pretending to be okay. But behind that happy facade was a little girl who felt like her whole world had fallen apart. If growing up meant living without my mother, then I wanted to stay in the past forever. I remember doing the math as I got ready for the dance, counting out exactly how many hours and minutes had passed since my mother died; they say time heals, but I learned at a young age that time also hurts. Every birthday, holiday, and missed milestone became a painful reminder of the permanence of my mother's absence. When you lose a parent at a young age, you're always playing a game of catch-up that reminds you of not just who you've lost but what you've lost — all those life lessons that you hope your mom would have shared to help you navigate the world. Having lost my mother just before my teenage years, I found it especially difficult to navigate puberty without her. I wanted her to teach me everything I thought a teenage girl was supposed to learn: how to use an eyelash curler, shop for bras, insert a tampon, and shave my legs. I feel a pang whenever I look at one close-up photo of me as a 14-year-old, with eyelashes that were clumped together by far too much Maybelline mascara. I had taught myself how to apply it, hoping that it would help me look more like my mom, who had always worn it until she got too sick and weak to put it on. But it wasn't until age 38 that I learned how to properly use an eyelash curler. I had always applied my mascara and then curled my lashes, until one day a friend told me I was supposed to do it the other way around. How did I not know that? I thought to myself, feeling the load of loss grow heavier. Soon enough, when my lip-gloss-loving daughter expresses interest in makeup, I will show her how the curler works. Until then, I'm trying to teach my kids the bigger life lessons that my mom shared with me when I was young: how to persevere in the face of uncertainty, work hard for what you want, and show familial love. Lately I've felt a greater sense of urgency around sharing these lessons, especially when I think about what else is hiding in my desk drawers: genetic test results showing that, as my mother's daughter, I'm at a higher risk of developing breast cancer compared to other women my age. As I enter midlife, it saddens me to know that my mom never got to witness all the places I've gone with my writing — and that she won't get to celebrate alongside me when my debut memoir is published this summer. But I find comfort in knowing that she was there from the very start, believing in me and giving me reason to feel hopeful about the future. Mallary Tenore Tarpley is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of the memoir SLIP. The post How I'm Learning to Outlive My Mother appeared first on Katie Couric Media. Solve the daily Crossword
