This Week in America - The Things We Remember

This week, a chest infection brought back memories I hadn't thought about in years. Even though it wasn't COVID, the symptoms felt almost identical, reminding me just how deeply certain experiences stay with us. 

From remembering the uncertainty of the pandemic and being separated from family in Australia, to living through storms and power outages in Tennessee, I explore how difficult moments leave lasting marks on the way we see the world. 

I also share a personal story about helping Georgia navigate friendship struggles at dance, and the challenge every parent faces of supporting their child without trying to rewrite their own childhood through them. In the end, one simple act of kindness reminded me that while we can't choose what happens to us, we can choose the kind of person those experiences help us become. 

This week's episode is a reflection on memory, resilience, parenting, and the invisible ways our past continues to shape our present.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

This week in America had me feeling like it was 2020 all over again. The test says otherwise, but the tight chest, the cough, the fever, and that horrible feeling like you've been hit by a truck all felt pretty familiar. They were almost identical to the symptoms that I had when I caught COVID during the first wave. I had it pretty badly. I was off work for six weeks at the time, and it was one of the sickest that I have ever been. So when those symptoms started creeping back this week, even though the test was negative, my mind immediately went back to that time. It's strange how some illnesses leave a memory in your body. You don't just remember being sick, you remember exactly what they felt like. You better take cover. The moment those same sensations returned, it's like being transported straight back there. For me, they brought back those early years of COVID when nobody really knew what was happening, how bad it was going to get, or when life would feel normal again. It was also an incredibly difficult time for me personally. My mum was dying from motor neuron disease while the pandemic was at its height. And I was living here in America. At one point, economy flights back to Australia were around $25,000 per person. And even if I had somehow managed to afford that, arriving in Australia meant spending two weeks in mandatory hotel quarantine with regular COVID testing before you were allowed out. And the bigger problem was that once all of that happened, and I was in Australia, there was no guarantee I would be able to return home to my wife and daughters in America because of the international travel restrictions. It was an impossible position to be in, and one that thousands of families around the world found themselves facing in completely different ways. It's almost hard to believe now that we live through a period like that. It's one of the reasons I found it so interesting over the years hearing Americans talk about Australia's COVID response. As many have told me that they were surprised by just how strict they had heard that it was. Living between the two countries, I've realized the pandemic is remembered very differently depending upon where you experienced it. And that doesn't mean one country remembers it correctly and the other doesn't. I think it simply reminds me that our experiences shape the way that we look back on major events. For me, COVID will always be tied to my mum's final year, being on the other side of the world and wondering whether I get the chance to say goodbye to her. For someone else, it might be the business they lost, the job that disappeared, the months they spent isolated from family, or the loved one that they never got to say goodbye to. No two people came through those years with exactly the same story. And maybe that's why conversations about the pandemic can still feel so different today. We're often not talking about the same memories. Even when we're talking about the same event, it's easy with a few years of distance to forget just how extraordinary that period really was. And whatever your experience was, I think those years left a mark on all of us. It also reminded me that COVID isn't the only experience that leaves our little marks behind. We had another reminder of that this week when storms rolled through here in Middle Tennessee. There was flash flooding, heavy rain, urgent alerts sent out to our phones, and the power flickered on and off several times. Just still something I have not quite gotten used to. In the 15 years that we lived in Canberra before moving to the States, I can barely remember losing power. But here, it feels like almost every decent storm brings at least a flicker. Sometimes it's only a few seconds or a few hours, sometimes it's days. Back in January, an ice storm knocked out power here for several days with temperatures well below freezing. And a few years earlier, we lost it for almost a week after a tornado tore through our town. And that's the thing about experiences like that. After you've lived through them once or twice, every flicker feels just that little bit different. Because suddenly electricity isn't just about having the lights on, it's about keeping the house warm and protecting your pipes, making sure the food in the fridge doesn't spoil, keeping your family safe while wondering when the power is finally going to come back on. Before moving to America, losing electricity for days was something I mostly associated with news reports. But here it has become part of our own lives. And just like getting sick, your mind remembers. Now, whenever the lights flicker during a storm, there's a tiny moment where I wonder, is this going to be another one of those? And most of the time it comes straight back on. Not before the girls have already grabbed the flashlights and candles, just in case. It's funny how often that happens in life. Once you've lived through something difficult, your mind starts looking for it long before it even arrives. And I realize I was doing exactly the same thing this week with Georgia at dance. She's been having a difficult time with someone that she thought was her best friend. As a parent, the moment you hear someone has hurt your child, every instinct tells you to step in. You want to get in there and fix it and protect them. Make sure that it never happens again. The difficult part is that children also have to learn how to navigate friendships for themselves. I spent about an hour talking with Georgia about friendship. We talked about not trying to force a best friend. We talked about how friendships change and evolve over time. And we talked about spreading a little happiness each day, even when other people aren't doing the same. Outwardly, I was calm. I was calm for her. But internally, nah, I wasn't. I was bullied a lot as a kid. So when I hear someone is hurting my daughter, it doesn't just make me angry. It presses every old button that I have all at once. Your child is living through their own experience, but part of you is suddenly reliving all of yours as well. And you remember what it felt like to be left out. You remember wishing an adult would notice what was going on. And before you know it, you're responding to two childhoods instead of one. I think that's dangerous territory as a parent, not because your instincts are wrong, but because your job isn't to rewrite your own childhood through your child. It's to help them navigate theirs. Sometimes that means listening more than fixing and giving them language for what they are feeling, helping them understand what they can control, and then trusting them to take the next step. As children get older, that's one of the hardest lessons for parents. You can't force someone to be kind, and you can't manufacture friendship. You can't guarantee they'll always feel included. What you can really do is help them become strong enough to move through those moments without losing who they are. And that's why we ended up talking about spreading happiness. Because it sounds simple, but I think there's something really powerful in it too. Because you can't control whether somebody else is kind. You can control whether you become like them. You can control whether you make another person feel included. And you can control whether you carry somebody else's bitterness forward. It doesn't excuse hurtful behavior. It just means refusing to let it define who you become. And I was actually really proud of Georgia the next day because after everything that we talked about the night before, she noticed another girl sitting by herself at lunch and went over to sit with her, make her feel included. And that happened while the very friend who had been hurting her was still trying to isolate her and pull other girls away from her. She couldn't control any of that. But she could control the kind of person she chose to be. And as a dad, that was the moment I realized that she'd been listening. Also reminded me that experiences don't just leave memories, they leave habits, instincts, and different ways of seeing the world. Maybe that's true of all of us. If you've lived long enough, there are certain moments that quietly change the way you move through the world. Smell can take you about 20 years. A song can remind you of someone you haven't thought about in months. A particular street or a season of the year, even the first cold morning of winter can bring back memories you didn't realize were still there. Sometimes they're happy memories, sometimes they're painful. Most of the time, they're simply reminders of the life that we've already lived. And maybe that's what experience really is. Not just a collection of things that happened to us, but a collection of things that continue to shape us long after they've happened. I think the older I get, the more I realize that none of us experiences today in isolation. We're all carrying yesterday with us. Sometimes that's a gift, sometimes it can be a burden. I think usually it's probably a bit of both. Maybe the challenge isn't trying to forget those experiences, but maybe it's deciding what we're going to do with them. Whether they make us more fearful or they make us prepared, whether they make us more bitter or more compassionate, and whether they make us close ourselves off or notice the person sitting on their own at lunch. Because if this week reminded me of anything, it's that our experiences don't just shape how we see the world, they also shape how the world experiences us. And that was this week in America.