My house smells of milk today. A large can jumped out of the fridge while I was arranging all my groceries. It was a shock in the moment because I rarely tend to have such accidents. A river of milk started flowing and crawling all over the floor while I just stared mutely realising that this was the first time in my life—very strangely—that I would have to singlehandedly cope with such an event. I froze with the thought of how to fix it. If you have done it before you know what to do but for me this was unprecedented. I first tried cleaning it with tissue papers and it was evidently a bad idea. Then I got a towel and squeezed it into a bucket. Memory very faintly suggested that that's what people did back home. It worked. Slowly I realised that I have a mop and bucket and that would sort this even better. So I finally cleaned up the remaining white patches and blotches with a mop. 

I guess when something unexpected happens we are transported to similar experiences we might have had earlier. This milk incident sort of made me think about how whenever something like this occurred back home there were always people who "took care of it". Magically everything that needed to be done was done. Today it felt like I was confronting this "problem" for the first time with none of those who just dealt with it around... it felt strange. Unlike theoretical problems that I resolve as a matter of course every day, this practical problem made me feel a bit stumped because I had very little history of dealing with it. Which is why I felt a little proud of myself for rising to the occasion albeit a bit late. I know what to do if it happens again so I feel like I gained something. But at the same time I felt my heart grow a bit heavy… thinking of those who took on all practical worries to give me a life of some ease…