Project Thanksgiving

Last Year's Epic Thanksgiving in St. Mandé

It’s that time of the year. The Birthday/Thanksgiving/Onset-of-Winter time. My mother’s birthday and my own are two days apart, the 19th and the 21st, and Thanksgiving is usually within the following week. It’s a very warm, bright spot just at the beginning of what in my natural habitat could be a long, grueling, frozen winter that doesn’t give way until April or sometimes even May.

Like last year, I’m in Paris. And  like last year, we’re going to be celebrating my birth at my favourite bar. This time, though, I live next-door to the bar (danger!) and the first half of the party doubles as a Housewarming shindig for Kam and I.

Oh, convenience!

Pam, Julian and Chris will be visiting from their program in Firenze that week as well. Way to amp up a naturally juicy holiday-time, right? We will be holding Thanksgiving Dinner on the actual, real, honest-to-goodness Day Of, and digging in to our meal at possibly the same hour as many of our fellow East-Coast Pilgrim Descendants who dig in shortly after lunch (7pm our time, 1pm EST). On the holiday menu: turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, bean salad, stuffing, and dessert that still needs deciding upon.

Trouble is, how does one recreate such an iconic American meal? A good friend here in Paris holds an event every year around this time called Frenchgiving, and it’s not meant to imitate our classic menu at all. In fact, it redefines Thanksgiving-time for expats and French guests alike. My friend prides himself on the fact that his potluck-style meal “has never seen a cranberry sauce”.

My idea is to recreate the American meal, while adding a twist of classic French cuisine, since all three of my friends will be either visiting Paris for the first time in their lives, or in a long time. It would only be fair to try and provide them with a little cultural reference point in the meal. This led me to consider making a less-hearty gravy, in the French ‘jus’ style, making sure to pop some authentic champagne, and perhaps making some crêpes to finish off the dinner. Baguette, as always, will be a central point of the meal, and I’m accepting any and all suggestions up until the Big Day.

Should we go “fois gras?” or is it too much?

I’ll try to keep updating as things become clearer, like whether or not we’re going to be able to find a cooked turkey for the event on such short notice, and if we do, will it still be warm by the time it gets to the table, and whether it will come in its juices, for jus’ing purposes, and if not, whether we’ll be reduced to a rotisserie chicken (What “reduced”? rotisserie chicken is damn good…it’s just not turkey).

One positive side to this is that the grocery stores won’t be packed with people loading up on last-minute items, or running out of important meal staples, buying out all of the canned cran sauce or other such tragedies. The trickiest bit will be actually finding the items in the first place, and figuring out how to engineer some of our classic American dishes.

Today I am thankful for the Thanksgiving Store. Yeah, it’s literally called that, or something like that. It’s a store in Paris I’ve heard talk of, which has Thanksgiving stuff in it. For sale. To me.

Crazy Boat

I am really good at giving advice. Good advice, I think. I don’t find it hard to put myself in someone else’s shoes and I pride myself on always trying to be constructive and supportive to my friends. Naturally, I have a lot of friends like that as well.

Funny how when crazy shit happens, sane people are still unable to follow the good advice they’ve been doling out for years. I can’t count the number of times that my mostly sane friends have come to me with totally absurd relationship questions or admitted to me some crazy scheme they’ve devised in reaction to some emotional trauma. And I just sit there like,

wow, you really can’t be your own therapist.

And here I am now, in the Crazy Boat. Let me tell you, things look different from inside the Crazy Boat. The shore looks miles and miles away. I mean, the Crazy Boat is really just Out At Sea. And it’s small, the Crazy Boat; just a wooden dingey really, and there is only room for one person, and the water around the Crazy Boat fluctuates between rough and choppy, and eerily calm. When the waves are crashing, you just have to hold on to the sides and let the water wash over you until it subsides. And the calm water can be just as bad, like now you can peer over the edge of the Crazy Boat and that terrified feeling comes over you, like

ahh, the water is infinitely deep!

and you shudder with the knowledge that you have none. As the captain of my current Crazy Boat, I now turn to my friends, who have never let me down, and will eventually help me will this vessel ashore. I suppose it is that certainty that keeps the Crazy Boat from capsizing.

Some advice I’ve been receiving lately has included never becoming dependent upon someone else, as a rule. I like this thought, in principle. I think everyone should be able to find happiness within themselves, be self-sufficient. But the beauty of sharing things with others is human, and the line between sharing, and becoming intertwined, being interdependent…I just don’t know where it is. Isn’t it wonderful to give to others? Isn’t it magic to let someone else know they can depend upon you? I guess you just have to know how to go on if something doesn’t pan out the way you hoped it would.

This idea could use developing over a bottle of wine.

In the meantime, I’m just going to give a shoutout in the spirit of pre-Thanksgiving, to all of my friends and family who are always there for me, and who consistently show me so much love and support. I’ve got your backs, too.

Tags: friendship, interdependence, rebirth, therapy

Press On

Shit is hard this fall. Last year when I moved overseas with nary a backward glance, I seemed to arrive in this prime moment in which everything just kind of bowed and bent before me: I had found a job within a week of my arrival, I found another job shortly thereafter, and before I knew it, I was feeling ‘settled’. Everything I touched turned to gold.

This year, everything I touch seems to disintegrate in my hands. I found a job before coming over here, looking after some kids. I thought I had struck a great arrangement with the family, the kids were great, the pay wasn’t bad – it looked like it might supply me with a partial livelihood and that I would still have time to pursue other things. But when I got back from my three-week hiatus in Italy, I had been replaced and the family had discovered that they really didn’t need me as often as planned. Disappointing, but I still had some faith in the way things work out, and pressed forward.

In June, I had started to take a low dose of antidepressants to manage the chronic daily headaches I’d been having for months. When I came back to Paris in October after my time in Italy, I discovered that my prescription still hadn’t arrived from the States and was likely being held at Customs. People should really warn you about taking these kinds of medications: I was tired, I was pissed, I just wanted to sleep and cry and wallow in some mysterious black hole I didn’t even know I was capable of accessing. I was miserable. My boyfriend took me to an ER that was specifically geared to headache sufferers, I got my refill, and thought that things would just shoot upward from there. Unfortunately, the fact that I had stopped treatment so suddenly and then went back on the medication after a few days seemed to pose more problems than anticipated; the medicine had to be reintroduced to my system, and my system hated it.

So I went on a silent warpath, stopped communicating with important people in my life, and just generally felt worse than I ever have in my life for weeks straight. Now that I’ve regained a rational perspective, I see how important it is for  me to get off of these meds, whether or not that means entering back into the world of the Daily Headache. And so a few days ago, I began the slow process of weaning myself off of amitriptyline.

So couple the difficulties of living and working in a foreign country with the challenges of being on a totally bizarre medication…

and you’ve got me, now.

Tags: antidepressants, chronic daily headache, medication withdrawal symptoms

Kyle, His Laugh, and How Nothing is Ever Lost

The day I heard that Kyle died was the same day that I found my grandmother’s cross. One of those lost-heirloom headaches I’d suffered for several years, finally giving up on the thing altogether and trying never to think of it, to avoid the guilt and the feeling of complete idiocy for having misplaced it. Turns out, it wasn’t really misplaced – It was simply in the corner of a front pouch in a bag I’d been carrying around with me from country to country for years. Also within that bag – a little medicine bag my mother had made, and my lucky golden elephant, given me one day by a generous African peddler in Italy.

It was like I had been carrying my good luck charms with me unknowingly for these last years. The coincidence of finding these keepsakes on the day I learned of Kyle’s death is something I will never forget. Kyle shared a birthday with my grandmother, with whom I was extremely close, who passed away in 2008. And although I don’t literally believe (or do I?) that my grandmother sent me this sign, I do believe that somewhere in the simultaneity of last Sunday there was a lesson or two.

Lesson 1:  The universe is mysterious. Yeah, it seems obvious, but so many people are either unwilling to give over to the unknown, let alone greet that mystery with open arms.

Lesson 2: Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Obvious? Sure, sometimes. I’m thinking specifically about the way that these little superstitious items were with me on so many adventures and in so many closets, always close by, but in a way forgotten because their loss was too profound to fathom.

It makes me think about Kyle, this persona, this magnetic soul. He was, and continues to be, a person with so much life within him that it is still almost impossible to think him gone. But that’s it: he isn’t gone. He’s in the pocket of your favorite bag, he’s in that spot in the corner of your glove compartment that you never can seem to reach from the driver’s seat. You know what I mean: he is everywhere, because he touched the lives of everyone he met. It’s hard to think about having lost him, because you know he can never, ever be replaced; not by a longshot. So sometimes you’ve got to put it on the backburner when that emotion starts to well up, and his totally mirthful laugh ignites in your memory.

I can still feel Kyle coming over to me and slinging his arm around my shoulder like a big brother, smiling that winning smile and saying “Ça gaze?” in his Kyle-way. “Tu veux une bagarre!?” Then trying to mooch something off me, like a cigarette (usually a cigarette). God, he was a mooch. But as a good friend pointed out, you could just never stay mad about it. Oh, you could GET mad, but staying mad was another thing. One just couldn’t with Kyle. He was incredible like that. Incredible in that, if he had anything to give, he would gladly give it to you. No questions asked. Probably the shirt off his back, to be honest.

We’d been out of touch in the years since college, and of course it saddens me now, when a month ago I was hardly thinking of him, or anyone else really, that I went to college with (aside from the few people I actually stay in contact with). The truth is, I’m ashamed of how little I manage to write some of the people I love, to let them know that I love them.

People always say this when someone they care about dies: that now they will begin to write more letters or that now they will tell that girl they like that she’s pretty. Why are we waiting for these moments? What is it that we are waiting for, exactly?

Now go tell someone how important they are to you.

Tags: kismet, kyle whelan, mysteries of the universe

Encore!

I can’t decide whether the better metaphor for my current situation is that the tide has taken me back out to sea, or that it has washed me up on shore again. A giant leap, or a heavy splash. In any case, some changes have occurred, the biggest of which was leaving my job in April. So now we are in June, and my last post was in January, and I suppose I have some explaining to do.

I left Paris at the end of February on a business trip that I was not well-prepared for. Without placing too much blame, I’d rather just say that my work style was incompatible with that of my boss and I felt lost in projects I was supposed to own. Too much emotion has already been wasted on that job for me to keep exerting the energy. It was also not a job I saw myself in for the long haul, once I’d had a taste of it.

And so in April I resigned, spent a couple weeks on K’s couch in the Upper East Side, wandering out to drink coffee and talk on the phone to my mom while meandering through Central Park. Not a bad interlude, but short-lived. I was running out of money and had to get out of the city before it was all gone.

In mid-April I made the bus trip from New York to Boston, then Boston to Maine, where I settled into my old bedroom at my parents’ house. Strange to be sure, and the longest I’ve been home in years. I made the last-minute decision to apply to graduate school to continue my study of French and Italian for this year. By last-minute, I should clarify that attending this particular school has been a lifelong dream, and since last summer it’s been high on my list of What’s Next, but leaving my job actually made it a possibility for THIS summer, and Admission was on a rolling basis. I asked a few really lovely people if they would refer me, they agreed, paperwork was completed, and I awaited the decision (especially the financial aid bit).

Clé came to visit for three weeks in May, and we did the New York, Boston, Maine circuit together, as it was his first time in the States. He got to meet so many of my great friends, and we had an amazing time in each place we visited. We were hosted by some of the most wonderful people I know, who made our trip special.

After Clé left, I made an appointment to see someone about my headaches, since I’d seemingly been waking up with the same one every day for about two months. While I suffer from Migraine, the doctor I saw said she thought that what I was experiencing might be a Tension Headache or a Chronic Daily Headache instead. I was put on a low-dose antidepressant to be taken every night before bed. Definitely hesitant to be put on something that sounded so serious, I was told that this is a common practice for migraine sufferers, and that I should feel no side effects at all.

Except for the sleepiness. Bedtime never tasted so sweet. I curl up, I doze off happily, I sleepwalk to the bathroom around 4am (small bladder), I have no trouble going back to sleep. Downside being that I have a terrible time waking up in the morning. At my parents’ house, I generally get up with them, between 6:30 and 7:30. This past week and a half, I have done all I can to pull myself upright by 9. The good news is that when I’m up I feel good, no headaches since the start of the pill, I hardly ever nap anymore. It’s just the part where I actually open my eyes and peel the sheets back that is difficult.

And then I was accepted to Grad School. I’m still waiting on my financial aid package, to see if it’s really feasible, but if it is, the program starts next week. I’m in this strange purgatory. A less-than-favorable grant means a larger-than-desired loan. It’s something I’ll have to weigh when I get the news (fingers crossed for today).

So the rundown of my future life (if the program works out) is this summer studying Italian in this amazing immersion program, trying to find some translation work (possibly through connections at school?) so I can get back to Paris/Venice as soon as possible, spend the year supporting myself with translation work, traveling, seeing my boo, Part II of the Italian School next summer June-August, followed by the academic year ’12-’13 in Paris learning French and being with Clé.

Fingers crossed for all of that, with a generous topping of happiness.

Office Rites

When you arrive in the morning, to a small French company like mine, you’ve got to kiss everyone in the office. For me, that’s like 3-5 Hello Kisses per day. Everyone kisses differently. If you’re close or in a particularly good mood, you might really plant more of  a kiss on the cheek of your greeter. Otherwise, a brushing of cheeks accompanied by the sound of kissing is acceptable, and far more common.

Throughout the workday, there are other invasions of personal space with which one must cope. Sayonara to all of those good old American desk lunches – you know the ones I mean – where you heat up that cup-o-soup in the microwave and slurp it down in haste while perusing Facebook and ignoring your telephone.

Goodbye are the days of lunch being a personal moment of rest and repose. If I start getting hungry, I think, naturally, about what I might want to eat, then about who is also in the office and what they might want to eat. And then I do the rounds. “Have you eaten? I’m going to Picard.” This bit I don’t mind so much. It’s the part after this – when you get back to the office with your boxes of frozen meals, or styrocartons of kebabs and must then sit around with all of your colleagues to eat.

Goddammit, sometimes I like to eat alone.

At my desk.

Reading a book.

And then everyone is smoking before you’ve even finished eating (some of us like to eat slowly).

One must also remember to bid farewell to all of one’s coworkers at the end of the day. For whatever reason, the kissing bit is often left out in farewells, but everyone has their own set of unwritten rules about it. For example, as I was bidding farewell to two coworkers one night, one of them decided to kiss me goodbye. This resulted in the other coworker, though not usually a Goodbye Kisser, kissing me goodbye, out of pure obligation. It is unacceptable to leave the workplace without bidding each coworker farewell.

But when exactly is the end of the day? Another funny thing about this country is its hours of operation. We Americans are known for our incessant working, our lack of vacation, our habit of holding two or three jobs simultaneously. And after some time here, I can’t really tell who has it worse.

As far as health benefits go, France is kicking our ass. And hey, that might be the most important thing here, in the end. A nation of healthy people! People who aren’t worried about taking their sick kid to the doctor because it might cost them hundreds of dollars at an emergency room…hundreds of dollars they don’t have.

The other side (I wanted to say ‘more superficial side’, but that is probably just my own vacationless culture speaking) to Workplace Life is that of hours worked, and vacation granted.

The French workday begins between 9-10am, and much to my horror, seems never to end. People just work and work and work, until, “well, I guess I’m done for the day.” I mean, how do you know when it’s time to go home? Isn’t there always work to be done?

Rush hour in Paris is between 8 and 10am, and then from 530-8pm.

Rush hour in Boston is 7-9am, and 4-7pm.

The French receive, on average, FIVE WEEKS of paid vacation per year. Five Full Fucking Weeks (pardon my French). Plus about 11 unpaid national holidays. You also earn MORE vacation if you decide to work 39 hours per week instead of 35.

For the information of my French or otherwise International readers – Employers in the United States are Not Obligated to grant vacation time. If they do, it averages about 10 days per year, and working overtime is simply rewarded with money. Being at work 40 hours a week is the norm, technically clocking in at 35, as the lunch hour is unpaid. If a worker surpasses 40 hours in the workweek, they are paid overtime. Woohoo!

Also, as the American system is not designed for all of this wild vacation playtime, it is nearly impossible to take all of your vacation days in one go.

Vive le Long Weekend?

Tags: being social against one's will, colleagues, france, office rituals, work

Pharmacy Visit à la Française

 

Can you spot the Pharmacie?

I love French pharmacies. Have I said that lately? Those people know what is UP. Who needs doctors when you have the French Pharmacist? As an American, one is skeptical of all this Just-Pop-Into-Your-Local-Drugstore crap. You know you’re not getting anything good unless your doctor has already written that prescription.

Here in France, okay, you may not be getting sent home with hard drugs, but let me say: at least they care what’s going on with your sick self. One of the highlights for me, of being ill, is going to the store with the bright green beacon of hope in the shape of an almost-cross. As close to god as I may ever get.

Today, for example. I write from the living room of the apartment I’m subletting. I took the day off work because when I awoke I was like daaaaaaaamn this is worse than before. So I made myself a cup of tea, blew my nose several times, and then threw on a strange, sick person’s arrangement of clothing for a trek down the street.

There are so many pharmacies in Paris. I mean, you really get the choice. There is one right beside my house, run by a little old man. He’s rather nice – once helped me choose a lotion, although, being an old man, was not as helpful as the young woman in the Other Pharmacy who helped me choose sunscreen once. The third Pharmacy is on the other block, across the street, so I decided to continue ignoring it, and go the place where the sunscreen deal had gone down (“I’m looking for a sunscreen.” “Well, here are our sunscreens. This one is for… And here is this one…This particular sunscreen is for….Are you going on holiday, or is this just for Paris?” “Paris,” I replied. “Ah, then the only one you really need is this one…”)

Today a very kind lady helped me. I mean, these people go above and beyond the call of duty. This is how things went down (translated).

Pharmacist: “Hello, how can I help you?”

Me: “Well, I started feeling sick three days ago. Sore throat mostly, swollen gland on this side, not here. Now I have stuff in my throat. I don’t remember the word.”

Pharmacist: “Sore throat? Okay, let’s see – for sore throats, we have syrups or sprays that will help – it’s up to you.”

Me: “A syrup is fine. But will it help with the uh…the stuff I have here in my throat?”

Pharmacist: (puzzled look) “Are you having trouble swallowing?”

Me: (repeating the word) “I don’t understand.”

Pharmacist: (repeats word, swallows hard.)

Me: “Oh!” (remember word, understand.) “Well, it hurts, yeah because it’s swollen.”

Pharmacist: “Can I touch it?”

Me: “Sure.”

(I pull down my scarf, Pharmacist feels the huge swollen gland with her hand, then steps back and apparently can actually SEE my enlarged throat on one side, great. Opens mouth in awe, composes herself.)

Pharmacist: “Ok, are you coughing?”

Me: “Yes, I am, not much, but it hurts. It’s dry.”

Pharmacist: “Ok, let’s get you a syrup for the cough, and a spray for your throat, ok? You don’t want that to get any more inflamed.”

Me: “I’m in love with you.”

Goodies

Then I bought some herbal tea, paid her almost no money at all (not because I chose not to, but because there actually is a place in the world where people can afford to be treated for their illnesses! With no appointment and no insurance). Now I’m home, pleased with myself, ready to take another nap with my Paul Auster novel…

Vive la France.

Tags: france, illness, insurance, paris, pharmacies, sickness, swollen glands

Girl from the Great North

Maine in November

I grew up in the state of Maine. The realest place you know. Or don’t know, because frankly there are far too many people who have never visited Maine. And I pity them. For the Non-Americans reading this blog, there are just tons of states in our country. 50, to be exact (and counting: whatup Middle East?).

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the snow lately, as it has started falling in Paris – fell steadily all day yesterday in fact, and through the night. People are constantly missing opportunities to pity me when the weather drops below zero. YES, I’m from Maine, NO that isn’t a substitute for mittens! And I, too, want to be able to chatter my teeth to the tune of a warmup hug.

The Métro

The Parisians are getting stiffer by the hour, as temperatures drop. We (well, i’m a part-timer) stand on the platform of the métro with our hands in our pockets and necks tucked into our shoulders. But the métro is always a relief – it’s like home base. Walk as fast as you can to the station, and all will be well.

Other places in Paris are decidedly colder.

Angelina, one of my favourite indulgences in the city, and part of a ritual of warm hot chocolate and buttery cakes that I share with my friend Yalie, opened it’s Tuileries-facing doors in 1903…and quite literally hasn’t closed them since. Last Sunday, the smartly dressed hostess approached Yay and myself, informed us that there was an open table, but that we might be chilly. Yay gave me a Southern California Glare and we passed on the table. The foolhardy, unsuspecting couple behind us went for it, and spent their teatime with shaking shoulders, eyeing us and pulling their jackets tighter around them.

Angelina

It was amazing to us that a tea room/restaurant could be so cold. We imagined the numerous restaurants in the States, pumping heat as fast as it went out the doors, just for the comfort of their spoiled clientele.

As a Northerner, I would rather be cold than hot. Heat, I can do nothing about (and if you say Air Conditioning, I say Gross). And the fact is, I usually AM cold. My hands and feet, even in full summer can get quite icy. I’m the one with cold toes in bed. I shop for winter year-round. I got made fun of for wearing stockings in the summer here (ONCE, ok? The morning was chilly) – I had my new woolen winter coat before the last beach days of été.

I’m like a squirrel collecting woolen nuts all year. Or something.

Snow à la Parisienne

And the snow gives me great comfort. When I see it falling, I am all up in my fair isle sweater (today, for example), tea water is coming to a boil, and all that is missing is my dad bundling up to go out into the yard with the snowblower and my mother tending to a fire in the wood stove. Or getting into bed to watch movies with Amelia with nothing but a space heater fighting back against our thin Boston walls.

Snow quiets everything; it just sort of insulates the world, changes all the sounds around us, not to mention the light. As a Girl of the Great North, I feel like I’m being tucked in with the first snowfall, embraced by the clouds, like when your buxom great aunt kisses you, and leaves you all red-cheeked and slightly in pain, but feeling ever-so-Loved.

A Photo Finish

The other night I went to Portland with my parents to see a photography exhibit at the museum. Pictorialists vs. Group f/64.

Portrait of Three Women - Elias Goldensky ca. 1915

Pictorialists: A group of photographers making pictures with a softer edge, based on the notion that photographs should echo the painting and etching styles of the late 1800s, hence the manipulation of photographs both during shooting (filters, lens coating and soft focus), and in the darkroom (hand-scratching negatives and using brushes to blur parts of the image). Some would argue that the subject matter in pictorialist photography is of lesser importance than the style in which it was photographed and printed. Members of this movement were fighting for the acknowledgement of photography as an art form.

Imogen Cunningham

 

 

 

Group f/64: Named after the small aperture setting on a large-format camera that produces the greatest depth of field, this group of seven photographers based in San Francisco formed an opposition to Pictorialist photography. The group’s 1932 manifesto, displayed alongside their work at their first exhibit, states that entry into the group was by invitation only and for those “striving to define photography as an art form by simple and direct presentation through purely photographic methods.” Their photographs, due to the often lengthy exposure time that accompanies this particularly small aperture, were often of landscapes, found objects, or otherwise staged by the photographer. Images are extremely sharp and focused, in opposition to the soft edges of Pictorialist images.

My Take: I couldn’t decide which I liked better. I found myself moved by the romantic quality of the Pictorialist images.  I felt dedicated to their construction of their art – the time they took to manipulate their pictures, to achieve that dreamy atmosphere. One can’t help but become part of the photograph: to let the soft edges envelop you and fold you into the image.

That said, the photos I saw from Group f/64 were just as stunning to me and, in their strength and focus, managed to strike gentle Pictorialism from my mind. The depth of field in these images is not as inviting as the Pictorialist touch. These photos feel like a wall: a magnificent, carefully constructed wall. While beautiful, Group f/64′s pictures leave me cold. I have no questions about the photograph. I can see every angle and corner clearly; I know what the photograph is of.

Group f/64′s images dare you to ask, dare you to come up with some kind of criticism, question, any comment. Pictorialist images invite curiosity. I feel Pictorialism, I see the images created by Group f/64.

 

The Baby Ache

 

Elly

 

One of the joys of being at home with my parents for a while is Elly. Elly is three months old, and she is my niece. According to my research, the only other baby this cute was my nephew, and that was eleven years ago, before I knew how to appreciate babies.

In fact, I suspect that my time as a Nounou in Paris had a huge hand in helping me appreciate babies. Those three little girls showed me a new level of patience with the age-challenged. I realised how little they know, how they have absolutely no concept of our reality – of hate, of love, geography, language, mathematical impossibilities, of how little they are in the scheme of things. What a fantastic thing! We write it off as imagination, but I mean – isn’t it easy to create alternate realities when as a child, your own is so loosely held together?

I have also seen firsthand how important adult roles are to children. Your parents (and other adults involved in raising you) give you the world. They show you things that you will consider truth for a good chunk of time, maybe changing your mind when you yourself become an adult, but nevertheless important in sculpting your individual worldview. They are responsible for unrolling the map before your eyes, preparing you for what is to come (and possibly choosing to leave a large chunk of that for you to figure out on your own, if they are what I would deem Good Parents).

When I look at my niece at 3 months, I can’t help but be amazed. She smiles like she already knows everything there is to know. She laughs like she’s heard it all before.  I think it’s easy to forget that children just Don’t Know Yet, especially when they give you those wise looks, or furrow those quizzical brows in your direction. I believe the best example of how much babies perceive of the world is in the way that they sleep. Elly sleeps like there is nothing to worry about, because she doesn’t know about wars and bombs and lust and murder and gluttony.

I never thought I would say that I could see myself as a mother (and trust me, it’s still a LONG way off), but in the last year I have definitely developed a new sensitivity towards children. Part of it is that mid-twenties hormonal peak, where your body starts screaming to be impregnated (fight it off, ladies), that even women who know they do not ever want children can feel. And the other part is what I’ve described above – the way I see children today as never before, as really interesting little baby humans.