She jumped on the couch and snuggled next to me and said: “tell me more stories from your childhood!”

It all started with me trying to explain to her “elasticul” or maybe about my brother when he was her age tried to give me a bath when I was either Marc’s or Juanita’s age, just a few months old. Preposterous! Then we spent a good half an hour sharing stories. She is a very good listener, engaged, patient, eager. Her belly laughter at the funny stories, the follow up questions, the invitation to tell her more!

We talked about how we played hide and seek with our neighborhood kids, and tag, team games and speed games and strategy games… and how she may play with the kids in this neighborhood when the weather gets nice again. I told her about my time at my grandma’s in Piatra, and building forts and climbing trees, hiking in the woods, eating apples and pears, sleeping with a purring soft kitty in bed, going to the creek… “where was your mommy?” “I was just with my cousins. Mommy or grammie weren’t there.” “You were alone? They let you?” “I was with cousins and we looked out for each other!” “huh!” “Did you eat bananas or mangos?” “No, they are exotic fruit. We didn’t have such fruit in the village. We ate only what grew in the backyard” “What’s exotic?” 🙂 Now Daddy your turn! What did you do when you were a kid? Daddy put aside what he was doing and joined in the story sharing. He also climbed trees and fell from a few of them, and spent time in nature… After a while J. says: “Now it’s my turn to tell you stories from my childhood.” So, when I was a kid I played with my dog Rufus, and I read books and I did this puzzle, and I played kitchen, and I played Go-fish… and she was describing what she did today. That is her childhood. Then she came again next to me, took my arm and put it around her and said: “now it’s your turn again to tell more stories from you childhood”. She was so mature and engaging and pleasant and genuinely interested in our stories… I think last evening was one of my favorite episodes of connection, balanced, filled with wonder and joy of knowing another.