And I Will Never Grow So Old Again

There's a warm breeze in the city. And my world is coming back to life.

I discovered the other day that I can now call American telephones from my Gmail account which is pretty incredible. I called my mom's house and heard our answering machine for the first time in a year and a half. When I got through to her today, all I wanted to talk about was how I finally felt like myself again.

Last weekend, I found myself in a six hour conversation with a relative stranger. We talked about everything. We talked about love, religion, politics, how we were raised, everything that you spend years revealing to your friends as you get to know them. At one point in the conversation, I said, "You know, sometimes you just need to talk to a stranger to remember who you are." I walked home that night and each step was easier than the one before it. For months, each step was a hurdle. I was too tired to sleep, I was too tired to get out of bed. I felt lost in this city, lost in my own head. But suddenly, I was searching for similes and metaphors. I was getting a new pair of glasses, removing a veil, watching the sun come out from behind the clouds, feeling a weight lifted off my shoulders. There weren't enough. There will never be enough. We reserve so many clichés for falling in love, for explaining that inexplicable feeling. And now, I want to steal all of those phrases and use them for how I feel about living.

I find myself running for trams a lot lately. I wear dresses again. I feel the way that my feet pound against the pavement, the way that it fights back and propels me. I feel the way that my dress flutters against my stocking-clad legs. I throw my arms wide and feel like I am flying in this warm breeze. I let the tram catch me, I let it pull me through the city. I look up. I see murals I've never noticed. I catch glimpses of crocuses. I smile at strangers and they smile back. I dance when the urge overcomes me. I sing out loud. I sing "Sweet Thing" by Van Morrison because it's the only song that can capture the feeling of spring after a long, grey winter.

Teach a Man to Fish

Though my spring break doesn't occur for nearly another month, my kids are already taking theirs. This is because different schools in different districts of Prague have different holidays to prevent the entire country fleeing to the mountains at once. None of my kids are vacationing in the Mediterranean for spring break. They all go to the mountains. One of those little things about living in a post communist country is seeing how the limits imposed by the government became somehow natural. But that's a post for another day.

My kids are off on holiday because their older siblings in other schools have holidays. This means that instead of my class of eight little princesses, we've been topping out at five. While it's frustrating because my kids will be at such different levels after this next month, it has given me a chance to get to know them better as individuals.

And there are those moments when I just happen to be listening to the right kid at the right moment that make my whole life make sense...

We've been putting up a bulletin board with fruit on it to show how some fruit grows on bushes and other fruit grows on trees. I was hanging a cloud up with rain coming down over one of the bushes and one of my girls asked why it was raining.

"Well, you need to drink water and tea, right?"

"Mhmm."

"The bush needs to drink, too. It drinks the rain water."

A few hours later, my girls were sitting below the bulletin board.

"You know why is cloudy here?" I heard. "The bush need drink rain water so it get big."

A few minutes later:

"I am rain and you are bush. I come and make you big, okay?"

Most teachers I know think of circle time as their most important lesson time. I'm learning that the time I give to individual children is just as important if not more important than our class lessons. If I teach the whole class something they don't particularly care about, it's lost about five minutes later. But if I spur the curiosity of a child and that child spurs the curiosity of another child, two sentences can lead to an elaborate role-play in which my children figure out how the world around them works.

My kids are always playing nurturing games. "I'm Mommy and you're Baby!" Or "I am the kitten and you're my daddy!" They've managed to discover a new nurturing game as rain nurtures plants. Spring is coming and I'm so excited to see it through their eyes.