tweedledum
My daughter is 8 months as of yesterday. Still no “Mama” or “Dada,” but utter glee at most things and an all-consuming desire to do everything she sees her brother do, including walking and talking.
Eating mini Milky Way bars as an after-lunch treat reminds me of skiing in France. French students go to school Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and a half day on Saturday, with Wednesdays off. Also, the schoolday finishes closer to 5 p.m. than to 3 p.m. like it does here in America. But the free Wednesday is a great break in the middle of the week. In the winter, my mom would send my best friend, Timothy, and I off on a day trip to the nearby ski resorts further up in the Alps. I remember playing a prodigious amount of handheld LCD gaming and really solidifying my friendship with Timothy. For energy during the day-long skiing, my mom would pack miniature candy bars in most of my coat pockets–European candy like Mars bars and Lion bars. Like Milky Ways, though, they contained caramel, and I remember my semi-frozen fingers fumbling and they unwrapped a bar on a chairlift, only to discover the bar itself was half-frozen as well and took a few minutes to thaw in my mouth. I remember darkness too… Those trips punctuated the winter weeks, keeping them from running together and fixing my memory on details like the trip home in late afternoon when the sun had already set and I squirmed on the scratchy fabric of the bus seat, unable to find a comfortable position to assuage my tiredness. Still, I wouldn’t have traded those days for anything.
I brought some candy bars along last time I went skiing up here so I could eat them on the lift just like France too. Amazing the things we remember :)
Paul