Blessed are the walks to Cambridge School, up Dorobantiler Avenue, where our dear little S. must be delivered each weekday morning. These are the occasions for the most remarkable encounters, sparking in S. the most remarkable bits of verbal flourish and humane curiosity. After all, she is fresh into her day, which means only several hundred sentences into her day (she wakes up talking and does not cease until she sleeps at night), her intellectual engine firing already at a pace that’s hard to match.
…from the mundane:
Why is the sidewalk so hard?
…from the mundane:
Why is the sidewalk so hard?
Why is that woman wearing red shoes?
Why are there so many holes in the ground?
Why do people like to write all over the sides of buildings?
to the profound:
Why is that man begging?
Why are there so many holes in the ground?
Why do people like to write all over the sides of buildings?
to the profound:
Why is that man begging?
Where does that dog sleep at night?
Can dead people really live on clouds?
Why are there pictures of God on that house?
Certainly our walks to school through the leafy provinces of Pennsylvania are lovely too, not to mention utterly safe. But the urban landscape, even so early in the morning, has myriad distractions and details to stir a million questions in any self-respecting inquisitive girl. Blessed, then, is the mayhem and crud and tree-lined chaos of the Bucharestian street, beautiful in its offerings of human and animal business.
S. grips my hand tightly while we cross the perilous intersection at Dacia, then lets go entirely to run ahead (only a few steps, since she knows people DRIVE on the sidewalks here, which even she finds outrageous), her grey skirt and bedraggled white dress-shirt flapping in time to the flopping of her pony tails, her black “dragon” Chuck Taylor high-tops (she eschews the dress shoes that the other kids wear) scuffing along the sidewalks, all the while improvising questions and little goofy songs, until I swear she almost levitates.
Why are there pictures of God on that house?
Certainly our walks to school through the leafy provinces of Pennsylvania are lovely too, not to mention utterly safe. But the urban landscape, even so early in the morning, has myriad distractions and details to stir a million questions in any self-respecting inquisitive girl. Blessed, then, is the mayhem and crud and tree-lined chaos of the Bucharestian street, beautiful in its offerings of human and animal business.
S. grips my hand tightly while we cross the perilous intersection at Dacia, then lets go entirely to run ahead (only a few steps, since she knows people DRIVE on the sidewalks here, which even she finds outrageous), her grey skirt and bedraggled white dress-shirt flapping in time to the flopping of her pony tails, her black “dragon” Chuck Taylor high-tops (she eschews the dress shoes that the other kids wear) scuffing along the sidewalks, all the while improvising questions and little goofy songs, until I swear she almost levitates.
C
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