On my lunch break of a ham baguette sandwich, I hear familiar sounds coming from across the street.  On the stage in the corner farthest away from inside the cafe, there is a peekaboo space between pieces of bamboo in the thicket fence.  It’s the familiar sound coming from the Montessori preschool across the street at 3PM on a weekday.

But first, the stern tone of one teacher pierces through the cloudy air: a Chinese woman whose impeccable English is colored by the harsher tonalities of her native tongue.  By American standards she sounds automatically punitive, forceful, perhaps unkind, and overly so.  But when in the village of raising children, the stern balances the coddling, and caution to the reassurance.

Adults have the capacity to be as observant and full of wonder like a young child, although the growth no longer shows so dramatically from the outside.  Even from day one, we are lead by our wonders, and can only do so much in the face of the expectations of our environments.

12.18.13