"Como girafa!"

I met a little girl today - her name was Kelsey - while hanging out at my friend's house in the Stuart neigborhood of Minneapolis. The little girl was a beautiful latina - long black hair, caramel skin, big grin. She was playing with Hershey the dog, who Katie and I were walking back from our trip down the Midtown Greenway.

Kelsey wasn't alone - she had young friends and cousins romping around in the yard with her. Nobody was older than 7 or 8, youngest was probably 3. Summer was fresh on their faces, in the grasstains on their knees, in the breathless way they ran from yard to yard. I loved that they all crowded around the dog laying there in the lawn.

I crouched down to be with them and the dog, and a curious and familiar conversation began to happen.

Kelsey and another little boy pointed to my shoulders which are covered with freckles. They furrowed their brows together, and Kelsey pointed to a patch of them, asking, "What are these on your skin?"

This is not the first time my speckled skin has drawn attention from children. When I visited Thailand in 2004, we lived in a villiage with many young ones. As I walked through the playgrounds to the cabin we were living in - all of us tall, white basketball-playing women - I was always met with pointing and staring. None of them spoke English, however. I only realized what they were laughing at when they got close enough (and brave enough) to touch me. Suddenly they were prodding my arms with their hands - giggling and giving me questioning looks.

These children spoke English, though - even though much of it was laced with Spanish words I understood - so I was finally in a place to explain my particular spotted appearance.

"These are my freckles," I said, and Katie offered the Spanish word "peca" to back up my soon to be wordy explanation.

"But why?" Kelsey asked me.

"You see your skin?" I said, pointing to her arm, "You see how you get brown in the summertime? Well, I do too, but instead of it being an even brown like your pretty skin, I can only have it in spots."

"You can't be in the sun?!" one boy asked, alarmed.

"No, no, I can be in the sun. It just makes me look a little different than you," which I knew wasn't giving them the answer they wanted, so I laughed and offered, "The sun makes me look a little bit like a giraffe."

Katie laughed one of her hearty, lean back laughs, and said, "Girafa!" which of course made Kelsey and her friends laugh, too.

They then moved on to looking at Katie's cell phone, wrapping themselves in blankets and playing tag, and tearing grass out of the lawn.

I'm always oddly happy to be a curiosity - suddenly so foreign. I sometimes forget that even the briefest intersections can leave me feeling like a giraffe, like a funny joke, like someone to stare at. Maybe there doesn't have to be much interesting about me beyond my "markings," and my ability to sit down in the grass with a dog and some children and play.

I like the simplicity of being a giraffe for an afternoon.

Letters from a stranger

I learned many things this week during my various intersections with humans in my life.

From a pair of relative strangers, I knew what it was to grieve and love through someone else's memory.

From a group of clients, I learned the power of chemistry - one girl requested that her class be reunited for next session. "You can take care of that, right? Because I don't think I want to do this without them." I watched a woman 6 times their age hand over her card, encouraging these young girls to call anytime - just to talk. She drove 50 miles back to Minneapolis, racing the setting sun.

From a past love, I learned the power of peace - because begrudgery only lead me to obsession and sadness. The days are fleeting and begging for the lightness that regret never allows.

From a rascal, I learned that I was maybe less dramatic than I once believed. I think what happens to a soul on it's way down a new path is something best described as a scattering - thrown in several directions at one time, and trying to pull everything together to make a whole. I learned that "Well, it happened, and there's no taking it back now."

I learned that meeting the parents is not always that big of a deal - and that school teachers can run with the bulls in Pamplona, or scream and carry on in a cab in Japan. Lawyers sometimes bike to work, looking like aliens all lit up on their trek downtown.

From a writer and a thinker, I learned that "get in the pool" life theories are good, and ones I need to follow more often. Throw your whole body at your target, I've learned.

Bon Appetit

This morning, I sat down with a colossal pancake that I made for a very late breakfast and flipped on the gigantic television my roommate owns. We don't have cable, and I have little patience for anything on non-cable television besides the news (on occasion), and Public Television.

I have always loved PBS. Every kid starts loving PBS nowadays, it seems - what with Sesame Street and the late and beloved Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. I guess I never lost my zest for public television (and radio, actually), ever since I discovered Globe Trekker and the occasional movie special. I've been to Egypt, watched Humbert Humbert seduce Lolita in black-and-white, started a reality television addiction with "Pioneer House," and even caught a documentary made by a Carleton student about giving up technology once. I think a general life goal I have is probably to have my own show on PBS, but until then, I'll tell you about what I saw today.

With all of the hype about Julia Child lately, it's no wonder that even PBS needed to capitalize on the movie buzz by plugging "The French Chef" seasons on DVD as a gift for contibuting to their cause. I remember vaguely watching Julia Child with my grandparents when they came over to babysit us once. We also had to watch "Yan Can Cook" - but that's a whole 'nother story. My memory reminded me that she had a very distinctive voice - but that's about the extent of it.

In the episode they were airing, they featured Julia making a spit-roasted chicken stuffed with parsely, challot, salt, pepper, and, you guessed it, butter. She even gave the chicken a "butter massage" (her own words) to prep the skin for roasting. Later, she tied pieces of bacon to it in an effort to "self baste" the bird.

What I learned from this episode and perhaps my readings on Julia in general as of late is the following:

1) Julia Child was tall and awkward. This endears me to her, of course, as there aren't many of us 6-footers out there. We have to band together.

2) In the days of South Beach diets and the like, it was strangely refreshing to see someone slather on butter like it was her job. It's not like Julia sat down to eat that entire chicken, or that she made it every day - but if you make something special, you have to think about how it tastes. If you're presenting your best work to others, wouldn't you want it to be so perfect that they could think of nothing but the heaven that is hitting their tastebuds? We worry so much about how we talk, how we look, how we present ourselves - but cooking always reminds me that sometimes the best reflection of oneself that can be offered is something made, and something given.

3) The greatest gift a teacher can give is the accessibility to the subject matter. The more I read and learn about Julia, the more I learn that she did precisely that: demystify. As a teacher myself, I struggle always to analyze tasks, to break it into tiny pieces and feed it to my students in such a way that they learn.

4) All the best people have playful hearts. They make fun - they create great events and great enthusiasm around their own personal passions. They aren't afraid to be the most ridiculous person in the room, or to pick someone off the floor, or to trip and fall themselves. What great fearlessness she had, indeed.

There is plenty of hype, and rightfully so, stirring around Julia Child as of late - I believe that she and so many of the teachers, friends, parents, and heroes we all have are made of similar stuff. And as for me - I'm learning to savor the tastes of today, and remember them as they slip into tomorrow. I'm going to try to be the best awkward 6-footer since Ms. Child herself.