Whatever you loved at eight

is what you love now. Now, draw me a sheep.

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The Little Prince fresh from the basement where it’s sat for 7 years.

Have you read The Little Prince?

I found a copy in our new basement and, on a very long afternoon days before school started, I read half of it aloud to my six and four-year-old. Our ship freight hadn’t arrived in the U.S. yet so the only books they’ve had to choose from are a Chi graphic novel (always good, honestly) and some tattered chapter books. Maybe they were just sleepy and entranced in Lego while listening and maybe I’m reading into things, but they liked it…? Unlike so many of the books they love, the reward of a picture was few and far between, and some aren’t even color. The writing is archaic compared to The Book With No Pictures or Dog Man but my six-year-old giggled at the right spots and the four-year-old parroted words he didn’t know in a British accent, so it truly felt we were all on the same page.

Four-year-old said, “Mama, I love his dress.” Me too, me too.

I thought we’d make it through a couple of pages but thirty minutes later, I was still reading aloud with no sign of uprising.

I know very little about the French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, but am aware there are niche academic circles that could wax poetic on his work. And I’ve heard comments about the “true” The Little Prince in French versus the translated versions. I grew up hearing about how much more meaning you might get from a sentence here or a point there when read in French, as my own mother is a devotee and has read the original in French numerous times.

Hilarity just a few pages in. Antoine! So good.

As I read The Little Prince aloud to my kids, a calmness came over the room and I noted it had been too many days and nights since I’d liberally read out loud to them. For the joy of it. Not just to knock off a parenting to-do or a bedtime checklist but because when adults in this house read aloud, the house shifts and settles into a truer equilibrium. It’s like the house knows children need to be read to, and once they are, can nestle in for the night.

Could not stop loving saying the word “Baobabs”. Twas a delight.

This is all to say that this last week I turned a new chapter. I returned to full-time work after two years of living in Seoul without a visa that granted me permission to work and many (12!) years of a mix of freelance and contract writing work. All this <waves hands> is a book I’ve hoped to write since I was a little girl imagining what I would be when I was older. I’ll definitely be a mom, I thought. But besides a mom, what else? In a dated agenda my mom gave me, I wrote

1. Cheerleader

2. Secretary

3. Race car driver

4. Teacher (check spelling tests in red or blue ink.)

And what a weird perfect list that’s turned out to be 28 years later. I could never have imagined—nor did it even exist in 1994—that I would someday write for something called a “product” on a metal and glass screen about the size of a small envelope that would be in billions of peoples’ pockets around the world. Eight-year-old me was true me. It’s true what people say—go back to whatever you loved when you were eight or nine. It’s probably what you want to do.

So now I get to be a mom AND I get to cheer on my team, ask questions and take a million notes, drive fast (move fast), and teach/be taught about my niche focus and content design.

Turning the page is emotional*. It always is. But it feels good. It’s the right thing. And it’s just the beginning.

What are you turning the page on right now? What “book” are you hoping to write through your life? I’ll add more thoughts to the comments. As always, thank you for reading. See you here next week.

*My first week back at work coincided with rough PMS. It was a hard week filled with self-doubt, anxiety, guilt, and even self-hate. I share this to encapsulate the reality, and not sugarcoat it. And to emphasize that hey, I started my period and funnily enough feel way better. Everything just might be alright in the end. Funny how that happens.

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