She is growing up between two countries and two languages. She has four grandparents who adore her.
Whenever I babysit, I speak to her in French.
Her first complete sentence to me was “mon amie”—my friend.
Philippe and I still exchange emails in French. He signs every message:
“To the woman who understood every word.”
But he is not entirely correct.
I did not understand because I had been setting a trap or hiding some clever advantage.
I understood because long before anyone taught me to disappear, I had been brave enough to travel somewhere alone and become someone.
That woman had never truly vanished.
She survived through the marriage, the divorce, and all the silent evenings afterward.
She was simply waiting for someone to speak to her in a language her fear had never learned.
At a dinner table beside a copper-coloured lake, someone finally did.
