Coming full circle

When I saw some Metro station names and street names near the apartment we rented in Paris, I quickly realised that I was very close to somewhere I had lived as a child. But I can't say I actually recognized anything. And I couldn't decide if it was the year I was 5 that I'd lived there, or the three months during my Grade 2 year in Canada...

I was able to piece it together, but it was nice to have my dad visit from England to clarify it all for me. Yes indeed, just around the corner from our rental was the apartment we lived in when my brother was born. We had a little Austin Mini Cooper (grey and white) -- they were smaller than the new one that came out recently -- and we had just become a family of five. My sister and I went to the same school, but I was in kindergarten and she was in gradeschool, so we were in separate parts of the yard at recess and used to meet at the fence that separated us. I remember the name of the street where my best friend lived, and the name of the street where our doctor lived. Some of this is real memory, some is memory of family stories.

One of the fun things that happened when my dad visited is that we went to the market place when the marke was not on, as it's a great space to kick a ball with Declan or let him run around on his scooter. "There used to be a market here," said my dad. "I have a film of you standing just here holding a baguette that's as big as you are." It's really fun to have, quite inadvertently, taken my boys to places that were part of my own childhood. I hope they come back as adults and continue the circle.