Who were you at six?

Mark comes home tomorrow after being in Frankfurt for a few weeks. It will be so good to have him back home for a thousand different reasons. I don’t mind the short hops across the pond, but this long one was really long: filled with running around and things to do, sick kids, summer programs, Conclave submissions, house packing, house hunting, and so on. I feel as if a month was squeezed into these weeks.

In the meantime, Maya had her week-long Aspiring Vets summer class, and she *loved* it. I’ve never seen her so happy to come out of school or an activity. My firstborn has been fascinated with animals since she was a baby and has always insisted that she wants to be a veterinarian. Now I certainly don’t expect a 6-year-old to decide her future, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she did grow up to be a vet.

This got me thinking about the children we once were.

How much of the 6-year-old child self exists in your grown up persona? What have you held on to and why? What do you long for, or wish you had been able to hold onto?

Time to go and see the presentation of my little aspiring vet.

Have a lovely day.

Published by Valya

Valya Dudycz Lupescu has been making magic with food and words for more than 20 years, incorporating folklore from her Ukrainian heritage with practices that honor the Earth. She’s a writer, content developer, instructor, and mother of three teenagers. Valya is the author of MOTHER CHRISTMAS, THE SILENCE OF TREES, and the founding editor of CONCLAVE: A Journal of Character. Along with Stephen H. Segal, she is the co-author of FORKING GOOD: An Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of The Good Place and GEEK PARENTING: What Joffrey, Jor-El, Maleficent, and the McFlys Teach Us about Raising a Family (Quirk Books), and co-founder of the Wyrd Words storytelling laboratory. Valya earned her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and magazines that include, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Kenyon Review, Culture, Gargoyle Magazine, Gone Lawn, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium. You can find her on Twitter @valya and on Mastodon.social @valya

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