Blog au Crudite

Here's an interesting cognate: cru is the French word for raw. Thus, for example, you can get a poulet au crudites sandwich, which means you're getting chicken (not raw) with crudites (raw vegetables). At my new-favorite Marais restaurant Le Petit Marche, where we ate with John Nation and Catherine Cunningham during their wonderful stay here last week, you can get a thon a cru (raw tuna) or you can verbally wrestle with the waiter in awkward French until he finally sends his English-speaking coworker to tell you that lotte is a monkfish and yes, it's cooked, and yes, you can have it for dinner.

Just recently, my sister sent an update email from her Harlem apartment. For those of you who don't know or aren't my sister, she is doing Teach for American in the Bronx. It is apparently an experience which is alternately inspirational and harrowing. She points out in her email, as I often did in my emails when I worked at the Hippie School, that children's emotions can best be defined as raw.

Which got me thinking about the French cognate, and how we refer to a person who speaks too much and without thinking: crude. Trust me, I know all about these people. They're everywhere. Even sometimes in this apartment. Typing at this computer.

With children it seems our job, as the adults who care for them, is too teach them to take their raw emotions (frustration, fear, sadness) and help them put them in perspective, or at least help them, say, not throw yogurt all over the floor in a fit of fury when it turns out they wanted to stir it themselves. Random example. This will be a helpful skill later in restaurants when they're on dates.

So what we're doing is taking a raw emotion and adding bits of socially acceptable seasoning, mulling it over until it softens a bit, perhaps roasting it on a spit so it gets evenly cooked and presenting it to the world in a digestible fashion.

Please note we're cooking the childrens' emotions and not the children themselves. Lisa and Ben sometimes read this blog so as their children's nanny, I want to be very clear on that point.

For the most part, I think teaching children to cook their emotions just a little bit is a crucial tool. If only because a moment's pause or perspective can help show you that everything, actually, is okay. You're still going to get a turn. There's plenty of food. The ladybug didn't actually eat you. (Ladybugs don't eat raw children, see...)

But I also think adults would be well-served, sometimes, by revisiting raw emotions. We tend to maybe over-cook things. Until they're burned. Like, for example, this metaphor.

Anyway, I feel pretty lucky to work with kids, if only because it's fun to sometimes react to things like a kid. For example, I'm looking forward to our trip to Amsterdam with a child's excitement. Debs is going to be up from Austin and the three of us found cheap train tickets to the city, where we will visit the Van Gogh Museum, ride bikes, enjoy the canals, and see what else there is to do. Nothing comes to mind. Suggestions welcome.

I'm pretty excited about all our visitors: Kristin and Mike, Debs, Michael's mom, maybe Mary. The list goes on. We've had such a good time with our visitors so far (Bob, John, Catherine, Ally) that I can't wait to welcome more into our humble little apartment, which everyone reacts to with a grown-up, processed, slightly cooked version of their original sentiment (Egad! Where will I sleep!) by saying things like: "It's so...cute!"