Dear Yuri,
When your options narrow and distractions are removed, you’re forced to notice things.
I watch my son eat lentil soup with buttery bread. The soup that my mother made for me and her mother made before her. I wonder why he likes it so much and I realise he is made of me, and I of her, and she of her; and it’s all a part of him.
I wonder if our likes and dislikes aren’t just a matter of finding, discovery and circumstance, maybe they’re woven into us over generations.
Do people see the same light in my eyes that I see in my sons when an animal meets his gaze or crosses his path? Does he pout and concentrate and lose himself in the freedom of a pencil and paper the same way his father does?
Are these things we all like, or are they made in us? I’m forced to wonder, and watch and learn.
Carolanne, Porto, Portugal