The Letter
I was sitting on a flight from Latvia to Germany. The teen next to me tapped the man in the aisle in front of us on the shoulder. “I am hungry,” he said in a tone suggesting he was asking when we were landing rather than for a snack from his dad’s backpack. His dad waved him off. The teen leaned back and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head.
I turned to my husband who was devouring a box of Piroulines and snactched a cookie from the wrapper. I held it up to the kid who thanked me, but waved it off. I put it to my mouth, “you sure?” I asked.
“English! Oh man, that’s so cool. What are you doing here? Where are you from? You must be American, you sound like me.” He pulled his hood back down and gawked.
I chuckled. I knew the feeling but at nearly twice this kids age, I have since learned to temper my enthusiasm.
I told him that my husband was an engineer and I was a writer, and we were traveling for holiday. He learned that we live in German, I learned him and his family live in Estonia, and we talked about what it was like for him moving from Chicago to a small village just off the border of Russia.
“What do you write about?” He asked. It was obvious this teen had learned manners, but he wasn’t just being polite.
I paused. I have a hard enough time explaining what I write about to adults; I wasn’t exactly sure how to explain it to a 14 year old who may or may not have taken a government class yet.
“Policy,” I said. “I write about problems, and solutions.”
The kid turned to me with wide-eyes and a wider smile. “Oh my gosh dude, that’s so cool! Can I tell you about the coolest policy I have seen recently?”
“Tell me,” I said, amused and with a mouth full of cookie.
“Well, I went to Sweden recently, and we went to a library, and in the middle of the library, at the center of all the books, they have this area where you can learn hand’s on what is in the books. Like, sometimes they have sewing machines. And sometimes they have art’s and craft stations. And sometimes they have people to talk to that have fought in wars. And sometimes they have a cooking class. And sometimes a writing teacher. And…”
Honestly, I was kind of stunned that this kid knew exactly what I write about off the top of his head, and could give an example.
“AAAND….what’s REALLY cool about this is that now the library has become this really cool place where people get together and it’s helped to bring money to the library AND what’s ALSO cool is that the reading level of the town got tested and all of their readings score averages went up.”
This kid was 14 and excited about a topic most adults I meet need a working definition for in order to understand.
The general response I get when I talk about my vision used to have me thinking that what I wrote about was something complex, heady, and maybe mildly arrogant. This kid was a vibrant reminder that policy is common. It’s accessible. And it belongs to the curious, non-discriminatory of life age or stage.
Most importantly, it’s easiest to understand for a person who has done something one way, and then had to learn how to do the same exact thing a different way. Somewhere between two ways of doing things, therein lies policy…and that policy can have a very measurable impact on people’s lives.
Policy is a really broad term…a term I still am working to make sense of how to package neatly, in such a way it’s perceivable to the everyday reader. But this kid, in his spirited description of a functional library reminded me that the breadth of that which can be considered policy is exactly where the magic lies.
And that’s wildly cool.
On that note, sweet reader, I am in the middle of a huge life transition. As it turns out, we are moving…again. This is the way of life alongside the armed forces.
While this move comes like clockwork, I still sit in my home, guarded by empty white walls, and I am making peace with what the last few years have meant for me. I am grieving what it means to leave again, and I am joyous by what it means to fall face first into a new chapter. I am meditating on my feelings about returning to the continental US, and redefining what I believe it means to be an American. I am holding space for myself in this transition…whatever that space means.
And I am waiting eagerly for my husband, because I officially get him back Thursday, and margaritas and dirty martini’s are in our future before we hit the road again.
Your Partner in Policy,
Taylor Patrice
P.S. I will see you soon, dear reader. I have a husband to enjoy, and time to spend in a few more countries, a few podcast episodes to record for our fall kick-off, and a few really hard good-byes ahead of me. With that, I am signing off until the other side of the ocean. But stay turned, there’s also a chance I write from the road because inspiration is a curious thing.
If you missed last week's podcast, you can listen here. I tell you exactly where we are moving to, and give you the down-and-dirty on what this stage of life feels like + some life lessons from abroad.
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Your Partner in Policy,