visitor aftermath

[fflo]

How did things get back to ordinary life so quickly and fully? The flavor of company was strong enough to hold through Sunday and into Monday, but today it seems long gone. I'm sure work has something to do with that.

Comments

hosting vs. hostility

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

those were some really fine guests, and i'm thinking not only because *i like them, but because they didn't 'traumatize' you either (as mentioned above), either by being too hyper so you have to perform a crash landing when they leave, or by being such a drain that you feel liberated when they're gone.

so i'm thinking -- 'quick recovery' is the best of outcomes. also, the other symptom i often look up -- their child was one of the most unneurotic and unneedy and kindest i've ever seen in my life (and the first american kid that responded well to me; i never have any trouble with kids in europe, but i seem to scare the shit out of most gringitos AND gringitas). not that the kid isn't the main architect of that, but i think it reflects quite directly on the parents at this age and bodes well for the future.

Re: hosting vs. hostility

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

And yeah. He's a good kid. Odd that other American kids react that way to you. I'm kinda culturally embarrassed by it, as a native is (or this native is) so often by so much of our insular way (with its arrogance as icing on the barely comestible cake). Cuz I'm thinking it might have something to do with the sort of omnipresent catered-to matching up we provide and expect others to provide for children to safe, known archetypes of smiley benign predictability. Which seems not unrelated to branding and franchising and television and action figures and the marketable recognizable stock thingness that's sort of a specialty of the U.S.

Or, of course, it has nothing to do with any of that at all.

My brain is fried again today. Two days in a row now.

visiting aftermath

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

Ordinary life isn't nearly as fun (or even as sane) for me as was my visit to A2. The rest of the family seemed to adjust pretty well, but I'm definitely in that post-visit let-down period (or something). I am glad to read that shmizla liked our boy. He liked her a lot too. I mean, she appreciated the efforts of the "rescue squad," and she tickled him--what more could a 6-year-old ask for in a grown-up friend?

Ah well, back to the grind.