New friends

Zoe and I landed around 6:30pm in Stockholm on the Monday evening, just in time to grab sushi in the airport and head home for bed. We had landed at gate 7 ("Mom, how funny, I left from this gate too!"), which took us past the little playground and I gave in to Zoe's plea for 10 minutes play. She quickly made friends with two other bilingual kids her age and I sat down to relax for a bit, happy that she was finally playing with other kids after a mommy-only weekend. "Where are you from?", the girl asked Zoe in her British English that I later overheard she had learned from her dad. Zoe hesitated a bit, "well...", but then said in one breath "I'm from New York, but my mom is Danish and my dad is Scottish and my stepmother in Germain". I was a bit surprised, but also happy to hear that narrative. In her 6 year old life, she has lived in three different countries, four different cities, and that is not including Copenhagen where she has probably spent more time than any of the other places. She often mixes up the US, New York and California (where she was born) and just refer to the US as New York where she feels home like me and still has a lot of friends. But what I also realized was that in not so long she would probably have to add "and I have a stepfather from [a fourth country]". Because it wouldn't be our truly messy lives if I didn't find someone to date who speaks a fourth language and live in a fourth country. Still.

The two other siblings had to leave and the girl kept running back to Zoe for more goodbyes, clearly infatuated by my lovely, funny daughter. Zoe was proud, "look mommy, I made friends, they spoke English", she said as we headed down to the sushi place.