One of Maya’s favorite things to do–that is other than insisting on walking when we exit Kita (therefore making our trip back home ten times longer then it supposed to be) and insisting that I will carry her on my hands three flights of stairs when we finally reach our flat-is reading. She reads everything, reading makes her very calm, and, I must admit, reading babies are great gifts for their parents. As a young parent you learn how to evaluate buying things for your babies by how much time it gives you piece of mind. Books get top rating in that category.

One of Maya’s favorite books is one she got from my family in Israel. It tells the story of a young elephant who is depressed over the fact that he is grey, boring grey. A little bird watches the little elephant, ask him why he is so sad and even though the bird finds the elephant to be beautiful, she decides to help him. She flies around, borrowing some colors from flowers, put them in different buckets and paint the young elephant.

The Elephant now is very happy, proudly he walks back to the rest of the elephants to show them how colorful he is. They see him and all they can do is laugh about him. The young elephant is very confused and he asks the rest of the elephants to spray him with water so he will be grey again.

I am sure that there some morals to this story. Live in piece with who you are or something like that. Or that elephants are not very open to gays.

Anyway, today I walked with Maya to the Turkish store to buy some vegetables. We walked with her new sled tied to her McClaren stroller, we were dressed in our cool Prenzlaurberg clothes, I was wearing my earring, and we talked a mix of English-Hebrew-German. Though we were as dark as the people who were running the store and the customers in it, we stood very much in contrast to them. I could see them staring at us.

Later, we went home, and Maya was asking me to read for her the elephant book. I did, and all of a sudden I felt that I am also telling her a story about myself.