A friend and a bento...

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend of mine - first time in ages, hurray! We work together - or used to, for the moment - and I really like her. She is Chinese and she is the one who used to have a nanny at home (lucky?) Anyway, we went to eat in a very good, cheap and quick Japanese restaurant on 19 rue d'Antin (if anyone wants to go, owned by Chinese but approved by my Japanese boss, an awful person but a connoisseur) and I ate something like this (but much bigger):

Oh-my-God (pretend I am American) it was good! At first I thought it would be too much to eat, but I love sashimis, and, I mean, a few sushis and yakitoris and rice and stuff on the side - why not? Why not? I engulfed the whole plate in a minute and I was surprized myself, when I was done, at how fast I had eaten my bento. Plus with a miso soup and a vegetable salad to go with it and drinking tea and finishing with a fruit salad and the dessert my friend didn't want. Usually, I eat more like a bird at lunch, especially when I eat outside. Not today. I came back home with my belly looking like I was pregnant again. There, I found my baby waiting for me in his father's arms, he had boycotted the baby milk powder that Earl had offered him and smiled to me with a smile that made my day.


When we were having lunch, my friend told me that she had just divorced. I didn't know. We hadn't talked much since I left my school on maternity leave. She went on holidays to China to visit her family in December for a few weeks, when she came back in January she found out that her husband had an affair. She decided to divorce right away and in three months it was done. Divorced. Sooner than it takes to get married. Wow. They have a baby and now her ex husband has moved back in the South of France and he only sees his son twice a month, for a few hours. She said the last time he came the baby didn't recognize him...


I can't judge her, and I don't want to. I just hope she will be fine, and her baby too, and her ex husband will continue to have a relationship with his son. I am reading a book about how to help your children sleep well (2 month 1/2 of nursing at night and you seriously start to think about this question, believe me!) and they say that children need to have security at home in order to grow with confidance. From almost one day to the next, my friend's baby stopped seeing his father every day. He'll get by, yes. But I just pray for him that he will keep dreaming and learn that love is great and marriage is worth it, and that if a father goes away it doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't care...


Life is anything but easy...