What if two kids met in a room in a house in Paris…. the boy was nine, and the girl was eleven. This moment is a moment of in-between for both of them; she is on her way to live with her grandmother, and he is meeting his mother for the first time. He lives with adoptive parents. In a moment of perfect nine-year-old boy, he goes over and picks up her suitcase, which promptly falls open, spilling her personal effects. It was an accident, but she’s furious and mortified. They were curious about each other, but now they hate each other, too. It’s rare for kids to like each other. Liking each other is risky. As the narrator says:
“With no banal reassuring grown-ups present…there is no limit to the terror strange children feel of each other, a terror life obscures but never ceases to justify. There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone” ( 20).
Espionage and crime, this is not. Yet still, what we have here is a situation. What will happen? Will we follow the children into their lives, see how the meeting with the mother goes? Will we end up with them in the future, 
married? Will we find out how they both came to be in the same house in Paris? Why is that boy not living with his mother? Why must the girl must go from England to the south of France to be looked after by her grandmother? How are they connected to this strange house owned by Miss Fisher, whose mother lays dying upstairs?
I love this moment. The possibilities are endless. I’d like to stay here, close the book and ignore it awhile, exploring all the directions this narrative could go. Which would please me most?
I’ve been thinking about third grade. The news is out at our school regarding teachers and class configurations, which has stirred up all kinds of anxieties. The worst kind, really, because not much is at stake. All the teachers in our elementary school are great. The crux of parental anxiety is thus: sure it’s good, but how could it be better? Which possibility would please me most?
In the long run, does it really matter? I remember very little from the third grade. I had no best friend. This was not a tragedy, just a function of the still mostly-blank slate of my personal development. I’ve spent loads of energy worrying over my kids’ lack of best friends. Why don’t we get invited? Why does no one call? Where are all the friends?
Yet when I look into the vault of my own past, I see no best friends before the age of twelve. In fact, I don’t see much of anything. Here is all that I recall from Mrs. Farris’s class:
• Sitting in desk teams, side by side, with a boy. Having picked my nose, something massive and disgusting rests on the end of my finger. I am going to wipe it on the underside of the desk, but first I double check that he—Michael Hartz— isn’t watching. He is.
• Being made to stand with my nose in the corner, a common punishment at the time.
• Writing a letter to Amy Carter, who then lived in the White House.
• Writing a report on my favorite color, black, then deciding this was too grim, leaving it at home, vowing to rewrite it. Then, asking to go to the office, where I call my mother and beg her to bring it. Waiting, near tears, wringing my hands, for the delivery. Reading it, no more than a paragraph, thinking, Well. It is my favorite color. So what if it’s weird.
• Cheating on an SRA quiz. SRA was a boxed curriculum full of laminated cards with stories you were to read, then answer the corresponding laminated card full of questions. A quiz was given. The teacher stood in front of my desk delivering the quiz, not realizing that the answers were on the back. I wrote them down. Aced the test. Never told a soul.
• Following two Naughties at recess, climbing in our classroom window. No one saw us. We walked back out to the playground just as our class was coming in. The playground aide glowered but said nothing; we rejoined the class. I spent the day wooden with panic. Inconsolable. The principal buzzed into our classroom, and my heart stopped. This was it: Please send Christy Stillwell to the Principal’s office. That was not it. I did not enjoy getting away with that. Not one little bit.
• Fourth grade. Mrs. Schmidt. A standard yard ape in our class. Can’t recall his name, something solid and Norwegian. In reading circle, he set her off; she grabbed the paddle in one hand, his arm in the other. Because he weighed more than half what she did, the rest of us witnessed a horrifying violent dance: the two of them spinning in a circle, him screaming while she held on, whipping his bottom again and again. That circle they made, her furious face.
Elementary school will work out okay. Because elementary school does. We’ve got good teachers. We are good parents. Far into the future, very little will be remembered from this age. And yet. If that nine year old boy had picked up my case and all my things fell out, I would have wept with rage. My hairbrush on the floor. Gender wouldn’t matter. Even our personal situations wouldn’t matter. At this age we would understand very little outside the case falling open, the hairbrush on the floor. We would be powerless.
A lot will be forgotten from before the fifth grade. Yet this is the ultimate beginning, the moment we’d love to stay inside awhile, enjoying the possibilities without any consequences. Without any outcomes. No beginning can remain a beginning forever, where gender doesn’t matter, personal situation doesn’t matter. Whether we remember it or not, it’s in us. We carry it to every relationship, to every moment. To some degree, we remain powerless. With the possible exception, perhaps, of the writer.