Today, I met up with a friend’s friend I met for the first time at a kid’s birthday party several weeks ago. We met at a coffee shop on the Upper West Side and talked about our backgrounds, work, kids, and families. This friend grew up in the Dominican Republic, but she is fluent not just in Spanish, but also in French (and English). Her two young daughters are at a French daycare and school. So I was curious to understand how she learned French, and then how she decided to have her daughters immersed in French language.

She said that her mom wanted her and her two younger siblings to learn English. But when she started looking into the schools, she found out that while the international American school’s fees were extremely high, the private French international school was just a fraction of the cost. With this school, her children would learn not just English, but also French — at a massive discount! So it was a no brainer for her to send all three kids to the French school. That French K-12 led to all three kids moving to France to study and eventually work. This friend lives in New York now with her husband and two daughters, but her two siblings are still living and working in Paris and the south of France.

I wonder if her mom ever envisioned the future of her three kids not just being tri-lingual, but also moving quite far away from home and in their daily lives, speaking a different language than their native tongue. That one seemingly little decision changed her kids’ paths in life forever. It makes me wonder what Kaia’s young adulthood and adulthood will look like — merely because of seemingly small choices that Chris and I are making now.