A Foreign World

At 6:50am yesterday morning, Lily – my 5 yr. old – lightly padded into our room and woke Ken and I up. She then proceeded (as is her usual style) to chatter incessantly about what’s on her mind. She went on for several minutes about her favorite new book and how cute our dog, Maisy, looked snuggled in her chair – all while Ken and I were still dozing, barely acknowledging her every once in a while with half open, unfocused, sleepy eyes.

Suddenly, her eyes wide with wonder, she changed topics. “Did you know my friend Casey’s Nanny lives on an island?” she said. “Isn’t that cool?” I was now awake as I had a feeling I knew where she was going with this conversation, as my favorite show is Lost and my kids have become obsessed with Flight 29 Down – a series on the Discovery Channel with a similar premise of an airplane crashing in the middle of the Pacific, but focused on more age appropriate subject matter.

“Lily, Casey’s Nanny doesn’t live on a tropical island”, I explained. “She lives on Long Island.” “Wow”, Lily replied, “a long island. It must be hard to survive there”. Before correcting her I chuckled inwardly as I thought that many of us New Jersey natives have often wondered the same thing – how do people actually live on Long Island?!?!