The Fifth Version of Me: Winter Lessons from Orléans

We were in France to reset and step gently into 2024. Ruhiya’s French had bloomed—she now strolled confidently through farmers’ markets, exchanging easy banter while gathering croissants, camembert, cider, and other small joys wrapped in paper and familiarity.

To mark the new year, we took a short trip to Brittany, where the ocean greeted us not with calm, but with cleansing. The gales off the coast whipped us clear. Watching the kite surfers rise with the wind, I made a note to self: test kite-surfing as a metaphor for antifragility—you rise best by meeting the turbulence, not avoiding it.

Mostly, though, we stayed in Orléans—my childhood city, shaped by medieval stone and a river that has flowed through me since I was small. We were there to spend time with my parents and sisters, to return to old places with new eyes, and maybe, just maybe, become a family again.

Orléans is famously the city once under siege, later liberated by Joan of Arc and a rekindled French army. Another note to self: study Joan of Arc as a model of fierce feminine leadership. But walking the riverbanks now, I sometimes forget which waters I’m looking at: Loire, Ottawa, Mississippi. The fluidity of belonging runs deeper than borders.

My father, almost ninety, remains sharp. A late-blooming painter and writer, he’s now something of a bionic sage—knees, hips, teeth all upgraded—but his mind and spirit are agile. After a lifetime of being gratefully but sometimes grumpily cared for, he’s now learning to give care in return. It’s not a small shift. It’s a soft revolution.

My mother, in her mid-eighties, is a force. Deaf since childhood, she learned lip-reading like a second language. During the pandemic, mask mandates rendered the world mute. It was demoralizing, but she found ways to adapt. Now, even after two rounds of cancer treatment and a fractured spine—thanks to a plumbing job she insisted on doing herself—she persists. Her resilience is not performative. It’s elemental.

One day, during a typical French ritual—espresso after lunch—my parents turned to me with warmth in their eyes and said, “What happened to you? It’s like we have a new son. The fourth or fifth version of you! Not all of them were easy to be around. But this one—he’s kind. Supportive.”

I said nothing. Let their words wash over me like the tides of Brittany. The silence between us felt like gift wrap around something fragile and precious. I hadn’t done much, really—set the table, fixed a cabinet hinge, ran a few errands. But perhaps I’d become a better listener.

What I do know now is this:

When turmoil churns within, there’s little space left to see others.

And it’s hard to see another clearly when you barely see yourself.

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We shared good moments with my sisters—meals at crêperies we once passed in our youth but had never entered together, laughter in brasseries, and an evening at the local theater. Sylvie, the youngest, chose the film: The Captain—a harrowing journey of two Senegalese teens migrating to Sicily, caught in the brutal machinery of organized crime in Libya.

It wasn’t typical holiday fare, but then again, neither was our gathering. What we don’t see, we don’t fix—and Sylvie had seen too much. Her work supporting delinquent minors had left her burned out, depleted by meaning and demand in equal measure. We’d been estranged for decades. This time, we spoke. At length. It may have been the first time since childhood we watched a film side by side.

With time and patience, even old stories can find new chapters.It’s never too late to be siblings again.

Marie-Christine, the middle sister, organized us into a creative writing workshop in a café tucked into the medieval quarter of Orléans. It was the kind of place that might once have welcomed crusaders or pilgrims—now home to organic fare, books, potted flowers, and stories.

The prompt was clothing. I wore my Jordanian keffiyeh that day—not the classic red and white, but in desert tones of beige and gold. The words came slowly, then all at once: a poem about Jerusalem. I titled it Dans tous ses états, a layered phrase gesturing toward both emotional upheaval and political fracture. I’d meant to be clever.

But when the moment came to read it aloud, the cleverness dissolved. Twice, I choked. My voice faltered. I handed the notebook to Marie-Christine, who read the poem for me. Her voice carried my words across the room, steady where mine was shaken.

That was a small moment, but I’ll remember it for a long time.

Sometimes, grace arrives as a sister reading your words aloud when your own voice trembles too much to speak. Sometimes, forgiveness arrives disguised as shared silence. Sometimes, the fifth version of you is just a better listener—and that’s enough.

Next: What Propels Us, What Holds Us Back

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