If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures...
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

            I spent the first six years of my life under the care of five different au pairs.  My inconveniently-timed birth saw my father frequently traveling and my mother about to become a junior partner at her law firm, so the need for live-in childcare was unavoidable.  In 1986 the idea of an international exchange nanny was brand new, and just bohemian and economical enough to attract my parents.  So there I was.  Six months old, with a new, foreign, third parent-figure to look after me.  Except the bizarre thing is, that parent-figure was the age that I am now. 

            After experiencing the initial frustration and culture shock of living in a foreign country with a host family last semester when I studied abroad in France, I am unable to even begin to fathom how these girls were able to avoid throwing regular temper tantrums themselves, much less be responsible for a three-year-old me throwing them.  In Paris, when the language barrier, cultural differences, or even general unfamiliarity became too much for me to handle, I at least had the option of holing up in my room, wandering the streets of the city, or losing myself in the blissfully American internet.  My caretakers had none of these options.  They were obligated to fight through the frustration and confusion and care for a child. 

            My mom tried her best to welcome these girls as warmly as she could, and the gift basket waiting on their bed always included two books: one called The Little Prince, and one called Le Petit Prince, or Il Piccolo Principe, or El Principito or…  This was her attempt to help foster an improvement of the English language, one of the goals of the Au Pair program.  She also hoped that exposing her daughters to different versions of this classic story would cultivate an appreciation for literature and language.  Every year, a new Au Pair would arrive, and with her a new way for me to hear the story of a marooned pilot and his little friend.

            The Au Pairs stopped coming when I was six and my mother decided to stay at home full-time.  Thus, it has been a long time since I have revisited this book. Upon reading it for this class, I felt confusing waves of déjà-vu and scattered, fragmented memories dredged up from my experiences with it as a child, but I was also exposed to an exceptional piece of literature that is extremely relevant to adults. 

It is funny that I just used the word “adult,” because one of the most touching and significant aspects of this book is Saint-Exupéry’s contempt towards “grown-ups.”  This is an emotion that I try as hard as I can to hold on to as I get closer and closer to accepting that I am one of these ignorant, silly kinds of people—“the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures.”  Luckily for me, however, frustration with adults is not a sentiment exclusive to children.  The pilot’s experience with his misinterpreted drawings is strikingly similar to my experiences trying to communicate while in France.

Just as a child lacks the artistic and articulate skills to fully communicate his drawing of an elephant swallowed by a boa constrictor, I often found myself lacking in the comprehensive language skills to express my ideas and opinions to the French people I encountered.  Similarly, as the adults in The Little Prince repeatedly come to the incorrect assumption that the pilot has drawn a hat, the French people in my life would finish my struggling sentences for me, making incorrect assumptions about what I was trying to say.  As far as communication skills go, I was a child to most French people.  And, just like the pilot in this book, it took an interaction with a child for me to feel like I had truly expressed myself.

To the grown-ups in my life, Sophie Coudrier was my French “sister.”  That is to say, she was the seven-year-old daughter of my French hosts Madame and Monsieur Coudrier who lived in the room across from mine and affectionately called me “ma Sœur Américaine.”  But to me, she was my very own little prince—ma Petite Princesse.  Sophie was creative, adorable, and clever, but above all, she was patient.  The realization that I had encountered a French person who would never try to “help” my sentence along by finishing it for me, or who would sacrifice valuable time or endure an awkward silence as I translated my thoughts from mental English to verbal French was much like the pilot’s initial encounter with the little prince.  The pilot is “astounded” when the little prince immediately recognizes his drawing as a boa constrictor, and I was similarly surprised (and grateful) to discover that Sophie found no reason to inject her own assumptions into my thoughts. 

While conversations with her parents were exhausting—both because of the heavy debates the French tend to enjoy as normal chatter and my constantly being interrupted with what they thought I was trying to say—my conversations with Sophie were…fun.  My French “parents” wanted to discuss what the grown-ups in The Little Prince would call “matters of consequence,” while Sophie was more than content to talk to me about animals, her friends, my hair, and flowers.  Perhaps my connection with this little girl had more to do with my French vocabulary level being more like a seven-year-old’s than a grown-up’s than it did with the notion that children have an innocent, unbiased way of communicating that circumvents language and culture, but I prefer the latter when explaining my fondness for Sophie, and I think that she would prefer it as well.  Actually, Sophie would probably prefer not to make such explanations at all, but, for me at least, they are necessary to have on file, because “grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”  But, “one must not hold it against them.”

My experience with my Petite Princesse was one of the most rewarding and memorable of my abroad experience, if not my life.  Sophie offered me the comfort of a true friend, and the relief of an equal with whom I could comfortably communicate.  Just as the pilot found joy in the little prince’s correct identification of his drawing, Sophie’s willingness to accept and understand me—poor grammar, lacking vocabulary and all—granted me the essential feeling of being valued.  Ultimately, Sophie was unique because she didn’t really care about the feeble translations with which I was wrestling in my head like her adult counterparts did.  She knew that what really mattered, what was really “essential,” was what was in my heart.  Sophie taught me the invaluable lesson that what is in the heart does not require a mastery of a language to be successfully communicated; just another willing heart to accept it.
Now, thinking about my Au Pairs, I am amazed at their ability to take on the huge responsibility of childcare, knowing first-hand the exasperating aspects of trying to fit in with a foreign family and culture.  I am also comforted, however, by the possibility that I may have been someone else’s Petite Princesse.

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
He aquí mi secreto. Es muy simple: no se ve bien sino con el corazón. Lo esencial es invisible a los ojos.
Ecco il mio segreto. E molto semplice: non si vede bene che col cuore. L’essenziale e invisibile agli occhi.
And now here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.  What is essential is invisible to the eye.