Miru

Fragments written for my daughter Miru, born January 2013. Observations about her life, her learning, her loveliness. I share stories about how she grows up as a bilingual child dividing her time between different continents. There are also reflections about parenthood, as well as letters that I write to her.

Miru also has her own website at miru.creativechoice.org

Fearless
Dear Miru, There lives an intuition in me that wants you to be fearless. I know that fear has a vital function, but it only works when you experience it against the background of fearlessness. When your mind is troubled by unprocessed phobias, the fear that might have saved you will become useless and irrational. ...
Kamiel Choi
Miru, The good life
On Education
Dear Miru, Today, I want to tell you about Education. Even if we would want them to, our children don't accept the concept of schooling as the transfer of a canon of established facts. They are so much used to Wikipedia and Google that it would be practically impossible to convince them that carrying knowledge ...
Kamiel Choi
Miru
At the Zoo
About a month ago, I took Miru to the Tierpark Berlin. When we entered the large park, she had no expectation and did what she does best: smiling at the guys who checked our tickets and nagging for a candy she sees in the hand of an other child. I, on the other hand, had ...
Kamiel Choi
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Miru
Bird watching with Miru
Miru and I found ourselves on the church square in the village of Vimeiro in the Alentejo region of Portugal. A father and his daughter. In the portico in front of a church, where we sat down because of the shade we looked up and there were swallow nests between the naves of the dome. Miru ...
Kamiel Choi
Miru
Learning from Miru
What do you do when your two year old daughter points at your plate of spaghetti and says "papa" when you come into the kitchen? I was late for dinner the other day, due to trivial computer work that ate up my hours, and I hadn't eaten enough. Miru knows this exactly, and readily takes ...
Kamiel Choi
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Miru
Do you have that too, dad?
Recently, I purchased a used Konica Hexanon prime lens with an aperture of 1/1.4 and I am enjoying the amount of light that it can take in. With such apertures, the field of focus becomes very thin, and objects really stand out. Because the camera takes over some of the routine work of our eye, ...
Kamiel Choi
Miru
Let her do the talking
[series-miru] Miru gets more expressive every day. Her vocal range resembles that of ever more extraordinary songbirds, she can stick out her tongue, pick her father's nose or anything else that fits her fingers, she can stand for several consecutive minutes, smiling proud of her accomplishment, eat with a spoon, decorate her surroundings with food ...
Kamiel Choi
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Essays, Miru
New Year’s Resolutions
[series-miru] Dear Miru, Three days ago, you turned one year old. We had a great time in Luxemburg, together with our couchsurfing hosts and their wonderful children, who gave you a cake with one candle. From there, we traveled to the Morvan in France, where your parents are doing helpx for the first time. It's ...
Kamiel Choi
Miru, Writing