On the first Thursday of every month Lydia’s after-school program has what’s called a föräldrafika, which means they serve coffee and cookies and parents can drop in and chat a while. I don’t especially like these kinds of things since I’m not terrifically good at making small talk–particularly in Swedish–but the women who are the teachers for Lydia’s group are very nice and friendly so I don’t dread going too much.

As I neared the building this past Thursday I saw Lydia playing outside on the swingset. As soon as she noticed me, she leapt up and fairly sprinted in my direction, calling out, “Mamma, mamma!” She was still a few yards away from me when she started chattering excitedly. “Today wasn’t just a regular day, it was the best day EVER!” she exclaimed, going on to tell me that an Australian couple with a seven-year-old daughter had come to visit the school and that she had gotten to speak English with them.

The first enthusiastic gushing out of the way, she settled down to the details. Apparently this family is spending six months traveling around the world and they’re currently staying at a campground outside our little town. They arranged to visit Lydia’s school so that their daughter could see what school is like for Swedish kids, and the school specifically called upon Lydia for her help as a tour guide.

I’m not sure how long the visit was, but Lydia told me that they checked out classrooms, the playground, the cafeteria, and other points of interest, and she got to tell the story of how it happened that an English-speaking second grader such as herself came to be living in the far reaches of northern Sweden. Her excitement was so infectious as she was recounting the experience that I got lost in the moment and didn’t notice for several minutes that she was doing the telling in English. At her school. With other people — her peers, even — within earshot.

That may not seem like a big deal to most people, but as I think I’ve mentioned here before, Lydia has been plagued by an almost-pathological resistance to speaking English in front of her friends and teachers, and even in front of our Swedish family members. If there is even the slightest possibility that someone she knows can hear, she insists on speaking Swedish (even when she’s talking to me). If she has friends over when I’m talking to my mom on the phone, she won’t take the phone herself because that would mean speaking English. She has even admonished me not to speak English when her friends can hear me but, much to her chagrin, I generally have no compunction about speaking English. Not when I’m out and about, and certainly not in my own home.

When I called attention (casually, of course) to the fact of her speaking English at school, she said, “I know! When we were in the cafeteria, Emelie and Alicia could hear me and I didn’t feel blyg [shy] at all!” It was almost as though she couldn’t believe it herself, and she continued speaking English openly with me for the remainder of the forty-five minutes or so that we stayed at the school.

So, while the excitement of meeting the Australians and getting to show off a bit was the best part of the day for Lydia, the best part for me was her getting the chance to see that what we perceive as embarrassing differences that set us apart can sometimes turn out to be wonderful distinctions to take pride in. I hope she keeps some of that lesson with her as she continues to navigate the often-treacherous waters of childhood and adolescence.