When I was little, summer was my favorite time of year, and not for the reasons people assume. My parents both worked, so every June my grandparents flew across the world to watch my brother and me during our summer break. And every June, I appointed myself their shadow.

I ate every meal with my ammama and thatha. I followed them from room to room, refusing to be anywhere they were not. In return, they told me stories about their lives, their joys, their regrets. Things they never even told their own children.

Then August would come. I would insist on walking them all the way to airport, all the way to the security line, where I would promptly dissolve into a ball of tears. That was, inarguably, the worst time of the year.

I've always loved being around elderly people. Their wisdom, their experience, their sheer calmness of mind. Around them, the world gets slower, softer, more fragile, and somehow more worth protecting. But I got older, and those summers faded the way childhood things do—until Marseille.

Marseille is not a calm city by any means. It is a city of scooters running red lights, fishmongers auctioning the morning's catch at full volume, and seagulls the size of small dogs with the confidence of large ones. But inside Les Jardins d'Haïti, the pace of life sits lighter. Coloring becomes an event. Conversation becomes the day's main programming. Around the residents, I keep slipping back into my own childhood.

Marseille has restored my sense of whimsy.

I've always believed my artistic career peaked somewhere around elementary school. Yet somehow, my team and I's final project here is to create a vivid mural, made with the residents to revive their garden space. Throughout the past two weeks, I have never felt so out of my element: linguistically, culturally, technically. I have also, weirdly, never felt more connected to the blissful boy who spent his whole summers by his grandparents' side.

Fun fact: in French, the word for whimsy is close to "fantaisie," which sounds like fantasy, or something you are supposed to grow out of. The residents of Les Jardins d'Haïti would disagree. So would my ammama and thatha. So, increasingly, do I.