Debby Waldman is my beloved friend from long ago days when we were both grad students studying writing and literature at Cornell. Though we live far from each other and only manage to see each other every few years, we always start up right where we left off, our visits filled with talk talk talk—about writing and parenting, work and hobbies, the different ways we inhabit our Jewishness, travel, more writing, more kids, politics, the dogs. Debby is a wonderful writer of children’s books, creative nonfiction and journalism. Her personal essays manage to be both funny and heartbreaking, poignant and acerbic (see her website for a peek). When she asked me if I’d like to talk about Kantika with her for a piece in Moment Magazine, I said of yes, course, I’d take any chance to gab with you! This time, we talked over Zoom. I was in France, Debby in Italy, which, somewhat absurdly, meant that we were closer geographically than our usual Boston, Massachusetts/Alberta, Canada split. As always with Debby, distance evaporated once the words started moving back and forth between us, and we might have been sitting together in a room. Here’s our conversation, such a pleasure!