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I have a habit of watching people. I can’t decide if I consider it a bad one. I’d rather call it curiosity.

The other day, I was on the subway, sitting across from a family. They were a couple who had a stroller with a wonderful boy. I could tell from what I saw that this boy was very interested in the people around him. He was smiling at everyone. Smiling and interacting with children in public places is not entirely appropriate, but perhaps these are my prejudices. Perhaps these are the reasonable prejudices of society, to try to protect children from crazy people. The mother was a young woman with a little touch of makeup, wearing a luxurious black wig and black clothes. Her husband, too, was all in black, wearing a fedora and with the traditional payot (sidelocks), according to his religious dress code. What stood out to me and led me to reflect on this was that the little boy was wearing a silver jumpsuit and brightly colored clothes.

Another few years will pass, and all these colors will change to a monochrome, traditional for his Hasidic community. One day, he will realize that all these colored things remain only in photographs from his childhood, in this unconscious past, when his mother could still safely dress him up in a way that is permitted for his age. I saw myself in him, as a person who came from a conservative religious household and had to make hard choices, with consequences, for the freedom of becoming my true self.

Life is full of choices.

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Mark Preston, age 34, was born in southern Russia. He completed a degree in finance in Moscow, founded a fashion and travel blog, and now works as a creative director and photographer in the U.S., where he arrived in 2017. He studies with teacher Karen Ruelle at the Andrew Romay New Immigrant Center of the English-Speaking Union, where Karl Hart is the program officer.