fracture de cheveu

Yesterday G. was running across the Trocadero, hellbent on destroying a display of tiny Eiffel Towers, when he skidded on the marble, slipped and fell. We are regulars at the Trocadero, and G. has a special relationship with the touts there – they love him and try to give him little toys, and he tries to destroy their merchandise. It works for them. Anyway, when he got up, he wasn’t crying, but he didn’t want to put any weight on his right foot. S. brought him straight home, we made a quick consulting call to the nurse mother-in-law, and then it was direct in a taxi to the emergency room at the children’s hospital. (May I just put in a plug here for children’s emergency rooms? All the weekend emergency rooms I’ve ever been in were full of barfight victims and large people coughing up strange substances – all of whom have a perfect right to be in the ER, and I’m sympathetic to their plight, but it sure dialed things down a lot to have my sick child in a room full of other, well, sick children).

It turns out it was a good thing we went. Two X-rays and a couple of hours after our arrival, they found a hairline fracture in his right calf bone (the tibia? Yes, that one.). At that, I have to say my respect for my tiny engine of destruction went up about tenfold. He hadn’t cried at all the whole afternoon, except when the very nice French orthopedist tried to put him on the examining table, and that was much more en colère than douleur, as she put it. I think that earns him a place in the tough guy annals right up there with John Wayne, and Hannibal, and Steve McQueen. Or, as our visiting friend said, when G. figured out how to drag his cast behind him, at a pretty brisk clip, within ten minutes of coming home: “I like this kid. A lot.”

G now has a cast – old-school, plaster, weighs about ten pounds – from his toes to the top of his thigh, which he has to wear for a month. It is more hilarious than pity-inspiring, especially now that it sports a black duct tape stripe around the middle where G. has already managed to bash in a weak spot. Every indication is that he’s going to get along just fine, and I’m feeling an extremely guilty enthusiasm that my G.-chasing duties just got a whole lot easier for about thirty days. Still, when I rocked him to sleep last night, the heavy cast clunking against the armrest, his damp, sweaty hair (which is going to get especially sponge-bath stinky in the next few days) spilling over my neck, I felt my own hairline fracture crack a little, somewhere under the sternum. I’ll take the crashes and bashes, I’m signed up for multiple trips to the emergency room. But just – stay a while.

what so proudly we hailed

We had a quiet expatriate independence day yesterday. It rained. But in honor of the festivities it seems appropriate to share this article I came across recently, which documents the raging success that is McDonald’s Europe, headed by a Frenchman who may be next in lead to run Mickey D worldwide. The success seems to have something to do with gas fireplaces, unobtrusive signage, and the personalization of local menus. It’s certainly a small miracle of differentiation – our student babysitter, before she became a vegetarian, swore up and down that the French Big Macs were better than the American. Mostly I was impressed that the author managed to score an interview with José Bové and his moustache. And maybe I won’t feel as guilty when I finally give in to my recent, relentless pregnancy urge for a double cheeseburger and fries. I might even co-opt G. right along with me. So there. Vive la révolution!

she's gone and done it

It’s July, and we’ve lived in Paris for almost a year now. When we arrived last September, the crowds of tourist were starting to thin; now the first flush of lost-looking people in matching tee-shirts and sneakers – or backpacker gear and dirty Birkenstocks – is starting to make its way along the Champs-Elysees. I’ve given about eight sets of directions to the Arc de Triomphe, but so far it hasn’t really affected our lives much. Being here certainly has, though I struggle to say exactly how. It still seems like a ridiculously good stroke of fortune that we get to live here at all, that we aren’t tourists ourselves – who gets to run away to Paris when they’re boring and old and have a dog and a toddler? And yet I can’t overemphasize the sheer mundanity of most days, where the most challenging cross-cultural thing that happens to me is figuring out how to say “bloody diarrhea” in French before I go to the vet.

Since we got here, G. has learned to walk and talk (well, sort of), and I’ve done a pretty good job of documenting all that on a family website for the grandparents and forbearing friends. But I’ve done a pretty terrible job of documenting anything else. Why not? Well, I didn’t fall in love with a Frenchman, I haven’t launched on a beautiful journey of self-discovery, I haven’t learned to cook, and I’m not (thank god) renovating a crumbling but charming farmhouse in a picturesque part of France. Still, some folks have been kind enough to ask what I/we have been doing in the interim, perhaps on a blog, so I’m starting this one (a bit more anonymous than the pictorial blog, to protect the guilty). Here goes. What else is an overeducated, underemployed, tired mother of a walking id to do?

Image is a cover shot of "French for Dummies" French edition, Editions Générales First, 2001.