repatriation

Eight weeks, three relocations, several home improvements, one storage delivery of more crap than I thought it was humanly possible for us to own and leave lying dormant for two years, and a stealth gastrointestinal virus later, I’m back. To anyone who still checks in here occasionally, thanks, and I’m sorry.

I can report that the disorientation has receded, but not completely. I’m still startled by the voices of strangers talking to me, though as a consequence I’ve rediscovered the pleasure of unplanned and unrehearsed chatting. Even more fun has been watching G adjust to this very un-French volubility. It tracks well with his natural gregariousness, but he can’t quite handle it being the norm rather than the exception. It’s like being forced to eat ice cream every day. The pinnacle was when a strange woman stopped him mid-tantrum in line at Costco and said “That’s not the way you treat your mama, honey. Here’s the way you treat your mama.” And then she gave me a big hug. He was speechless.

Cars and roads are big. Even our urban grocery store is the size of a city block, with the dairy and the deli at opposite mileposts, and I often find myself exhausted in the middle, trying to remember where the peanut butter is (at the dairy end, next to the yogurt, go figure), and wondering if I should just give up and go home. I haven’t yet, even though we’re at that stage of larder-stocking where every trip to the store involves locating the invisible but essential staple item without which you cannot make X for dinner -- only to come home and find that you don’t have a big enough pot. Even with the load of storage items delivered, there are still big gaps in what we need for everyday use, and I find it increasingly hard to remember where anything is. The response to approximately 78.5% of G’s questions is “It’s on the boat, honey” (the response to the other 11.5% is, “No, you might kill yourself.” Welcome to the world of the almost three-year-old boy. There are many wonders here.).

And, of course, as we try to configure our lives into something more stable and predictable, the boys are changing every day. B is crawling and pulling himself up to standing; any minute we’ll have to install a gate on the stairs. He has a two-toothed smile to rule the world. G speaks more and more in complete paragraphs, and has mastered an elocutionary hand-gesture (we’ve been watching the debates) that he uses for emphasis to define his place in the world (“I have a problem, mommy,” he says, making the gesture Obama uses to mark a place in the air for middle-class misfortunes. “I can’t eat the big oatmeal because my mouth is too small.”).

The thing that’s happening fastest is that G is losing his Frenchness, a thing so elusive I didn’t realize he had it until we returned to the states. The first weeks of our return, he was dismayed every time we went to a park that didn’t have a fountain; he was also fascinated by garden squirrels, which in France are exotic woodland creatures and do not inhabit city parks. These things made me realize that G’s first conscious impressions of the world, his mind’s eye Rolodex for the important nouns of childhood, are completely different from my own, sounded out with a distinct image and accent. He’s already adapted to the new realities of Washington with the cheerful pragmatism of a toddler – he never feels at sea in the supermarket – but I hope that, little as he is, somewhere those images will hold, a dissonant echo to remind him, and me, where we’ve been.

by the sea, by the beautiful sea

Here we are at the North Carolina coast, with the ocean literally on our doorstep. We’ve gotten to watch the sunrise every day since we got here, a glorious consolation prize for the jet lag that still has both boys waking up well before God herself does. Yesterday G sat on my lap as the pinky blaze crept up over the horizon, backlighting the clouds à la Cecil B. DeMille. His mouth dropped open (letting loose a few chunks of Raisin Bran) and he gasped, “Someone painted the sky.”

It’s lovely to be home, lovely that G’s grandmother was sitting next to him to hear him say something so rare and wonderful instead of only reading or hearing about it much later, when some of the magic had worn off in the retelling. It’s also lovely that two weeks from now we won’t be boarding another international flight. On our flight over, I only had to lock myself in the bathroom once with the baby, crying (me, not the baby – the comma is important), but it’s still not an experience I’m eager to repeat. And yet I can’t believe that means we’ve really left Paris for good.

On our long walks down the beach – some of which G is joining us in this year, matching our slower pace with a stride that advertises the two inches his legs have grown past the bottom of all his pants – I pause every time someone waves at us or stops to say hello (which is exactly every time we pass another human on the beach). I’ve been away a long time, I think. Do I know you? I wave back uncertainly, and smile.

And then I remember we are here, in the southern United States, not Paris, where a greeting is a sign of intimacy born only of many years of cautious interaction, a place we were just approaching as we left. I had forgotten what it’s like.

The weather here is as warm as the greetings, and it’s helping to thaw me out, keeping me relaxed even as I avoid facing up to all these sea changes in our lives. I’m normally the first one to get excited about a big change, but the sadness of leaving Paris plus the disorientation of packing up all our belongings and the children has me off my paces, a bit.

Beach houses in North Carolina all seem to be decorated out of the same central warehouse, stocked with pastel and sunset-hued furniture and an endless supply of decorator prints and beach-themed tchotchkes (plastic dolphins, surfboard-shaped doormats). This year’s house has a number of painted wooden signs, made to look slightly weatherbeaten, each with a different exhortation in a different font – “Relax! It Doesn’t Get Better Than This!” “Run your toes through the sand!” They have the effect of making me slightly anxious. Suppose I don’t toe the line?

And tonight, a hurricane is rolling in, a storm small enough not to require evacuation but large enough to bring in some pretty spectacular weather. We’ve laid aside flashlights, diapers, and bottled water, and all up and down the beach there’s a sense of waiting, like a slightly held breath. I’m looking forward, a little, to the storm, and the rain, and the calm after.

goodbye stranger

We leave Paris in a week, and it’s making me emotional about the strangest things. I’m not a saver, and yet I fetched out the cancelled bus tickets from the bottom of my purse for the two lines we take most often and stowed them in the pocket of B’s baby book. It was an awful, rainy day on Friday, but it was the last of S’ vacation, and so we went to the Louvre and had lunch among the horrible humid crowds in what is basically an underground mall food court and I still misted up as we walked back to the bus in the driving rain.

“Boy, you really do love Paris, if you love it today,” S said, and he meant it as a compliment. But I think it is the complement of the sublime and the ridiculous that truly gets me about our life here, the constant refraction of my daily life with small children against such an eternally beautiful backdrop, the crowds and the rain notwithstanding. It’s as if the cliché of Paris (which is true) is a defense against the mundane repetitiveness of raising a toddler and a baby – my nostalgia for their babyhood will be shot through with Parisian light (and a healthy helping of soaking rain).

For example: the week before the Louvre, we were out and about on a very specific errand, which was to find and buy a plastic toilet-seat insert that will allow a thinking-seriously-about-potty-training G to sit on the grown-up toilet without falling in. The errand was designed partly to encourage G in his endeavors, partly to distract him from his obsession with putting various objects – coins, small toys – down the corrugated hose that vents our air conditioner to the outside. You can imagine that my house is divided as to whether introducing a new level of chaos is such a good thing, especially just days before we pack up all our worldly possessions and change continents (S’s attitude: continents, continence, what’s the big deal?). Anyhow, it turns out that the toilet-seat insert -- which, after visiting the supermarket baby section and the droguerie (home of all orphaned home supplies, from mop buckets to small appliances), we finally found at the pharmacy -- is called, in French, a “siège reducteur.” Now I, for one, would be delighted to own a device that would reduce the size of my rear merely by sitting on it. And I am also certain that such a device exists in France, and can also be bought at the pharmacy, but it likely is not made of blue plastic and shaped like a hippo (instead, it vibrates and you have to rub a special cream on your fesses before using it). But for G, onward and upward.

As we left the pharmacy, seat in hand, a bunch of dudes who looked like they were in no particular hurry to get anywhere were drinking beer and passing around a small radio that was blaring, improbably, Supertramp. G smiled and waved, they smiled and waved, and we went on home to put the seat in the potty. I meditated a little on the idea that there is a time and a place for everything, and how that is underlined by the formalities of French culture and the beauties of Paris – that it opens up to make a place for us, and the tour buses, and the bums listening to Supertramp, is nothing short of a miracle. And for a moment I began to trust Paris to show me the way to an elegant leave-taking that will maybe impart a little borrowed grace to me as I go.

Then G came running in from the bedroom saying, Mommy, come look where I peed. Sadly, the siège reducteur was dry as a bone. It turns out the air conditioner hose has uses beyond toys and small change. Elegance, not so much, but I’m grateful all the same. Paris, thanks. We’ll miss you more than you know.

old stones

France is as full of monasteries as it is of other old things – some working, some crumbling, and even some belonging to the Carthusian order, the unusual monks about whom I wrote my graduate thesis, in a land long ago and far away. (The Carthusians were also recently brought into the international spotlight through the documentary film “Into Great Silence,” which I haven’t seen yet but opened to long lines in New York and Boston, making me feel retroactively hip). On two previous occasions I’ve been within spitting distance of one of these monasteries but was unable to visit, due to complications of itinerary or under two-year-old. But last week in Loches, where we spent a marvelous holiday imposing on the hospitality of G and M, we discovered quite by accident that there were ruins of a Carthusian monastery only about 25 km away – in fact, our hosts had been to see a set of one-act plays presented there. We had no special plans for the week and decided on a day trip.

The Chartreuse, or Charterhouse, of Liget was founded by Henry Plantagenet as one of the many penances strewn across the UK and France as acts of contrition for the murder of Thomas à Becket (nothing says “I’m sorry” like a nice bouquet of monastery). At its height there were 20 learned, probably aristocratic monks – including Richelieu’s brother – leading a contemplative life in a rather lovely setting deep in the Loire valley. The monastery was almost completely destroyed at the time of the Revolution, and the monks had to escape for their lives through an underground passageway in their sous-sol that went over half a mile through the limestone (and served originally as a connection between the monastery and the servant brothers housed down the road at the Corroirie). After the Revolution, the land – including all the old stones – was bought back from the republic by an aristocratic family that had survived the Terror, who built a manor house on the property and have more or less lived their ever since.

How do I know this? I got it straight from the mouth of the great-great-grand nephew (or something like that) of the land’s most recent purchaser.

When we arrived at the monastery – which, like many French monuments, is private property open to the public at the discretion and generosity of the owner – there were signs indicating that we should park at the road and then pay a call at the “lower house” to be admitted. Unfortunately, there were a number of lower houses, one of which seemed to be occupied by a party of German painters having lunch, and no clear place to make ourselves known. Just as I started to talk to a couple of curious Germans, two boys about twelve or thirteen years old came up the hill toward us and our stroller and gave us a cheerful wave. They were both wearing tee shirts, shorts and wellies (the latter item of clothing leading me to believe that the level of their enthusiasm in greeting us had much to do with avoiding some kind of chore). "Vous voudriez voire la monastère?” the taller one asked politely. “There are some leaflets at the bottom of the hill,” he continued, “but I can give you a guided tour if you want.” We did, of course, want, and so the six of us set out across the forecourt of the manor towards the ruins of the church and the old monastery walls.

The tour was excellent – heavy on the blood and destruction, but also very correct about the lives and habits of the brothers. I found myself distracted as we walked around, though, not just by the second language and my two-year-old, but also by my growing infatuation with our junior tour guide. Like many other French boys his age that we’ve met, he was incredibly gentle with B and made much of G, in what seemed like a natural inclination. I don’t know if it’s just manners bred in the bone, or the fact that generations of government encouragement of familles nombreuses virtually ensures younger siblings and cousins for just about every French child, but it’s a patience I’ve come to appreciate. I was also impressed by his attention to small details, like the giant chestnut that stood in the place of the original monastery well, or the legend of the naughty monk, who, when caught out skipping vespers in order to drink the last of the monastery wine, crawled inside the oak barrel and was turned to stone (this stone barrel now sits on top of a trickling fountain next to a sign that reads “Eau non potable.” Tant pis.). And he didn’t rush through the details as if they were memorized from index cards – he had a sense of the story, and at the appropriate moments even paused for effect. Most of all, though, I was entranced by the sound of his French, which rolled out in fluid prose that seemed to have bypassed entirely the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and come directly from the court of Louis XVI. There were none of the French equivalents of um, or you know and he didn’t use any slang, which not only made it easier for me to understand but also made me feel like I was in the middle of a movie whose main plot device was to have the adolescent hero possessed by the ghost of his great-great grandfather. It would have to be called something like “Jean-Louis and the Revolution,” or “My Dinner With King Louis.” It was all quite wonderful.

At one point during the tour, G did something especially hair-raising, I forget what, and I scolded him by calling out his full name in three long, drawn-out syllables, in the French pronunciation.

“I’m sorry, what did you say his name was?” our tour guide asked. I told him.

An amazed smile bloomed across his face and he said, “That’s my name, too!”

I said something like, well, I hope he can live up to the honor – and then I took his picture. I plan to use it for future reference as Exhibit A in child-rearing. Even if there was more than a little noblesse oblige involved there, it was still an impressive display – only made more charming by the fact that, as we walked back up the hill to our car, both boys were being screamed at by their older sister (cousin?) for spraying water out of the barrel-fountain.

It was only a minor slippage, considering. Because most twelve year old boys I know, if they’re talking about old stones, they usually mean Keith Richards.


*The photo is of a small window featured in the lower story of each monk’s cell. Their food was passed in through this window every day, so as not to interrupt their study and prayer. Sometimes I would like to have the same thing for G.

bad mommy

It was a fine morning yesterday, and with B ensconced happily making eyes at the babysitter, G and I had a date. I’m trying to make sure that he and I get some individual time together so that our relationship doesn’t devolve into the litany of Don’t (hit your brother, scream so loudly, open the refrigerator door, cause me to be institutionalized before I turn forty). Plus he’s a pretty amusing small person, all told, and it makes me feel like I’m being a better mother.

When I asked him what he wanted to do with our special time together, he said, “I want to go to the coffee shop.” The current object of his toddler obsession with achieving adulthood is the hot beverage – “want warm coffee/hot tea in my special own cup” is a pretty common refrain chez nous, especially if I happen to be drinking one or the other. (Lest the caffeine police break down my door in the next instant, both “coffee” and “tea” for G are a cup of microwave-warmed milk. For the “tea” I have to dunk my tea bag in the cup for half a second to achieve verisimilitude; it is not necessary to add anything to the “coffee,” for reasons mysterious to me. The “special own cup” is a tiny coffee mug some blessed soul gave us when G was born – it looks like a cross between a diner mug and Oliver Twist’s tin cup. So you get the picture). Since we were going out anyway, it seemed like a good time to up the ante.

Our home being Paris, the city of a thousand charming cafes, and we being ourselves, the ugly Americans in residence, we went to Starbucks. The awful truth is that the four cafes nearest our square are in a race to outbid each other for supercilious snottiness, and while I might enjoy a whiff of that when I’m out on my own in the afternoon, it’s not the best environment for a date with G. And the French people making American-style Italian coffee drinks v-e-r-y slowly in our local Starbucks are unfailingly kind to G and me. Exhibit A: le chocolat chaud.

G and I had made our way to the coffee shop by the usual toddler tacking – like navigating a very small sailboat through an extremely choppy sea. Once we’d made it safely into port (i.e. inside the doors of the shop), I settled G on a green velvet armchair by the window and told him sternly to stay there while I ordered our drink. Naturally he popped up next to me five seconds later, nose barely clearing the service counter. I was in the middle of ordering a moyen chocolat chaud, and the young woman at the register grinned – yes, grinned – past me at the mop of blond hair and said, “C’est pour le petit?” I nodded yes, and immediately she pulled up two paper cups, smaller and smallest, like two-thirds of the three bears, and said, “I can make it in the little one so it’s easier for him to drink.” Before I could even thank her, she said, “And I’ll make sure they don’t get the milk too hot.” Merci beaucoup.

G was practically levitating with joy by the time the drink arrived, waving the green straw (une paille, one of those startling words that is exactly the same descriptive metaphor in both French and English) I had unwrapped and given him, like a tiny epée. The hot chocolate itself was an exquisite example of the genre, topped with an escargot-like ribbon of whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate (I also love the phrase for whipped cream, crème fouetté, which sounds like cream made crazy. But I digress). The pleasure of watching G inhale the hot chocolate through the straw was as intense as it was brief. He sucked it down in two long, professional pulls, leaving a halo of chocolate and milky froth around his mouth. We sat for a few more blissful minutes, enjoying the hit, and then took a little tour of the coffee shop, testing out various tables and chairs for comfort and commenting on the artwork.

And then it was time to go home.

My elder son, as you may have noticed, likes a little drama. When he’s happy, the angels are singing; when he’s sad, the world is black, black, black. (Here is where my own mother can insert something about “chickens,” “home,” and “roost.”). When I said the words, “It’s time to go home,” he emitted a long, low moan, like the creaking of a bellows, and then began to keen “NO H-O-O-M-E! NO H-O-O-O-O-O-O-M-E!” at the top of his lungs, and steadily, as we exited the coffee shop and began to make our way down the street. People actually stopped to watch us – I know that French two year olds have tantrums (sometimes), but apparently they do not involve flinging oneself on the filthiest part of the sidewalk and rolling in discontent. I believe this is called restraint. Flinging and rolling for G, on the other hand, are tantrum standbys, and are one of the many aspects of his behavior/ my parenting that have been cause for observation and commentary by our Parisian neighbors. (Once, walking home from the garderie, a woman of a certain age in spotless white woolen pants watched G thoughtfully for a while as he rolled in mid-rage on an oil slick at the entrance to a parking garage. “You know he’s going to get dirty that way,” is what she told me.) Other popular subjects include the state and appropriate seasonality of my children’s clothing, the safety of my double stroller, and G’s gender. I like to think that we provide some entertainment value.

Anyway, as we neared the end of our long march and approached the doorway to our building, I noticed the homeless woman who lives in our neighborhood coming up behind, and eventually past, us. She’s probably about seventy and clearly not all there – she swathes her whole body, including her head, in rags of various colors and provenance, and she talks to herself in a constant stream. I appreciate that even in our snooty neighborhood, people are generally kind to her. We’ve never had much meaningful interaction, as she is terrified of both the dog and the stroller, but I try at least to be respectful about giving her space. Well, yesterday I had neither dog nor stroller, only a vociferously unhappy toddler – which must have been inexplicably less terrifying, because as I began to haul G unceremoniously over our doorframe, she turned around and began making her back toward us in a way that was clearly purposeful. She did not stop until she got about a foot away from me, and she looked down first at G before fixing me with a baleful glare. And then she said, in very clear French, “Vous n’etes pas une bonne maman.” “You are not a good mother.” And flashed a grin at G and went on her way.

au revoir, les enfants

Today is the last day of garderie, the little nursery school where G has spent the better part of Monday and Wednesday afternoons for the past year. I didn't realize that this was the last week until this past Monday -- there is a slightly Byzantine system of "regular time" versus "holiday time" (is it like ordinary time in the church calendar? I don't know.) that I tried to understand for several months until I just gave up and showed up when I was told. Anyway, most months have a bit of each, so when I paid for July's holiday sessions back in June (there are different accounting systems for each kind of time), I assumed that Madame le directrice would prompt me for the regular payment, just as she does for the kleenex and boxes of dry biscuits and the fact that I really shouldn't be giving the baby his pacifier any longer. But here we were, a week into July, and not a word. So on Monday afternoon, after I had dropped G off with the teachers, I asked if I could pay for the rest of July.

Madame looked confused (not an expression generally viewed on the lady in question) and said, "Mais, ce n'est pas necessaire. You have already paid."

"I know I paid for the holiday time," I said, "but don't I need to pay for the rest of July?"

Again, confusion. "Mais, aprés cette semaine, il n'y a plus. C'est fini. It's finished." She gestured at me with both hands in the air, briskly but not unkindly, as if to wave away my stupidity which was an embarrassment to us both. And she threw me a bone: "But he can come back on Tuesday to say goodbye, if you like."

And that was that.

As much as whatever actually happened at the garderie was and remains a black box to me -- they whisk the children away the minute you arrive and encourage you strongly to vanish, so that they can continue with the black magic, the infant sacrifices, and the nursery rhymes, I suppose -- it has been a constant in G's life and now it is done, the first unstacked block in the structure of the life we've built in the last couple of years. So I'm feeling disproportionately unsettled and not a little sentimental, even near tears a couple of times today.

I've actually had more conversation with G's teachers in the last two weeks than in the entirety of the previous year -- they seemed to like him, they always smiled when I picked him up -- on account of some mild behavior problems involving, unless my translation is completely in error, his lying down on some of the other children when they did not comply with his wishes (or maybe just didn't appeal to him). That is how I found out that up to that point he had been "un des plus cooperatifs." No one seemed to be very worried, they just wanted to let me know. I was a little distressed, of course -- no one wants her child to be a bully, particularly not when they have several times the body mass of their playmates. Still, the last few weeks on the playground haven't revealed much more violence beyond the usual two-year-old capriciousness, and he really does try to share (even if it occasionally takes the form of "you'll bloody well take this car if it's the last thing I do."). And the reports from the last days have been glowing.

I'm not really sure what will happen when I pick him up today. I don't even know the names of all his teachers, and it is hard to say that I will miss the garderie beyond the spare hours it has given me these many afternoons. And yet these are people who know my child, who have not hurt him, who have taught him, among other things, a startling amount of French, a good bit of manners, and how to bend over in a yoga position to have his diaper changed. Valuable life lessons, all. Who knows what great novel may come pouring forth from G when he sits down some afternoon with a dry biscuit and a cup of warm apple juice?

I might cry, I'm sure I'll feel silly, and then I'll take him home, leaving another tiny piece of childhood behind on Avenue Victor Hugo. I think this is what they mean by nostalgie.

manhattan transfer

Many thanks to S’ sister, who, by getting married there, gave us a reason to spend four glorious days in New York. We were a little worried about the Atlantic crossing with the boys – based on past experience – but it was, if not pleasant (when is air travel, ever, these days?) a non-event in both directions.

Outside the events of the wedding, our trip seemed dominated by transportation and architecture. With only four days, there was a lot of getting from place to place, and it was amazing how the landscape – the “built environment,” as they say – kept changing so dramatically within a relatively small footprint. It’s so much more kinetic, so much more dense than Paris. It’s the energy and the density that binds everything together, even as the buildings range from human-scale brownstones to industrial refurbishments to the skyscrapers which seem to belong in New York in a way that is just stage setting almost everywhere else. Maybe it’s the island. We availed ourselves of cabs and car services for our many trips across the boroughs – a slightly guilty luxury for us, and a huge treat for G, who rides in cars so rarely over here in Paris. Everything from the seatbelts to the locks to the automatic windows was endlessly fascinating. We were lucky to wind up with all our fingers and everyone still in the car. The car window was also a great vantage point for viewing all the other cars and trucks and things that go – New York being also, as a two-year-old’s eye will tell you, a paradise for motorized vehicles of all kinds. B just took it all in as usual, importing with him the French philosophy of “rester zen.”

I had wondered what it would be like to be back in the States after being gone for so long, but New York, a city I love, made for a soft landing. I’d been warned that things might seem diminished, tacky, or just bizarre, that I would be aware of how much we still owe to Europe in the way we make cities and how much doesn’t translate well in the crossing. But it was all just wonderful. New York, if anything, looked better than the last time I was there – the weather, the people and the place were all pulling out the stops in terms of charm. People smiled and greeted us regularly on the street, even as they all seemed sort of good-naturedly busy in a way I realize I have missed. Europe does so much so beautifully, but it doesn’t bustle. New York’s noise and brusque friendliness were a bright counterpoint to Paris’ peaceful reserve, and the new seemed less to clash with the old than just to be pleasantly different.

The wedding itself was in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which by all right should seem like a big, faux-Gothic pile, but instead, with its sped-up, jumbled history, owns the several city blocks it occupies as if it has always been there (it has certainly always been under construction). So when my beautiful sister-in-law stepped out from behind the construction screen covering up the better part of the central nave – as if she had been playing a game of hide and seek and just stopped in to get married – with the noise of the glorious cathedral organ erupting behind her, it didn’t seem at all like an imitation of European architecture or religion, but more like a magnificent re-imagining. Like New York just shrugged and said, “This is the way we do it here.”

(Or maybe it’s just that everyone’s vision is getting blurred. Only the week before we had been in a 17th century French church for the baptism of an American baby by an African priest. Everything in French, and no one was speaking their mother tongue). I cried at the wedding, of course, and had to wipe my eyes on a diaper, which was the only thing available.

The reception was in the fabulous, peeling Elizabethan hall next door, where we danced the night away and took turns holding all the babies. We saw so many of our family and friends we could hardly process it – a whirlwind. It left us wanting more. So that part of it, at least, it makes it a little easier knowing, as we do now, that our time in Paris is rapidly coming to an end and we’ll be going home soon, for good (well, for awhile). I haven’t wanted to write about it yet – I’m not quite ready to finish things up here, but who really wants to hear my sorrows after two very full years of getting to live in Paris? It seems unsporting to be sad.

Anyway. At the end of the wedding reception, the bride and groom, who had doubled back to pick up a forgotten bag, were accidentally left behind by the car service and without a way back to the hotel. So my sister-in-law stepped into the street in her wedding dress and hailed a cab. The startled cab driver said, “Is this for real?” and when they said yes, he gave them a ride for free. My sister-in-law gave him her bouquet. The whole time we’ve lived in Paris, I’ve felt like that cab driver. But it won’t be so bad to be back.

the dinner party

S has had a week of late days at the office, rough for him but coming to a thankful end soon. Last night he got in about 10:30, and just as he sat down on the couch and eased off his shoes the dog started to do a desperate little dance.

“I’ll take her,” I said. If I’m awake enough, I like to take Lucy on her last walk – it’s a little time alone in the world after the kids are asleep. I fetched up the leash and little plastic carry-bag (I take my responsibility seriously as a citoyenne propre), and hooked her up to go.

S half-rose up from the sofa. “Take a longer walk, if you’re up for it, and go all the way to Champs-Elysées. Then you can tell me if I was hallucinating on my way home. There’s something strange going on up there.”

It was a gorgeous, cool, clear night after a day of storms, with a brisk breeze blowing away the last of the rain clouds. Lucy and I hustled up the avenue, past all the buildings lit up exactly like the houses in those familiar Magritte paintings (it turns out those are the only ones that aren’t surreal – the light just looks like that in early summer). As per usual, the street was empty until we got about a block from the Arc de Triomphe, where little clumps of people start to trickle down and around.

When we got around the circle to the Champs-Elysées, it was just as S had described it – hundreds of people, dressed entirely in white, were sitting down to dinner at makeshift camp tables and folding chairs. The tables were fully set with white linens, china, crystal, candles and flowers, and yet it was all clearly a bring-your-own occasion – every table had different china, crystal, and flowers, and behind at least one chair at every table was stowed a rolling grocery cart that had recently held all the provisions. Everywhere you looked there were people toasting and laughing and the sound of clinking silver on china. Other than the monochromatic dress code, it appeared to be an aggressively ordinary crowd – French people of all ages, but mostly the middle, who looked as if they would be equally at home hosting a tasteful soirée before the symphony.

I found a quiet spot and stood with Lucy to watch, along with the other passersby. Lots of snapping of pictures and video, some appreciative honking from the street, but very few people seemed to be approaching the crowd – it was their party, after all, and we were just along for the ride. A few minutes before eleven, a tall, slim gentleman with salt and pepper hair, wearing a white guayabera, made his way through the set of tables nearest us, saying, “A vingt-trois heures, n’oubliez pas d’allumer les feus.” So of course at that point, we had to stay to see.

Things went on as they were for a few more minutes, and then suddenly, as the clock struck eleven, the people at every table started lighting holiday sparklers tip to tip, until the entire Champs-Elysées was sparkling from the Arc De Triomphe all the way down to the Place de la Concorde. It was a wildly beautiful moment that took the whole event from something you were simply pleased to have walked past to something permanently imprinted on your brain. I think I actually applauded. The diners stood up and waved their sparklers in the air, shouting at their friends across the street and hooting back at the passing cars, until the last of the fire went out.

I didn’t want to wait around to see things start to disassemble, so I turned Lucy toward home, only to catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, just visible over the rooftops. It was sparkling, too.

I don’t really want to know what they were doing out there, though I’m sure within the next couple of days someone will explain it to me, and then I’ll have another piece of my Parisian cultural lexicon in place. I like that for now there aren’t any extra words or layers of meaning, just the memory of all those fizzing lights, lifting all the petty grievances of the day away on the night air in a few minutes of pure delight.

scenes from the life

G is sitting on his bed in his pajamas, holding the National Geographic Explorer snowmobile in one hand and the matchbox pizza delivery van in the other, banging them gently together with a look of total absorption.

“They are fighting, mommy,” he says solemnly, mid-bang.

“Oh, no,” I say, in my best learning-opportunity voice. “How sad for them. Let’s think about what they might say to each other if they, um, used their words.”

I take on the persona of the snowmobile. “Please don’t hit me, pizza delivery van,” I say. “It makes me so sad. I just want to be your friend.”

“I’m sorry, snowmobile.” (I say, as the pizza delivery van). “I was feeling angry, but I don’t want to hurt you. Let’s be friends.”

“See, honey,” I say, brightly. “They are talking it out.”

He smiles at me fondly, benevolently, as if to forgive the special kind of drugs I must be taking at the moment.

“That’s very nice, mommy,” he says. “But now they are fighting again.”

Whack. I’m clearly going to have to work on my tone.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with Mme. Marron after another tough day wrangling G away from the garderie. Lying on the floor, I believe, was involved, along with a refusal to put on a jacket. Sandrine, his teacher, knelt down beside him and in a firm, even voice, said, “G, you must get up now and put on your jacket immediately. Maman is very tired and it is very naughty not to help her.” And lo, immediatement, he got up, the jacket was on, and we were out the door.

“Why does this never work for me?” I wondered.

“Well,” said Mme. Marron, “it’s because he senses that deep down you don’t really care whether he puts the jacket on or not.”

And I don’t, really. I like to believe that my parenting philosophy is invested in general principles, but that’s only true if I admit that principle number one is “How does this affect my peace of my mind and the probability that I will either a) drink an entire cup of tea while it is still warm, or b) have access to ten minutes of uninterrupted reading today?” If a or b look available over the course of a given afternoon, I’m likely not to be too pressed. G is already much too aware of this highly personal ratio to mommy’s displeasure (heaven forbid he had been whacking me with one of the toy cars). Whenever it looks like things are going south for him in the trouble department, his first question is “Are you happy, mommy?” And then he brings me a magazine. So I guess it’s all working out in its own way.

We’ll just have to put B in charge of the teakettle.*




*note: for those of you who maintain any interest in the saga of the coffeepot, last week I walked into Darty on a whim and they actually had the verseuse for my coffeepot in stock. I was able to locate, purchase, and walk out with my new coffee carafe in under fifteen minutes and for less than twenty euros. We’ll see how long the feeling of triumph lasts.

this week at our house

It’s sleep deprivation central around our house these days. Yesterday afternoon I was looking for some extra clothes hangers for the laundry, and I couldn’t get into the hall closet. The previous day we had had a talk about trying to leave the closet keys (very popular items in the toddler set, as they are old fashioned skeleton keys that look like they might unlock the Treasures of the Universe) in the same place all the time, on top of the bookshelf in the study, next to the television, so as to avoid the frantic and futile search that happens five minutes before we absolutely have to leave the house, every time.

And yet, when I looked there, the keys were not. Also not on the mantelpiece of our bedroom (another likely culprit) or in plan C, the broken coffee mug that holds change in the living room. So I called S at work.

“Hi honey. Any idea where the closet keys are? I looked in all the spots and I can’t find them.”

“Oh, they’re in the closet on the high shelf. G was messing around this morning and I was just trying to get them out of his way quickly.”

“Inside the closet, really?”

“Yes, definitely.”

“The closet that I closed after you left, because G was still messing around in it?”

“That would be the one.”

“With the keys locked inside it.”

“Um, yes.”

We actually have a spare key to the closet, somewhere, and the babysitter and I spent a half hour looking in every drawer, under every bed, and behind every piece of furniture in an attempt to locate it. But it was not until I sat down on the floor (and almost fell asleep on it) and tried to imagine our apartment from the perspective of someone under two feet tall, that I found it in the third place I looked – inside the fireplace, under the screen. Unfortunately that kind of role-playing is not exercising any success in locating a very large suitcase that has gone missing, seemingly under our noses, and which we thought to use in our transatlantic flight, tomorrow. We’re good, we bought a new suitcase, but if we happen to have lent ours to you any time in the last few months, would you let us know?

In completely other news, the prince is currently out of residence. Two mornings ago when we walked past the villa, three taxis were idling outside and the entrance doors were flung wide open, revealing a fleet of suitcases lined up in the hall (suitcases: plain black Samsonite; hallway: plain white marble, like a bank entrance; more disappointment, all around.). We never saw the prince, but by midafternoon the kitchen was shuttered, the staff door empty of lurkers on cigarette break, and the security guards melted into air, leaving only their car behind them. The car, a battered old Peugeot 205 (but red), would be hard-pressed to challenge a perpetrator operating only on his own speed. And then, this morning, the car was gone, too. I miss him, our neighbor the prince.

As you may have guessed from the royalty, we’ve landed in a neighborhood a bit outside our batting range. Inasmuch as the washed and unwashed are always rubbing elbows in a city, we’re still the ones dependably bringing down property values every time we step outside. It makes for fantastic window voyeurism, especially at night when all the chandeliers are lit. One neighbor appears to have a Brancusi in the living room; another has covered the wall above the marble fireplace in the salon (normally occupied by a gilt mirror) with a flat screen plasma television at least five feet across. There’s no accounting for taste.

But my favorite neighbors are the family just across the street. Though we’ve never met, our street is only about 20 feet wide, so that when the drapes are open we’re afforded pretty intimate views of each other’s lives. They are a multigenerational family who have long, exuberant Shabbat dinners every other Friday night. The action shifts from the salle à manger to the salon and back again quite effortlessly, like the bubbles shifting in a lava lamp – one minute everyone is around the table, the next the kids are dancing in the living room, talking on cell phones, and then the older men open the windows and lean out for a smoke.

All of this takes place in a lovely apartment of grand proportions decorated in high baroque. All the furniture has feet, the wallpaper in the dining room has painted foliage, and if it can be gilded, well, why not? It’s all clearly expensive, yet has a free-for-all quality that makes me sure this is a fun house to live in. I often wonder what they think of us, looking across the way at the same vintage molding, accented only by IKEA. Oh, and Legos. It must be a little confusing.

As a way of preserving privacy, I’m sure, we never acknowledge each other, even when our eyes happen to meet in the middle of opening or closing a window. This little ruse helps to maintain a sense of dignity when you’re halfway through dressing after a shower and realize you forgot to pull the drapes. Or just walking around your apartment in your husband’s t-shirt carrying a half-naked baby. We all pretend we’re not looking, but of course we are.

The other day, for example, I noticed that the drapes to the petit salon (normally not on public view) in the other apartment had been left open, and stopped for a long moment to stare in. I saw the green velvet drapes, the lovely red sofa backed up against the window, the brass lamps – and, on the opposite wall, what could only have been a portrait of Madame in her prime, 40 years ago. And when I say prime, I mean: Not. Dressed. It wasn’t a reclining nude – hardly – but instead Madame was seated bolt upright, swathed lightly in a diaphanous veil, staring straight out at the viewer with one of those early Gainsborough portrait looks that says “Gaze on this if you dare.”

I was so startled I had to go back into the kitchen for a second cup of coffee, and when I had recovered sufficiently to return to our living room the drapes were drawn again, blotting my view and any chance the neighbors had to see the coffee stains dribbling down my shirt. I think we would like each other if we met, I have always felt sure of it, after a year of watching the Friday night dinners through the window. But if it happened now, what on earth would I say? There really are no words.

Tomorrow we will be flying over the ocean for the first time since G was a baby, to celebrate a family wedding we couldn’t be happier about and to see people we love who haven’t seen G walk or talk and will hold B for the first time. And I will get to meet my nephew, born just a few weeks after B, which makes me so excited it almost makes the world spin faster. But did I mention that it is the whole ocean we will be flying over? And that we will be very high above it, and that it is very deep? Part of me would rather strap on a pair of wings, hold my babies tight, and hope for the best. But you have to do it, and hope for the best, and for patient people in airport security. We’ll be back next week.

a thousand words

This adorable thing



is the “free gift with purchase” we got for accumulating 15 customer loyalty points at the local toy store. I had actually forgotten we had the card, I was so delighted to emerge victorious, unbroken, and unstained from an all-children-included trip to the toy store to buy a birthday-party present. The item in question is a tablier (apron), intended for wear during messy or creative activities (G should pretty much be wearing one at all times, along with a helmet). It’s part of the general school supply list here for every child under six, and multiple versions are available in every shop come September. It says a lot about the deep vein of orderliness in French society.

But what says more to me is that this, the customer loyalty gift, doesn’t have a single logo printed anywhere on it. Not even on the tag. If that’s not “you’ll be back” confidence, I don’t know what is.

No wonder French lovers are legendary.

left to our own devices

We had the day off on Thursday for V-E Day, or Victoire, as it is known here. There were ceremonies all day long at the Etoile – rows of old soldiers straggling, if the word is not too disrespectful, up the Champs-Elysees and culminating in a wreath-laying at the Arc de Triomphe. It was a warm day, but not too, for which I was grateful on behalf of the veterans and their companions. Every year there must be fewer and fewer of them who can make the march – fewer and fewer of them period, really – and their halting steps seem to hint at something sadder lost in these days of darker, less penetrable wars.

We only happened on the ceremonies, though, in the middle of more undirected wanderings – the luxury we gave ourselves for the holiday (well, S, anyway) was A Day Without A Plan. We started out in the late morning by dividing and conquering; I held down the baby front while S diapered and dressed the two-year-old. Then we got everybody in the stroller and headed our in the general direction of the Trocadero. (I had two tokens in my pocket “just in case” we passed by the Eiffel Tower Carousel, as well as extra diapers and snacks – that’s a day without a plan in my world, you’re welcome.)

G elected to get out and walk most of the way. He was cheerful, but even more dawdly than usual. Besides his usual pauses to examine pigeons and fenceposts and to pick up suspicious trash, he kept stopping every fifty yards or so to pick at his shoes. Because I am such a thoughtful and understanding mother, this drove me completely insane. Finally, about twenty paces from the carousel, he stopped completely, raised his arms, and said, “Mommy hug,” which in G-speak means “pick me up, now.”

And when I reached down to pick him up, I saw that he was wearing two left shoes.

As in, from different pairs.

A query to the responsible party came up with this: “Hmm. Well, those were the ones he brought me.”

I started to say something about how letting two year olds make their own decisions not being the best idea, but then I thought about the root meaning of the word “paternalism,” and what I really want my boys to learn (beyond handwashing and basic hygiene) about picking the shoes they march in, and I decided to shut up.

We took off his shoes, he rode the horse, we came home.

petit prince

I’ve just confirmed we live next to royalty.

Ever since last winter, there has been an unsubstantiated rumor that one of the villas on the private side street that connects with ours in the next block was owned and/or about to be occupied by a prince from an unnamed eastern state. This would have shades of Madeline and the son of the Spanish Ambassador (although G would have to be Pepito), except that a week after the rumors started flying, a ten-foot high, electronically controlled wrought-iron gate was built across both entrances to the side street, perhaps not the most obvious nod to neighborliness. Our babysitter A, who has lived on the other, non-gated side street for 20 years and is in the know about such things, swears that all the residents on the other side were pressured into agreeing to the gate, but that the prince paid for it all. I have definitely seen more than one elderly person pausing to swear at the gate when they forgot the combination.

On my walks with Lucy, I’ve determined that both a swimming pool and a tennis court seem to live on top of the roof of the villa in question. There is also a lot of staff, mostly visible taking breaks in the basement-level English style kitchen that fronts the road. Today I saw two men unloading a raft of groceries into the kitchen. Want to know what mysterious royalty drinks? A lot of supermarket brand water, apparently. It’s a little disappointing – I mean, how can we really build up a good head of envy unless the super-rich do their part and actually bathe in Veuve Clicquot?

In the last week, a permanent security guard has appeared at the villa end, although again, this is not as impressive as it could be. Fantasy security guards either dress like gendarmes (the best hats) or commandos (just scary in general), but the two guys that trade duty here wear plain tee-shirts that say “Securite” on the front in faded letters and they mostly lean up against their cars.

I kind of like these downmarket details. Is the prince pennypinching? Is he trying to say, hey, gates and tennis courts aside, I’m just a regular guy? Would he be up for un express at the corner café?

Tonight, on our 10 o’clock walk, the security guard spoke to us as we passed by. He was actually sitting all the way inside his car this time, so I had to scan a moment to place the disembodied voice.

“You all walk past here every day, huh?”

“Yes, sir, we do.”

He got out, and reached down to scratch Lucy behind the ears. “She doesn’t bite, right?” he said, and laughed.

“So, must be someone pretty important who lives here,” I said.

“Well, it’s a prince,” he admitted, and named the country (which pretty much met and rose all my expectations for the day).

“Wow,” I said. “That’s quite a neighbor.”

He shrugged without committing. “English?” he asked. (The question was about nationality, rather than native tongue).

“No, American.”

His face broadened into a smile that indicated this might be the least boring thing that had happened to him all evening. “You have such an election coming up,” he said. “I’ve been reading.”

“Tell me,” he added, “Are you for Obama?”

where i'm calling from

Or, having a baby in France, part 1.

The night before we actually had B, I thought I was going into labor, and so we called the hospital. It’s is a surprisingly inexact science, this going-into-labor business, and I’m ashamed to say I was just as in the dark the second time around as the first. I even dithered around with S about whether we should actually call the hospital – I’m not sure how to say “I just have a feeling” in French, and I was certain that even if I did manage a translation it would earn me nothing more than a routine dismissal, probably from the hospital telephone operator (oh, these Americans, how they have lost touch with themselves. They do not even know when they are in labor). It would seem awfully disorganized of me not to know.

In the event, when we finally decided to call the hospital, there was no signal at all on the telephone. Not when we called the maternity wing, not for the main switchboard number, not for the emergency unit. No ring, no dial tone, nothing. At first we thought it was a problem with our own telephone, but the phone rang and the line dutifully connected when we tried a friend. None of my imagined contingencies for childbirth had involved not actually being able to contact the hospital. We panicked a little – well, actually, I panicked a little, and insisted S call the police to get to the bottom of the problem, or at least determine if the American Hospital of Paris (which is a private French hospital located, in point of fact, in the close-in suburb of Neuilly) was now a giant, smoking hole in the ground and therefore unable to deliver me of a child within the next twenty-four hours. S said, “They are just going to ask me why on earth I thought they would have access to that information and make me feel stupid.” But he called both the Paris and Neuilly police anyway, sweet soul. The result? They wondered why on earth he thought they would have access to that information. The Paris police added that it was not in their jurisdiction, either.

After a couple of hours, we finally got through to a receptionist at the hospital on a patched in cell phone, who sounded harried but apologetically admitted that the whole switchboard at the hospital was down. No, she didn’t know why. She was able to call the maternity department internally while I was on the phone, but not to transfer me. The result of that conversation was “If you think you are in labor, come in. If you don’t, stay home. It’s up to you.” I could feel the gentle exasperation even by proxy, and I felt guilty, even though I wasn’t the one with a broken switchboard. It just works that way here – there is always a protocol, even for the unpredictable, and not to know it and react accordingly is just bad manners. I decided to stay home, partly because I didn’t really think I was in labor, partly to avoid facing the midwife on duty, and finally because I wasn’t sure my hole-in-the-ground theory was completely off base, yet. The induction we had scheduled for the next day with my doctor, in the event that the baby didn’t come, was starting to look better and better. I had worried that it was a little like cheating; now it seemed like not tempting fate.

And so we went, and they gave the baby a little nudge – what they call un coup de pousse here, a tap of the thumb – and after an extraordinarily civilized amount of time, B was here, and everything and everyone was wonderful. The doctors clapped each other on the shoulders in congratulation, and possibly also because, since B had outstripped his predicted arrival time by two hours, they could easily be home in time for an apéro. The sweet midwife stayed a few minutes past her shift to come visit the baby in our room. I thanked her, and she said, “Every time it is a gift to be part of such a sweet moment.” And then we stayed on for several days in a beautiful sunlit room – B, his linens, a lot of dairy products, and 24-hour BBC coverage of the Davos economic forum in Switzerland. Only one strange thing – everyone to whom we mentioned the phone debacle of the night before our arrival was completely mystified, to the point of denying that it ever happened. “I didn’t hear anything about it,” said the incredibly polite administrator who checked us in. “Perhaps it was just a very busy night in the urgence.” The ward nurse said, “Oh, no. Things like that don’t happen in Paris.” Good enough.

On the day of our departure, however, I called home to the apartment to let the grandparents, and Gus, know that we were on our way, but I couldn’t get through. Our line was out of service.

the ballad of the sad carafe

You may remember the dear departed coffee carafe from several weeks back. As it turned out to be more than tedious to replace it (online research revealed that we had, in fact been given the correct réference, but alas, the wrong carafe, and I could imagine this happening by mail order and store visit ad infinitum on into the future), I decided to take the practical route and buy a French press. It’s elegant, it makes exactly the amount of coffee we drink on any given morning, and since it has no electric parts it has no voltage issue to hinder its transport when we move away from France.

I did a little comparison shopping, decided we were not classy enough or accident-proof enough to merit the top-of-the-line Danish Bodum, and so instead went with an anonymous Italian model whose cap and press were a cheerful shade of yellow. I brought it home from the local coffee shop and S and I congratulated ourselves on a Job Well Done.

Such bright, shiny plans on a bright, shiny morning, when all our hopes were clean and new.

The third time we used the new press, when S poured the boiling water over the coffee, a hairline crack appeared at the lip of the press and began to spread downward, along with a trickle of brownish water that quickly became a large puddle on the countertop. S swore, I mopped, and then when I took the dog out for her morning walk I did what any sane person pressed to the edge of the undercaffeinated brink would do – I brought home an extra large Starbucks daily brew in a carryout cup. Sometimes principle has to go right out the window, along with pride.

It was the weekend, and so the following Tuesday (it took me that long to work up my courage) I washed and wrapped the cracked press and carried it back to the coffee shop, where the two vendeuses were engaged in some stockage, including a couple of new versions of my press. I explained the situation in the French I had been practicing under my breath all the way to the shop – desolée de vous déranger, en train de verser l’eau bouillante elle est aperçue la fissure…c’est pas normal, ça…si on pourrait l'échanger…

All to no use. Vendeuse #1 widened her eyes at me and said, But madame, I cannot possibly exchange an item that has been broken. Her colleague, who had the face of a worried spaniel, shook her head in silent agreement. I tried again, smiling gently, hopefully. But surely you understand, madame, that the item was broken in the course of its utilization for the purpose for which it was designed (this, a sentence I had especially practiced, sounded exactly this stilted in French, I am sure. Except with the wrong pronouns.). I mimed pouring hot water, and my surprise at the breaking glass.

She shrugged and smiled sadly. Yes, I do see, she said, but I am not in charge here, and I cannot take responsibility for the exchange. If you can come back on Monday when the manager is here, perhaps…I cannot promise anything. She turned back to her stockage, and that was that.

I wrapped the broken press back up in its tissue and receipt, walked home, and set the bag on top of the table in the foyer, where I would be certain to see it on Monday on my way out. On Sunday morning, I decided to wage war against entropy in our house, which began with collecting stray legos and baby shoes, ran straight through banishing small drifts of paper, and wound up with remembering I needed to clip the baby’s nails and where on earth had I left the clippers. And so I rifled through the cachepot on top of the foyer table in search of the clippers and caught the bag with the coffeepot inside with an energetic elbow, tipping it over. Out of which fell the press, smashing into a thousand pieces on the floor.

One of which, no doubt, contained the original crack.

For the moment, I have switched over to tea.

you can call me al

We all got frisked in the airport on the way down south to visit some of our oldest friends last weekend, even G, who seemed to enjoy his patting down so much I was afraid he would ask for more. It was the most polite frisking I’ve ever had, and if not done in a spirit of fun exactly, there was a whiff of apology and quota-meeting about the whole thing. One security agent even held B and cooed at him while the other agent checked me with the wand. G was wearing his flashing-light Spider-Man boots, on reflection perhaps not the best airport wear, but all I was thinking was that he could put them on and take them off by himself, which seemed practical at the time. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” was really the theme of the whole packing endeavor (who needs shoes?), and G’s behavior throughout, and yet we were met with such graciousness and goodwill at every turn, such astounding and effortless-seeming preparedness – the laundry basket fitted out as a baby crib, the breakable dishes silently migrated to upper cabinets – that I’m still marveling at the thing.

The Côte D’Azur really pulled out all the stops for us – hiking on Friday in the high meadow in our coats in the shadow of a low, feathery cloud that actually seemed to be following us, and then riding the ferry and picnicking on Saturday in shirtsleeves on an island beach in view of the alps. Looking back it feels like one long bright ribbon of conversation, walks, sunlight, and good things to eat, punctuated by occasional episodes of G actively trying to kill himself on rocks and terraces.

I loved seeing B held by so many hands that I mean to make a part of his life for the duration, the ease of being with old friends (even when being with us is not easy), and the special joy of seeing that the life they have made there is such a good and happy one. All four of our friends – Mme. Marron, husband C, and daughters J and E -- look wonderful, but the girls, whom we have known almost since they were B’s age, are so radiant now it makes my ribs hurt. They are smart and graceful and funny and make it seem natural that the first thing any well-brought up person ought to say upon entering a room is “what can I do to help?” And to keep saying it after three days of toddler is almost showing off, don’t you think? J and G continue to have their mystic connection – she remains the one person who can, without fail, calm him down – and E is, as always, the most serene and grown up of us all.

On our last night at La Bastiole, sitting on the terrace with an apéro of champagne, smoked salmon, and matzoh (it was the first night of Passover), C looked over at B, who was sitting in his carseat on the table, and said, “You know, he looks a lot like Paul Simon.” This was duly registered, and then we all got distracted by the size of the full moon, which was floating over the Mediterranean for all the world like a hot air balloon, and we called the girls outside to shiver in their sweaters and take pictures.

A while later over dinner, which had been pushed to an aggressively European hour in order to give G time to fall in his tracks and go to bed, Mme. Marron laid down her knife and fork and gave B’s carseat a gentle rock. “Do you all know,” she said thoughtfully, “where B is going?”

“No,” I said, thinking it was something existential. “Where?”

“He’s going,” she said with a satisfied smile, “to look for America.”

B looked blandly up at both of us with his monkey-button face, and I burst into helpless laughter.

“And do you know what’s on his feet?” she added.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Diamonds.”

It went on like that for the rest of the evening, pure silliness, tears rolling down our faces, observed by patient husbands, forbearing daughters, and the boy himself, clearly waiting for the day he could go meet Julio down by the schoolyard. At one point Mme. Marron said, “I don’t even really like Paul Simon.” But I don’t think either of us had laughed that hard in a long time.

In French you “render” a visit, which I like a lot – it’s more muscular than “make” and less transactional than “pay” (well, ok, if you take out the sense of “render unto Caesar”). My Anglophone ears hear the softer echoes of what render means in English, which take up several columns even in our small-type OED – to create, to transform, to give. I really felt it this time, sitting around the table with our chosen extended family, in a borrowed country amid borrowed beauty that belongs to none of us, and yet somehow being together made it home. And for that I truly give thanks.

rumble on the 52

A little more ethnographie from the world of the Paris bus.

We just came back on the bus from meeting some friends at Parc Monceau, a nineteenth-century era park so well-groomed that all the ladies match their little dogs. Our crowd was slightly less elegant, and peanut-butter-stained, but G and the love of his life, Amelie, were so adorable walking everywhere hand-in-hand that a Frenchwoman stopped to take their picture. Points to us. We sat down in the sun next to a sweet elderly lady who warned that her small dog was “trés méchant” on account of having been hit it its youth, but that she would be watching carefully and we should not worry about our children being bitten. Said dog was lying on the ground, asleep. After that comforting bit of dialogue, she added, somewhat mysteriously, that you should never lend your dog to anyone, it’s a bad bargain. We tried to absorb this advice with all the seriousness with which it had been given, and moved a little further to the end of the bench. She was true to her word, though, and we didn’t hear a peep from her King Charles.

Tooth and claw were a little more evident on the ride home. The bus was packed with the post-prandial crowd – there were three strollers, which is technically not allowed, but they let us get away with it. At the Étoile, an elderly fat man lumbered aboard and planted himself in the middle of the aisle with a look that dared anyone to challenge him. At the next stop, even more people got on, and the bus driver switched on the canned announcement advising everyone to move to the back of the bus. An old woman wearing blue mascara and a fusty chignon poked the man in the shoulder. “Go ahead, sir,” she said (in French), “move to the back of the bus.”

“Move it yourself, b***.” (The French word he used was connasse, which is not very nice at all).

There was a pregnant pause, marked by the collective stopping of breath from everyone within hearing distance.

“I would,” she said clearly, drawing herself up to her full height, “but your fat ass is taking up all the space.”

The collective breath released with a grateful sigh. Touché.

“Shut up, you old hag,” he said.

“You shut it,” she said, shoving her way past him.

“Looks like you could use a diet, too,” he said, to her back, but his heart wasn’t in it.

When she got to the back of the bus, she grabbed the door rail. “My god, what an annoying old shit,” she said.

The woman standing next to me and I couldn’t help it – we burst into a fit of giggles. Old people. Cursing. On a French bus. (The only even remotely similar situation that has happened to me here was when I was pushing G around the grocery store with a full cast on his leg, and an older woman in a Chanel suit said, “Oh la la, ça c’est la merde, ça.”)

In English, I am known to appreciate a well-placed “gros mot,” but I would never dream of attempting it in French. Someone gave us a dictionary of French argot before we left that has carefully placed stars next to the words that have the most, er, shock value, but I’m still playing it safe, trying to make sure my subjects and verbs agree. I’m embarrassed to admit, however, that after more than a year and a half here, I’m more proud of being able to understand that conversation on the bus than of being able to read Molière. Vive L’Academie Française.

here comes everybody

I just saw this review of a new book by Clay Shirky, which is basically about why everyone should learn to stop worrying and love the internets (I do, I do). I love that the title is Here Comes Everybody, since it’s what G shouts every morning when he wakes up and heads for the kitchen. And then there’s the reference to James Joyce and HCE, the hero of Finnegan’s Wake. I love that, too, as the Wake makes a great cheeky metaphor for the web – vast and incomprehensible on the surface, but with a little faith and luck, when you dive in you’ll probably find what you’re looking for.

The last time I lived in Europe, a hundred million years ago, I was part of a Finnegan’s Wake reading group in Budapest. The entrance fee was a bottle of Bull’s Blood red wine (67 cents at the corner store) or a bag of snacks, and we discussed a page every week. We were all poor English teachers – I think the total of my possessions was four black sweaters, a coat, two pairs of pants, and a stack of old New Yorkers that came with the apartment I shared with two other book group members – but we were multi-national, with Hungarians, Americans, English, and a few real Irish among the regulars. I was the impostor, since I was the only group member who had never read past Dubliners before joining, and who went on to study medieval, instead of modernist, literature. But no one ever seemed to blame me, and we had a lot of fun getting tipsy over etymologies and wild speculations. One member played ringmaster/discussion leader each week, and I remember spending the afternoon before my session holed up at the British Council Library, which was housed in a gorgeous nineteenth-century pile on one of the city’s most beautiful avenues, poring over a key to mythology and a couple of old books of literary criticism (a prefiguration of graduate school, sadly, it wasn’t). That year was the longest, coldest winter Central Europe had seen in decades. I remember crossing the Petofi Bridge one night on the way to a group meeting and seeing ice chunks floating down the Danube. Another night I slipped on a patch of black ice outside a group member’s apartment and probably cracked a bone in my elbow – but not the bottle of Bull’s Blood I was carrying.

Joining the group – though I’ve never been much of a joiner – was the little wedge that opened up my life in Budapest, creating a little community for me there, and it’s still the lens through which I view that year. Budapest was beautiful, scarred and strange; still near enough to the Communist collapse that the shiniest, best-renovated buildings all housed fast-food restaurants. The young people I hung out with had been part of underground democratic political groups while I was filling out applications to university. The day I called the number on the flier I saw in the café behind the law university, I was having a fit of loneliness inspired by the lack of cognates. From there I moved on to Joyce, a couple of great roommates, singing in a symphony chorale directed by Kodaly’s last music student, bunking six to a sofa on a weekend trip to Lake Balaton, visiting the Turkish baths, and teaching English to the defense attaché for the Greek government, who asked me if I might consider a sideline job as his mistress. And all this in the days before Facebook.

I don’t feel nostalgic for that time – a high speed connection and craigslist would have made remarkable enhancements to my time abroad, and S and I would be able to seed a college fund on that year’s investment in long-distance phone calls, which we now make for free across a DSL cable. Although I will be able to tell my children, without lying, that I had to walk a mile (well, a kilometer, anyway) uphill and across a bridge in order to have access to email. But sitting here in another magnificent old apartment building at an easy walk from a different river, the past suddenly seems like, well, a long time ago. And I feel fond of it, those early steps that started me down this road before I even knew I was on it. Here comes everybody, indeed. I wonder if it’s even possible to buy Bull’s Blood in France.

bus stop butterflies

I just looked out the window to the bus stop, and lo, a couple of butterflies have drifted into our neighborhood, in spite of the rain. Normally we are a very beige, brown and black quartier – it’s all about tailoring, not color (well, tailoring and fur). But the two women standing at the bus stop, both lovely, both d’un certain age, apparently did not get the memo. The one on the left is wearing a bottle-green twill raincoat with – can it be? – gaucho pants made of some kind of stiff black taffeta, plus knee-length snakeskin boots with a small heel. The one on the right (sadly, they do not seem to be traveling together) is wearing an orange velveteen belted trenchcoat that matches her sweater and her hair. I could die happy.

This morning we went back to the Luxembourg Gardens for a pony ride, before the rain, and we ran into a group – a bridge club? a chorus? a community orchestra? – having some kind of organized meeting next to the orangerie for which they had commandeered a number of green metal chairs and laid in refreshments in plastic containers of ascending sizes. In the smallest container, macarons of multiple flavors. In the medium sized container, petits fours. And in the largest, enough chouquettes (like small beignets) to feed an army of ponies. I did not see the coffee but I know there were smart aluminum thermoses lurking somewhere.

I realize that I have not yet written much about the baby, or, by corollary, the experience of giving birth to him in France, in a French hospital. It seems like having one of each in America and in France would be ripe circumstances for comparison, but every time I try to write about it I either run straight into cliché (oh, the French!) or sentimentality (oh, the baby!). But there is still a lot to say. I’ll try again soon.

dirt and other pleasures

I promise to write something soon about something other than my two-year-old – what I’ve been reading (just finished No Country for Old Men, getting ready to start a new Penelope Lively); further progress on figuring out whether the man with the Dalmatian and the Jack Russell and the man who gets a manicure with his chow are actually the same person; the cheese shop; and sweet baby B, who is smiling at everyone these days and seems halfway to turning over. But living with a two-year-old like G and not writing about it is like living in South Florida and not writing about the weather. It defines your life even when it isn’t blowing the roof off.

Yesterday we went back to story hour at the American Library (a mild success), and then went to the playground on the Champ de Mars afterwards with my friend H and her two daughters, Amelie and Rose, who are just a little bit older than the boys. We all had a crepe and then set the ambulatory children loose on the playground. For the first time G. and Amelie actually played with each other instead of staring at each other balefully over peanut butter and jelly. They climbed up the ladder on the monkey bars several times; they got on the seesaw and rocked maniacally; and then they finished up the hour with G introducing Amelie to the pleasures of stomping in mud puddles and then trying to fill them up with sand.

As we were leaving the park with everyone strapped back in the strollers, H said to me, by way of wondering observation, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Amelie this dirty.” I looked over at Amelie, in her navy coat and cotton leggings, and try as I might, I couldn’t see a speck. Then we both looked at G. He was encrusted in mud and sand all the way up to his thighs, and his hair was clumpy with sand and even a little bit of blood where he had bashed a glancing blow off the monkey bars. As we looked, he was trying and failing to stuff a very large rock in his pocket. Without saying another word, H and I just burst out laughing.

adventures in appliances

On Monday morning G woke up before the rest of us and decided, considerately, to make his own breakfast. S discovered the evidence shortly after G wandered into our room about 8:30 with a diaper in need of attention. He dumped G straight into the bath and then passed into the kitchen to get a drink. It was a bit like it must feel to walk into a house after a robbery. The refrigerator door was open, and on the floor in front of it were two wheels of Camembert in their open boxes, each with a healthy chunk bitten out. The two loaves of spice bread I had made the previous afternoon had been torn from their foil wrappings and the tops raked off, as if scavenged by wild dogs. And the carafe from our coffee maker lay on the floor, in pieces. All in all, a nice morning’s work.

So instead of walking down to the Eiffel Tower to see the Petit Village de Paques (bunnies! A six foot tall Easter egg!), we made our way to Darty – the French equivalent of Best Buy or Circuit City – on the off chance it would be open, in search of a replacement carafe.

The fleet of gated and locked storefronts all along the way dimmed our hopes, but when we got to Darty the automatic doors parted – oh happy day – and we strolled into an empty store staffed by half a dozen employees all wearing the expression you would have on your face if you had drawn the lot to work on a public holiday. And we had walked in with a two-year-old who promptly ran into the middle of the flat screen television display.

Nevertheless, we made our way down the escalator to the petit électromenager, where, upon scanning the wall of coffeemakers, we saw that our model was not on display. It was our first inkling that this would not be so easy. The attendant assured us that replacing the carafe – which is called a verseuse, or pourer, in French, to differentiate from the vessel you would use for water or wine – would still not be a problem, but he wondered what model it was we had in our house, chez vous. I said that it was the purple one, just like the electric teakettle on the shelf above his head.

Well then, he said, you just need to go upstairs to the cashier and tell them you need a replacement verseuse for the Philips Cucina coffemaker, in lilac (yes, we have a lilac coffemaker. And a matching electric teakettle, too). Just like that. And he waved us away with a smile. Or me, anyway – I had to go locate S and G over by the washing machines before we could go upstairs to the cashier station.

When we got upstairs, our reception by the two men manning the station was much less friendly. “There are a lot of Philips coffeemakers,” said the first. “Do you have the réference (model number)?

“The man downstairs told me to tell you it was the one in lilac,” I said.

“That doesn’t help me,” said the other man, who was looking at the computer screen. “I need the réference.”

“I don’t have it,” I said, “but I could show you the model.”

“Couldn’t you just order it on the website?” said man number one. (I did not ask him why it was not possible to check the website, in the store, for the reference. Such things are futile.)

“I’ll just go downstairs and see if the other guy knows the réference,” I said, not entirely politely. This time S and G had migrated to the telephone display, so I fetched them again and said to S, “I think you’re going to have to handle this one from now on. I haven’t had my coffee yet, and I can’t be held responsible if I say something grumpy.”

“No problem,” he answered. G was thrilled to ride the escalator again.

Downstairs, I corralled the same attendant who had helped us before, in passing, and said that upstairs they had asked me for the réference.

“Really?” he said. “And you told them it was the one in lilac?”

Indeed.

“Well, then, just tell them it’s the soixante-quinze-quatre-vingt-deux.” (I write out the numbers here because to my American ear that sounds like sixty-fifteen-four-twenty-two, while the number we needed eventually to transfer to the cashier was 7582. And still. No. Coffee. Because we were there to replace the coffee pot. I make my point.)

S confirmed the number and went back to the cashier, while I took Gus to the TV display, where approximately one hundred television were showing the trailer for the Lord of The Rings. The battle scene was probably too much for a two-year-old, but the horses had him riveted in his tracks and so I decided to let it rest.

Five minutes later, S arrived carrying a small cardboard box. We opened it with trembling fingers, but alas, it was not the carafe that goes with our coffee maker.

I went back to the cashier. “This is not a match for our coffee pot,” I said.

“It is not the coffee pot you have chez vous?”

“No, it is not,” I said.

“But that is the soixante-quinze-quatre-vingt-deux.”

“But it is not my coffee-pot.”

“Then you will have to go home and get the réference.” He made the little French gesture, usually so charming, that is a small shrug with the palms lifted up, that means ‘there is nothing else I can do.’

S had noticed downstairs in the appliance display a shelf of orphaned coffee carafes of various shapes and sizes. “There’s one that looks kind of like ours,” he said. “It’s four euros. Let’s grab it and get out of here.”

And so we did, with only ten more minutes and one bloody nose on the escalator to show for our pain. We walked home in growing sunshine and G sat on S’s shoulders and sang the itsy-bitsy spider at the top of his lungs. The plane trees along the Allée Maria Callas were beginning to bud. I gave the baby his pacifier and decided it was warm enough to take off my scarf.

At home, I settled into an arm chair with last week’s New Yorker while S went back into the kitchen. Thirty seconds later, he appeared at my side and kissed me on the top of the head.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked.

“Yes, much,” I answered.

“Not so grumpy?”

“I think I’m over it.”

He smiled. “Because the coffee carafe doesn’t fit.”