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.