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.