in the garden

We woke up to a glorious morning last Sunday, so we packed up the boys and took the bus to the jardin de Luxembourg. I am often convinced our memories of Paris will be packaged as one long parade of Sundays – it’s an unwritten law in France that Sunday is family day, and on a Sunday afternoon it can seem like everyone is going somewhere with a bouquet of flowers (but where do they buy them on Sunday?) for mother or grandmother or Aunt Agnes. And all the parks are full, full. So I suppose it’s inevitable that our Sunday outings, more than any other, make us feel part of the fabric of things. And we don’t even have to visit Aunt Agnes.

The magic of the Luxembourg Garden, though, is that it’s Sunday every day. There is simply no time that you can pass through that gate without seeing multiple generations participating in perfectly executed rituals of leisure. For me, it’s the apotheosis of civilized society – the example I would hold up for Why We Are Not Likely to Blow Ourselves Up Yet. Case in point: there is a coat rack anchored in concrete in the middle of the boules playing area, alongside a kiosk where you can buy un éxpress to sharpen your game. It’s probably my favorite place in Paris, even though the competition is tight – it makes me happy in a simple and uncomplicated way, and I look forward even to the bus ride. I think S looks forward to it, too – it’s an easy bribe to make me happy, and you get to be outside to boot.

The jardin is a peaceable kingdom, ruled by fonctionnaires (and not, as it might seem on first glance, by the gendarme types in fancy dress guarding the French Senate, which is the former Medicis palace facing the fountain. They pretty much stick to their own business unless you walk on the grass somewhere near the Senate. Understanding which pelouses, or lawns, are actually meant to be trod upon in the jardin de Luxembourg is not for the faint of heart.). The fonctionnaires each preside over some domain of directly administered activity, such as the man who rents the toy sailboats, and the sticks to push them with, at the pool in front of the palace, or the one who takes the tickets and turns the crank on the crank-operated carousel on the west side of the park. The fonctionnaire closest to my heart, truth be told, is the one who operates La Roseraie, otherwise known as the best public toilet in the known world. It’s as if you have magically stepped off a garden path into your own bathroom, at home, except that an impeccably groomed, bespectacled bald man greets you at the door (this would be startling at home, of course, but it feels quite welcoming otherwise). La Roseraie has become somewhat of a pilgrimage point for me, having spent all my time in Paris with small children, and about half of it pregnant. But many a visiting unbeliever has been converted to the faith.

The fonctionnaire-administered activities are all run as concessions, so that there is a small fee for participation in these particular pieces of liberté, egalite´ and fraternité. But the fonctionnaires wear their mantle of authority, and commerce, quite lightly, and the sublime sense of order generated by their presence spills over into more informal practices. Joggers, strollers, chess players, tai chi practitioners, and sun worshippers share the space quite comfortably and without interrupting one another. In a way, it does seem like a democratic paradise there on the Left Bank, though, good republican that I am, I’m not sure you would have the same quality of orderliness in a country that had never been ruled by a king.

When we arrived at the jardin on Sunday, we entered at the southern gate and came down a long allée that leads directly to the palace. We stopped at the pool to watch the boats, and then took a turn along the north side, sharing that allée with the joggers. At the Orangerie, people had dragged the green metal chairs that populate every Paris park to the south wall of the building and were sitting in twos and threes, taking in the sun. Since I had the baby strapped in front and was walking a few paces slower, I had a good view of G narrowly avoiding collision with a number of joggers and then winding his way among the sun worshippers, flirting like crazy. G has never met a demographic that he does not take as a challenge to assault with his charm. S just followed along behind him, murmuring in French when it seemed appropriate.

We had strategized for a limited time window by confining our walk to the north and central parts of the park; on the west side, in addition to the carousel, there is an enormous and wonderful fenced in playground (also with a fee) that is a magnet for G but also a destination point in and of itself. We thought the day seemed better for strolling and not too much planned activity. G is still a little too small to understand the theory of boats and sticks, and is mostly happy to run; however, there had been some discussion between the parents about the ponies.

All along the central allée of the park, you see, a group of very patient, if slightly grumpy, men give pony rides to children (the description of the men applies just as well to the ponies). The animals are loosely roped together in two groups of about six each; one group also boasts a green and orange painted wagon. Up to last week, G had shown an enthusiastic but cautious interest in the ponies – I was able to convince him to ride in the wagon on one visit with friends, but a deep love for the stationary horses on every carousel in Paris had not translated into wanting to ride on one that was warm and breathing and smelly. Last Sunday, though, G walked right up to the nearest group of ponies and patted one on the backside (he cannot read the sign that says not to pet the ponies, and his parents, they are slow on the uptake). After some energetic finger-waving and tut-tutting from the pony men, we extracted G and determined that he really did want to ride a pony this time. S gave over the money and one of the men hoisted G up onto the pony in question, a small fat white one with a dirty forelock and swishing tail.

G sat up straight and tall in the saddle – and for once, not wiggling – while the man tied him onto the horse with a rope and fitted his feet into jerry-rigged rope stirrups that hung about five inches above the regular leather ones. When the man pointed, he grabbed onto the saddle horn with both hands and hung on. Once the last small child was tied firmly into place, the same man who had managed G took the lead rope and guided the ponies into a slow walk across the gravel. S and I were both watching G’s face as this happened, and it’s a moment for which I will be grateful the rest of my life.

Since G started talking, it has been customary for his life to unfold with running commentary, even if no one seems to be within earshot. When the pony underneath him started moving, my child was struck dumb, and he did not make another sound until the pony stopped again at the end of the circuit. I think there were just no words in his limited vocabulary to describe what he was feeling.

Well, maybe one. When the ponies stopped at the post, he looked up at S and said, “More.”

S paid up. We watched him go up and down another time, sitting up on his pony, smiling to himself as if he were receiving a visitation by angels. We braced ourselves for a tantrum when it came to the end of the ride, but he was so completely exhausted by joy he practically collapsed into S’s arms. S asked the man what the pony’s name was that G had been riding. It was Dondi. We told G, who then patted the pony on the face and said “Bye bye Dondi, see you next time.”

On the way home on the bus, G cuddled up into S’s arms and said, “I love Dondi, I love Dondi so much.” G has his own little pantheon of things and people dear to his heart that merit that grave pronouncement, ranging from our friends’ daughter J to our old friend D from Washington to, well, falafel. As strange an assortment as it sounds, it’s not random. G understands “like” as a word for describing things that give you pleasure of one kind or another – he likes yogurt, and Sesame Street videos, and slides. But he also grasps “love” as a word for something more transcendent – a connection or experience that leaves you different than you were before. He and J were born under the same difficult, but wonderful star; our friend D taught him part of the alphabet and told him she remembered when he was born (the first person outside of what he understands as his family to know that); “falafel” is a code word for the times when yes, we eat falafel in the Marais, but also for the first time he got to ride the train without being strapped into the stroller. And now Dondi has been added to the list.

That G understands this at two both exhilarates and scares me -- the capacity to feel such complete happiness also leaves you vulnerable to cataclysmic disappointment. When I watched his face as he rode the pony I could feel my heart breaking, and I also wished I had the power to make him feel that way every minute of his life. There is a Richard Wilbur poem in which he describes the experience of watching his daughter try to write a story – talk about exhilaration and disappointment -- as being something like the time a wild bird was caught in an upstairs bedroom of their house. The family could not approach the bird, but could only leave a window open and watch the creature throw itself against the wall again and again until it finally found the opening and cleared “the sill of the world.” The last lines of the poem read:

“It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.”

Now I understand what Wilbur meant. I think we’ll go back to the jardin de Luxembourg tomorrow and look for Dondi again. At least I can give him that.

The image is of the boules playing field in the jardin de Luxembourg. If you enlarge the image, you may be able to just see the coat rack in the middle distance.

a small update

We've all been sick with a cold the last several days -- G running a fever on and off for most of it, meaning that his last relevant contact with the outside world was garderie last Wednesday.  Since then, it's been all Sesame Street, all the time, to the point that I fear even relatively non-toxic television is creating the monster I warned myself about (several times he's woken up half-in, half-out of a fever dream, keening "watch Sesame, watch Sesame."  God help me).  But how else do you keep a two-year-old still and calm without narcotics?

After an astonishing run of mid-February sunshine, making everything glisten like a celluloid dream (Paris in winter seriously dilutes the willing suspension of disbelief engendered by films like Charade and Funny Face; the last two weeks, even sleep-deprived, have revived my faith in Audrey Hepburn, at least), this first fever-free morning dawned cold and damp and grey as yesterday's oatmeal.  The idea of going outside seemed even less inviting.  I explained to G, gently, that I could not be held responsible for the brain rot certain to ensue if we spent yet another morning watching video, and that we would have to spend the morning in the living room playing.  With toys.  And books.

He took it pretty well.  We put the baby in his bouncy seat by the fireplace (yes, that little monkey, about which more later), and G diddled around the room for a while, repatriating several toys and large objects and winding through a few rousing choruses of "Miss Lucy had a Baby."  I worked in a mug of cooling coffee and a few stolen glances at a year-old New Yorker.  Then G crawled up in my lap and danced a plastic polar bear over my knees for a few thoughtful seconds.  He patted the arm of the couch fondly and said, "There's a man in there."

"Oh, really," I said.  "Who is he?"

"Oscar," he said.

"Tell me about Oscar."

"He's a green man.  And he's a grouch," he added, sadly.  "Yeah."

"Oh well, we all get grumpy sometimes," I said.

"Yeah," G agreed, more drawn out this time, as if in heavy sympathy.  He patted the couch again, and brightened.  "Oscar loves la poubelle," he said.

I had to turn my face to hide the smile.  

"I take out la poubelle with Daddy," he said.

"Yes, you do."

"It's yucky."  Session concluded, he found some Legos and threw them over the back of the sofa, managing not to hit me or maim his baby brother.

Garbage in, garbage out, indeed.  I guess we're safe with Sesame Street for another day.

waiting

We’re at the point now where the baby could arrive any minute. It’s raining, as usual, and so instead of being out walking, my usual time staller, we’re all just sitting around the house reading tea leaves and making bets. It seems appropriate that we live across the street from a bus stop. I see people standing out with their umbrellas, craning their necks around the corner, checking their watches. I can relate.

Off and on, G stands over at the corner, talking to his plastic animals and singing – we’ve told him what’s going on, and about half the time it seems to dawn on the edge of his growing consciousness, and the rest of the time it’s business as usual. His regular number is the Twinkle, Twinkle/ Baa Baa Black Sheep/ Alphabet medley. But yesterday morning, he was singing a tune I couldn’t place at first, until I remembered that our bedtime repertoire includes a little bit of the Beatles. He had changed the words to suit his own vocabulary and, maybe, circumstances: “And then while I’m away, I’ll be good every day, and I’ll send all my loving to you.” And then he smiled and gave me a hug.

It reminds me these things are worth waiting for.

everybody on the bus

Even though we live on a relatively busy street, the only real noise disturbance we ever get (besides the occasional muffler-less scooter) is from the city bus. Our apartment is just a couple of doors down from the intersection of a narrow but heavily trafficked one way street (ours) and a slightly wider two-way street. And it is at this intersection that a major city bus route is required to execute an exactly ninety-degree turn to continue south toward the suburbs. Even Haussman’s relentless 19th century modernizations were not made with buses – or Parisian parking anarchy – in mind. Here’s the general traffic picture:

The four corners of the intersection are each anchored by businesses of varying levels of activity – the pharmacy has mostly foot traffic, the fancy Joel Robuchon restaurant has intermittent deliveries as well as valet parking, and the bakery and interiors shop both get about one major delivery per week. In addition, our street, because it’s one way and has a bus lane, is ripe for the double-parking for which Paris is legendary. As long as there isn’t a major delivery truck parked with its lights blinking near one of the corners, or a car double-parked in the livraison zone for the bakery, there is exactly enough room for the bus to swing down the street without hitting a parked car, a store window, or a pedestrian. About twice daily, this is not the case. The bus gets struck halfway in and halfway out of the intersection, like a woman trying on a dress that is too small in the shoulders. And there’s nothing for it except to blast the horn at regular intervals until the offending driver comes out of wherever he or she is lurking and moves the car or van. These people show an amazing lack of chagrin relative to the inconvenience they’ve caused, or maybe it’s just a peculiar French reaction to public shame – they generally walk out at a brisk but not hurrying pace, eyes straight ahead, and drive on without acknowledging the situation with so much as a hand wave. I’ve even seen a couple of folks dare to saunter. The honking has just become a backdrop to our day.

Narrow streets and big buses being what they are, I’ve seen the same scenario play out all over Paris, though never with quite as much élan as the one time I was lucky enough to be a passenger on the afflicted bus. This time the bus route led through a narrow side street along one side of a park, and the offending automobile was an SUV stopped about three feet in front of the bus stop right next to the “No Parking This Side” sign. After about three minutes of impasse, the bus driver let out a gentle but firm toot. After seven minutes, and a couple of more toots, several passengers got off the back of the bus, figuring their feet were faster means of transport at this point, and one man stepped up to the front of the bus to try to explain to the driver, by a series of energetic gestures, that there was actually enough room for the bus to pass through the bottleneck, with just a little direction. The driver patiently explained – using his own gestures -- that a certain number of meters clearance was “requise par loi,” and that he didn’t intend to have his license revoked in order to save a couple of extra minutes.

The man sat down. The rest of the passengers exploded into a high, excited murmur of differing opinions of what might happen next, how long we would be there, and what the driver ought to do – nothing brings out conviviality like minor calamity – when, at 15 minutes, the driver’s voice came over the intercom system. “Mesdames, Messieurs,” he intoned, in his best radio voice, “Veuillez gardez vos oreilles, et je vais resoudre le problème dans quelques secondes” (Ladies and Gentlemen, if you will kindly guard your ears, I will resolve this problem in a few seconds). And with that, he laid on the horn loud and long for about 90 seconds straight. At which point an elegant Parisian woman in high-heeled boots came dashing out of a nearby shop as fast as her legs could carry her, waving her arms in apology. Several other passengers actually applauded as we moved on.

Match point. This kind of road rage I can live with.

small discoveries

I just walked past the travel agency in the building next door for what must be the thousandth time; but only for the first time noticed that there is a giant stuffed rooster on the receptionist’s desk. Stuffed as in taxidermy, not toy. No other decoration in the office at all, except for some worn travel posters. How could I not have seen this before? What does a stuffed rooster have to do with train timetables?

This is why they say the French are enigmatiques.

beau geste

G and I went to fetch S home from work early on New Year’s Eve so we could spend the afternoon together. The bus ride home shuttles for several stops between the Champs-Elysées and the rue du Faubourg St. Honoré – one of the swankier shopping streets – so we are often treated to some pretty rare plumage getting on and off the bus. That afternoon, a pair of older women got on the bus a couple of stops after we did, carrying a few tastefully muted and very expensive shopping bags.

The younger of the two women was wearing an elegant but not very interesting ensemble of camel-colored coat and tortoiseshell glasses that both matched her hair. Her older companion, however, was luxuriating in the privilege of having crossed the line from femme d’un certain age right on into grande dame, taking no prisoners along the way. She wore an ankle length black fur of curly lamb trimmed with silver fox at the collar and cuffs. Underneath were black leather boots with two-inch heels. It was an astonishing coat and I couldn’t take my eyes off it, not least because I was afraid that any minute G would dart off across the bus yelling “bear, bear!” and try to pet it. The curly lamb caught the light every time she shifted and made her whole form seem to shimmer and sparkle, like someone’s very classy fairy godmother.

The women had gotten onto the bus in the middle of an animated conversation and, taking two facing seats across from us, continued it throughout the bus ride. Mostly the younger woman talked and the older woman nodded, occasionally signaling a comment by pointing the pair of gloves she was holding in her right hand. They started arranging their parcels for departure a stop or so before the Etoile. In the moment before standing to go, the grande dame reached up and patted her hair gently with her cupped right hand, and I was filled with a sudden wave of nostalgia.

I can remember almost every older woman in my life making this same gesture at one time or another (generally not while wrapped in silver fox) – whether it was in preparation for a night out, a quick check in the mirror, or, more often, a nearly unconscious moment of reckoning between one activity and another, as if to say “There, that’s all settled.” It’s a lovely little movement, even if it has more to so with the hairstyle it is protecting than the air of restraint and elegance it suggests, and it’s a shame that it’s probably doomed to pass from our lives with the speed and inexorability of the dodo. I don’t want to start setting my hair in curlers or changing my clothes for dinner, nor do I mourn the kind of baggage that way of life could provide in spades. But seeing it here still made me smile.

I was talking to a friend last night about how it would be so much easier sometimes if we were able to wear only one of the many hats both assigned at birth and accumulated over time – daughter, mother, person-with-too-much-education, girl raised in the south, traveler. It’s not much to whine about, but the noise in the metaphysical closet is sometimes a bit too overwhelming to leave much room for grace. Next time I feel like tearing my hair out, I’ll try to remember to pat.

sapin de noel

We decided to dispose of our Christmas tree in the dead of night on New Year’s Eve. It had done as valiant a job as could have been expected of a last-of-the-lot, discounted tree in the face of a toddler, a dog, and a fiercely radiator-heated apartment. When the grocery store clerk sold me on the tree – no doubt spotting my eye for an end of season bargain – he was quick to praise its olfactory benefits (oh, madame, il sentira comme la fôret! – oh, madame, it will smell like the forest!), while glossing over its probable life span in our home. When I asked him if it were likely to last until Christmas – at the time it was about a week before – he glanced nervously at G in his stroller and pronounced, “Quinze jours, bien sur.” Fifteen days.

He was right about the smell, anyway – every needle that dropped, in profusion, on our living room floor smelled wonderfully of pine and frost and the outdoors, the poor tree’s last gasp of its origins. In Paris, most Christmas trees are sold at the florist, wrapped up tightly in netting to give the appearance of a tall, skinny mummy. I find it charming that you can buy a Christmas tree at the florist, though I guess it’s really just the city version of a garden shop, but it’s an expensive charm in our neighborhood, especially, and so we took advantage of the large, American-style supermarket down the street with its bank of less delicately netted, but much cheaper, trees. My mother-in-law was still here with us, bless her, and I was suffering a bout of decidedly unromantic sciatica, so anyone strolling the rue des Belles Feuilles around three o’ clock a week before Christmas was treated to the vision of the small parade of me pushing G in his stroller at a glacial pace with my mother-in-law trailing behind us, hoisting the tree, like the cut-rate version of Birnam Wood, bewaring the ides of December. It’s hard to express the depths of my shame.

Clunking along with the stroller was a hanging plastic bag holding the buche, a flat piece of log with a hole gouged in it for the whittled end of the tree to be fitted into. Now, I’m sure that there is some methodology of tree preservation that goes along with the log – it’s certainly prettier, and a lot less sloshy, than the metal Christmas tree stands I’m used to, and it goes up with a lot less swearing. But short of spritzing the branches with mineral water and hope, I’m honestly not sure what it is. Our tree turned out to be the sensitive sort, and if you so much as looked at it unkindly it released a dark shower of needles shivering to the floor. By Christmas Day it was a bit unsightly, and by New Year’s it had passed on to disreputable. It was so dry I was sure that anyone drinking a glass of brandy in its vicinity would produce enough fumes to send it, and us, up in flames. So when S said, “It’s time,” I was happy to divest the tree of its few garlands and tin foil star in preparation for the disposal.

I had wondered, privately, how we would ever get the thing out of doors and out of our apartment without releasing a drift of needles that would risk alienating all of our neighbors and the gardienne. But S had already thought this through. “I’m just going to open the window and drop it out,” he told me.

Now, we live only on the second story, but even that short drop bears the appreciable risk of being over a narrow sidewalk with parked cars to one side and large plate-glass shop windows to the other – neither a good option for breaking the fall of a used Christmas tree, not to mention how you might explain that, in French, to an insurance agency. We considered for a moment what would be the best angle of descent, and finally decided it would be safest to remove the buche from the bottom of the tree rather than to depend on it as ballast. We waited until G was in bed, opened the window, and did a quick check for passersby before S squatted on the sill and hurled our tree into oblivion. Then he leashed up Lucy and took her with him to drag the tree over to the unofficial “dumping spot” down the street (I suppose the theory was that Lucy could defend him against any well-meaning citizen who might yell at him for improperly disposing of holiday waste).

By the time they came back inside, I had swept up a pile of needles big enough to fill a decent-sized, fragrant pillow. “Oh, my God,” S said, looking at it. “When I dropped the tree out the window, it lost the rest of its needles. I mean, every single one. What I dragged over to dump was nothing but a bare branch.” For some reason, this struck me as completely hilarious – what other kind of tree would we manage to buy in Paris than one that would wind up naked, lying on a dump, well before Epiphany? – and I started laughing helplessly. The next morning, out with Lucy, I would see a legion of dumped trees of varying sizes, all lush with needles and in much better shape than our tree had been even when I bought it (our own bare tree had been moved, for unknown reasons, and by an anonymous reveler, to rest gently against the side of a parked car).

In the meantime, after we swept up, we did manage to wake up G in time to walk over to the Eiffel Tower in time to ring in the New Year with a cast of thousands. In addition to the twinkle, there were a lot of noisemakers, champagne in plastic glasses, and homemade fireworks – an altogether satisfying experience for a small boy. When we got home, he didn’t even notice that the tree was gone.

*this really is our tree. I was not kidding.