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.

bright lights, big city

Since we slid past the winter solstice over a week ago, the days have been getting longer, but I don’t think anyone has noticed yet. It’s still dark when we wake up and dark again by a few minutes past naptime. Paris really pulls out all the stops on holiday lighting – the Champs-Elysées is a corridor of blue lights and icicles, and I’ve recently learned that even my beloved electric light trees in our local fountain are the product of a city-sponsored contest, “Paris Illuminates Paris,” which has invited lighting designers to unleash their imaginations on city streets since 2004. The spangly tree-of-lights display at Place Victor Hugo actually has a title – “Sapin Féerique” – though come to think of it I’m not sure if that refers to the metal trees G and I watched get hoisted in the fountain with a crane, or the lights in the real, bare trees surrounding the place. Frankly, these look flung up a bit too casually for a “lighting designer” (it’s what I like about them), but maybe they are going for a total effect.

The whole “by design” nature of the lights is a testament to a well-administered modern city, but it kind of puts a kink in my romanticized imagining of Paris as having organically evolved over the centuries to feed the felt needs of the human psyche, boiled down to a longing for light, especially in winter. And yet, what makes it less magical that this patient illusion of beauty is planned and worked for (and who did I think put up the lights? Elves?)? After all, other than the benefit of a river running through, Paris is short on beauties of geographical accident and long on those that are the cumulative effort of human imagination, carefully tended over time. And when you add to that how far north we actually are, and the vagaries of Parisian weather – let’s just say it isn’t the quality of the eternal sunshine that gives us the “city of light.” Instead, even without the holiday extravagances to carry us through the dead zone of the shortest days, there are streetlights and river lights and the most beautifully lit monuments known to man. At night the decorative statuary on the Grand Palais actually looks as if it is on the verge of rising into the heavens. The crown jewel, for me, anyway, is the Eiffel Tower, which, in addition to being lit constantly with the usual dramatic monument fare, twinkles for absolutely no reason at all, every hour on the hour, for ten minutes. The effect is just glorious – almost enough to make me believe in god, and certainly enough to earn my undying gratitude to Mayor Bertrand Delanöe, who caved to public demand and extended the twinkles indefinitely past their splashy debut for the millennium. When our little neighborhood darkens the holiday lights in mid-January, I’ll depend on the Eiffel Tower to get me through – February, particularly.

And then…we’ll have a new baby in a few weeks, and it’s prompted us to start having conversations about what our life might look like when we go home to the states, as ultimately we must. We talk about it as “going back” even though physics and experience tell us there is no such thing. My life here in Paris still feels so new that I expect things to be different every day – when I called to make an appointment at the salon where I last had my hair cut, oh, nine months ago, I was utterly surprised that the same person who cut it before was still there, would still be able to cut it again. While it seems normal, expected even, that two or three small storefronts across from us have already closed and reopened as new entities – the suspicious video shop is now a real estate agent; the unfriendly toy store is, as of tomorrow, a lighting supply. Yet somehow my vision of home, like any place left behind, is frozen in amber. When we left the states I was barely a mother; we’ll return with two little boys, not babies, even. So I don’t know if it will be more disconcerting for things to seem completely familiar or completely changed. Stranger still, I’m sure, is the huge place Paris will occupy in our imagination once we’re gone, in inverse proportion to the faint blip we’ll leave on the register of the city. “Our” Paris will be its own reflection, no deeper or truer than any, giving the lie to the faint sense of ownership or belonging that we feel over the average tourist. The specific memories that, to us, belong to Paris forever – G’s first steps, nighttime visits to Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter, the action of lifting a stroller onto a thousand Paris buses – will simply close over without a ripple into Paris’ collective consciousness. Which is fine; they’re our memories, not Paris’.

We’ve been getting the annual check-ins with friends and loved ones, cataloguing a year in which, again, we’ve failed to keep in touch the way we might have or wanted to. Mostly blessedly ordinary lives and passages, moreso because of the few wrenching changes we’ve heard about, which leave me sad for days. Even if a calendar is no more significant than a way for humans to keep tally, some people we love are coming into 2008 with too much left behind and too heavy a load to carry forward. I’ll be thinking of them when we pop a clandestine bottle of champagne and, weather willing, wake our son to let the tiny lights on the Eiffel Tower illuminate the first few minutes of our new year.

Bonne année, everyone.