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.