au revoir, les enfants

Today is the last day of garderie, the little nursery school where G has spent the better part of Monday and Wednesday afternoons for the past year. I didn't realize that this was the last week until this past Monday -- there is a slightly Byzantine system of "regular time" versus "holiday time" (is it like ordinary time in the church calendar? I don't know.) that I tried to understand for several months until I just gave up and showed up when I was told. Anyway, most months have a bit of each, so when I paid for July's holiday sessions back in June (there are different accounting systems for each kind of time), I assumed that Madame le directrice would prompt me for the regular payment, just as she does for the kleenex and boxes of dry biscuits and the fact that I really shouldn't be giving the baby his pacifier any longer. But here we were, a week into July, and not a word. So on Monday afternoon, after I had dropped G off with the teachers, I asked if I could pay for the rest of July.

Madame looked confused (not an expression generally viewed on the lady in question) and said, "Mais, ce n'est pas necessaire. You have already paid."

"I know I paid for the holiday time," I said, "but don't I need to pay for the rest of July?"

Again, confusion. "Mais, aprés cette semaine, il n'y a plus. C'est fini. It's finished." She gestured at me with both hands in the air, briskly but not unkindly, as if to wave away my stupidity which was an embarrassment to us both. And she threw me a bone: "But he can come back on Tuesday to say goodbye, if you like."

And that was that.

As much as whatever actually happened at the garderie was and remains a black box to me -- they whisk the children away the minute you arrive and encourage you strongly to vanish, so that they can continue with the black magic, the infant sacrifices, and the nursery rhymes, I suppose -- it has been a constant in G's life and now it is done, the first unstacked block in the structure of the life we've built in the last couple of years. So I'm feeling disproportionately unsettled and not a little sentimental, even near tears a couple of times today.

I've actually had more conversation with G's teachers in the last two weeks than in the entirety of the previous year -- they seemed to like him, they always smiled when I picked him up -- on account of some mild behavior problems involving, unless my translation is completely in error, his lying down on some of the other children when they did not comply with his wishes (or maybe just didn't appeal to him). That is how I found out that up to that point he had been "un des plus cooperatifs." No one seemed to be very worried, they just wanted to let me know. I was a little distressed, of course -- no one wants her child to be a bully, particularly not when they have several times the body mass of their playmates. Still, the last few weeks on the playground haven't revealed much more violence beyond the usual two-year-old capriciousness, and he really does try to share (even if it occasionally takes the form of "you'll bloody well take this car if it's the last thing I do."). And the reports from the last days have been glowing.

I'm not really sure what will happen when I pick him up today. I don't even know the names of all his teachers, and it is hard to say that I will miss the garderie beyond the spare hours it has given me these many afternoons. And yet these are people who know my child, who have not hurt him, who have taught him, among other things, a startling amount of French, a good bit of manners, and how to bend over in a yoga position to have his diaper changed. Valuable life lessons, all. Who knows what great novel may come pouring forth from G when he sits down some afternoon with a dry biscuit and a cup of warm apple juice?

I might cry, I'm sure I'll feel silly, and then I'll take him home, leaving another tiny piece of childhood behind on Avenue Victor Hugo. I think this is what they mean by nostalgie.

manhattan transfer

Many thanks to S’ sister, who, by getting married there, gave us a reason to spend four glorious days in New York. We were a little worried about the Atlantic crossing with the boys – based on past experience – but it was, if not pleasant (when is air travel, ever, these days?) a non-event in both directions.

Outside the events of the wedding, our trip seemed dominated by transportation and architecture. With only four days, there was a lot of getting from place to place, and it was amazing how the landscape – the “built environment,” as they say – kept changing so dramatically within a relatively small footprint. It’s so much more kinetic, so much more dense than Paris. It’s the energy and the density that binds everything together, even as the buildings range from human-scale brownstones to industrial refurbishments to the skyscrapers which seem to belong in New York in a way that is just stage setting almost everywhere else. Maybe it’s the island. We availed ourselves of cabs and car services for our many trips across the boroughs – a slightly guilty luxury for us, and a huge treat for G, who rides in cars so rarely over here in Paris. Everything from the seatbelts to the locks to the automatic windows was endlessly fascinating. We were lucky to wind up with all our fingers and everyone still in the car. The car window was also a great vantage point for viewing all the other cars and trucks and things that go – New York being also, as a two-year-old’s eye will tell you, a paradise for motorized vehicles of all kinds. B just took it all in as usual, importing with him the French philosophy of “rester zen.”

I had wondered what it would be like to be back in the States after being gone for so long, but New York, a city I love, made for a soft landing. I’d been warned that things might seem diminished, tacky, or just bizarre, that I would be aware of how much we still owe to Europe in the way we make cities and how much doesn’t translate well in the crossing. But it was all just wonderful. New York, if anything, looked better than the last time I was there – the weather, the people and the place were all pulling out the stops in terms of charm. People smiled and greeted us regularly on the street, even as they all seemed sort of good-naturedly busy in a way I realize I have missed. Europe does so much so beautifully, but it doesn’t bustle. New York’s noise and brusque friendliness were a bright counterpoint to Paris’ peaceful reserve, and the new seemed less to clash with the old than just to be pleasantly different.

The wedding itself was in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which by all right should seem like a big, faux-Gothic pile, but instead, with its sped-up, jumbled history, owns the several city blocks it occupies as if it has always been there (it has certainly always been under construction). So when my beautiful sister-in-law stepped out from behind the construction screen covering up the better part of the central nave – as if she had been playing a game of hide and seek and just stopped in to get married – with the noise of the glorious cathedral organ erupting behind her, it didn’t seem at all like an imitation of European architecture or religion, but more like a magnificent re-imagining. Like New York just shrugged and said, “This is the way we do it here.”

(Or maybe it’s just that everyone’s vision is getting blurred. Only the week before we had been in a 17th century French church for the baptism of an American baby by an African priest. Everything in French, and no one was speaking their mother tongue). I cried at the wedding, of course, and had to wipe my eyes on a diaper, which was the only thing available.

The reception was in the fabulous, peeling Elizabethan hall next door, where we danced the night away and took turns holding all the babies. We saw so many of our family and friends we could hardly process it – a whirlwind. It left us wanting more. So that part of it, at least, it makes it a little easier knowing, as we do now, that our time in Paris is rapidly coming to an end and we’ll be going home soon, for good (well, for awhile). I haven’t wanted to write about it yet – I’m not quite ready to finish things up here, but who really wants to hear my sorrows after two very full years of getting to live in Paris? It seems unsporting to be sad.

Anyway. At the end of the wedding reception, the bride and groom, who had doubled back to pick up a forgotten bag, were accidentally left behind by the car service and without a way back to the hotel. So my sister-in-law stepped into the street in her wedding dress and hailed a cab. The startled cab driver said, “Is this for real?” and when they said yes, he gave them a ride for free. My sister-in-law gave him her bouquet. The whole time we’ve lived in Paris, I’ve felt like that cab driver. But it won’t be so bad to be back.

the dinner party

S has had a week of late days at the office, rough for him but coming to a thankful end soon. Last night he got in about 10:30, and just as he sat down on the couch and eased off his shoes the dog started to do a desperate little dance.

“I’ll take her,” I said. If I’m awake enough, I like to take Lucy on her last walk – it’s a little time alone in the world after the kids are asleep. I fetched up the leash and little plastic carry-bag (I take my responsibility seriously as a citoyenne propre), and hooked her up to go.

S half-rose up from the sofa. “Take a longer walk, if you’re up for it, and go all the way to Champs-Elysées. Then you can tell me if I was hallucinating on my way home. There’s something strange going on up there.”

It was a gorgeous, cool, clear night after a day of storms, with a brisk breeze blowing away the last of the rain clouds. Lucy and I hustled up the avenue, past all the buildings lit up exactly like the houses in those familiar Magritte paintings (it turns out those are the only ones that aren’t surreal – the light just looks like that in early summer). As per usual, the street was empty until we got about a block from the Arc de Triomphe, where little clumps of people start to trickle down and around.

When we got around the circle to the Champs-Elysées, it was just as S had described it – hundreds of people, dressed entirely in white, were sitting down to dinner at makeshift camp tables and folding chairs. The tables were fully set with white linens, china, crystal, candles and flowers, and yet it was all clearly a bring-your-own occasion – every table had different china, crystal, and flowers, and behind at least one chair at every table was stowed a rolling grocery cart that had recently held all the provisions. Everywhere you looked there were people toasting and laughing and the sound of clinking silver on china. Other than the monochromatic dress code, it appeared to be an aggressively ordinary crowd – French people of all ages, but mostly the middle, who looked as if they would be equally at home hosting a tasteful soirée before the symphony.

I found a quiet spot and stood with Lucy to watch, along with the other passersby. Lots of snapping of pictures and video, some appreciative honking from the street, but very few people seemed to be approaching the crowd – it was their party, after all, and we were just along for the ride. A few minutes before eleven, a tall, slim gentleman with salt and pepper hair, wearing a white guayabera, made his way through the set of tables nearest us, saying, “A vingt-trois heures, n’oubliez pas d’allumer les feus.” So of course at that point, we had to stay to see.

Things went on as they were for a few more minutes, and then suddenly, as the clock struck eleven, the people at every table started lighting holiday sparklers tip to tip, until the entire Champs-Elysées was sparkling from the Arc De Triomphe all the way down to the Place de la Concorde. It was a wildly beautiful moment that took the whole event from something you were simply pleased to have walked past to something permanently imprinted on your brain. I think I actually applauded. The diners stood up and waved their sparklers in the air, shouting at their friends across the street and hooting back at the passing cars, until the last of the fire went out.

I didn’t want to wait around to see things start to disassemble, so I turned Lucy toward home, only to catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, just visible over the rooftops. It was sparkling, too.

I don’t really want to know what they were doing out there, though I’m sure within the next couple of days someone will explain it to me, and then I’ll have another piece of my Parisian cultural lexicon in place. I like that for now there aren’t any extra words or layers of meaning, just the memory of all those fizzing lights, lifting all the petty grievances of the day away on the night air in a few minutes of pure delight.

scenes from the life

G is sitting on his bed in his pajamas, holding the National Geographic Explorer snowmobile in one hand and the matchbox pizza delivery van in the other, banging them gently together with a look of total absorption.

“They are fighting, mommy,” he says solemnly, mid-bang.

“Oh, no,” I say, in my best learning-opportunity voice. “How sad for them. Let’s think about what they might say to each other if they, um, used their words.”

I take on the persona of the snowmobile. “Please don’t hit me, pizza delivery van,” I say. “It makes me so sad. I just want to be your friend.”

“I’m sorry, snowmobile.” (I say, as the pizza delivery van). “I was feeling angry, but I don’t want to hurt you. Let’s be friends.”

“See, honey,” I say, brightly. “They are talking it out.”

He smiles at me fondly, benevolently, as if to forgive the special kind of drugs I must be taking at the moment.

“That’s very nice, mommy,” he says. “But now they are fighting again.”

Whack. I’m clearly going to have to work on my tone.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with Mme. Marron after another tough day wrangling G away from the garderie. Lying on the floor, I believe, was involved, along with a refusal to put on a jacket. Sandrine, his teacher, knelt down beside him and in a firm, even voice, said, “G, you must get up now and put on your jacket immediately. Maman is very tired and it is very naughty not to help her.” And lo, immediatement, he got up, the jacket was on, and we were out the door.

“Why does this never work for me?” I wondered.

“Well,” said Mme. Marron, “it’s because he senses that deep down you don’t really care whether he puts the jacket on or not.”

And I don’t, really. I like to believe that my parenting philosophy is invested in general principles, but that’s only true if I admit that principle number one is “How does this affect my peace of my mind and the probability that I will either a) drink an entire cup of tea while it is still warm, or b) have access to ten minutes of uninterrupted reading today?” If a or b look available over the course of a given afternoon, I’m likely not to be too pressed. G is already much too aware of this highly personal ratio to mommy’s displeasure (heaven forbid he had been whacking me with one of the toy cars). Whenever it looks like things are going south for him in the trouble department, his first question is “Are you happy, mommy?” And then he brings me a magazine. So I guess it’s all working out in its own way.

We’ll just have to put B in charge of the teakettle.*




*note: for those of you who maintain any interest in the saga of the coffeepot, last week I walked into Darty on a whim and they actually had the verseuse for my coffeepot in stock. I was able to locate, purchase, and walk out with my new coffee carafe in under fifteen minutes and for less than twenty euros. We’ll see how long the feeling of triumph lasts.

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.