Gone viral: part II

Welcome to part II of my lockdown diaries. Part I is available here. To set the tone, let us conjugate the expression être confiné (to be on lockdown):

Je suis confiné(e) : I am on lockdown 
Tu es confiné(e) : You are on lockdown
Il/Elle est confiné(e) : He/She is on lockdown
Nous sommes confiné(e)s : We are on lockdown
Vous êtes confiné(e)s : You are on lockdown
Ils/Elles sont confiné(e)s : They are on lockdown

AND IT MAY LAST FOREVERRRRRRR.

March 30
With the entire country being ordered to #RestezChezVous, work has been a tad slooow for the past few weeks. But that does not stop me from ordering 250 euros’ worth of clothing from stores that are naturally closed due to the epidemic and won’t be able to deliver a damn thing until June. My husband, who loves statistics, really loves the one about how men still do most of the earning while women still do most of the spending, but what he doesn’t realize is that in my world, e-shopping is a highly effective form of self-medication with calming powers akin to those of Hatha yoga or, say, hiding in the garage with a shot glass and a bottle of triple sec. Buying stuff has always done great good to my nerves, and this is ESPECIALLY true when they have been frayed into oblivion by these very loud, very needy little creatures we live with who, the way things are going, may never go back to school again, ever.

March 31
One of the very first cultural lessons I was taught about the French, even before I first arrived in Paris waaaay back in 1999, was that direct eye contact with total strangers is a big no-no. Smiling while engaging in wanton eye contact is even worse. Far too forward. Far too direct. Far too intimate. But over time this has, at least in my experience, relaxed somewhat. A smile and a bonjour, when directed at the right passer-by, may be returned—without the recipient taking you for a wacko, a nympho, or a tourist. And as lockdown drags on, I find myself searching the face of everyone with whom I cross paths, hoping to find a kindred sparkle in their eye and perhaps even a little smile of solidarity. Alas, people are so freaked out by the risk of contagion that not only do they avoid eye contact at all costs, but they CROSS THE STREET when I come within 10 meters of them. I know it isn’t personal, but it still feels undeservedly cruel.

April 1
I’m out on another mind-clearing run, feeling more unnerved than ever by the deserted park avenues and grassy esplanades that in a parallel universe would have been brimming with families, teenagers playing soccer, and sweet elderly couples out for an evening stroll. But the voices and laughter are gone now, and in their place is an eerie silence that hangs heavy in the air, making it somehow harder to breathe. I think of an article a friend of mine recently posted on Facebook entitled “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief,” and  before I can stop myself, tears are sliding down my cheeks.

I want to sit down and weep. Weep for this town, for this country, for this world. To surrender just for a moment to the fear I feel for my brother, working on the front lines of this horror show in the emergency room of a New York City hospital, or for my siblings-in-law who are both physicians just south of Paris, or for my parents and so many other people I love who are “over 65” and live halfway around the world. For ourselves, too, and the uncertainty that has replaced the familiar and the safe. But I can’t allow myself to fall apart; not now, not ever. So instead I run faster, wondering how many people are hanging by a thread, doing their best to smile when what they really want to do is scream.

April 2
It’s Thursday. Thursday is D-Day for food shopping. We’ve been told again and again to avoid the grocery store, but we gotta eat, especially with all four of us here all day, every day. So online shopping it is—along with the entire Paris region, bien sûr. Result: in addition to the physical lines on the streets, there are now virtual lines just to access the largest online grocery stores. Plus, no sooner do you manage to enter these websites than you realize with dismay that the earliest you can be delivered (if you can be delivered at all) is in 10 days. Hmm. Pigeons are edible; shall we pursue that?

Never being one to give up, I ultimately find a trick that works: go to chronodrive.fr, open a browser window, and leave it open for 48 hours, at which point some algorithm or other must take pity on you because around 3:30 p.m., a magical free spot appears for pick-up the following day. Dude, I’ll take it. Actually, virtual grocery shopping in itself is kind of fun. What is not fun is when you choose a time slot, only to be informed that half your cart is now out of stock. Each week has its own “out of stock” theme. After the Great Toilet Paper Famine of mid-March, now the country is out of flour. No flour anywhere. Not in the stores. Not on the internet. Nowhere. No yeast, either. What in God’s name are people doing? Trying to bake themselves a time machine? IT WON’T WORK.

April 3
My son’s teacher sends a group email wishing us all good luck for the upcoming holidays. What? Oh riiiiight, tomorrow is the start of spring vacation! Two weeks of enjoying an all-inclusive resort in Majorca hanging out right here in the living room. She adds that she’s planning to put together a children’s Coronavirus recipe book filled with the delicious cakes and whatnot that her little students have surely been concocting with their newly-unemployed parents during lockdown. Two thoughts come immediately to my mind: 1. As a communication professional, believe me when I say that “The Children’s Coronavirus Cookbook” is not a well-thought-out title. 2. “The Flour-Free, Yeast-Free Children’s Coronavirus Cookbook” is infinitely worse.

April 4
Since the only thing I seem to have any control over these days is the cleanliness of our home, I have taken to somewhat obsessive-compulsive vacuuming. In a moment of stupendous foresight, we invested in a handheld Dyson a few months back and it has since become, perhaps not my best friend—that title is reserved for the corkscrew—but at the very least my close friend. However, today I am temporarily out of things to clean, so I decide to tidy up my travel laptop, which my husband says is woefully low on available disk space. I can’t even install the latest upgrade, Windows 10 version “1903” (because nothing makes sense anymore).

April 5
Seeking to free up my hard drive, I delete a bunch of stuff. I get a little overzealous and end up uninstalling Microsoft Office 2010, which is surprisingly easy to do, actually. Only now I can’t reinstall it because the license belongs to my husband’s former boss. All the little blue and white Word document file icons on my desktop transform into “blank page” icons.

I AM AN IDIOT.

April 6
I find Office 2016 selling for €20 on Amazon. Sounds shady, but the reviews look legit. I download it, install it, and it works. The little blank pages become comforting “W” icons once more.

I AM A GENIUS.

To be continued!

Visions of sugarplums

I’m not really a dessert person. Oh, I love tarte Tatin (it’s like an upside-down apple pie and I’m from the apple pie capital of America, so no surprise there). And macarons. And I can be coaxed into the occasional moelleux au chocolat. But I cannot *make* any of these things. I can make pumpkin pie. And banana bread. That’s about it. Everything else turns out either too thin, too flat, too dry, too crumbly, too dark, or some unfortunate combination thereof.

Lacking any kind of talent in this area never particularly bothered me until I became a mom. Living in France and all, where children’s 4 p.m. snack-time is straight up sacrosanct, I kind of feel obligated to provide mine with a warm home that smells of sugar and spice—which is why I buy scented candles.

But this is Christmas. Christmas is different. Christmas means turning on the oven and baking sweet things. More specifically, my American psyche says that Christmas means baking COOKIES. I suck at baking cookies. However, this year I felt like family cookie time would be a nice festive bonding opportunity that we could all share, while listening to carols and smiling. I have these moments of suspended sanity sometimes, where I forget all past experience or indeed common sense and just dive, head-long, into guaranteed failure. This would be one such moment.

It doesn’t help matters that my Christmas cookie culture is more inferential than empirical; my mom being an enthusiastic devotee of the full organic SoCal lifestyle, my brother and I did not grow up eating chocolate chip cookies; we grew up gnawing on whole wheat-sesame-raisin-honey-nut thingies with an involuntarily blackened underside (I’ve inherited this trait, so no criticism here). Actual Christmas cookies—the kind made out of white flour and white sugar—were something the neighbors gave us once a year, probably out of pity.

I obviously don’t own any cookie recipes—because why would I?—but that is why we have the internet. So I hunted down some Better Homes-worthy candidates, printed them out, made a shopping list, and figured I was off to a good start. What I neglected to factor into the equation was that THIS IS FRANCE. One would think that after 20+ years of living here, I’d stop assuming anything, especially when it comes to Christmas (there are no candy canes! NO. CANDY. CANES.), but alas.

Now, in my defense, we do our shopping at what the French call an hypermarché, which supposedly translates as a “big box store,” although I’ve never used this particular term in my entire life, and I get the feeling that if I went and tried to sneak it into an English conversation, people would imagine I was talking about a cardboard specialty shop. In any case, “big box store” is a moronic translation for the hypermarché, which is where you go when you want to buy large quantities of multiple types of stuff, all in one place. Oodles of groceries, tons of toys, mountains of clothing, piles of housewares, etc. etc. etc. It’s like Walmart but way better (duh, it’s French). Ours is a Carrefour Planet, which I call “the Vortex,” because time seems to mysteriously speed up as soon as we’re inside; instead of taking 1-2 hours, the average visit takes us 5. So I figured, foolishly, that the Vortex would cover all of my cookie-baking needs.

Ah, but this is France, mes chéris. And France does things its own way.

Let’s start with molasses. Seems simple enough. The word exists in French—mélasse—and is a known ingredient (at least in the French West Indies); therefore, it should be a supermarket item like any other, according to me. Except that no, it isn’t. I scoured the (very large) baking aisle, the jams and jellies aisle, the organic aisle, and even the imports aisle (lost time: 30 minutes). Nothing. As my dad pointed out, France’s colonial past would indeed lead one to believe molasses to be a readily available commodity. Plus, France has quite a few overseas territories that grow what? SUGAR CANE. Rum, for instance, is not lacking here; the Vortex has all the rum anyone could need. No molasses, though. The same can be said of whole turkeys, but don’t get me started on that.

Fine. I scratched molasses off my list and figured I’d find a workaround. All the basics were there aplenty: butter, sugar, eggs, flour. No ready-made frosting, but who cares? I’d rather make my own (you heard me). However, things got tricky again when I reached the “decorations” part of my list: red and green sugar, holiday M&Ms, and Hershey’s Kisses. Oh yeah, and cookie cutters.

Red and green sugar: did the Vortex have it? No. In fact, the entire baking aisle looked much like it does the rest of the year, i.e., nothing particularly Christmassy about it. Thus, the only decorations available were the usual confetti sprinkles, chopped nuts, chocolate chips, vanilla extract, almond powder, etc. I looked, believe me. Up the aisle and down again. Crouched. Stood on my toes. NOTHING. Oh, there was colored sugar all right: gold sugar, pink sugar, pearled sugar. I even found candied fruit, but only YELLOW candied fruit. They must be doing this on purpose.

On to M&Ms. Do you think that the French stock holiday M&M’s (considering they do stock brownie M&Ms, mini M&Ms, and caramel M&Ms)? No, I’m sure you would never think anything so patently absurd. Anyway, they don’t. So I bought a normal bag and figured I’d PICK OUT the red and green ones. Hershey’s Kisses I pretty much expected not to find; they may stock miniature candy bars like Snickers, Mars, Milky Way, etc., but the so-called City of Love does not carry Hershey’s Kisses.

By this point my bitch-o-meter was at about a 6 out of 10, so it was time to move along. Cookie cutters—dammit. I had to backtrack to the “house and kitchen” section of the Vortex. And what did I find there? NO GINGERBREAD MEN is what. Not one. I found tree shapes (yay!) and lots of festive cake molds, but no good old-fashioned gingerbread man cookie cutters. WHY THE HELL NOT? French Christmas decorations often feature gingerbread men! So where do they keep the corresponding cookie cutters? My bitch-o-meter inched up to a 7. I needed a drink. Spiked eggnog would have been nice, except eggnog is ANOTHER CHRISTMAS THING YOU CAN’T GET IN FRANCE.

In the end, I had to go to an arts and crafts store on the other side of town the next day for my gingerbread man. Obviously, the cutters weren’t sold separately; I had to buy a pack of three in various sizes. Oh well. I ALSO found green and red colored sugar! Granted, the red was definitely fuchsia, but it was labelled rouge, so I took it. Total cost for sugar and cookie cutters: 19 euros. Yeah.

When cookie baking day rolled around, I pulled out my recipes, organized my ingredients, summoned my children, and got to work.

It took six hours. SIX HOURS.

First of all, we only have one cookie tray (technically two if you count the pizza tray, but it’s “not optimal” and I mean that in the Benghazi sense). Second, our oven can only handle two racks. Also, whatever one is supposed to use as a surface for rolling out and cutting up cookie dough, we clearly don’t have that. Doing it directly on the countertop seemed weird, so I used a cutting board. The cutting board is not big. Anyway, our limited production capacity meant that our productivity level was destined to be mediocre from the get-go. That did not stop us. We rolled out portions of dough, the kids obviously fought over who got to do the cutting, I managed to get the cookies off the cutting board and onto the various trays without completely destroying their shapes, and into the oven they went.

Decorating the cookies was another romp through the fields of wholesome-family-moments-gone-terribly-awry. Have you ever made icing? I hadn’t. The recipe called for powdered sugar and water. Do you know what happens when you mix powdered sugar and water using an electrical hand mixer? Clouds of powdered sugar rising into your face is what happens. My kids thought this was hilarious. Spooning said icing onto the cookies was rather messier than I’d imagined as well, but we got through it. The kids THOROUGHLY enjoyed decorating the iced cookies, and for a few moments there I really did catch a glimpse of the “holiday moment” I’d been aiming for all along.

Alas, it was short-lived. The decorating committee soon began to squabble over supplies, which rapidly degenerated into mutual accusations of ineptitude, followed by insults and verbal attacks, physical aggression, and ultimately eviction of the committee from the premises. The committee was reconvened after a 10-minute break and told in no uncertain terms that such behavior was not reflective of the Christmas spirit and would not be tolerated.

Did that help? Not really, but we (I) gritted our (my) teeth and got through it. In the end, the house smelled Christmassy and the cookies were actually pretty tasty. The kitchen, however, took about an hour to put back into order, and seeing as how I’d had quite enough “help” from my children for one day, I thought it wiser to limit the clean-up committee to those above the age of 10. This obviously gave me ample time to mutter under my breath about holding Hallmark and its holiday propaganda (in particular that ca. 1990s Oh Holy Night commercial) FULLY RESPONSIBLE for guilt-tripping me into believing that family Christmas baking is a thing, when in truth I’m pretty sure that all those beautiful sugary cookies our neighbors used to give us when I was a kid were MADE BY ADULTS, WHILE LISTENING TO NAT KING COLE AND SIPPING BRANDY.

Oh well, there’s always next year. 

The plight of the working SAHM

Here it is September. And I am not writing this from a jail cell or a psychiatric ward, meaning that I have officially survived my son’s first grandes vacances (summer break). Hooray! The French public school system can now resume its life-saving role of civilizing him encouraging his deep sense of right vs. wrong to win out over his possibly deeper urge to wreak havoc on his mother’s fragile sense of self-worth. 

I will let you in on a little-uttered secret among us working SAHMs (Stay At Home Moms): YOU HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO DO THIS. Seriously, who does this? Kinda no one. Why? Because it’s absurdly difficult! Working from home while trying to be a passably decent mother means that your brain is on constant overdrive and yet you never seem to actually accomplish anything. You pour your whole heart into making sure that your kids are rested, fed, safe, clean, and entertained; that your clients are satisfied and faithful; that your husband is … like your clients; and that your house is cozy and relatively free of clutter. Without forgetting your own appearance of course (because c’mon now—French women manage to drop their kids off at school at 8:20 am looking bloody perfect in their 10-piece outfits and sexy-yet-somehow-bicycle-friendly heels).

And yet, despite making what feels like a constant, gargantuan amount of effort, despite multitasking in your sleep (which you get precious little of, incidentally), at the end of the day your kids are dirty and whiney, your clients are requesting last-minute changes, your house is a wreck, you haven’t so much as glanced in the mirror, and your husband, arriving home to pure chaos, surely wonders what in tarnation you’ve been doing for the past 11 hours (other than tweeting insults at Donald Trump, which is a given). Come to think of it, what have I been doing?

I’ve been coaxing little eyes to open, little ears to listen, and little mouths to eat; I’ve been picking out little clothes, wrestling little clothes onto squirming little bodies, washing little clothes, folding little clothes, and putting little clothes away; I’ve been trying to prevent little feet from sliding down the stairs, little hands from getting pinched, little heads from getting bumped, and little fingers from going where they shouldn’t; I’ve been reprimanding for hitting, for not sharing, for drawing on the table for the 50th time, for being rude or crude or mean; I’ve been searching for a lost teddy bear, a lost pacifier, a lost toy car, and a lot of lost marbles (mostly mine); I’ve been taking temperatures, making doctor appointments, going to doctor appointments, picking up medicine, and administering medicine; I’ve been cleaning the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and everything in between with sponges, antibacterial wipes, brooms, and my friend the Magic Eraser; I’ve been changing diapers, changing undies, and explaining how peeing INTO the toilet is preferable to peeing NEXT TO it; I’ve been giving baths, brushing teeth, reading stories, singing lullabies, and promising that witches don’t exist; I’ve been hugging, kissing, swinging, dancing, laughing, and crying too. I’ve been feeling guilty for not seeing my friends more, for not calling my parents more, for not reading more, for not running more, for not doing more, and for not doing it better.

And somewhere in there, I’ve also been managing a business.

The mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion of being a stay-at-home-yet-working mother is impossible to put into words. Normal people know better. Normal people either stay at home with their kids and don’t work, or arrange some form of daycare for their kids and then work. Trying to do both simultaneously is insane. However, my answer to seemingly impossible situations has always been “Yes I Can,” or more accurately, “Don’t Tell Me I Can’t.” And so here I am, with a 4-year-old, a 1-year-old, a writing business, and a new home that we just finished renovating because hey, at this point who’s counting? Add to that the fact that we (still) have no reliable babysitter, no nearby family, and that I promised myself I would only put my kids into daycare after their first birthday, and there you have it: it’s, as the French would say, compliqué (translation: IT’S A COMPLETE SHIT SHOW, BUT I CAN’T VERY WELL GO AND ADMIT THAT NOW CAN I?).

But, and this brings me back to my initial point, I have made it through the summer, i.e. full-time two-kid management while trying to work. Little g is now back in school and Baby c has just begun daycare two full days a week, meaning 18-odd hours of potential concentration time for yours truly. NETFLIX BINGE! Perhaps not, but the next best thing—real, honest-to-God, uninterrupted intellectual work. I don’t much care for the adjective “amazing,” but this calm? This silence? This ability to finish a thought and complete a sentence? It’s amazing. My Bitch-O-Meter is slowly descending from “molten lava” to “somewhat pleasant,” which is a solid win. I’m finally getting stuff done, after what feels like an eternity of bicycling through sauerkraut (pédaler dans la choucroute—a great French expression).

I know that one day I will think back on this period with great fondness and nostalgia—assuming I survive—but I would be lying if I said that it’s anything this side of “stupefyingly hard.” But this is where the little voice in my head pipes up to quote the well-loved line that Tom Hanks’ character delivers in the movie “A League of Their Own,” and it instantly makes me feel somehow lighter: “Of course it’s hard. It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” I’m not saying that the comparison is entirely spot-on, but the message is: who the hell ever said that playing two full-time roles, that of Super Mom and that of Super Entrepreneur, would be easy? Jean-Philippe NOBODY, that’s who.

The truth is, I’ve never been one to shrink from a challenge; I actually sort of thrive on them (even if I bitch and moan the entire way). So yeah, this is tough—but maybe that’s the whole point. It may kick my ass today, and it may keep on kicking my ass until my kids move out (undoubtedly to go live in the U.S., because karma), but it’s also doing what challenges are supposed to do: improve us. And I am becoming a better person. For one, I’m a lot more compassionate. I laugh at myself more freely. I laugh at a lot of things more freely. My ability to relativize has greatly improved. I may be gaining more gray hair by the day, but each twinkle of silver has significance: a lesson learned, a ray of wisdom received, a jagged edge polished smooth.

The bottom line? My kids are doing great; my business is thriving; my new home is almost fully decorated. In other words, maybe it’ll all be okay after all. 

NO PROMISES THOUGH.

Photo by Jeff Holt

The good fight

Not to knock parenting, because it is 95% awesome, but that crappier 5% seems to be getting the better of me these days. I looked in the mirror a minute ago and realized I’m starting to resemble a White Walker: pale, gaunt, unblinking.... Now why would that be? Oh yeah—“we” are in the throes of toddlerhood and frankly, it is, as the French would say, compliqué (which is just a euphemism for “horrendous”). At 18 months, we are discovering what the “first adolescence” is all about. Basically, it involves one’s toddler responding in the negative to all questions asked, refusing to eat, refusing to sleep, and generally asserting his little self through opposition. 

Go on—ask me anything.

Here’s what meal time looks like these days:

I try to put little g. into his high chair.
Little g. says, “Non!” (He is half French after all—I obviously blame that half for all of this.)
I manage to finagle him into his seat and place food in front of him.
Little g. says, “Non!”
I try various tactics: explaining, demonstrating, bargaining, pleading, threatening, shouting, etc.
Little g. says, “Non!”

Here’s what bath time looks like:

I announce that it is bath time.
Little g. says, “Non!”
I put him into the bath and ask him to please sit down.
Little g. says, “Non!”
I finish bathing him and hold out a towel.
Little g. says, “Non!”

Diaper changes are similar, with the addition of flailing arms and legs, sometimes accompanied by bellowing—just to really drive home his message.

In addition to this first adolescence thing, we are also dealing with the dreaded “18-month sleep regression.” No one forewarned us of this of course, but it turns out that there all kinds of sleep regressions. There’s the 4-month one, the 9-month one, the 12-month one, the 15-month one, and now, the 18-month one. In between, there’s teething, sickness, separation anxiety, nightmares, and a host of other reasons why “sleeping through the night” has become a distant memory—if it ever even existed at all (it may just have been another hallucination, like pleasant meals). The irony of course is that real adolescents love to sleep, yet whoever came up with this miniature version (I think it was Satan) conveniently left that part out. Eating disorders and general defiance, yes; appreciation for sleep, dream on.

Anyone else miss high school?

I love our pediatrician’s responses to all of these issues—everything is always so obvious to her:

Me: “My son keeps waking up screaming at 2:00 am and 4:00 am.” 

Doc: “Close the door.” 

Me: “My son has discovered how to make himself gag for fun.” 

Doc: “Don’t react.” 

Me: “Should that vaccination mark still be on his arm?” 

Doc: “It will fade.” 

Well OK then. But €50 later, I get home and realize she’s either childless, or the mother of robots, because if things were that clear-cut then typing “child sleep problems” into Google would not yield 27 million results, closely followed by “child eating problems” at 26 million. Plus, close the door? I’ll let her explain that to our neighbors, who all seem to be suffering from acute noise intolerance (in addition to general intolerance).

The more compassionate say to hang in there, that this will not last forever. I don’t know why, but whenever anyone pronounces that phrase—this won’t last forever—I just want to cry. Maybe part of me doesn’t believe them: yes it will last forever! Waaaaaaah! But of course I know they’re right. So what do we do in the meantime? Enjoy it, I suppose (that’s the other thing they say). What’s truly insane is that in the midst of wondering whether I’m winning any battles, let alone the war, I’d kinda like to add another little soldier to the opposition army. Damn you, maternal instinct! I used to think you didn’t exist, and now I can’t shut you up!

Maybe I should just embrace my new look.

Leave sleep to the mortals! *Sob*

Comfort me with apples

Teething sucks. I can’t remember my own, but so far as I can tell from my 15-month-old son, it ranks right up there with stomach flu in the “fun” department. Poor baby; he first began sleeping soundly through the night at 6 weeks, and I distinctly recall our naive hope that we could all just take up residence in the Land of Uninterrupted Dreams. Little did we suspect that the teething demons would swoop down and steal our collective slumber away for weeks—nay, months!—on end. In fact, I would venture to say that it has been one year since our teething troubles began. A full year! And do you know how many teeth Babykins has to show for it? Four and two halves, minus a chip. Sigh.

Gnarly teeth run in my family. After five years of braces, a pretty unpleasant headgear episode, and numerous visits to the oral surgeon, I have exactly 24 of them left in my mouth, as opposed to the standard 32. My husband, on the other hand, has these tiny little naturally straight teeth, so I was kinda hoping our son would inherit his chompers from THAT end of the gene pool. Alas, reality seems to have chosen otherwise.

Yours truly at age 13.* Note large teeth and nascent patriotism.

I had no idea that teething would take so damn long. If it were up to me, they’d all just come in at once and we could move on to losing sleep over something else. But it’s one of the universal “joys” of babyhood, so we may as well accept it. Yet judging from certain third party reactions, one might think that teething is some rare disease. We’ve been told on multiple occasions by well-meaning folks with the utmost gravity in their voices, “Votre fils a très mal aux dents” (your son’s teeth really hurt). To which I always reply with an “indeed” and one of those nervous half-laughs I do when I’m totally uncomfortable. What am I supposed to say? “REALLY? Is that what those white things in his mouth are?” “Should we have him hospitalized?” “Do they make children’s morphine in France?”

But tonight, while we were celebrating Monday with our traditional apéritif du lundi, I stumbled haphazardly upon a surprising source of comfort. Baby was in his high chair, an array of strategically-chosen toys at his disposal, yet still doing that glass-shattering wail he does when we aren’t personally entertaining him—adult conversations at our home these days are a creative mix of shouting and lip-reading—when I had a revelation: give him an apple. And you know what? It worked like a mute button! He didn’t utter a peep for the next hour. Perfectly content, he gnawed that thing into oblivion, barely allowing me a chance to remove the stem and seeds before it all went down the hatch. And then he went and fell fast asleep without a fuss, and is still dozing peacefully—truly a rare, write-this-down phenomenon!

Perhaps as a nod to his mother’s country roots, that apple may have been just what his poor, sore little gums needed. And here I was loading him up on teething rings, tamarind gum paste, homeopathic moon drops and the like. How’s that parental learning curve going...?

*Photo by Bill Benson

Yes we can

For those of you who don’t believe in miracles, check this out: my son is now 14 months old, meaning that despite my incapacity to sustain most forms of plant and animal life, child rearing is surprisingly doable.

I can’t say it’s been easy learning to parent while working from home, keeping said home passably tidy and maintaining at least a solid B in personal hygiene, but I’ve never been one to shrink from a challenge, especially in the face of naysayers. Our pediatrician comes to mind: “You’ll never get anything done” was her retort when I informed her of my intention to forgo childcare until our son had turned one. Well, she was wrong; I get stuff done. It just takes me 10 times longer than it used to.

Something I discovered in my first year as a mother is that no-you-can’t-ers abound; our pediatrician is but one example. And it’s not just that. Too many sources of parenting information, be they first or second-hand, are either needlessly negative or straight up alarmist—the apparent goal being to keep parents in a perpetual state of borderline panic. From SIDS risk to vaccination hype to choking hazards, the underlying message is that at any given moment, we are but one accident away from infanticide. Why, it seems every baby product out there bears a warning label tantamount to If you don’t use this product exactly as intended, your child may very well die (and it will be all your fault, you poor incapable fool). And here I thought pregnancy was stressful.

OK, some specifications are warranted.

That may be why I’m so delighted to have passed the 1-year mark unscathed. I’m also delighted to have discovered just how wrong so many people are about raising babies. Even before ours was born, we began receiving all manner of seriously jaded, totally unsolicited advice, often from perfect strangers. For example, “Enjoy your pregnancy; it’s the last time you’ll be able to do what you want for a long time.” (How is one to respond? Thank you?) Since our son’s birth, we’ve been advised to avoid restaurants, museums, and weddings; to protect him from honey, public changing tables, and the sun; to have him fed, bathed, and lying in an empty crib—on his back only—by 8:00 pm; and for heaven’s sake, to never leave those little feet bare. But my favorite piece of advice, and one that apparently has no expiration date, is to “cherish this age while it lasts” (insinuation: because man, are you gonna hate the next one).

Coming soon.

Incidentally, this is all garbage. We may be the only ones around doing it, but we take our son absolutely everywhere. He’s traveled with us by plane, train and automobile. He’s visited five countries, including both coasts of the United States, and dipped his adorable baby toes into the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea. We’ve taken him to museums, cathedrals, art gallery openings and classy restaurants (and a wedding). He doesn’t have a fixed bedtime and no, he doesn’t like socks—so just STOP already with the tisk-tisking! Yes, there have been some extreme situations (a diaper change at 1,500 meters atop Puy de Dôme, for example), but so far, so good. Babies need stimulation, which we’re happy to provide. And you know what? He’s doing beautifully.

Maybe that’s why I’m such a die-hard Obama fan. However history ultimately remembers him, he had me at Yes We Can. As a new mom, I cannot fathom why, amid the cascades of parenting advice out there, none is anywhere as encouraging as that simple notion: yes you can. Of course it’s hard; everything worthwhile is. But a whole lot of people, many far less apt than we, have managed it. So as we ease into our second year as parents, we do so with renewed confidence in our own instincts—which have turned out to be of far greater worth than all that other advice combined.

Almond joy

I’ve never been a huge fan of lunch. Breakfast, yes; dinner, definitely; but lunch ... meh. Uninspiring. I’d even dare say depressing. Just something we do in the middle of the day because our bodies demand nourishment. I realize this anti-lunch attitude is very un-French of me, but considering that I will never actually be French, I’m OK with that. So is my distaste for the midday meal an American thing? The running perception on this side of the world is, after all, that we Americans don’t eat lunch, or at least don’t eat anything worthy of being called “lunch.” We’re supposedly more of a sandwich-at-the-keyboard kind of culture. I’d try to argue otherwise, but since I obviously cannot cite myself as a counterexample, what’s the point?

Actually, that looks pretty good!

My parents aren’t big lunch people, either, which is probably where my lack of enthusiasm began. Lunch at their house is, for want of a better word, “nonexistent.” If one happens to be hungry in the middle of the day, one opens the refrigerator and forages. Possible finds include salad greens in various stages of decay, giant Costco cheese blocks, ancient tortillas that no one will ever eat, and an astounding—no, a stupefying—array of condiments. In the freezer are raw cranberries and a year’s supply of nuts. But again, since no one in my family eats lunch, the lack of actual food in the kitchen is worrisome only to my husband, who, being French and all, has no desire to subsist entirely on inferior cheese and frozen almonds until dinnertime (which is also pretty sparse). I say, where’s his sense of intercultural appreciation? At least there’s no need to worry about any holiday weight gain!

We are what we eat.

I will acknowledge that living in France has helped me to take lunch more seriously, even if I still don’t necessarily enjoy it. When I was a regular employee, I appreciated the midday breather that la pause déjeuner represented, as well as the proximity and variety of solutions to those pesky hunger pangs. But now that I’m my own boss, I’ve kind of returned to my ambivalent roots. Lunchtime rolls around, I’m hungry, and I have neither inspiration nor patience. Happily, there is an obvious choice: I really like cheese, which, France being the alpha and the omega of dairy products, we have aplenty. I also really like this pre-sliced packaged bread called Harry’s “American Sandwich” (which is actually quite popular among the French, who are more open-minded about bread than one might imagine).

Maybe it’s the American spin that my subconscious finds comforting, or maybe I’m just lazy, but I can’t get enough of the stuff! It probably accounts for about a third of my daily caloric intake. I do opt for the “whole wheat” variety, so I figure it’s not so bad. I mean, yeah, I’m eating straight up industrial bread in France, but hey—it’s from a French supermarket.

Plus you can’t do that with a baguette.

To make a long story short, I eat a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches: way more than I ever ate while living in the US, actually. I use coconut oil instead of butter (virtuous), real cheddar cheese (semi-virtuous), and Harry’s bread (it’s whole wheat!). I know I should eat some veggies with that, but when it’s already 3:00 pm and Babykins could go into meltdown mode at any minute, I don’t have the presence of mind to go concocting some amazing salad of organic produce, which I would have carefully selected that morning from a quaint farmers’ market while humming “Little Town” from Beauty and the Beast. So instead I eat a tomato. Whole. Like an apple (less cutlery to wash). Ironically, I often do this while watching reruns of Masterchef or Top Chef or some other cooking-related show, whose participants would probably be horrified by my dietary deconstructionism. But I figure watching real food being prepared counterbalances what’s actually on my plate and besides, it beats frozen almonds.

Won't you be my neighbor? Part II

As some of you may recall, I have already discussed my beloved neighbors and their eccentricities, but such is the magnitude reached by said eccentricities over the past several years—nay, over the past several weeks—that I feel the subject warrants revisiting.

Like I mentioned in January, I am now officially self-employed, working from home, a free agent, etc., and am (mostly) loving it. The new boss in particular is one cool chick. The office, on the other hand, could use some work. Let me explain:

Prior to being self-employed, I worked long days far from home, meaning I missed out on exactly what goes on in my apartment building between the hours of 8:30 am–8:00 pm. In my blissful naïveté, I always assumed that nothing much went on at all, aside from the occasional delivery (mainly for me). But since merging home and office, I have realized that no such peace reigns in my apartment building. Quite the contrary, actually.

First off, nobody works. I don’t know what my neighbors are all up to, but they are definitely up to it at home. Victims of France’s 11% unemployment rate? Fellow freelancers? Rentiers? Whatever the case, they’re all here, all the time. I am thus treated to a smörgåsbord of weirdness all day long.

Undoubtedly lives in my building.

Let’s begin with my certifiably insane next-door neighbors and the 1-inch partition separating them from me. Crazy Neighbor #1 is an elderly Japanese gentleman, who judging by the noises coming through the wall is a true connoisseur of gay pornography. He is also the victim of some form of extortion by an old lady to whom he refers as “ma pauvre dame,” and who regularly calls him demanding money. Their conversations go something like this: “WHAT? No, ma pauvre dame, I will NOT send you any more! Pardon? Forty euros? OK, but this is the LAST TIME!”

As if that weren’t entertaining enough, last week Crazy Neighbor #2, a.k.a. Crazy Neighbor #1’s 20-something Brazilian alcoholic boy toy, returned from wherever he had been for the last few months (not rehab in any case), and the pornography fest ceased..., only to be replaced by drunken shouting matches, slamming doors and gangsta rap. The novelty wore off within the first 24 hours since, let us not forget, the aim of my being home all day is actually to work. And I don’t know about you, but I need some modicum of calm in order to succeed.

At one point, I actually resorted to an online white noise generator in a vain attempt to block out the insane loudness of all that vodka-soaked screaming. Sad, I know. And ineffectual. So I took it up a notch. As I was working on a project involving the Middle Ages, the idea came to me to crank up some nice loud medieval music. And as it turns out, nothing combats the sound of two drunken, shouting men like a bunch of chanting monks. So that is my new secret weapon. When things get out of hand next door, I release the holy brethren.

You want a piece of me?

So that was last week. THIS week has been a whole new adventure. Monday I came home from having tea with a friend only to find a baby carriage, baby included, sitting in the apartment entryway unattended. I wouldn’t dare leave a piece of luggage unattended in the entryway, let alone a baby, but then I’m not insane. My conscience told me to stick around, so I kept the forsaken child company until, some 15 minutes later, his (clearly incompetent) mother, a.k.a. Crazy Neighbor #3, came strolling nonchalantly down from the 6th floor singing to herself.

Me: It seems you have forgotten someone here.
Crazy Neighbor #3: Oh! I was just upstairs getting some diapers!
Me (seeing no such diapers): Mmm hmm.

On Tuesday, a plumber showed up at 10 am to break apart our shower tiles. I’ve oft mentioned the disastrous state of our ceiling, so one would naturally assume that any work done on our place would involve first and foremost the ceiling. Not so (our landlord is evidently also crazy). Monsieur le plombier was nice enough, although I can definitely confirm that “plumber’s crack” is an international phenomenon. Is there a specialty clothing store for plumbers, where all the pants have ridiculously large waistlines and no belt loops? Anyway, so we now have some new, entirely unasked-for tiling (in the wrong shade of white, but who’s keeping track?). Meanwhile, our ceiling is getting to the point where the sound of pieces of it breaking off and exploding on the floor no longer makes me jump. It’s become a sort of familiar background noise, not unlike the cheerful humming of the refrigerator.

Wednesday was pretty uneventful, aside from our upstairs Crazy Neighbors #4 and #5 spending a good part of the night dragging heavy objects across their 19th century wooden floors. Judging from the sound, and the guests, I can only assume they were having a nocturnal furniture-rearrangement free-for-all. They do that sometimes.

We’re not crazy, we just enjoy doing this at midnight.

And then on Thursday came the crescendo. I arrived home with my husband, laden with sacs of groceries, only to find that our entire block had been sealed off with yellow crime scene tape, flashing lights, stationed police agents, the whole thing. They let us pass, but upon reaching our building, we saw the reason for all the hubbub: a body. As in, a dead body. There it was, just lying on the sidewalk, hidden under the gold foil that the French use to cover dead bodies, shock victims, and the homeless during winter. No explanation, nothing on the news, zip. I called my mom:

Me: So there’s a dead body outside our front door covered in gold foil.
Mom: Gold foil? The French gift wrap their dead?
Me: I told you it’s an elegant culture.
Mom: Did they put a bow on it?

I figure that the day one’s own mother no longer seems surprised by the theater of the absurd that has become one’s life, one needs to perhaps consider making a change. So as fun as this all has been, I think it’s about time we looked to greener, saner pastures. I was reluctant to leave our “nice” neighborhood, but you know what? I think I can handle it after all.

In the summer when it sizzles

It’s HOT in Paris right now. Hot-hot-hottttttt. It’s so hot that my boss has asked everyone in the office to draw the window shades and turn off our desk lamps, thus betraying his insanity for he must suspect that our energy-saving Ikea light bulbs are partially to blame. Ever the rebel, I have not obeyed orders because first of all, no way do these silly lamps generate any heat worth mentioning and secondly, never underestimate the parakeet effect, i.e. darkness = zzzzzz. I personally have no desire to awaken hours from now, the right side of my face decorated with key-shaped indentations, only to spend the rest of the afternoon taking witty remarks from my colleagues like, “Hey, fall asleep on your keyboard again?”

This sudden heat thing happens every year, always with the same effect: June gloom takes up most of the month, everyone bitches and moans about how wretched Paris weather is and how lucky those bastards in the south of France are and then, all of sudden, BONJOUR la canicule! Overnight the temperatures sky rocket and everyone seamlessly switches to bitching and moaning about how unbearably hot it is. It doesn’t last, generally speaking (the heat, not the bitching; this is France after all). A notable exception was of course the summer of 2003, which featured endless days of scorching heat, alternating with endless nights of scorching heat, and ended only after some 15,000 people had died of dehydration (a public health catastrophe that bizarrely no one seems to discuss anymore).

Never one to shun an occasion for harrowing adventure, my family made the trip over the big blue water to visit me in the middle of that very same 2003 heat wave. I remember us all sitting around my 5th floor apartment dinner table, eating only after 10:30 pm—when the heat had subsided just enough to allow us to conceive of consuming anything solid. We took cold showers at regular intervals, slept with spray bottles next to our beds and would awaken in the middle of the night, wander over to the open windows and stretch our sweating arms out into the stifling darkness, attempting in vain to catch even the slightest whisper of a breeze. Yeah, it sucked.

At the time, I had no fan (still don’t). This of course shocked my parents, even after my explanation that Paris seldom heats up enough to warrant a fan and that besides, where would I store such a thing during the 11.5 cooler months of the year? But faced with day after day of 100+ degree weather, even I was willing to hoist the proverbial white flag. We thus embarked on a wild goose chase through the city, visiting shop after shop after shop, only to be told that no fans were to be found—not there, not anywhere—and that furthermore, no new deliveries were expected anytime soon. This of course DOUBLY shocked my parents, who could not believe that a first world country could just run out of something as common as a stupid fan—and at the height of summer no less! France in their eyes was demoted right then and there to second world status (where it shall remain indefinitely). So we resorted to fanning ourselves with anything lying around my apartment: newspapers, museum brochures, table mats....

I have since discovered that the acme of H-O-T in Paris is in fact underground: aboard the RER, a mode of public transportation that is half métro, half suburban train. In the suburbs, the RER runs above ground, but when it passes through Paris, it actually descends below the métro—much closer to Hades in other words, which I suppose would account for the heat, as well as for the demon-like characters one may spot while on board. In addition to being damn hot, the RER is notoriously poorly-kept (that’s a euphemism for “ghetto on rails”). All of this leaves RER passengers with a serious dilemma during the hotter months: either a) dress conservatively and sweat away in silence (but avoid drawing any unwanted attention) or b) dress in skimpy summer attire and take their chances with the more dubious of their fellow passengers. Tricky. My tactic is to avoid the hot heinousness of the RER like the plague (incidentally, the RER and the plague have something in common: rats).

Between us, I am enjoying the heat this time around. It’s nice to eat outdoors, nice to wear sandals to work, nice to leave the jacket at home. And I’m sure that if, heaven forbid, the heat wave were to stay past its welcome, I could always just pop out and buy a fan (surely they are back in stock by now).

Back to business

I’m back!

After quite an absence from spouting witticisms into the void, I have at last returned to my trusty AZERTY keyboard and am ready to pick up where I left off. I seem to recall a rant involving a giant bottle of olive oil. Geez, it has been a long time.

To sum up, I have just gotten married. In the US. Hence the long silence (I took a month of vacation ... kindly paid for by French employment law!). And while preparations for this Grand Event have kept me both highly occupied and highly on-edge for the greater part of the past 12 months, in the end it was a resounding success. In fact, it was such a success that I almost want to change career paths (again) and go into wedding planning. Yes it was totally stressful, but also quite a lot of fun. We did everything ourselves, meaning personal creativity + local suppliers + many pairs of helpful hands to bring it all together. And it really was the sweetest, most magical day I could ever have imagined.

And then suddenly it was over and we were heading to the Bahamas on our honeymoon. That’s how it generally works, no? For months and months you pour your whole heart into planning to marry, then all of a sudden the wedding comes and goes and before you have any time to process the whole thing you’re in another time zone. In the space of a few hours we passed from 4,000 feet in the mountains of San Diego to a sprawling white beach beneath nodding coconut palms in the middle of the Caribbean, feeling almost obligated to forget everything and RELAX! NOW! Which we did—in spectacular fashion—so I’m not complaining! I just find it psychologically bizarre that weddings work this way.

And now, a few weeks later, we are officially over our jet lag and more or less back to living our “normal” Parisian lives. I must say that so far I’m finding married life to be quite similar to fiancéed life, although something definitely does feel different. It’s a bit as though we’ve been initiated into a secret society, like we have a special wink-wink complicity that wasn’t there before. In the métro I find myself discreetly eyeing the left hands of my fellow passengers—and generally discovering precious few signs of membership in this particular secret society. Does no one get married around here anymore? (Answer: no.) So while I may no longer be “The Bride,” and thus no longer the center of attention (alas!), at least I AM part of this cool—and increasingly exclusive—married people’s club.

But that aside, G. and I are actually having a rather rough time of this post-wedding period. I especially am having a rough time of it. Which isn’t so surprising, really. I mean, for a full year this wedding constituted a real Project toward which I could direct nearly all my creative energy; an event brimming with symbolism and emotion, set in my hometown and uniting my loved ones from North America with my loved ones from Europe, my family with G.’s family, in the definitive fusion of the American me and the French-ish me.... In its wake, how could everyday life not seem somewhat pale? On the upside, I have total faith that these post-nuptial blues (that’s their official name—look it up) will disappear with time, much in the manner of the “day after Christmas” blues. But in all honesty, I hadn’t planned on how hard the adjustment would be; that’s the one thing I neglected to include in all those wedding lists, charts and spreadsheets.

And just to add insult to injury, since the Big Day has passed, the myriad wedding-related on-line newsletters to which I subscribed over the past year have spontaneously transformed themselves into newly-wed newsletters. So now when I sign in to my email account, I find it inundated with home decoration ideas, helpful hints on enjoying married life, and of course, everything related to maternity. While I find this unsolicited advice both invasive and anxiety-inducing (OMG am I supposed to have a POST-wedding to-do list? Quick! Where's my organizer?!?), I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I didn’t unsubscribe myself immediately. Would “my” newsletters just keep automatically evolving throughout my whole life? Would I receive pregnancy newsletters, then parenting newsletters, middle age newsletters, retirement newsletters...? “Personality quiz: what kind of mid-life crisis are you?” “Tips on planning the ultimate retirement party!” “Why drafting a will has never been easier!” The worst part is, this stuff probably really exists—or will someday. I think I’ll unsubscribe after all.

So to boil it all down, the wedding of the century (mine, obviously) is over and I’ve come to a big “NOW WHAT?” moment. I feel a bit as though I’m still sitting inside the movie theater after the credits have rolled. My colleagues like to joke that from here on out it’s giving foot massages, ironing shirts and whipping up complicated gourmet dinners that will be keeping me busy. But no, seriously—what is one supposed to do post-marriage and pre-pitter-patter-of-little-Franco-American-feet? I think I need a hobby. Or a dog. Or at least a new purse. Sigh.

 

Who's George Banks?

Contrary to popular belief, I have not fallen off the face of the earth or gone into hiding for tax purposes. I’m actually just extremely occupied with organizing the wedding of the 21st century, which will take place in about two months. The future King of England’s wedding is to be a mere opening act for my own. Yes, G. and I are going to tie the proverbial Franco-American knot, and while we have been engaged since last June, I have not written about it thus far because this blog is dedicated to humor and an engagement is not supposed to be funny. It’s serious, life path stuff. But now, two months out from the wedding, I realize that balancing guests, bridesmaids, groomsmen, flowers, decorations, music, gifts, entertainment, assorted Pantone napkins, customized M&M’s and the pros and cons of acrylic nails is actually quite funny. What’s even funnier is that some people do this for a living.



Part of the hilarity of this whole affair stems from the fact that the wedding will be in California while my intended and I continue to live in France, meaning that everything must be done long-distance. In fact, it’s so funny that I’ve come down with a sinus headache that seems to show no signs of letting up. I imagine it will magically disappear on its own the day after I’m wed, when I no longer need to think straight. Ha ha. See? Funny. 



In their infinite wisdom, my parents got married at a Self Realization Fellowship temple surrounded by their immediate family and something like two of their closest friends. We, on the other hand, are going whole hog. One hundred guests, a good quarter of whom are from “out of town” (meaning transatlantic), the little church PACKED, the reception hall decorated just so, my brother as MC, a feast of French-inspired delicacies cooked up by our own Chef Charles, music, speeches, cases and cases of Californian wine, contributions of time and energy from local merchants and my parents’ friends.... This is going to be anything but minimalist—it is literally going to take a village. I’m just hoping I can keep it together, live up to the A-MA-ZING dress that will be wearing me, and avoid tripping, fainting, crying uncontrollably, getting hit with a freak attack of the whooping cough or blanking out on my future husband’s name when asked to pledge him my everlasting love in front of all these people. 



In any case, this is why I haven’t been blogging of late. I’m a tad stressed. I shall try to make up for it once I have gained the peace of mind that comes with being happily married, honeymooned and unpacked, and before moving on to the next chapter of official adulthood (a wedding means that we are definitely no longer just playing house)!

The eyes have it

It is 2011 and therefore time to once more resolve to become a better version of myself: kinder, gentler, more spiritual and less materialistic, more punctual and better-rested. I want to take up jewelry-making and give up meat and dairy products. I also fully intend to cease all procrastination with respect to seeing the doctor. For example, I’m waaaaay overdue on multiple vaccination boosters, meaning if, God forbid, my ankle were actually to be bitten by one of Paris’ myriad ankle biters, I’d probably be foaming at the mouth in no time at all.



But I’ll take care of the shots, um, later. Today, I’m going to begin by paying a visit to the ophthalmologist, so that she can tell me just how blind I’ve become from the insane amount of time I’ve spent staring at computer screens since my last visit five years ago. The reading glasses I currently wear know their days are numbered (which would account for their constant trembling), and will undoubtedly have been replaced by bifocals by this time tomorrow. 



Actually, I’m kind of excited. New glasses will give me a new style, which somehow seems appropriate to accompany the new, on-time, anti-meat industry, enlightened yoga master I shall soon become. That me should ALSO have better-looking reading glasses. 



I’ve often complained about the difficulty one faces in Paris when trying to purchase perfectly practical, everyday items; stuff like weather stripping, flower vases and miniature table top tennis kits can be maddeningly difficult to come by. On the other hand, anyone looking for perfectly impractical, postmodern, designer decorative objects priced at 700% of their value is ALL SET.



Yes, but does it come in blue?

Luckily for me, one notable exception to this rule is eyewear, a practical item that the French see no reason to render difficult to find (ease of purchase is another matter, as they all seem to employ a specific, “you must be joking” price structure). For if there is one commerce more omnipresent on Paris streets than pharmacies, it’s glasses shops. One has but to look for the flashing pair of red spectacles, as opposed to the flashing green cross:

Psychedelic green neon = free drugs.

Psychedelic red neon = pricey shades.

There seems to be one glasses boutique every other block in Paris, all of them strangely empty (or not so strangely; that’s a lot of eyewear for a population that doesn’t seem to actually wear all that much of it). Maybe their relative emptiness is a cost issue: the last pair of eyeglasses I purchased from just such a boutique set me back €300, and that was five years ago!

Or, maybe the French have simply begun doing as my dad does: order generic reading glasses by the dozen from Costco. Except they don’t have Costco here; Costco is far too practical (see my above point). Moreover, something tells me the esthetically sensitive nature of the French would find such things as 10-pound bags of frozen chicken breasts or 5-gallon bottles of olive oil somehow vulgar. Part of me agrees with them ... but another part of me says, “Cool! Five gallons of olive oil!”

You can take the girl out of America....

Road rage I

I haven’t driven a car in over a decade. In Paris, you really don’t need one. The public transportation system, while far from perfect, is efficient enough to allow the city’s inhabitants to get around with relative ease. If you ask me, owning a car here is more a liability than a necessity; the streets are overcrowded, the parking cher et rare, and the security highly dubious (unless your car is made of some kind of un-keyable, un-bashable, un-burnable space material). So why bother?

Well, because cars are quite handy when one wants to travel beyond the city without having to rely on the train. And they’re good for professional purposes. And for those with young children, public transportation is not so convenient. I’m well aware of all these things. Truth be told, I’d have obtained a French driver’s license years ago if I could have. But alas, one of the (many) things that no one tells you when you move to France is that you have exactly one year from the issuing of your first residence permit in which to freely exchange your foreign driver's license for a French one. After that, it’s all over; you have to go through French driving school, complete with coursework, road lessons and a final driving test that is notoriously difficult to pass or even schedule, all for the peccadillo of €1,300 or so.

But that’s not all. You have to learn standard shift. In France, automatics are considered wimpy cars created for wimpy people who don’t know how to handle the road (Americans, in other words). Granted, plenty of my countrymen (my parents included) thumb their noses at such vicious stereotypes and embrace the stick shift. Not me. All through high school I happily zipped about in my late grandfather’s 2-door hatchback, an automatic that really hadn’t been conceived for the twisting, narrow roads of my native mountain town and thus struggled quite a bit with the steeper inclines. That didn’t matter; I was—and remain—incapable of maneuvering a stick shift. My dad courageously tried to teach me once.... I’ll leave it at that. Three pedals, three mirrors and five gears are just too many things to deal with simultaneously, even for a multi-tasker such as myself. In all honesty, I do tend to go through life with my head in the clouds—ask my 10th grade driver’s ed teacher—and one simply cannot have one’s head in the clouds while trying to drive stick. That’s why God invented the automatic.

But again, the French don’t do automatics (taxi drivers notwithstanding), or at least they’ll never admit to it. And so, if I ever intend on once more embracing the freedom of the open road, leaning into the wind at the helm of my mighty steed ... er ... whatever, then I am just going to have to grin and bear the humiliation of French driving school. Sigh. I hate being made fun of, and I will DEFINITELY be made fun of when I show up to class, a 30-something American amidst a bunch of snickering French teenagers, and proceed to demonstrate precisely how clueless I am when faced with a stick shift. “Ha ha! The old lady with the funny accent stalled the car again! Ha ha!”

But let’s just entertain the impossible for a moment and imagine that I somehow master the stick. I’d still have to face the sadistic free for all that is French motor law. Coming to a dead stop in the middle of an intersection if there’s a series of dashes running through it, for example. And whatever sick fool dreamt up the whole priorité à droite thing should be given the same sentence as Edmond Dantès. But my least favorite of all is probably the roundabout. I began calling them “death circles” the minute I arrived here and have remained true to my prejudice ever since. Those things were not meant to be negotiated by people like me.

Place de l'Etoile: where mediocre drivers go to die.

Incidentally, I’ve lived outside the Motherland long enough to no longer detain a valid US license, either. That’s right; I lack what is essentially the ID card of the average American citizen, a fact that never fails to get me into trouble when I’m home for a visit. Whether it’s writing a check (contrary to popular belief, one’s passport is not a universally accepted form of ID) or trying to buy booze, having an expired driver’s license is just a recipe for disappointment, extreme irritation and uncontrolled outbursts of anti-American sentiment quite ill befitting my generally easy-going (American) nature. I should really look into renewal one of these days, but with all the administrative hoop-jumping I already have to do as a French resident, I simply cannot accept the notion of also having to stand in line at the DMV. I’ve paid at the proverbial office, non? They should just SEND me a new one as a token of goodwill between fellow Americans. But in the meantime, I cannot legally get behind the wheel of a car in America or France, or for that matter any country requiring a (valid) driver’s license.

Which brings me to my next point. I discovered a few years back that having a French permit is not necessarily the sine qua non of legal vehicular operation in France. As early as the 1970s, European lawmakers went and approved the circulation of 2-person, permit-free cars. That’s right, cars that any idiot can cruise around in without ever having set foot in driver’s ed. Bizarrely, none of my French friends finds this blatantly criminal at all. “But the cars can only go 45 kilometers per hour!” they laugh. Right. Quick math quiz: A permit-free car traveling at 45 km per hour is heading south on la rue du Piéton mort. At the same time, another permit-free car moving at the same speed is heading north on the same road. A few seconds before the moment when the two cars meet, a small child goes running into the street between them, chasing after his ballon rouge.... What are the chances that anybody will walk away unharmed? I say, people without permits should limit their driving pleasure to Disneyland's Autopia and not go careening about on real roads, risking multiple lives behind the wheel of permit-free cars. I mean, just look at these things:

Just this side of a rickshaw.

I seem to recall having seen a similar contraption in a long-ago episode of Family Matters. And while at the time it appeared perfectly appropriate for the iconic nerd Steven Urkel to be driving one, today plenty of perfectly normal French men and women zip about in them without a second thought. On the other hand, in a country that fully embraces the Smart car as a credible—nay, even somewhat fashionable!—form of transportation, I suppose the permit-free car’s relative popularity should come as a shock to no one.

Thus, it appears that the only remaining option to my driving conundrum is to win the lottery and hire a personal chauffeur. I rather like this approach, which would offer the additional benefit of freeing me forever from early morning/late night dependence on Parisian taxis, whose dubious reputation is worthy of an entirely separate blog entry. A chauffeur it is, then. I shall leave driving school to the peons.