I wake at Anne-Laure's, whom I have never met. It is her home, or at
least it is when she is not renting it to strangers, and one pieces
together an idea of her from both the family snapshots that line the
walls of the WC and the general atmosphere of the place. The walls and
wooden floors are painted stark white, with Moroccan-patterned tiles in
grey and white to enliven the kitchen and bath, and there are pops of canary yellow, fuschia, blueberry, and
orange in cushions and rugs and framed designs, which combine with
taxidermy and abundant linen drapes to create a
modern "Pays de Merveilles" straight out of Pinterest. One surmises that
Anne-Laure, who is a journalist, is creative and lots of fun, and that
her small son and daughter are at the center of her world. There is the
notable absence of a husband or father, except for a delicate gold
band on a pregnant Anne-Laure's finger in one of the photos, which has
disappeared by the time the second child is old enough appear in the
photos with her. There is definitely no guy in the atmosphere of the
apartment, as Steve pointed out the moment we stepped through the door.
This is a Paris pied-a-terre for women and children only.
The sun has been up for an hour already--were we still in Stockholm it would have been three-and-a-half; even in Riga it would have been light almost three hours ago--and the rumblings of heavy machinery passing by outside started not long after the late-night laughter and shouts of loitering, drunk young men had stopped. Apparently Anne-Laure's little street is the ideal thoroughfare for construction equipment and partiers making their way to the other side of the river. It is the end of July, and as this is Europe there is no A/C, so the windows stay open day and night, making it sound like we are sleeping in the street.
A whispered morning prayer of gratitude while still in bed, then I get up to brush my teeth. Almost immediately Townsie--or Thomas as he is used to being called here--peeks into the bathroom, fresh-faced and sweet in a white tank top and no pajama bottoms. After the requisite snuggle into my legs, he announces that his tummy is hungry and he is going to get his own breakfast. He reappears in bathroom doorway a minute later, holding a large acrylic serving spoon.
"And I am going to eat it with this giant spoon!" he says in delight, then disappears again.
By the time I emerge from my morning ablutions, mascaraed and smelling of Jo Malone, Townes is eating cereal while he watches Violette swing on the trapeze bar next to the table.
"Mom! Look how high I can go!" she calls out cheerfully.
I dodge in front of and under her for a belt amongst the luggage, then lunge behind her to grab a pair of black gladiators, purchased the year Townsend was a baby and we came to Europe with our nieces for the summer. I bought two pairs of sandals at home in NYC for that trip--both are with me on this one--and packed all my best clothes, trying to prove that I was not letting myself go after two babies. Even though my memories are mostly of looking around ancient marvels for a spot to sit and breastfeed, the wardrobe did work in the photos. I grab my bag and, right on cue, Steve stumbles out of the bedroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes, to pick up where I leave off.
The acrid scent of urine hits the nostrils as one traipses down the stairs and through the lobby, which is quintessentially French, in that it has the most gorgeous ancient tiles but smells like a sewer. By the time I am on the Metro, Steve will have dropped the kids "at school" which is what we are calling their daycare this week (since it is in French), and he will grab a baguette to nosh on throughout the day as he does grad school prep and researches non-profits back at the apartment.
During my transfer from the 9 (direction Montreuil) to the 10 (direction Gare d'Austerlitz), a dapper gentleman in his sixties several paces ahead of me pauses, looking back along the platform, and motions to a young father with a baby carriage that he will help them up the stairs. The father reaches him just as I do, and when the two men crouch to lift the baby, I feel the sting of tears under my eyelids. Little acts of kindness. They will save the world.
On the 10, holding the bar to steady myself, mine is one of six hands stacked vertically onto the cold metal. On one side of me stands a girl in her twenties, chic and effusing ambition. The young man on the other side of me is reading, as am I, and his suit sleeve brushes my arm as the train sways. He and I and the girl next to me all sway along with the crowd that is pressing in around us, and I remember what it was like to feel part of humanity in this way on the subway during rush hour in Manhattan, and how much momentum for the day I always felt as I rushed up the concrete steps out into a city that was just getting to work. I feel that today, emerging into the Gallic sunshine.
During the morning class on American writers in Paris, I talk perhaps a little too much because I am so excited to be back in a university setting and discussing one of my favorite topics. The professor is of the artfully disheveled intellectual type, which puts a slight buzz into the room of mostly female students. Referencing the Proust I read on the train could be perceived as a bid for attention and I do it with some hesitation, but it really is apropos--we are talking about Gertrude Stein's quote about writers having two countries, real and imagined--and he treats my comment deferentially. There are the expected photos of flappers and Josephine Baker, and familiar readings from Hemingway and Fitzgerald, as well a couple that are new to me from James Wheldon Johnson and Harry Crosby. I make a note to get their books when we are back in the States. Hemingway's A Moveable Feast was my favorite book when I read it at sixteen, and for many years afterward. I feel like I'm visiting old, dear friends.
Afterward, on my way to lunch, a teeny tiny Sofia Coppola pops out of a taxi onto the sidewalk right in front of me. My eyes immediately lock straight ahead and past her--standard NYC celebrity-sighting protocol--but I am not wearing my sunglasses, and the recognition has registered on my face. Her companion, a gentle-looking woman with long, romantically-waved copper hair, gives me a look of empathetic amusement, and after they have passed I realize that Ms. Coppola and I are dressed almost identically and have similarly bobbed hair. I would like to have been a filmmaker, I reflect, over my chicken salad and pain au chocolat at Eric Kayser. I even flirted with a film major all of those years ago in college. But now I am thirty-eight and into simplifying life, and my writing and design work and our family's amateur painting and music-making will be enough for my kids to build upon, if they would like to be filmmakers. That's how it's supposed to work, right? Each generation building upon the last? That's what Sofia Coppola did. We are not Francis Ford Coppola, Steve and I, but it's a start.
Toward the end of my afternoon course on French feminist literature, I look around the classroom. We have been taught by the chair of the department, whose intelligence and ease with the subject matter have made me wish I could note every last word. There are a few of us who are "older," meaning outside of the university system, and we uniformly wear expressions of rapture. The other two dozen students are currently in their last year at universities around the world, and the three-hour class is KILLING them. They are falling asleep, doodling, packing up their belongings as a hint to the professor to wrap it up, and casually talking to their friends. Wasted! I want to shout. All of this is wasted on you! To be sitting here at the Sorbonne, no other responsibility but to fill your brains with wisdom to interpret the world around you! But, of course, I keep these thoughts to myself and make a little plan to walk over to Shakespeare & Company and buy A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. My copy was lost at least a decade ago, and a reference to it in the lecture has given me an itch to see it on my bookshelf again.
The idea of a warm crêpe buerre salé lures me out of the rain--I have forgotten my umbrella--on the way to the bookstore. Outside of Shakespeare & Company there is a queue of three or four students waiting to get in, but a guitar-violin duo is playing a bit of Pre-War jazz in front of the shop, and it is nice to listen while we wait, even with the drizzle. Inside, I find a beautiful copy of Woolf's book plus a slim volume from George Orwell, and after the salesman has stamped both books with the name of the bookstore and I have handed over my twenty-two euros, I film the appealing young musical vagabonds to send to Jane--her Davis plays the violin and I think she would like the idea of his growing up to play jazz with Shakespeare & Company as a backdrop, his long hair in a man-bun and surrounded by a crowd of appreciative females.
The walk from the Metro to Anne-Laure's is always longer in the evening. My leather satchel (in pink, naturally) is heavier after being on my shoulder all day, and the air is sticky and warm. When I get to the apartment I put my feet up for a bit in deference to my marshmallow ankles, unused to an entire day of sitting followed by an hour of walking. Not my exercise model. The kids are bouncing around in their usual evening mood of agitated joy, ostensibly putting on their pajamas in preparation for movie night, although there is little actual evidence that any wardrobe change is taking place. I enjoy them just a little bit more because I haven't seen them all day. Later, I will fall asleep with them in their room as we read, then shuffle into Anne-Laure's bohemian mattress on the floor sometime during the night. There I will stay in a hazy doze until early morning, when the heavy trucks begin making noise outside again and the words in my head will wake me up and try to arrange themselves on page or screen.
After my week of classes has finished, we will play wantonly in France for the last two weeks of these two incredible years we have spent in Europe. And then...and then. We will board an airplane to San Francisco and hang out there for a couple of weeks before going Utah. There, we will to camp out at the cabin for a few months--maybe a year--and get reacquainted with family and friends while we do grad school and NGO applications. I will write like a demon to get closer to that magical threshold of 10,000 hours that promises proficiency (if not genius)*. And we will begin to outline the second book in what we hope will be the nice long trilogy of our life as a couple and a family. The first book was a really good one. We can't wait to see what happens next.
The sun has been up for an hour already--were we still in Stockholm it would have been three-and-a-half; even in Riga it would have been light almost three hours ago--and the rumblings of heavy machinery passing by outside started not long after the late-night laughter and shouts of loitering, drunk young men had stopped. Apparently Anne-Laure's little street is the ideal thoroughfare for construction equipment and partiers making their way to the other side of the river. It is the end of July, and as this is Europe there is no A/C, so the windows stay open day and night, making it sound like we are sleeping in the street.
A whispered morning prayer of gratitude while still in bed, then I get up to brush my teeth. Almost immediately Townsie--or Thomas as he is used to being called here--peeks into the bathroom, fresh-faced and sweet in a white tank top and no pajama bottoms. After the requisite snuggle into my legs, he announces that his tummy is hungry and he is going to get his own breakfast. He reappears in bathroom doorway a minute later, holding a large acrylic serving spoon.
"And I am going to eat it with this giant spoon!" he says in delight, then disappears again.
By the time I emerge from my morning ablutions, mascaraed and smelling of Jo Malone, Townes is eating cereal while he watches Violette swing on the trapeze bar next to the table.
"Mom! Look how high I can go!" she calls out cheerfully.
I dodge in front of and under her for a belt amongst the luggage, then lunge behind her to grab a pair of black gladiators, purchased the year Townsend was a baby and we came to Europe with our nieces for the summer. I bought two pairs of sandals at home in NYC for that trip--both are with me on this one--and packed all my best clothes, trying to prove that I was not letting myself go after two babies. Even though my memories are mostly of looking around ancient marvels for a spot to sit and breastfeed, the wardrobe did work in the photos. I grab my bag and, right on cue, Steve stumbles out of the bedroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes, to pick up where I leave off.
The acrid scent of urine hits the nostrils as one traipses down the stairs and through the lobby, which is quintessentially French, in that it has the most gorgeous ancient tiles but smells like a sewer. By the time I am on the Metro, Steve will have dropped the kids "at school" which is what we are calling their daycare this week (since it is in French), and he will grab a baguette to nosh on throughout the day as he does grad school prep and researches non-profits back at the apartment.
During my transfer from the 9 (direction Montreuil) to the 10 (direction Gare d'Austerlitz), a dapper gentleman in his sixties several paces ahead of me pauses, looking back along the platform, and motions to a young father with a baby carriage that he will help them up the stairs. The father reaches him just as I do, and when the two men crouch to lift the baby, I feel the sting of tears under my eyelids. Little acts of kindness. They will save the world.
On the 10, holding the bar to steady myself, mine is one of six hands stacked vertically onto the cold metal. On one side of me stands a girl in her twenties, chic and effusing ambition. The young man on the other side of me is reading, as am I, and his suit sleeve brushes my arm as the train sways. He and I and the girl next to me all sway along with the crowd that is pressing in around us, and I remember what it was like to feel part of humanity in this way on the subway during rush hour in Manhattan, and how much momentum for the day I always felt as I rushed up the concrete steps out into a city that was just getting to work. I feel that today, emerging into the Gallic sunshine.
During the morning class on American writers in Paris, I talk perhaps a little too much because I am so excited to be back in a university setting and discussing one of my favorite topics. The professor is of the artfully disheveled intellectual type, which puts a slight buzz into the room of mostly female students. Referencing the Proust I read on the train could be perceived as a bid for attention and I do it with some hesitation, but it really is apropos--we are talking about Gertrude Stein's quote about writers having two countries, real and imagined--and he treats my comment deferentially. There are the expected photos of flappers and Josephine Baker, and familiar readings from Hemingway and Fitzgerald, as well a couple that are new to me from James Wheldon Johnson and Harry Crosby. I make a note to get their books when we are back in the States. Hemingway's A Moveable Feast was my favorite book when I read it at sixteen, and for many years afterward. I feel like I'm visiting old, dear friends.
Afterward, on my way to lunch, a teeny tiny Sofia Coppola pops out of a taxi onto the sidewalk right in front of me. My eyes immediately lock straight ahead and past her--standard NYC celebrity-sighting protocol--but I am not wearing my sunglasses, and the recognition has registered on my face. Her companion, a gentle-looking woman with long, romantically-waved copper hair, gives me a look of empathetic amusement, and after they have passed I realize that Ms. Coppola and I are dressed almost identically and have similarly bobbed hair. I would like to have been a filmmaker, I reflect, over my chicken salad and pain au chocolat at Eric Kayser. I even flirted with a film major all of those years ago in college. But now I am thirty-eight and into simplifying life, and my writing and design work and our family's amateur painting and music-making will be enough for my kids to build upon, if they would like to be filmmakers. That's how it's supposed to work, right? Each generation building upon the last? That's what Sofia Coppola did. We are not Francis Ford Coppola, Steve and I, but it's a start.
Toward the end of my afternoon course on French feminist literature, I look around the classroom. We have been taught by the chair of the department, whose intelligence and ease with the subject matter have made me wish I could note every last word. There are a few of us who are "older," meaning outside of the university system, and we uniformly wear expressions of rapture. The other two dozen students are currently in their last year at universities around the world, and the three-hour class is KILLING them. They are falling asleep, doodling, packing up their belongings as a hint to the professor to wrap it up, and casually talking to their friends. Wasted! I want to shout. All of this is wasted on you! To be sitting here at the Sorbonne, no other responsibility but to fill your brains with wisdom to interpret the world around you! But, of course, I keep these thoughts to myself and make a little plan to walk over to Shakespeare & Company and buy A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf. My copy was lost at least a decade ago, and a reference to it in the lecture has given me an itch to see it on my bookshelf again.
The idea of a warm crêpe buerre salé lures me out of the rain--I have forgotten my umbrella--on the way to the bookstore. Outside of Shakespeare & Company there is a queue of three or four students waiting to get in, but a guitar-violin duo is playing a bit of Pre-War jazz in front of the shop, and it is nice to listen while we wait, even with the drizzle. Inside, I find a beautiful copy of Woolf's book plus a slim volume from George Orwell, and after the salesman has stamped both books with the name of the bookstore and I have handed over my twenty-two euros, I film the appealing young musical vagabonds to send to Jane--her Davis plays the violin and I think she would like the idea of his growing up to play jazz with Shakespeare & Company as a backdrop, his long hair in a man-bun and surrounded by a crowd of appreciative females.
The walk from the Metro to Anne-Laure's is always longer in the evening. My leather satchel (in pink, naturally) is heavier after being on my shoulder all day, and the air is sticky and warm. When I get to the apartment I put my feet up for a bit in deference to my marshmallow ankles, unused to an entire day of sitting followed by an hour of walking. Not my exercise model. The kids are bouncing around in their usual evening mood of agitated joy, ostensibly putting on their pajamas in preparation for movie night, although there is little actual evidence that any wardrobe change is taking place. I enjoy them just a little bit more because I haven't seen them all day. Later, I will fall asleep with them in their room as we read, then shuffle into Anne-Laure's bohemian mattress on the floor sometime during the night. There I will stay in a hazy doze until early morning, when the heavy trucks begin making noise outside again and the words in my head will wake me up and try to arrange themselves on page or screen.
After my week of classes has finished, we will play wantonly in France for the last two weeks of these two incredible years we have spent in Europe. And then...and then. We will board an airplane to San Francisco and hang out there for a couple of weeks before going Utah. There, we will to camp out at the cabin for a few months--maybe a year--and get reacquainted with family and friends while we do grad school and NGO applications. I will write like a demon to get closer to that magical threshold of 10,000 hours that promises proficiency (if not genius)*. And we will begin to outline the second book in what we hope will be the nice long trilogy of our life as a couple and a family. The first book was a really good one. We can't wait to see what happens next.
(*According to studies, including those mentioned in the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, currently a family favorite.)
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