out + about, part i

Birthday week starts this weekend, so I had better catch up on the past few weeks before we are into all of that.  Here's the thing about the French school system we are in, Violette has two weeks off every other month. Time for road trips galore, we mused as we looked at the schedule the first week of school. When the first break arrived at the end of October, Steve was on a work trip in the States and had to go directly to a meeting in Paris, so I gamely (okay, with some trepidation) packed two weeks' worth of odds and ends, threw the kids in the car, and drove on my own to Paris to meet him, stopping in Belgium overnight to break up the five hour drive. 

It was a bit surreal, standing outside an ancient hotel in the square of a tiny Belgian town at eleven at night, sleeping babe in my arms and an only slightly more awake one at my side, wondering if the hostess would wake up and let us in. Thankfully, after some minutes, she did. I quickly deposited the children in our room, leaving them entranced by cartoons on television, and ran out to the square again, where my car was waiting with its hazards on. It wasn't until I was walking from the parking lot a block away, rolling our small overnight bag behind me, that I wondered at the wisdom of walking through dark streets of an unfamiliar town completely alone.  Ah, well.  We not only survived but enjoyed our little sleepover. The hotel was very cool and gave us a good breakfast, and the town and surrounding countryside were beautiful. TTO and Violette even got a little playground time in our ten hours there. I almost wished we could stay, but Paris, and Steve, were waiting.

And, Paris. As I navigated the familiar streets I realized that it was the first time I had ever done so behind the wheel. I had always found the idea terrifying, impossible. After two months in The Hague sharing narrow streets with bicycles, trams, and electric wheelchairs, Paris seemed positively tame. Apparently, I am now a European driver.

We had promised Violette she could spend her sixth birthday in Paris if we moved to Europe, but once we got here and realized a party with the girls in her new class at school was probably a good idea, we finessed our already scheduled October trip into her "birthday trip." For months she dreamed of the Ferris wheel and miniature cars she had ridden in the Jardin des Tuileries on our last trip to Paris. We made very few plans, thinking that between the bakeries and the Tuileries we would need little else for the children.  We arrived to find the amusement park vanished.  The birthday girl accepted it more gracefully than we had any right to expect, and turning from the disappointingly empty promenade she grabbed my hand, entreating me to run through the garden's rows and rows of hedges with her in the dark. We were laughing and dodging in and out of the maze-like leafy configurations when a small creature scuttled by.

"A ground squirrel!" she beamed. "I saw another one a minute ago!" I stopped.  

Ahead of us another "ground squirrel" passed in front of a beam of light from the streetlamps surrounding the park.  Its pear-shaped figure and pointy head looked distinctly un-squirrel-like.  In fact, rat-like. Another passed by and this time the shape of the body was distinct, its long, very long, pointy tail perfectly back lit.  Around us, a chorus of squeaks became audible, rising from nearly every bush.  As quickly as I could I ushered Violette up a hill to the safety of sidewalk and street.  For the next thirty minutes she lay on her belly in the well-lit grass next to the promenade, watching as herds of rats roamed the hedges below. She emitted squeaks of her own, speaking to the rats in their own tongue, entranced by the sight of them. Groups of teenaged boys and girls dashed into and out of the bushes, daring each other to go on rat hunts, shrieking with laughter. We nearly had to drag the birthday girl away once we could take it no longer. Somehow the whole scene struck me as oh so Parisian.

That night, as she lay on my lap and I stroked her hair, Violette looked at me with bright eyes.

"Mommy, I love Paris," she sighed dreamily. "Today was the best day."

I nodded, thinking how like Paris it was to endear itself to a little girl even when things had not turned out as planned.  The beauty of it, the gorgeous clothes and displays in the windows, the frilly pastries.

"I especially loved seeing the rats," she whispered, and with a soft smile on her lips she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

p.s. In a book of the writer Nancy Mitford's letters I am reading, she recounts the experience of moving into a luxurious apartment in Paris, and a few nights later waking up to find an R-A-T sitting on her belly. She, too, said it just seemed so like Paris. We couldn't have been the only ones to think so, now, could we?