Paris Letters

by Janice MacLeod

  Soon after, my mother arrived for her two-week vacation. On the second day, she fell on a sidewalk and required two rows of stitches in her knee. We spent the night in the emergency room with Christophe as our translator. Sometimes she acted like a frail old grandma, holding my arm as we walked and telling me how this cramped and that ached. But then there were times when I saw that it was mostly an act. She was much stronger than she admitted. The day after she fell in Paris, all she needed was a few Advil and a fresh bandage each morning before she walked with me all over the city. She also slipped in questions here and there about me finding a job, but then I told her that for now, I had enough money.

  “And for later?”

  I shrugged and she started praying.

  I’m pretty sure she mentioned her worries to my uncles and aunts who arrived one after another. I became tour guide to them all. They each mentioned that I should make a profession of touring people around the city, but when I started replying to their questions about French history with, “Dunno, Google it,” they piped down about the tour guiding.

  Still, they had a point. Since I spent most of my days on long hikes throughout Paris, I thought that perhaps I could get paid for it. I asked Vicki for advice. She was a painter from San Francisco. She arrived in Paris from time to time to paint scenes of rue Mouffetard. Each morning, she unfolded her artist chair on the sidewalk, pulled out her supplies, and started painting. Alongside her easel was a box of postcards of her previous paintings that she sold to those gawking over her shoulder. And since one needs a permit for such things and she *may* not have had one, she *may* have had her friend Monique come by and watch for the coppers. Monique may have been a Communist spy in her youth, so this side gig may have been a perfect fit. Vicki packed an extra guest chair for when company arrived. These two lovely silver-haired beauties chatted and sat at different locations up and down the street. Vicki painted. Monique spied. Everyone was happy. I thought Vicki was in her mid-fifties but wasn’t sure because something came over her the longer she sat and painted. She seemed to regress in age as the weeks went by. I thought perhaps it was the company she kept. She stayed at a youth hostel called Young and Happy. “I’m not young, but I’m happy,” she quipped when I mentioned her mysterious age regression. By the end of her Paris visits, she always had a skip in her stride of someone half her age.

  On the morning before I was about to meet friends of friends and give them a little tour around the city, I stopped by Vicki who was painting a picture of the restaurant Le Verre à Pied on rue Mouffetard. She saw me coming and unfolded her guest stool. I sat and sighed, telling her I was taking some friends of friends around town for the day. “Vicki, I need to make more cash, and people have recommended becoming a tour guide. What do you think?”

  “You couldn’t pay me enough,” she said. “But I’m a plein air painter. That’s what I do. I like to show people Paris through my paintings.” She daubed her brush in burnt amber. “With the exception of the few people such as yourself whom I allow to sit near me, I want to be left the hell alone to do what I love doing.”

  She was like a wise owl.

  “Here’s what you can do. Take my advice or leave it. Today when you tour these people around, pretend it’s a paid gig. See if you’re into it.”

  So when I met up with the friends of friends, I tried out being a tour guide. Paris was their first European city, or their first trip outside a resort or off a cruise ship. This meant they wore pretty but inappropriate footwear and yoga pants (never do this in Paris unless you’re actually going to yoga or are alone in your home) and carried large, heavy water bottles. Their first request was a big coffee so they could sip and stroll. I told them that it’s not easy to find a coffee to go, but then they spotted a Starbucks on the horizon and got excited. They ordered their giant mocha-frappa-etceteras and we began exploring, me knowing that they would require les toilettes in twenty minutes. There are public toilets in Paris, but not that many and they are…well, public toilets, and come with all the usual unpleasantries. In order to use a toilet in a restaurant or café, one must saddle up to the bar and order something. Usually, this was an espresso, because it was cheap and really what we were after was restroom privileges. So they slurped back their espressos, headed to the loo, and in twenty minutes, they needed to do it all over again.

  The French avoid this entire cycle. I figured out how they do it. They sip liquids constantly at home, likely because they are severely dehydrated in their tour around the city. They stop half an hour before their next jaunt around town. They leave the house slightly thirsty but confident they’ll not need a pit stop on their tour. And when the ladies have earned restroom privileges in a café, they take them. Men? I know what they do by evidence on sidewalks.

  With these friends of friends, I gave them a few facts about me, and they gave a few facts about them. It was like a first date except we all knew our relationship was fleeting and it was unlikely we’d ever meet again. I spewed off a few facts and figures about Paris as we walked around. They seemed slightly interested but would likely retain nothing except what their cameras captured. They talked about work-related ailments and stresses and especially how tired and busy they were all the time. These people were kind of a drag, but I agreed to meet them, largely out of the kindness I felt for people like Sandro and Marco when I was traveling, and because I, on this particular day, was testing to see if I would like tour guiding.

  After my pleasant enough but exhausting tour around the city, I returned to Vicki who was still sitting in her artist chair on the sidewalk, putting her finishing touches on a painting. She saw me coming and whipped out her guest stool. She doesn’t keep it out for fear of inviting unwanted guests. I sat.

  “Well, how’d it go?” she said.

  “I’m tired and over it. I didn’t ask for cash but they gave me some to thank me.”

  “So you even got paid and still didn’t like tour guiding.”

  I nodded.

  “Sounds to me like it’s not an equal exchange. How much cash would it take to make it an equal exchange?”

  “Too much,” I responded.

  “It’s settled then,” she said, slapping her knee. “You’re just like me. Show people Paris by selling more of those letters of yours and forget the touring.” She pointed at her box of postcards and winked. “I sell enough of these postcards to pay for my whole vacation.”

  And that’s when Quit Your Day Job came along.

  Dear Áine,

  Even though there are four seasons in Paris, it seems to be the rainy season all year long. And though the tourist season is technically early summer, they seem to be here all year long too. Lately, I’ve become the Ambassador of Directions to confused map-gripping vacationers. But if I come upon a tour group, I usually slink my way around to quickly get where I want to be.

  All the tourists eventually arrive at la pièce de résistance: the Eiffel Tower. Only here do I hover close to the groups, who are usually led by a person carrying a large plastic flower that is easily visible for anyone who meanders too far from the pack. The leader usually rattles off facts and figures about the world’s most recognized monument. I don’t pay much attention. Instead I listen in to people’s conversations. It’s easy to do and I can’t resist. As we all look up into the brown belly of iron, I hear wives talking about the campaign to convince their husbands to come to Paris. I hear employees talking about the vacation time they had to earn. And students who saved every dime and are willing to eat crêpes on the street for every meal just to be here in this moment.

  It takes some effort to get where you want to be. Now that they are in Paris looking at the tower they’ve imagined for so long, they sigh with satisfaction, snap a photo, and look for that big plastic flower to find their way home.

  Au revoir!

  Janice

  24

  The Etsy Quit Your Day Job Article
>
  A blogger from Etsy contacted me and asked if she could feature me on the Quit Your Day Job blog. This is the same blog I scoured for ideas on how I could quit the advertising agency. It featured people who successfully moved on from the daily grind to build successful businesses on Etsy. Back then, I wanted to be one of those people. Now I would be! Being featured on Etsy was the moment that changed my grassroots business that paid for my coffee and cheese addictions into a business that could also help me keep padding my buffer of cash and saving up for the next big adventure, whatever that might be.

  By now, I had sent out over one thousand letters. But a week into the Quit Your Day Job article, I was getting orders to send out thousands more and I was pedaling dans la choucroute, which means pedaling in sauerkraut—getting nowhere fast. I went to bed at night with fifty orders to do the next day, only to wake up to fifty more. By the time I finished those, another fifty would be waiting. Of course I was astounded, delighted, and grateful for the success of this project, but there was a brief moment when I felt I had re-created history. I felt chained to my desk and overwhelmed by creating mail.

  But then I changed the pattern. Instead of being forced to sit in an office with a pile of folders, I realized I was not, in fact, required to stay at my desk. There was no boss expecting me to be there, no project managers chomping at my heel, no accountant tracking my billable hours, and no supervisor deciding whether to approve a Vacation Request form.

  So in the middle of addressing an envelope, I put down my pen, slipped into my ballet flats, and went for a long, slow stroll down rue Monge. I crisscrossed my way toward the Seine, changing sides of the street wherever there was a flower shop to admire. I literally stopped to smell the roses. I slipped quietly into Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet church to admire the soft glow of the chandeliers and sit among the ladies who still wore veils to cover their heads. Together we prayed in serene silence.

  Amply amped up on spiritual mojo, I left the church and continued down rue des Bernardins to cross the bridge at Quai de l’Archevêché and take a gander at the locks shining in the sun. Lovers from around the world add their locks to the bridge to solidify their love. I read a few of their names and sent them a silent blessing. I hoped Karen and Rob were doing well, and Patricia and Allan too. I continued to my favorite bridge, Pont Saint-Louis, where from one spot I could see the sexy buttresses of the back end of Notre Dame, the statue-encrusted Hôtel de Ville, the boats puttering beneath the bridge, and most importantly, the violin player.

  By the look of the gathering crowd, he had a gaggle of gawking groupies waiting for him to finish his set so they could have a little tête-à-tête with hopes for a little one-on-one. I could see why. His hair was tied back in a ponytail with a few wisps swaying in the breeze. He looked more like a skateboarder than a violinist, which was part of the appeal. When I dropped a few coins in his violin case, he locked eyes with me and shot me a sly grin.

  He was good.

  So was his music. He was an artist at play. I had spied him here before, playing to no one, swaying to the sound of his own music. When he sped up the tempo, he hopped and jived to his own beat, making his own fun. And I guess that’s what happened to me with the Paris Letters. Though I enjoyed sharing the letters with people, I created them for myself first. I wanted to see how the letters would turn out as much, or maybe more, than the people who would receive them. I always had an idea of how to start and of what to say, but as I spent more time with each letter, I was really just being witness to what happened when the colors mixed. And I was never sure what words would come out of me until I picked up the pen and started to write.

  We—the violin player and me—were not so dissimilar. Artists amusing themselves first for the sake of it.

  Artists.

  It had only occurred to me in that moment that I was indeed an artist. In Paris! The wish I had in January 2010 had come true. It was a circuitous route, so circuitous in fact that I didn’t even catch what was going on until this moment on the bridge. I had to first become an escape artist, then travel to discover the work of Percy Kelly and settle into a life that was conducive to creating art. And along the way, I found the lovely Christophe.

  I was an artist!

  When my beautiful violinist had finished, the salivating sisters chatted with him as he packed away his violin. Bidding them adieu with a tip of his hat, he headed toward the accordion player who had started playing on the other end of the bridge. He stopped and listened for a minute. He tossed a few coins in the hat and disappeared in the crowd.

  I skipped toward home. I had orders to fill.

  Dear Áine,

  Notre Dame turns 850 this year. She’s looking fantastique for her age. How French of her. Paris has grown out from this Gothic masterpiece of gurgling gargoyles and flying buttresses. And the English King, Henry VI, was crowned King of France here (Mon Dieu!), and later Napoleon was crowned Emperor here. Now, Notre Dame peers out to the green waters of the Seine, standing tall for the constant stream of tourists snapping photos from the riverboats. To celebrate her birthday, she’s getting a new set of bells. The originals were melted down to make cannonballs during the French Revolution. The replacements were temporary and always out of tune. I had the chance to see the new bells up close before they were hoisted to the towers. First, they were paraded through Paris on flatbed trucks, then displayed inside on the cathedral floor. Each bell is named after a different saint and tuned to the only original bell, called Emmanuel, which was the bell Quasimodo liked best and would swing from with delight. Despite all this bell hoopla, they are silent in the days leading up to Easter. Apparently, all the church bells of France grow wings and fly to Rome to get a special Easter blessing from the Pope. On Easter Sunday, they return and drop chocolates all over France. So while children in other countries have their eyes on the ground, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Easter Bunny, French children look to the skies for falling chocolate. I, however, head straight to les chocolateries.

  Janice

  25

  Yellow Flip-Flop Summer

  The following summer in Paris felt like the longest I’d had since my yellow flip-flop summer, which was the summer I was too young to work on my uncle’s farm but old enough to stay home and look after my younger sister Carla. I wore yellow flip-flops nearly every day and had tan marks on the top of my feet well into the next February to prove it. Free time was as plentiful as the humidity and mosquitoes. We had full days to ourselves except for an hour in the late morning when Grandma came over to tend the garden we shared in our backyard.

  Grandma wasn’t one for a lot of chitchat when I was a kid. English was her second language. She and my grandfather had immigrated to Canada from Belgium after the war with their three children. Once they settled in, they had three more children, including my mom. I thought about my grandma a lot during those long, easy summer days of writing letters in Paris. Letter-writing was the only way for her to communicate with her family. There were no phones for her first years in Canada. She lived for word from her sisters and mother. In fact, she arranged with the postmaster that if a letter from Belgium had arrived, he would honk twice at the mailbox upon delivery. She would run out right away. If there was no honk, it was just bills and she could collect them later.

  If I had a typical photo of my grandma, it would be of her in the garden. She’d be wearing a long sundress, bent over with her rear end high in the air, pulling out weeds between the onions. That was my grandma.

  She never fully grasped English but she was clear. She had commands for after eating lunch: “Go wash your hands. Don’t touch the walls.” And commands for in the car: “No feets on the seats.” And my favorite command: “Have it to me,” when she would want me to give her something. She never quite mastered when to use the verbs “to have” and “to give.” I never corrected her because it made it easier to imitate her later.

  Though we didn�
�t rattle on together, Grandma and I had a common language in the garden. My childhood homestead was largely self-sustaining, a side effect from those who grew up during the war. We would heat our home with wood my dad cut himself. We made our own maple syrup, canned fruit from our orchard, and made a wide variety of culinary concoctions out of what we grew in our garden.

  Most summer mornings, Grandma would barrel up the driveway to toil in the garden. I’d be sitting on the step petting kittens and ask her, “Flip-flops or running shoes?” Flip-flops were fine to wear in the garden for most jobs except for hoeing weeds, which required running shoes.

  She’d nod hello and say, “Flip-flops. Grab a basket. Beans today.” And we’d head out to the garden to pick beans. Sometimes the row of green beans was eternal. You’d be surprised just how many beans you can get from one plant.

  I’d whine, “Grandma, why did we plant so many beans?”

  She’d reply, “You’ll be happy you did in November. Happier still in February. Keep picking.”

  When I picked carrots, I’d ask, “Grandma, why are some carrots short and some long? Especially when we planted them all at the same time?”

  She’d reply, “Some days are short and some long but they are all the same time. That’s just how it is.”

  Sometimes zucchini would grow huge, literally overnight. “Wow, Grandma. Look at this.” I’d hold up a two-foot-long zucchini. “It’s ginormous!”