She’d reply, “Don’t get too excited. Bigger zucchinis aren’t as good as the smaller ones.” I didn’t understand this until much later in life.
Grandma would explain that some crops were ready to harvest early for a reason, like radishes, which were always ready first even if you pretty much ignored them. “Radishes come up first so you have strength for the growing season. As the season goes by, you get stronger and stronger so you can carry the heavy pumpkins, which are the last to harvest.”
“Grandma! You’re just joking.”
“See if I’m right. See if the radishes come up first and the pumpkins come up last. Then you tell me why that is. God doesn’t make mistakes.”
Once we had weeded what needed weeding and picked what needed picking, we went to the kitchen to prepare it for winter. I would cut this and that and have it to her. She would blanch this and that. I’d carry the jars of tasty vittles down to the cellar. And she was right about those beans. I was always glad to have them in November and especially glad in February.
One year, right before I left for university, Grandma departed this life. But not until after pumpkin harvest.
I can’t even believe this life I had. It seemed like so much work back then. But now, it all seems charming. Now when I dream of my future, it includes a garden. Perhaps someday, I will be the one in a sundress, bent over with my rear end in the air, pulling out the weeds between the onions.
“Grandma, why is this row of beans so crooked?”
“So I can fit more plants in it. Keep picking.”
By the end of summer in Paris, the markets were flooded with fruits and vegetables. Each Sunday, I walked to the market at Place Monge with Melanie, who by now had become one of my closest friends in Paris. We hardly spoke, knowing what was coming: natas for breakfast. Upon arrival at the market, we beelined for our favorite stall and ordered two of these famous vanilla-custard-filled tartlets from Portugal to eat en place. With our eyes closed, standing one step out of line, we were transported far away to a culinary paradise where clouds were made of puff pastry.
When we opened our eyes, we scanned the market. We always started at the vegetable guy who smiled wide on approach, I suspect because when I first met him, I started talking with him in the informal Tu form rather than the more appropriate Vous form reserved for supervisors, strangers, and vegetable salesmen. He smiled and winked. Since I talked with Christophe in the Tu form, I was constantly making politeness mistakes with others. But in this case, the mistake was in my favor as the vegetable guy usually handed me a few berries to taste while I picked out les légumes for the week.
When I first met Melanie, I didn’t realize the prize I was getting. Upon further observation, I saw that she was a shiny bauble. She had big curls that bounced as she walked, catching the glance of salivating men everywhere. Her skin had a creamy glow, as if it was lit from within like a delicate parchment lampshade. She was exactly my height, so when we kissed bonjour on each cheek, we had, at times, slammed cheekbones.
The olive guy nearly fell over when we arrived at his booth. He clutched his chest in mock heartache. He then scooped Melanie’s black olives before she could even ask for them, preferring instead to use their precious little time together to ask her out yet again. She laughed and politely declined encore. He clutched his chest encore. On occasion, when I went to the market without her, he berated me with questions about where she might be spending her time when so very clearly she should be at the market buying olives and allowing him the pleasure of beholding her glowing visage.
Over at another cheese booth was a young red-headed student who practiced his English with me while I practiced my French with him. I tried to ask questions in French. He politely corrected me and answered me in English, after which I politely corrected him. For months, I enamored my taste buds with chèvre, the tangy rounds of goat cheese. They ranged from stinky to very stinky. As my French improved, I could ask him more questions about more cheeses. Eventually, we started talking about the harder cheeses and especially the delicious cream-colored bricks of comté. One day I hope to make it further in my language skills to ask about the mysteries of the Roqueforts, marbled with various shades of blue.
Our last stop at the market was the flower guy, who wrapped our baton bouquets in waxy brown paper. We hauled our load back to la rue where we stopped at the Tourn’Bride café for a coffee. Sitting at the side of the bar so we could store our treasures along the wall, I ordered a crème, “Mais pas beaucoup de crème,” marveling when it arrived in my preferred shade of camel.
Next stop was the boulangerie, where we stood in a line thirty people long. Everyone seemed content to wait and watch, and I understood why. The bustling market street came alive on Sundays. A horn band played on the corner. Children danced as parents looked on, leaning on carts and soaking up sunshine. The beggars slouched more dramatically in an attempt to relieve people of their small change, couples walked arm in arm, with one of them holding a basket of vegetables. A basket! A tour group partook in a tasting at the fromagerie, and I cocked my ear to eavesdrop. At another café sat two well-coifed men in designer jeans and shiny shoes, accessorized with a matching set of droopy-lipped bulldogs who lapped up crumbs under the table. Church bells rang. Pigeons scattered.
Once at the front of the line, I ordered my baguette and an escargot, a donut shaped like a snail and speckled with raisins. I delivered it to Christophe who had a line of his own at his rotisserie. I thanked him for the flowers, but I said it loudly for the old ladies to hear, “Merci pour les fleurs, mon amour!” He always left me money on the market mornings to go pick out flowers for myself. He always leaned down from his perch and kissed me. The old ladies always swooned, clutching their hearts. “Avec plaisir, my darling,” he would say. He winked and turned to the next customer in line.
Balancing the baguettes and bouquets, I bid Melanie adieu with a careful kiss on each cheek and headed home. I walked toward my door and heard the singing troupe collecting near the fountain to begin their repertoire. I dialed the code to my building and walked through the courtyard where I noticed the ferns had fully unfurled in the garden.
I carefully climbed the round staircase to my apartment. It was narrow and I had long-stemmed flowers. I opened my door, stepped into my kitchen, and sighed. This apartment never got bigger, but for now I could open the windows to the breeze. Sometimes I yearned for a house in the country with a yard and bedrooms big enough to have bedside tables, a bathroom with a tub, and a view of a lake. I looked out at my ferns, my geraniums, and the brick wall. For now, this was doable.
I unloaded my groceries and began dicing vegetables for soup. I had become an accomplished cook here in Paris, thanks partly due to creating days where I made time for it, partly by my desire to participate in market life rather than stand at the periphery as so many hotel-bound tourists do, and partly because I loved my cast-iron-Dutch-oven-pot-thing.
The day I walked this heavy-as-heck pot home, I realized my one-suitcase nomadic days were officially over. There is that moment in a girl’s life when she makes the Dutch oven purchase. Another era hath begun. And this era hath a domestic tone. Surprisingly, I didn’t mind. I actually loved this domestic aspect of myself that was emerging. As I diced vegetables, I would think back to my advertising career. I paid a lot of money to have someone else cut my vegetables. Here in Paris, it was a surprising pleasure to do it myself. And, of course, in Paris, I had the time. Sweet, rich, wonderful time to cut my own vegetables.
Bit by bit, I learned the language of the kitchen, and it occurred to me that this was how to learn a foreign language too. I proceeded to be gentle with learning to speak and to treat my new words like delicious morsels rather than trying to get something accomplished quickly and not really enjoying the process. I wish I would have known this in my old corporate job. I wish I could have known to sit in my office, look at the piles of folders, and take my t
ime with each one rather than rush through them all. Why did I feel the need to go at the pile of folders like I was on a game show and the clock was running? The faster I would go, the more folders they would give me. And I’d get paid the same anyway. Why all the frantic days? Why the boasting about being either busy or tired but never about being happy? Oh, that old, busy, overwhelmed version of myself. I wish I could go back and tell her to calm down, slow down, and find joy in the moment. Was it me being clueless or was I steeped in an environment addicted to busy and tired? In Paris, I was in an environment that worshipped slow and delicious. And quickly, slow was becoming my preferred mode.
One day in the kitchen of my Paris flat, as my vegetable soup was simmering and I was washing a coffee cup, those summer days with my grandma came rushing back. I felt as if no time had passed. The years of corporate life in between were folded and compacted instantly into a few concise chapters rather than the long years of stress they actually were. And that’s how I decided they would live in my mind for now on.
After the dishes were done and the soup was finished, I donned my flats and walked to the park across the street next to the church to sit in the sun. I noticed that the tops of my feet were getting quite bronzé.
Dear Áine,
I spent the day meandering through one of Paris’s flea markets. When you’re an old country like France, a lot of stuff piles up. Things are passed down through the generations or are found after years of hibernation in dresser drawers and boxes in the attic. So I was not surprised to come across a pile of postcards from the turn of the century. After purchasing a stack, I zipped off to Angelina’s café to take a closer look at my new acquisition.
Angelina’s serves the world’s finest hot chocolate. It’s so thick that I dare not ask the ingredients. My heart skips a beat just imagining the amount of cream, sugar, and chocolate it takes to make something this heavenly. The powdered concoctions of my youth should hang their heads in shame. This hot chocolate trumps them all!
Upon closer inspection of my postcards, I noticed many from a Monsieur Deluchar to a Mademoiselle Martinazo. They were innocent in their messages—happy birthdays and happy new years—but the volume of postcards made me wonder if Monsieur Deluchar had a big ol’ crush on our mademoiselle. Was every best wish really a restrained unrequited love note? Did he agonize over his choice of postcards? Hope they conveyed a secret message of love that could never be? For the sake of my romantic heart, I hope so. My imagination spilled over with delicious possibilities. Looking back, I wonder if I was simply drunk in love with my hot chocolate.
Adoringly,
Janice
26
Nightmares…Les Cauchemars
Christophe shook me awake.
“Quoi?” I asked. What?
“Cauchemar?”
“Quoi?” I asked again.
“You know…dream…bad.”
Yes. Dream. Bad. The recurring nightmare. There were slight variations but the meaning was the same. I was back in California and being offered another advertising job, but this time at quadruple the pay and with all my favorite coworkers. I thought to myself that taking this job would be a smart financial move. Suze Orman would approve. She would remind me that instead of making money during my big money-making years and contributing to my IRA, I was in Paris spending 4 euro on chai tea lattes. When converted into U.S. dollars, I was rockin’ a $6 latte. Suze would not approve of this.
In the dream, Suze told me to take the job. I was considering it. Not because I wanted it, but because it would be a smart move financially. That Suze had me frazzled. If I took the job, I’d have to haul myself and my Polish Frenchman back to California and hope it would be all like The Alchemist or Wizard of Oz happy-ending-journey-worth-it.
In the dream, I walked through the halls of the advertising agency and saw my favorite studio people (Gregg! Marcus!), my favorite IT guys (Oscar! Nilesh!), account people (Joanna! Becca! Mason!), and co-conspirators—the Creatives (Akemi! Jan!). The list went on. Every person I’ve ever adored during office life was there waiting for me.
I sat in on a meeting. My gut started to do that weird thing it always did in meetings. The baseline stress building back up again along the back walls of my stomach. I started to sweat and wondered about the decisions I made that led me back here. How did this happen?
As everyone else talked about campaigns, I started to think about IKEA. If I moved back here, I’d have to get a lot of stuff at IKEA because I’d start with zero household items. I was not going to schlep my ladle from Paris. My cast-iron Dutch oven treasure would have to stay in Paris too. It was too heavy.
They kept talking about budgets and timing of the campaign. I started wondering how I would fit the IKEA load into the car. Oh gawd! I sold my car! I would have to buy another car and get wrangled back into that hot mess of car payments, insurance, gas, car washes, and the bait-and-switch negotiations at EZ Lube.
The meeting ended and a group lunch was suggested. Group lunches always filled me with anxiety. Someone always ordered more. Someone always ordered less. The bill was always split evenly. And resentment hung in the air as we would drive back to the office clown-car style.
It occurred to me that I always had lunch with Christophe in Paris. Didn’t I? Or was that a dream? Did Paris happen? I thought I lived in Paris but now I’m not sure. Maybe I just dreamed up a life in France like Demi Moore in Passion of Mind.
And that’s when I woke up in Paris next to Christophe, relieved that I didn’t have to decide on any job, relocation, IKEA, EZ Lube, or group lunch. I was here in Paris. I could breathe again, and I did. I yawned into a full-body stretch, hopped out of bed, and skipped off to the kitchen to make him coffee for a change. And I applauded myself.
These dreams came with more frequency as time wore on, and I knew why. I’d have to leave Paris and go back to Toronto to get a more substantial visa if I was planning to live in France.
On the day I said good-bye to Christophe, he told me not to walk by the butcher shop on my way to the airport. He couldn’t handle it.
Back in Toronto, I went straight to the French embassy to begin the paperwork for my new French visa. I then hopscotched between my mom’s house and sister’s house in the weeks I waited for the visa to be approved. Each day, Christophe called. Each day, he told me he loved me and was waiting for me to return. Each day, he would ask if the visa had arrived.
I nearly mowed down the deliveryman as he came up the driveway with my visa. Soon I was back on a plane heading for Paris. When I arrived, Christophe was at work. I walked up to him with my suitcase bumping along the cobblestones behind me. He stepped off his platform, leaned down, and gave me the biggest, best movie kiss of my life. Right there on the street! The people at the café across the street cheered. And me? I nearly cried. I never wanted to leave his side again.
So I could float for a while. No more paperwork. I could just explore, paint letters, and make sweet love to my blue-eyed dreamboat.
Back when the lady at the embassy accepted my visa application, she gave me a form with some signatures and stamps. “Send this in as soon as you get to France,” she said. And she said it in English because it was important. So upon my arrival in Paris, I sent in the form and figured life moved on. Oh no. No, no. Non.
I soon received papers in the mail stating that I was to show up for my next visa appointment. What the? But this time, I was to pay 340 euro online beforehand and print out the receipt. Now, it is unpleasant when I know a bill is coming, but it is really unpleasant when it sneaks up like that. In addition to the proof-of-payment receipt, I was to show up at the visa appointment with a slew of other paperwork. So my time of relaxing and painting became a time of gathering and translating.
On the appointment day, I was herded with the rest of the crowd, who I soon learned had the same appointment time as myself, into a large room with many doors.
There was an American girl in front of me, a New Zealand girl behind me, and a bilingual guy from Montreal behind her. Together, we formed our French Visa Office Alliance.
In the first room, a lady looked at our paperwork one by one and told each of us that the 340-euro fee we had paid online had increased 9 euros, so we must now go to the Tabac shop around the corner and purchase a 9-euro stamp. If this sounds confusing and inefficient, you’re following. It WAS confusing and inefficient.
Lucky for me and my new alliance, I had spotted the Tabac shop on my way into the building, so despite not understanding her instructions (what word is left and what is right?), I still knew where to go. Off we went. Ten minutes later, we returned to the lady who ushered us into yellow chairs along with the rest of the parade of stamp holders.
One by one, we were called into the room of blue chairs where we sat and waited. One person at a time was called into Blue Door #1 and came out of Blue Door #2 a few minutes later and was ushered into Blue Door #3. This person soon came out of Blue Door #3 to wait until a nurse came out of Blue Door #4 with an envelope and handed it to the doctor who invited the person through Blue Door #5. From there, each person was taken back to the blue chairs to wait until being called back to the original yellow chairs to wait until called through White Door #1.
Confused? Exactly. Imagine this game in another language.
No one knew what was going on behind any of those doors because no one had been told—and if they were told, they were told in French, and 95 percent of us didn’t speak French because we had all just arrived in Paris. Luckily I had the bilingual Montreal dude in my alliance and asked him questions whenever he was released from a door. Then I conveyed his information to one of the girls who came out of another door, who passed it onto the next girl if I was behind one of the blue doors. The whole room had ears perked on our little alliance of English-speaking smarty-pantses.
Paris Letters Page 15