The Script Ended

Girl Talk

My apartment is again full of girls. My three daughters who live Stateside all arrived on Thursday and the familiar feel of female hormones is once more in the air. When my husband was still part of our everyday life he used to enjoy showing off his "harem" and regaling his clients with stories of going through life surrounded by 5 women. You could tell by the grin on his face that he did not consider this torture.

Well anyway, today we are still 5 women together but I guess without the man we are no longer anyone's harem. I don't think that MFM is ready to be the head of a harem and besides, I think that position will always rest with the original.......

With her 3 older sisters here I can see that Jane, the youngest, had really become a little "Parisian". The word "little" is used rather ironically because she is by far the tallest of the 4 girls and is quite sophisticated from living in this cutting edge city. I wonder how she will feel after several months in the dorms of her small liberal arts college in the woods that she will attend next fall.?? Life in Paris for a teenager is a dream come true (for them - not necessarily their parents). They can get anywhere by public transportation, go clubbing and buy drinks legally at 16 (and no one cards for ID's here anyway). I have heard many stories of kids raised in Paris who go off to the States for college and end up wanting to get back to Paris as fast as they can after spending months with newly liberated American kids binge drinking and acting stupid with their new found freedom that is totally restrictive by French kids' standards.

It is really fun to be with my grown up daughters. They are all young adults with jobs (of some sort or another) and bills to pay and lives of their own. The cool thing to me is that their lives are all intertwined with each others'. 2 live together with daughter #2's boyfriend and another roommate and the 3rd who is still at University is just blocks away with her own set of house-mates and the kids all make up a big happy and very active family.

But daughter # 4 is not part of this freewheeling group and that makes me kind of sad. She is a bit apart with her own now separate life over here in Paris. And with her 3 older sisters here the birth order hierarchy snaps right back into place. From my current studies in my program I have learned that this birth order issue never goes away! It's effects are felt throughout life. I can see it with my own kids and how Jane continues to try SO hard to distinguish herself from her sisters, and how the oldest naturally expects a certain respect and so on.

Aren't humans funny? We are hard wired to put ourselves in certain boxes and build obstacles for ourselves and develop an identity that places restrictions around some of our own goals and then we have to fight our way through this giant forest of fears and roadblocks or pay a psychologist to help us undo all those years of self defeating construction.

As I watch my own little brood fly the coop and start to build their separate nests I wish that I could just wave the logic wand over their heads and erase whatever limits they are beginning to circle around themselves.

Another example of how youth is wasted on the young. Here I am at 50 finally throwing off miles of barbed wire that I myself put up long ago.......

So along with celebrating our Christmas together here having lots of quality "girl time" with my 4 daughters I also hope to chisel away at any walls that are beginning to go up.

That would be a great Christmas present for mom and daughters both!

Real Frenchmen Iron

Wash and wear is just not done here in Paris. Creases of the pressed variety are definitely in. A little revelation among many I have discovered living in a different culture is the importance the French people place on their laundry. It is a big deal here in 21st century France.

My romantic French boyfriend spends at least 2 evenings per week slaving over his ironing board. I have witnessed him in action - he is a whiz at speed ironing. It really is sort of sexy in a domestic kind of way. He irons almost EVERYTHING - including bath towels and dishcloths. He bears some guilt of being a slacker because he now skips ironing socks and underwear (his mother would never even THINK of such transgressions!)

I have noticed that he is not the only ironing French person I have met. The whole society seems to iron lots more than we Americans do - at least where I come from. There actually are some practical reasons behind this ubiquitous practice. For one thing dryers are still relatively uncommon. MFM considers them bad for his clothes (he probably has a point). But when you dry a towel for example by hanging it, it dries into a scratchy and stiff piece of sandpaper - hardly the fluffy blanket of warmth you want to reach for as you step out of the shower. So, you iron it.  Though other reasons, at least for me, make little sense. Dishcloths for one. I just do not see the point in ironing something that you are immediately going to get all wet and wrinkled with the pot and pans from dinner.

MFM sees it another way. It is  simply part of taking care of the house properly. He irons all his t-shirts and his son's too. He would never even think of putting on a wrinkled t-shirt even to just wear to bed. My California casual sensibility towards such things is definitely frowned upon. It just proves to him that we Americans were not raised properly!

I have learned that the domestic arts, if you want to call them so, have not been lost in France. This really is part of the country's charm. It would never do to set a French table with wrinkled linens - it would almost make the food taste bad. And to tell you the truth, there is something to a proper table with nicely pressed napkins that demands respect for the tradition of sharing a meal a famille. Not such a bad thing.

I have to laugh when I remember arriving at a house in Provence that we rented a couple summers ago. The agent was showing me around and he came to the laundry room. He proudly displayed the fully equipped facilities with 2 washing machines (washing machines in France can be minuscule in size). I searched the room for the dryer. Isn't there a dryer? I inquired. Of course Madam! It is right over here......Voila......and he unfolded a plastic rack. Une grande dryer -  Big American style. He was so proud of the 5 foot tall rack, I didn't have the heart to complain.

So in France I am beginning to iron more than I ever have in my life. I am still not even close to the standard set by MFM. But just like the man who refuses to learn how to cook so he will always be served - I may plead ineptitude for similar reasons....hey if it works, why not?

ho ho ho in Paris

I was at my book group Tuesday night and we got to talking about Christmas celebration styles. My group is quite international - we are French, Lebanese, Italian, American, British, Croatian, German, Persian, and other nationalities that I am probably forgetting at the moment. I started telling the group about our Christmas habits in the San Diego suburbs. They were astounded - even the other Americans, though they are from the East Coast and might as well be from a different country.

Apparently we go allllll the way overboard out West. Frankly I can see what they mean, especially now that I am entering my third Parisian Christmas season and live a different holiday experience here. It is December 12th today and I just bought my first present and have yet to decorate, buy a tree,or think about cards (and promptly dis-card that idea!). Truth is that if I was still in San Diego I would be in a complete state of panic right now - AND suffering immeasurable guilt at being such a Christmas loser for being as unprepared as I am today.

The mouths of the members of my book group were agape as I told them about hiring Christmas light hangers to work Thanksgiving weekend to drape our very tall houses and very tall trees in proper white lights.

"There is such a thing as PROFESSIONAL Christmas light hangers for regular houses?" they all asked incredulously.

Yes, sad but true. On or around November 28 those guys are booked solid in my old neighborhood. They were shocked with another crazy habit of so many of my friends back home which is to have more than one Christmas tree in their house. Not a couple little baby trees and one big main one - no - 2 or more big trees. This has always struck me as vaguely sacrilegious. Kind of like more than one Santa Claus in a room full of waiting children. You kind of have to keep up the illusion that He exists by having only one guy present at a time. Same with a tree. It's supposed to be a magical thing in a home and somehow having more than one takes away some of that magic. Besides Santa could become confused. Afterall He's got to put all the presents under the REAL tree doesn't he?

I don't know, maybe it was just me, but somehow amongst all that Christmas "magic" the fun went out of it. There was just too much stress and pressure to make everything so damn "magical".

Well, in Paris, things are different. Oh, the department stores are still having their promotions just like in the US and shoppers can be seen on the streets toting packages and the stores are open late and - get this - even on Sundays! (That is a big deal in France.) But somehow it is different too. For one thing, no one I know has decorated for Christmas yet and the first real Christmas party we are invited to is this weekend, in San Diego we would be on our 3rd party weekend I think. In fact, the French find it quite odd that we Anglo's have Christmas parties at all. For them, Christmas is a family holiday, akin to our Thanksgiving, and is mostly celebrated in private. Lots of French businesses have their "Christmas Parties" after January 1st and French families send out Happy New Year's cards not Christmas cards and ONLY to people they do not see during the year. And the idea of a Christmas letter??.........Mon Dieu..jamais, never!

All in all, at least so far, Christmas is relatively stress free from what I can see in France. Of course we are in the Crise (crisis) just like the rest of the world so there is talk of a shorter list of gifts for the family this year amongst everyone but I am pretty certain that the gift lists here in France were always shorter and more reasonable than the ones we are used to giving back home and I was as guilty as the next back there.

My other 3 daughters arrive from the States next week to join Jane and me and what I am planning is lots big meals for the 5 of us plus some "meeting the boyfriend (this time mom's!) and his kids" get togethers and decorating with a mini tree because all of my decorations are back in storage in San Diego along with the rest of the  stuff from my former life and maybe having a fire in the fireplace. I am learning lots of things living as a foreigner over here and as far as Christmas goes the French are teaching me that there IS another way.

 

eating bunnies

I have been eating a lot of rabbit lately. Now that I have been living in France for going on three years, its funny to me that there are still many people who feel squeamish at the thought of eating rabbit. French people think that we Americans are so weird to be weird about it. I must admit that you need to consider the source. The French are not squeamish about eating hardly anything. I just read a recipe yesterday in one of my French cookbooks that gave a thorough explanation of how to collect a bucketful of garden snails and prepare them for eating. Coming from San Diego where you couldn't run across a damp lawn at dawn barefoot without murdering scores of the little creatures and coating the soles of your feet in slime - happily collecting these garden eating pests for the dinner table just does not get my stomach rumbling in anticipation. For my French neighbors though, a bucket of slithering snails must be akin to lighting the charcoal for a BBQ.

Can't get there from here. But- eating the easter bunny has not proved to be a problem. (I do NOT think of my lapin holding a basket of chocolate eggs when I prepare him for the pot!)

Last Wednesday I taught another one of my cuisine courses and we did a rabbit. We cut him up (head mercifully is not eaten but does come attached from the boucherie). As I described in a post written about a year ago while I was in cooking school at Le Cordon Bleu, for me there is something strangely empowering about taking a whole skinned rabbit and getting him ready to fit into a pot to become a scrumptious dinner. I was hoping to pass on the same new confidence to the ladies attending my class. Cutting up a rabbit is actually far easier than cutting a chicken to pieces. I think that I was able to get everyone to relax over the operation - especially after Mr Rabbit's head got chopped off and removed out of sight. Though most were relieved to hear that the butcher will do the dirty work for you if you ask. Obviously not everyone needs this particular thrill in their lives.

After cutting up the rabbit we cooked him in a wonderful melange of vegetables and prunes and the result was a succulent dish that I think won over any lingering doubters in the rabbit eating department. Offering these cuisine classes has turned out to be one of the best pleasures of my life in Paris. They combine most all the elements I like best about life in Paris and actually almost anywhere. These happen to be in no particular order - cooking, sharing stories, laughing with new and old friends, yummy food, involving conversation, good wine, teaching fun stuff and enjoying the glow of giving people a nice time.

Sharing the discovery of French cuisine magnifies its pleasure. I am still not sure about the garden snails though - EVEN if they are doused in garlic and butter.

mental recession

I just read an Op-Ed in the New York Times on-line that used this expression - Mental Recession. This is so descriptive! It captures how I feel about what is going on in the economic world today. Of course there are real signs of a recession everywhere - falling house prices, rising unemployment, particularly for elephant organizations like the US car makers, dried up credit markets (I wonder if all those credit card offers have stopped clogging US mailboxes back in the States?), etc. But the real problem is how people FEEL. Because if people feel insecure, they stop doing things that naturally keep the economy going, defined today as buying stuff. Every time some newspaper or blaring 24 hour news channel trumpets another round of doom-sayer speculation, more people hunker down in their homes and hold on to their pennies. My oldest daughter recounted to me last week how when Washington Mutual failed and was taken over by JP Morgan a few weeks ago, she and daughter #2 considered rushing to their local branch to quickly withdraw their combined deposits of $200 - to save it "just in case" under their mattresses. Such thinking is not good when multiplied by 300 million or so.

I explained to them that for news channels - no bad news is bad news - for THEIR business at least. Never mind how the rest of the world collapses under the weight of depression and the pharmacies run dangerously low on Prozac supplies. The news media continues to spread doom and gloom because it apparently sells advertising space. How's that for cynicism?

But think about it for a moment - what's so bad about slowing down mindless consumption? It is commonly acknowledged to not bring true happiness or satisfaction anyway. Now this doesn't mean that there isn't still some things seriously wrong with our financial system. But as the article in the NY Times went on to say - the worldwide economy needs time to reset to a new level. For me, this could mean that the health of our economy can lower its dependence on the number of shoppers at the malls buying more stuff to fill over-sized houses with, to maintain its vigor.

Gee - what could we do with our time instead? That is a big question and one that needs to also help cure our economic woes too. But as is generally acknowledged, the human brain has a vast capacity to adapt and create - and the entrepreneurial climate in the US is one of the best stages on which to foster this creativity to bring about the next big thing - or things.

France, as I suspect much of Europe, does not rely so much on shopping for entertainment and therefor economic health (I could be wrong, this is just a personal observation). England being the exception judging from what I read in the London Times on-line (plenty of shoppers and spenders up there). Ironically - the rest of the world seems to rely on the Americans and their spending habits to maintain the world's fiscal health. While US shoppers are clogging parking lots on the weekend, we in Paris are eating with friends and family and going for walks. There is lots more time available for leisure activities if you stay out of the stores.

I can hear the economists now - But that is not good for the economy!

Then we are just going to need to change a few things - starting with our mental recession. Didn't somebody once say -Its not a problem, its an opportunity.