Shakey, Resplendent Among the Foulards

My couster (cousin-sister) takes Paris by storm. She brings along the Trader Joe's Candied Pecans, as requested, and also a surprise stow-away in her admirably small luggage: Shakey, the special friend of my little nephew (OK, technically first cousin once removed, for those keeping track). I know my couster enjoys her first ever trip to the City of Lights -- and also a rare vacation from work and parenting duties.

 

But it's Shakey who really seems to savor every moment of his first visit here. While my couster goes around madly shopping for scarves (going home with a total of ten, I believe, and making me feel better about my collection), Shakey simply revels in the silk and light cotton, the rainbow of colors, the swirl of patterns. He is, of course, a bear who appreciates flowing fabrics.

 

Shakey marvels at the views on, outside, and of the Eiffel Tower. For the "outside" photo, we each take a turn holding our arms out of the safety grill while the other photographs and find ourselves gripping for dear life (his, I guess, but it oddly feels like it's for our own).

  

There are other notable tourist attractions, of course, because Shakey is a very cultured, half teddy-bear-top/half blankey-bottom, centaur-like, sophisticated traveler. He's sensitive, too, as you can see by the tender look on my couster's face at the Louvre. Or perhaps that makes her the sensitive one.

  

Shakey also appreciates the simple things in life -- a casual meal at an atmospheric café or sharing a dessert crêpe with a good friend.

 

Lest you think that the only thing we enjoy on my cousin's trip here is running around taking pictures of Shakey, you should know that we also get a big kick out of the lawn-mowing system at the Jardin de Tuileries (no, not a joke; this really is the lawn mowing system here)...

 

 

...and this baba au rhum (rum cake) served to us for dessert. Shakey, who is a purely G-rated actor in this drama, will have nothing to do with this baba au rhum, as nudity and sexual innuendo are not in his contract.

 

How Gauche!

Paris is famously divided in two by the Seine, the so-called Left (gauche) and Right (droit) Banks. But is the gauche really gauche? Well, in some places, of course. But mostly the left bank is the charming home of the Latin Quarter, Sorbonne, Jardin de Louxembourg, Eiffel Tower, Invalides/Napoleon's tomb, Musée d'Orsay, and many of the toniest arrondissements in the city (specifically the 6th and 7th). The right bank has the Louvre, Opéra, Grand Palais, Bastille, Marais, Pompidou, and Jardin de Tuileries and some of the trendiest neighborhoods. Many people support one side or the other quite strongly, but I feel I can be pretty neutral on the Right Bank/Left Bank divide, since we don't live on either: Ile Saint Louis and Ile de la Cité are in the middle of the Seine and, therefore, neither here nor there.

 

Much as I have gone through my life with a mental block confusing oven/stove and dishwasher/washing machine, I have to imagine myself facing west from the tip of Ile de la Cité when I need to remember which is Left Bank, which is Right.

That's Left Bank.........................................................................................................and Right Bank.

 

 

If you're wondering, our meaning of gauche as "awkward" or "tacky" is indeed a reference to left-handedness. Yet the word "right" (in both French and English) means correctness or legal rights. The word "sinister" also comes from the Latin word for left. Poor lefties.

But here's the real problem, at least in my anglophone mind, with all this left-and-right: The way to say "go straight" is "tout droit", which literally means "all right". So if you are told to go à droite, you go right, but if you are told to go tout droit, you go straight. I would think if you went all right -- right after right after right, you'd end up right back where you started, but, as Steve Martin once said, "Boy, those French, they have a different word for everything!"

I've been thinking about this a lot, because Pippa is working on left and right in her class and, as you can see, has a way to go to get these concepts down. She has such difficulties -- in both French and English -- that a part of me wonders if it's some genetic legacy from her paternal grandmother, who was naturally left-handed but forced to become a righty and who, consequently, had right-left dyslexia all her life.

One day Pippa comes home from school and tells me her teacher made a boy change hands while working. Though I try not to be the crazy helicopter American parent, I do feel I have to say something, given the results this practice had on my mother-in-law. I am aware that Pippa is not the most accurate source of information, however, so I gently ask before accusing. And a good thing: her teacher is confused, thinks a moment, then says, "Yes! I did make a little boy change hands to use his scissors. Because he's a lefty, and he was using his left-handed scissors in his right hand. Which is actually a little dangerous." When she sees the look of relief on my face, she laughs and said, "Don't worry. Even in France, we don't do that anymore."

Of course the French wouldn't be that sinister. How gauche of me.


 

Too Gallic, Too Phallic

Yes, it is possible for the notoriously sexual French to go too far, even for French taste. There has been an uproar in France that the posters for the new film, Les Infidèles (The Unfaithful) starring Jean duJardin, have gone too far. This one was deemed too misogynistic and is -- theoretically at least -- being pulled from the kiosks and bus stops around the country.

The tagline in the poster above says "I'm going in to the meeting." It is has been replaced by posters such as these. Why, they're so "prudish," they're downright American!

The posters may soon be down, but there's no eliminating the very Gallic and Phallic nature of Paris. And so, I leave you with the following photo to ponder (taken from the Place de la Concorde: lampposts, Eiffel Tower in distance, and Obelisque):

Ups and Downs

Today, we are finally able to find an open patisserie.  G is like a kid in a candy store, or rather, like a kid in a pastry store.  After much hemming and hawing, she finally chooses a cream puff, but only after we assure her that it will be real cream, and not too sweet, since she is very sophisticated in her dislike of goopy, fake whipped cream products. 

                                (note from G): Back in SF the cream was too sweet for me
 and I did not trust it but now I trust it more.

Rather shockingly, P -- who is the biggest treat eater in our house (well, next to Anthony, who depletes desserts by half and then denies it) -- decides after 6 months of build-up and 3 days of intense pastry-hunting that she wants....a can of orange juice from the grocery store next door.  I find myself in an odd argument where I am trying to convince her to buy something sugary, but she insists her treat will be better because it is orange juice.  In a can.  Evidently, we deprive our children of packaged soft drinks. 

At the Jardin des Tuileries, they are having their annual summer fete, and this means we get to pay 12 euros per adult, and 8 per child, to ride the famous ferris wheel.  The view is priceless, as long as you don't translate 40 euros into dollars.  If you do, then the view is worth approximately $60.  The girls quickly deplete our cash, and most of our retirement savings, in order to go on various rides.  Anthony and I run into somebody we both knew at Princeton here; I have been in the country for about 48 hours so this is twice as long as it took me the last time I was in Paris to run into a friend.

      (note from G): Today at the Louvre, there was a carnival so of course we went

to the carnival and went on: 1 Ferris wheel, 1 round of bungy jumping,

1 water floom and 2 fun houses they were all super fun!!

But certainly, the most memorable part of the day is the very beginning, when G & P spend breakfast clean-up time running up and down the stairs and playing with the elevator, until P comes back up alone and solemnly informs us, "G is stuck in the elevator."  Stuck between floors, G finally gets to fulfill every child's fantasy of pushing the emergency call button.  She is remarkably calm and cheerful, and speaks with the call-button lady in French, nice as can be.  I am waiting at the bottom for the repair guy till Anthony comes down and tells me an elderly lady on the 4th floor (that's floor 5 to you and me) is waiting for the elevator.  I run up to apologize to her in French, only to find out she is not waiting to descend, but rather to chew out a French-speaker for letting our children play in the elevator, which is a no-no.  For obvious reasons.  Well, sure.  We know that now.  In mid scolding, she looks down and says in shock, "Mais Madame!  Vous avez les pieds nus!", "But Madame!  You are bare-footed!"  I point to my outfit and say, "Well, that's because I'm still in my pajamas.  I haven't dressed yet."  She shakes her head in disgust, then turns around and heads back into her apartment.  I had felt pretty guilty about my children breaking the elevator, so I'm quite pleased to find out that it is actually a minor offense when compared to slovenly dressing. 

                    (note from G):   I’m in Paris on a little street in a tiny apartment. Me and Phoebe

                                                               were playing in the elevator so much that I broke the elevator plus I got stuck in it and had to call for help!

 
The elevator is still broken later this afternoon, when we have to move 10 large pieces of luggage from our 6th floor apartment (that's 5th floor to the French) to a friend's office on the opposite side of the city.  Why?  Because it's the only place we could find to store it while we go off for a 2 week vacation to Croatia.  So now that our own children broke the elevator, and we have to haul it down by hand, it's that old lady who gets the last laugh.