Sharon Harrigan

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Belly Up!

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And now for a break in our regular Paris programming for a word on women’s vanity. Or, more specifically, my own.

I’ve become obsessed with my belly. I measure it, I squeeze it, I crunch it. This is the definition of navel-gazing, isn’t it? Could I become one of those narcissistic people we all love to hate?

Maybe my monomania is caused by a spate of my friends posing in bikinis on Facebook. Maybe I’m worried about getting old. You would be, too, if you spent as much time as I do, lately, writing about death.

I hate diets. Only once in my life have I lost weight, and that was by accident. When people asked me my trick, I said, “It’s the my-divorce-is-so-stressful my-stomach-is-filled-with-acid-so-I-can’t-possibly-eat-a-thing diet. I recommend you avoid it at all costs.” My boss worried and asked, “Are we literally working you to the bone?” A friend of mine went through a similar involuntary weight drop when her daughter had a health scare. I gained all my weight back, as many women do, during pregnancy.

The one diet I remember going on was the cabbage soup diet. Years ago, all the female editors in my department went on it at the same time. Some of them lost fifteen pounds in two weeks and vowed to repeat the experience every year. I became violently ill the second day and vowed to never go on a diet again. And I haven’t. Until now.

When my aunt told me I don’t need a diet, I lied and said I’m concerned only about my health. When my husband told me he thinks my belly is cute, I dismissed him with a wave of the hand. Then he reminded me that when my belly flattens, so will my chest, and I had to admit he was right.  Some women, I realize, don’t have to choose either no curves or all curves, but I do. Genetics, I guess.

I think I have a solution. I’ll put on my bikini and photograph myself head to ribs now. In a few months, with my belly (and also, I fear, my chest) gone, I’ll snap the other half of the picture, ribs to toes. One neat splice and voila! I’ll post my top and bottom together, and then . . . what? Why would I want to do that?

Or maybe I’ll just have a sandwich. All this talk about slicing and dicing is making me hungry.

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Things I Learned from France (or Didn’t)

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I’ve been back in the U.S. for a few weeks. Does the “Paris effect” last? My friend K., who also just returned, said she felt like the year disappeared, as if it were “all a (very pleasant) dream.”

I told myself, though, that what I had going on with Paris wasn’t just a fling. This was a long-term relationship, even if it turned long-distance. I had experienced (multiple!) epiphanies whose transformative effects would not just disappear like cigarette smoke.

Right? Time for a reality check.

Grooming: Before I left the house in Paris, even if it was just to buy the morning baguette or walk a block to the gym, I put on clean, fitted, nonathletic clothes and shoes, brushed my hair, applied make-up, and sprayed perfume. Every time I walked down the stairs, I glossed and rouged my lips. I wouldn’t have thought of showing my face even to strangers without at least this minimal preparation, no more than I would have stepped out naked.

But here? I tried. When I lived in New York City, I had high standards, too, but there’s something about getting in a car that makes me feel invisible.

I started to slip in California, visiting my in-laws. They live in a beach town, and we all piled into the car in our swimsuits then realized on the way back we needed coffee beans. So we sat at Peet’s in our cover-ups, barely covered up. Not that we were the only ones. Then, the other day my son wanted to make eggs for breakfast and we didn’t have any. I was in the middle of my Pilates work-out, but I said, “Sure, I’ll just zip to CVS” in my yoga pants and sneakers. I don’t put on make-up to meet my daughter’s bus. Maybe you’ll have more sympathy for me if I tell you it arrives at 7:09 in the morning? Who’s going to see me, anyway? One of the other moms comes in the overalls she gardens in. Once she arrived in pajamas.

Food: Cheese comes after dinner, not before. Nothing is more rich, delicious, and decadent than a pungent, almost liquified Camembert, so it makes sense to treat it as dessert. This new (for me) concept I have embraced. No snacks between meals, except for the kids’ after-school gouter: I’m down with that, too.  Meals should be eaten slowly, at a table, like a sacred ritual. Mostly I do that. Except yesterday, when I drove my son to college, we were running so late we stopped at the supermarket to buy sandwiches to eat in the car. (Everything about that last sentence shows my standards have plummeted, I know.) Maybe you can blame my son: I was also with him when I bought a coffee to go. (Why do I love coffee to go so much? Is it pretentious to say it feels Proustian to me?)  And then I invited my friend H. for dinner at the scandalously early hour of 6, asking her not to tell anybody. (But now everybody knows.)

Manners: I was completely charmed by the way people address each other as “Madame” or “Monsieur” in France. I vowed I would translate this custom in Virginia, where it’s just Southern enough to use “Ma’am” and “Sir.” But I can’t do it. “Ma’am” somehow sounds too matronly and The Help-ish. “Sir” makes me feel like I’m in the Army.

I try to be more polite to shopkeepers here, as I was in Paris, always greeting them when I enter or leave and bantering a little. This custom occasionally means that a five-minute transaction takes twenty, as when my butcher gave me a manifesto about liver and the cashier at J.C. Penney took my comment about flip-flops as an invitation to tell me about visiting her cousin in rehab while her flip-flops pinched her toes. But at least, in the U.S. when I nod to these strangers, I really do understand what they’re talking about.

What’s my score? Depends how many points I get for The Cheese Lesson. I think that trumps everything.

No? Then maybe I still need more experience in Paris. Is it time to go back yet?

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Push Ups

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With one week left in Paris, you’d think I would have run out of time to have transformative or embarrassing experiences. I managed to have both, thanks to this bra.

My daughter was at a sleepaway camp for six days. My older son was at camp, too, working as a counselor. My husband James and I were alone in Paris for the first time since our honeymoon eleven years ago. It was the last night of what my friend D jokingly called our “second honeymoon” when I called James at his office and asked if he wanted to meet me at Etam to pick out lingerie. He leapt at the chance.

James had been nudging me since we arrived in Paris a year ago buy new underwear, bras, and nighties. The entire city, with its beautiful window displays of nearly naked women and gigantic ads in the metro of scantily clad babes, had been prodding me, it sometimes seemed. I’m frugal and modest. I resisted. Until now.

James seemed to enjoy rifling through the silky fabrics. He chose a super-short nightgown and two bras. One, I realized only after I tried it on, was a push-up. It pushed way up. It pushed out, too. It had a mind of its own.

At dinner James said, “I had no idea how much difference a bra could make.” He seemed both impressed and disillusioned. All the seemingly well-endowed women on the streets of Paris might just be the beneficiaries of this marvelous technology, he mused. (But now, so was I.)

Some things in life we have to be born with. Others we can acquire, and it’s not really cheating. This is a simple, useful lesson it’s taken me a year (or perhaps my whole lifetime) to learn. That’s the transformative part of my Parisian lingerie experience.

Here’s the embarrassing part. The next day, James and I took the train to pick up our daughter Ella from camp. I had hastily thrown on a button-up V-neck blouse that I had worn many times before without incident. This time, my push-up bra pushed so much that the top button kept coming undone, revealing a lot more about myself than I wanted to show to Ella’s camp counselors and her new camp friends and their families. I would have killed for a safety pin.

When I reunited with Ella, she hugged me and said, “Your bra is showing.”  

The director of her camp, a 20-something guy with a goatee and a hoodie, whom I had just been chatting with, smiled at me as I said, “oops” and quickly buttoned up.

“It’s OK,” Ella said. “It’s a pretty one. Very sexy.”

I’m probably not the only person who has a recurring nightmare of being in my underwear when everyone else is clothed. It may be a symbol of my secret worry of revealing too much, in general, about myself.

Next time my buttons burst, I’ll try to remember the saleswoman at Etam, who was making no effort to hide her hot-pink bra behind her almost-transparent blouse. I’m still too shy to dare something like that, even in my dreams. But I’m going home a little more “push”-y than I was before.

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Bon Courage

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It’s happening. Our time is Paris is about to expire. We will be here for another month, but people are starting to leave for summer trips. I can no longer pretend that we won’t have to say good-bye.

The person I will miss the most is my friend G. The other day, another friend, S., complimented my French, and I told her I have G. to thank. When I arrived here, my French was functional, grammatical, perfectly acceptable. But I was scared to open my mouth. I didn’t want to appear foolish by making mistakes.

Now I speak without fear. Even though G.’s English is impeccable, we speak French almost exclusively, even on the phone (which is the hardest), even with street noise in the background. She is patient and encouraging and puts me at ease.

Sure I made mistakes. G. gently corrected my dipthongs and gender mix-ups, taught me subtleties of slang, and explained cultural enigmas. Thanks to her, I now put my bread on the table instead of my plate and choose French chocolate (which has more cocoa versus butter) instead of Belgian. She’s explained the intricacies of French law, recommended French novels, baked me apple pies and introduced me to the joys of raclette, which is much better than fondue.

She has also made me realize that my inferiority complex is silly. So what if I have an American accent, as long as people can understand me? I’ve always considered French accents in English charming. So maybe my English accent isn’t as ugly as I thought.

I was surprised when G. told me that when she lived in America, she was concerned about making cultural gaffes, too. She even had a handbook for French expats on how to fit in in America. It hadn’t occurred to me that cultural understanding is a two-way street, that even French people can feel out of place and afraid of appearing foolish when they’re away from home and don’t understand the rules.

S. told me, “One thing you don’t mention in your blog is that being an American in France makes you exotic in a positive way. Different can also mean interesting.” She’s right, of course. We’re not still in middle school, yearning above all else to just blend in.

When I return to America, I will be a little bit braver. I’ll stop worrying about messing up. I’ll dare to stand out, even when I don’t need to.

Wish me bon courage. It’s a phrase that means both “good luck” but also “I hope you will have the courage to do what you need to.” Thanks to this year in France, thanks to my hugely warm and welcoming guide and friend, I think I will.

 

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Bad Words

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The plumbing in our building in Paris had to be upgraded, and the coop president asked me to stay with Marek, the plumber, while he worked in our apartment. She didn’t trust him to be left alone. “It’s too tempting,” she said. I wondered what she thought we had that he might steal.

I did what I always do when I invite people into my house. I offered him coffee. Warm milk with two sugars. We sat at the table and sipped. And talked till our cups were empty.

Both of us had passable French. He spoke no English, I spoke no Polish. I felt with him the kind of solidarity I share with my Chinese-born greengrocer. We converse imperfectly, smiling a little as if to say, It’s kind of fun, isn’t it? Pretending we speak French?

Marek told me he’s from Poland but has lived in France for eight years. He pulled out his cell and showed me a map of the world (in Polish) and pinpointed his hometown. “You’re English?” he asked.

“American.”

“Really?” Suddenly he was fascinated. “That’s fantasic.”

“You’ve been to the U.S.?”

“No,” he said. “But I LOVE American TV.”

I asked where he lived in Paris and he told me right near Euro Disney. He has an annual pass and takes his daughter there all the time. She’s three. Did I want to see a picture? Of course. She’s adorable, holding a stuffed bear bigger than she is.

I took refuge in my office and tried to work through the jack hammer noise. Then I heard a crash and dashed toward the sound. “Qu-est ce qui se passe?” I asked. What’s going on? I was, after all, supposed to be keeping an eye on him.

The vibrations had caused one of the framed posters to fall off the wall, and Marek and I both looked toward the smashed glass.

Marek put up his hands. Grinned sheepishly. Then said the only English he seemed to know: The F word.

I don’t think he meant to say something that strong. Despite our coffee confidences, we didn’t know each other that well.

When I told this story to my teenage son, he said, “The guy’s been watching too much HBO.”

It makes me laugh to think of Marek’s view of America through television eyes. Which show does he think reflects my life? Mad Men? The Sopranos? Breaking Bad?