Sharon Harrigan

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Missing Mint Juleps

mint julep

A couple days ago, at dinner, we went around the table, taking turns naming all the things we miss about Charlottesville. English. Our yard. The walk to school. Our vegetable garden. The Downtown Mall. Fridays After Five. WriterHouse. Friends who live so close.

Then we read the blog post I wrote before we came to Paris, “Things I Will Miss About Charlottesville.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, while eating breakfast, Ella, my (just-turned-ten-year-old) daughter, watched a New York Times video about how to make Southern fried chicken.

“I’m going to make something for you,” she said, shooing me out of the kitchen. Two minutes later, she handed me a cold drink of muddled mint and sugar. “A mint julep,” I said. “I miss those, too.” We used to pick the rampant mint taking over our garden, crush it with a mortar and pestle, and serve with ice and sugar (bourbon for the adults, virgin versions for Ella). We would sit on our covered porch, tilt back our rocking chairs, and watch the magnolias open their blooms on our mammoth tree, so big it reminds me of the baobobs in The Little Prince.

Today we did the best we could to approximate that experience. Our living room windows look onto a courtyard across from a roof flower garden. We opened them wide, pulled up stools, and sipped a little bit of home.

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Comfort Food

new-starbucks-cup-design-frontTell me I’m contributing to the dilution of local culture. Tell me I’m part of the problem of rampant globalization. Then tell me, please, that everything’s going to be OK.

Yes, that’s a mermaid on my tall latte. With an avenue of Parisian cafes to choose from, today I opted for Starbucks. Not because the coffee is better (though it is), but because I needed comfort. I needed the memory that Starbucks evokes. Of hope and birth and new beginnings.

It’s been a hard week. My friend Stephanie wrote: “The tone [in your blog] is so open and positive, I can’t imagine that underneath it lurks melancholy and homesickness.  Though perhaps you are feeling those things now, hearing news of the bombing in Boston from so far away.” She’s right.

After the Newtown shooting, I felt those things, too. In the lockerroom before yoga class, several French women said, “I’m sorry for you. For you Americans.” The French feel our pain, but they seem to know that the pain is distinctly ours.

I’ve cried more than once this week, about other things, too. About not being able to help my son, who is in college in the U.S., move out of his dorm. By far the hardest thing about Parisian life is being far away from him.

Why Starbucks? When I was in the hospital for a week, to stop premature labor with Ella, I was strapped to the bed with my feet up in the air. A couple times a day, when I was allowed to leave my bed to use the bathroom, I could barely walk, my legs were so atrophied. But most of all, I was worried about my baby being born too soon.

Every day, my husband James brought me a pastry and drink from Starbucks. The taste of a blueberry scone and foamy milk was the taste of family. Of his generosity and moral support. Of all our aspirations for the future. Sometimes he would bring my son and we would watch Angels in the Outfield or Stuart Little. So Starbucks is also everything magical and childish and plucky. It’s the era when my son and I lived not only in the same country but the same house, when I could comfort him.

The foam sliding down my throat is the feeling that everything is going to be OK. Or, rather, that even when it isn’t, we’ll all stand by each other. We Americans. We, as a family.

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It’s British, But It’s Good

My favorite Paris metro ad of the week is for McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits, a round, flat cookie made in England. The ad reads “C’est anglais, mais c’est bon.” It’s English, but it’s good. The comedy lies entirely in the choice of conjunction.

What’s funny about this ad is how succinctly it expresses the love-hate relationship between the English and the French, the food snobbery which is both tongue-in-cheek and a little for real.

My husband James remembers eating McVitie’s by the tubeful as a child, when his family lived in London. “Eclairs au chocolat they’re not,” he says. “But they’re cheaper.”

Contrast this ad with the one next to it, for Four Roses whiskey. Superimposed on a (not-quite-realistic) rendition of Mount Rushmore are four roses, with a picture of the whiskey bottle at the center. Another one shows Four Roses in Monument Valley, the iconic setting for Westerns. A recent campaign for Jack Daniels whiskey proclaimed “It’s not whiskey, it’s not bourbon, it’s Jack.” The large text was in English, with small print at the bottom translating it into the French.

It’s not as if the French are going to give up their Calvados and Armanagnac, but they like to mix things up. All bars here will serve you a Kir (sauvignon blanc with a drop of cassis) as the classic French cocktail, but more and more are offering American-style ones, importing everything including the names. Sex on the Beach, on the Champs Elysees, anyone?

In the window of Pim Kie, a clothing store on my block, a mannequin wears American-style denim short-shorts that are meant to look “street.” Yet she pairs them with impeccable espadrilles and a tailored jacket slung over her shoulders. The look is perfect, if inappopriate for the season. Maybe she just needs to warm up with a little Jack.

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Writing Lessons I Learned From Pandas and Dragons

My nine-year-old daughter just entered two writing contests. “I hope I win,” she told me yesterday.

“So do I,” I said. “But the odds are that you won’t. And if that happens, it doesn’t mean your story isn’t good.”

One of the contests is run by the American Library in Paris, and I have no idea how many entries were received and how good they were, but I imagine the competition is stiff, and I told her so.  The second contest I have more insight into. I am 1 of 12 judges, so I know that 161 entries were submitted and only 30 can win, fewer than 1 in 5. I also know that most of them are competently written. I couldn’t just sort them into “good” and “bad” because so many were good. I had to use a different kind of filter.

When you read so many pieces, especially when they’re all on the theme of Asia, they tend to blend together. If most people write a fairy tale beginning with “once upon a time,” the first person who doesn’t will get my attention. If nearly everyone has a panda or dragon (or both) in the story, the first person who writes about a hamster or a ham sandwich (or anything besides pandas and dragons) will earn my gratitude. If half the entries include a quest with a riddle, then the first one that doesn’t will seem like the solution to my every problem. And if you tell me something I don’t know (for instance, that kindergarten girls in Tokyo take the subway to school by themselves, with GPS devices embedded in their backpacks) I will follow you anywhere on the planet, for pages and pages, to learn more.

Maybe it was harsh of me to tell my daughter her chances are not good. But 1 out of 5 is much better than the odds I face. For example, when I received an acceptance letter from the journal Pleiades, the editor told me they publish 5 to 10 stories per year and receive over 5,000 submissions. The odds are 1 in 500, at best.

What I learned, as a writer, from this contest can be summed up in two words: Surprise me.

What I learned, as a person, is more complicated. Did I choose the best stories and poems? Yes, if “best” means the result of one idiosyncratic person’s subjective filters. No, if “best” means all the others are not as good. I rejected stories that other people will like more than the ones I chose. I couldn’t choose all that were good enough to win.

I’ll explain this all to my daughter once the results are announced. I’ll also try to remind myself, next time I’m rejected. It’s a useful thing to know. Not just for writing, but for life.