Paris

July 8, 2014 By Sharon Harrigan

It’s Good To Be . . .

In Paul Auster’s latest memoir, Department of the Interior, he says,

“There is nothing better than being six years old, six is far and away the best age anyone can be. You remember thinking this as clearly as you remember what you did three seconds ago. . . What had happened to cause such an overpowering feeling? Impossible to know, but you suspect it had something to do with the birth of self-consciousness, that thing that happens to children at around the age of six, when the inner voice awakes and the ability to think a thought and tell yourself you are thinking that thought begins. . . You could think about being alive, and once you could do that, you could . . . tell yourself how good it was to be alive.”

I remember being five years old and telling myself that I was always going to remember what it felt like to be five years old. I tried to fix that year in permanent marker in my brain, afraid even then, of losing myself. “Five will always be my favorite number,” I said. “I didn’t just pick it because I’m five years old.”

A few years later, I promised not to forget what it felt like to be a child. What I meant, at age eight or nine, was that I didn’t want to lose sight, once I grew up, of how powerless it felt to be a child. How much all your decisions are made for you. How little control you have. Does the fact that I’m writing this mean I’ve remembered? I’m not sure.

Then there are moments, like Paul Auster’s, when I told myself I was glad to be alive. The moment I learned I got a scholarship to go to college in New York City. Me? Really? The moment I realized James was going to marry me. It’s true. He did! I remember those moments as well as I remember my name. Times when I was so lucky I kept looking behind my shoulder, afraid someone would leap up and say, Oops! Wrong person. We didn’t mean you.

And here I am, realizing that all it takes to have one of those “I’m lucky to be alive” moments is self-consciousness. All I need to do is pay attention.

I am traveling to Paris with my family. I am eating a pain au lait at the table while gazing out at the rain. I am typing a blog post about the ecstasy of it all. I am thinking, then taking stock of my thinking. Maybe I’ll still recall this moment decades from now. I’ll remember trying to remember: There is nothing better than this.

July 8, 2014 By Sharon Harrigan

You say linger-ay, I say linger-ee

I hate shopping. I hate confronting the difference between what a beautiful dress looks like on a hanger and on my body. I hate making decisions. (Another black dress? Or am I ready to show on the outside how iconoclastic I am on the inside, by wearing, say, neon orange?) And then there’s the pesky little detail about money. (Shouldn’t I just put every penny into my kids’ college funds?)

But here I am in Paris, during the twice-a-year season of soldes. Everything is on sale, marked way, way down. Plus I didn’t bring enough underwear.

My husband and I are alone for a few days while the kids are at camp. Even the dog has a sitter. And, since we’re in the Land of Lingerie, an underthings store beckons me on every block.

The last time I shopped for unmentionables was a year ago, again during the season of soldes, right before our sabbatical year here ended. I thought I’d gotten over my feelings of inadequacy vis-a-vis the natives (French women are so tiny! So chic!) I’d recovered from the fear that the boutiques wouldn’t even have anything that fit me. I knew my French bra size now. I took off the one I was wearing and looked at the tag. Then laughed out loud.

Why? Because the size is a ludicrously high number.

In America I am a 36, but in France I am a 90. (No need to remind myself that my dress size went from 8 to 38 and my shoe size from 7 to 37. I can just ignore the numbers I don’t like, the way politicians do.)

I’ll try to pretend I don’t know that the difference has to do with centimeters being smaller than inches. I’ll tell myself that all I had to do was fly over the Atlantic and my breasts almost tripled in size. And my weight, in kilos, is almost half its imperial number. Those 90-size breasts must be filled with something as light as fantasy. I imagine slipping my shirts over a couple of hot air balloons.

I bought a bra and panties to replace the ones that had stretched out and faded since last year. I also nabbed a lacy red nuisette. I didn’t actually need a nightie, but it was 50 percent off. Judging from how little fabric there was, it seems only fair that I was able to buy it for next to nothing.

So I still have a little money left to take care of my kids. But I’m not going to think about that—or them—tonight.

July 2, 2014 By Sharon Harrigan

Merguez

We’re in Paris—my husband, daughter, and I—for a few weeks. We’ve come so James can work on security-sensitive data that can only be accessed by his thumbprint. We’ve rented an apartment for all of us so Ella can reconnect with her friends from the year we lived here.

At least that’s what we tell people. But if you’d been in our dining room the other night, you might have thought this transatlantic journey was just a quest for merguez.

We returned to the U.S. almost a year ago, and during those months of reacclimation we missed many things: Sundays spent at museums, school days memorizing Paul Eluard and Jean de la Fontaine, a city dripping with architectural elegance, a culture in which writers and artists are treated like celebrities. But we distilled all that longing into a humble Moroccan sausage oozing with orange-red grease. We pined, at the store and at the table, about how much we missed merguez.

God knows we tried to find a replacement. In Virginia, we asked at the Middle Eastern market, at every grocery store and butcher shop. We found lamb sausages, but they weren’t the same. Finally, we asked at JM Stock, a new butcher that specializes in “whole animal” meat, and they told us, in February, that they were still trying to find a lamb farm they could trust. Then in March they said the lamb would be ready to slaughter by April. The butcher would make merguez, especially for us, by Easter.

We kept stopping by and checking. “Is the merguez ready?”

“Not yet.”

My husband suspected my daugher and I visited so often because the butchers are gorgeous. That wasn’t the (only) reason. We were groupies, yes, but the rock star we sought was a sausage.

We arrived on Easter Sunday. “We’re making it now!” the young men assured us, their cleavers as big as their biceps. “Come back tomorrow.” We did. We ate and ate and froze what we couldn’t eat. It was good meat. Humanely raised, deliciously spiced. But it wasn’t exactly the same as what we remembered. It didn’t contain, its its casing, our year in Paris.

Then, the other day, we finally bought a plastic-wrapped pack of merguez from the French supermarket chain, Monoprix. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not the best merguez in the world. But it’s our merguez. If pressed, I will even confess that the JM Stock merguez, artisanal and freshly butchered, is objectively better. Fresher. Less greasy. But it’s not our madeleine, our Proustian food that brings back a whole time and place in our mouth and our soul.

The sausage was not as delicious as I’d imagined it would be, during that year away from it. But that’s not what comfort food is about, anyway. Is it?

February 24, 2014 By Sharon Harrigan

How Getting a Puppy Is Like Living in Paris

Mittens, my three-month-old cockapoo, nabbed a plastic bag from the dirty snow with her mouth, shook out an opened ketchup container, and licked. Not exactly the height of haute cuisine. Then she sniffed out the feathers left from a cat’s midnight snack and rolled, covering her fur with bloody fluff. Hardly haute couture, either.

So what do puppies and Paris have in common?

I can’t take Mittens for a walk without every neighbor kid running out the door, panting: “You are so lucky. Aw. . . I want one, too.”

When I told my friends we were moving to Paris for twelve months, they all said, “I wish I were you.” One woman even asked (jokingly, I hope) if I wanted to do a husband swap for a year. Even now, as my husband readies for a two-week solo trip to Paris over spring break, people keep saying, “Lucky dog” and don’t believe him when he says, “It’s for work, not fun.”

The pet-crazy kids on our block don’t want to hear about having to set my alarm to take the puppy outside in the middle-of-the-night cold to empty her bladder. The fashion- and food-obsessed francophiles don’t want to know about having to wait eleven months to get health insurance or visit a bank five times before being allowed to open an account.

Puppies and Paris. Adorable. Enviable. Exhausting. Not that I’m complaining. I know I’m not allowed to. And anyway, I can’t open my mouth. Mittens is wagging her entire bottom with joy, a joy I can’t help but share, as she covers me with kisses. And ketchup. Bon apetit!

February 24, 2014 By Sharon Harrigan

A Visit from the French President

Francois Hollande, the president of France, recently visited Charlottesville to tour Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home, with U.S. President Barack Obama. Holland’s trip to the U.S., at Obama’s invitation, was a historic event, meant to symbolize and cement friendly relations between the two countries.

But what the trip meant for me was this: Now my city is on the map. Maybe when I return to France, people will know where Charlottesville is.

When we lived in Paris last year, at first I named my home town. After receiving a blank stare, I might say: “It’s near Washington, DC.”

“Is that close to New York or California?” French people would often ask. “New York,” I’d say. Soon, after people asked, “Where are you from?” I started just saying, “Near New York.” And it’s true, considering the vastness of American geography: a six-hour drive is relatively close.

When we were getting ready to leave Paris, I saw a note from one of my daughter’s friends. It said, “Have fun in New York.” I laughed.

The name Washington, DC didn’t mean much to many French people. Especially children. Maybe because in the French children’s dictionary my daughter used (the standard one for students) Washington, DC was placed right above Oregon.

After Hollande’s visit, French children should know that Charlottesville is near Washington, DC. Which probably means they think I live somewhere near Portland.