Sharon Harrigan

Author Website

By

Push Ups

soutien-gorge-push-up-etam-lingerie-0

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.

By

Bon Courage

Paris_lion_belfort_denfert_1

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.

 

By

Bad Words

bad words

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?

By

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.

By

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.