Sharon Harrigan

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Paris Journal: Our First Visitors

Today my brother Louis and sister-in-law Janet came to see our apartment in Paris—our very first guests. They flew in from their summer research sojourn in Florence and stopped in Paris, before heading to London, then New York, then back home to Austin, Texas, in time for what we call in France la rentrée: the beginning of the academic year.

We introduced them to the delights of our neighborhood, strolling down avenue du Géneral Leclerc to rue d’Alésia, where we lunched at Cafe Zeyer, an art-deco brasserie in the grand style. It was magnifique to see them!

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Paris Journal: Interview with Ella

Q: Is your new neighborhood like Charlottesville?

A: No. It is very different because it has shops on the street with the houses. It is also much busier and everyone speaks French. We have a store right next to our apartment called Monoprix, and it is really awesome. You can get everything there. If you wanted, you could never leave our block. We have restaurants, grocery stores, clothes shops, shoe shops, hair salons, toy shops, crepes stands, banks,  chocolate shops, two movie theaters, and even a school.

Q: How is the food?

A: There are a few American restaurants, but most of the restaurants are French bistros, and they’re really good. What amazes me is that our grocery store, Monoprix, has really good food and cheese that would be considered gourmet, $20 cheese in America, for 3 Euros. We have tons of little cafes where you can get chocolat chaud, which is much better than regular hot chocolate because it is not too sweet. We have a really good bakery in our neighborhood, which Professor Kaplan says is the best bakery in France. We can trust his opinion because he is a world-renowned historian of bread.

Q: Have you made any friends?

A: No, not yet, because everyone in our apartment building has gone away for vacation or is just not my age. Another problem is that they speak French and I don’t, which is why I’m hoping that at my bilingual school I will be able to speak English with my friends.

Q: Have you been speaking any French?

A: A little bit, when I go to restaurants or cafes and I order food, but otherwise, not really.

Q: Can you understand any of the French?

A: I can understand about three-quarters.

Q: What’s your apartment like?

A: We have a small but pretty apartment with a lot of shutters. We have a beautiful wood spiral staircase, which I like, even though only one person can go on it at a time. I have a clubhouse and a bedroom, the clubhouse being the spare guest room, which is about the size of a small shed. It is nice and I have a drying rack, which I use as a table to put all my stuff. I paint there, and I have several books, too.

Q: What’s the weather like? Is it the same as in Charlottesville?

A: No. It is a lot cooler and in the 50s and 60s usually, occasionally the 70s. Today it started to rain, but the rain is very different from the rain in Virginia, because the air is cold and the rain is cold. But in Virginia, the rain is room temperature and the air is hot and humid.

Q: What surprised you about Paris?

A: That the Tour Eiffel was as great as people say it is. Because usually people make famous things sound better than they are and this was not the case because the Tour Eiffel was bigger and grander and better than people made it sound. It was quite pretty and I liked the fountains surrounding it.

 

 

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A Few Things I Will Miss About Charlottesville

 

 

 

Watching goldfinches breakfasting on sunflowers while I water the Meyer lemon tree on my back porch.

Inviting friends over to harvest tomatoes and drink Riesling and tell jokes with French puns.

Walking my daughter to school, as she pogo-sticks beside me.

Running into people, by chance, at the Downtown Mall.

My neighbor ringing my doorbell and offering a glass of sweet tea because she kept me up late last night and I must be tired.

Store clerks calling my nine-year-old daughter “ma’am.”

Butchers giving me a lesson on how to cook ribs.

Running into people, by chance, at the farmer’s market.

Bumblebees and butterflies feeding off my zinnias.

Children ringing our doorbell without calling first.

Children riding over on their bikes to shoot some hoops.

Rollerblading in the local school parking lot.

Attending swim meets (OK, maybe not swim meets).

Basking in the Southern sun (yes, even the heat.)

Running into people, by chance, at a Wilco concert, at the Magic Flute, at Monticello, at Carter’s Mountain Peach orchard, on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Sitting in the rocking chair in our covered front porch drinking bourbon on ice and spying a fuzzy creature sleeping in the crook of the column holding up the porch ceiling.

Running into people.

By chance.

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Off We Go

Tomorrow we board a plane from Charlottesville to begin our one-year sojourn in Paris.

I’m in an enviable position. I know this because people keep telling me.  Oh la la, how they wish they could come, too. Or, as my MFA thesis advisor said, when I complained about not winning a writing contest, “Buck up. You know how many people would cut off their right arms to trade places with you? Or how many want to cut off both of your arms?” It’s strange to be the object of envy. Really? You want to be like me? What I want is to be brilliant like you.

The last time I lived in Paris, I was only twenty years old, one of a legion of college students doing our junior year abroad. I brought a check for $1700, to cover six months expenses. That was a long time ago, but even with a maid’s room for $250 (seventh floor walk-up, Turkish toilet in the hall, no shower or stove, and a heater fed with coins), I would have little left over for food.  I’m bringing a little more money this time. The fact that I don’t mention how much is a measure of how privileged (and, yes, enviable) my life has become.

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The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

This could be a test. Multiple choice: A, B, or C.

You get a text message. You barely know how to use the feature, owning not only a dumb phone, but a keyboardless one. The message has only this text: “Response?”

The picture to be responded to is a tattoo, which is actually text, too: “Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo.” Whose tattoo is it? The message is from your son, but the arm couldn’t be his; he just turned eighteen, doesn’t speak Italian, and is squeamish around needles.

You don’t speak Italian, either, so you plug the words into Google and read: “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” A Sergio Leone film you’ve watched with your son, one of his favorites. Now you know the arm is his, but you text him back anyway, because you have to say something: “You got a tattoo?”

The words appear almost immediately, his thumbs so much faster than yours:

“Possibly.”

Your stomach starts to ache. You want to ask: Does it hurt? You can almost feel the pricks on your own skin. You want to ask why. You want to say: Are you OK? You try to think of all the things he could have done that are more dangerous, more permanent, more painful. You tell yourself you’re glad he wanted to show you.

Finally, you write back: “If you like it, I like it, too.”

“I know you must be freaking out, but I appreciate that you’re trying to act cool,” he texts. How does he know you so well? Maybe he can almost feel your stomach clench the way you can almost feel his skin prick.

“I freaked out for five minutes but now I’m cool,” you text.

“U da best,” he responds. “Love you.”

“Love you back,” you write. And you do. Of that you’re sure.

You remember being eighteen, when you vowed to always remember what it was like to be eighteen. But have you?

Possibly.

You wish you could take a phone picture of this rite of passage, this getting-under-your-skin rebellion that ended with a love note. You wish you could text it to all your friends who have parented eighteen-year-olds or been eighteen themselves, so they could tell you if you guessed the right answer to this test. You would send a picture of this milestone, or write a blog post about it, with this text at the end: “Response?”