Sharon Harrigan

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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.

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Naked Perfume Hunk: Meet Naked Handbag Babe

We’ve had a lot of guests for spring break. “You know what we saw in the metro station?” my nieces said at dinner the other day. “People without clothes.”

I had almost stopped noticing. It’s always fun to see Paris from a fresh visitor’s point of view.

The two specimens my nieces were most intrigued by are the Naked Perfume Hunk and the Naked Handbag Babe. Equal opportunity nudity.

The Hunk lounges on a polar bear rug, wearing nothing but a black-and-white striped scarf over one shoulder. (The French do love their scarves.) One hand presses on the ice, which he melts because he is so hot. A large perfume bottle, shaped like a naked male torso with a conspicuous bulge sits in the foreground. The model’s forearm somewhat obscures the part of his body that, were it hung in the Louvre, would be covered by a fig leaf.

The Handbag Babe sits on the floor, completely naked, a designer purse the only thing blocking the area often covered here by tiny, lacy lingerie. The background is empty and the only text reads “500 Euros.”

The Hunk’s ad is over-the-top masculinity. The Babe’s is mysterious. Primal meets Minimal.

Sometimes, when I see the two ads across from each other, one on my side of the tracks, one on the other, I imagine they’re flirting. Maybe they’re making a date. Once the stations close at midnight, she invites him to her non-icy abode, and he shares his scarf. She spreads open her handbag and an entire picque-nique appears from inside—baguette, foie gras, and champagne. He snatches his polar bear rug to use as a tablecloth. They joke about the handbag, how it’s a metaphor for that piece of female anatomy it obscures in the ad.

They munch their meal and laugh at us, the passengers, whom they’ve stared at throughout the day. “You know what I saw at the metro station?” they ask each other, giggling. “People with clothes.”

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Instant Parisian: Just Add Scarf

My three teenage nieces came to visit Paris for spring break, clad in fuzzy yellow fleece and sports team logos, carrying bulky nylon school backpacks. It was fun to see them transform into Parisians, accessory by accessory.

First came the change in totes, borrowing a trim black leather backpack to carry their guidebooks and phones. Then, off came the swim team ski caps, exchanged for a plain black hat or nothing at all. The hair rolled up into chignons. They each bought a cotton scarf. Et voila! Instant change from suburban American teens to in-the-know French jeunes filles.

I’m not the kind of person who thinks that what you look like equals who you are. Anyone who’s seen me get ready for the day in five minutes knows that. And yet, fashion is part of culture, so learning about French dressing (and I don’t mean the kind that goes on a salad!) is part of learning about life outside your backyard.

The first time I ever left America I was about the same age as my nieces. My Uncle Dennis generously allowed me to accompany his basketball team to Sweden. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the trip completely changed my view of the world and of myself. I immediately started to dress differently. My host family gave me a trim corduroy jacket to replace my bulky down one. And I bought a colorful scarf. It didn’t cost much, but it wrapped me up in much more than cotton. It enclosed me in everything cosmopolitan and global, in a world so much bigger than the one I knew before.