Life's Too Short

I had a drink with a strange man, and I couldn’t tell you why I did it. All I can tell you is that it seemed like a fine idea at the time. I had been feeling depressed since New Years Eve, even though Tom and I had (at least nominally) reconciled and were being civil toward each other. I was despondent over the state of my marriage, which seemed doomed to mediocrity, and continued to harbor some ill-will toward Tom because I blamed him for our disastrous NYE.

After we had taken the kids to the park playground earlier in the day, I announced that I was going for a walk. Tom didn’t offer to go with me but instead changed into his pajamas and settled in for a leisurely afternoon at home. My despondency grew as I walked around Montmartre, feeling unloved and unappreciated, lamenting my loneliness in what was supposed to be the most romantic city in the world.

I ended up on Rue Abbesses, a popular tourist hangout lined with trendy shops and cafés, and stopped at a random café to order vin chaud, hot mulled wine, which I sipped at an outdoor table while reading a book. There was a couple smoking and chatting two tables away and I was so engrossed in my book that I barely noticed when a man squeezed past me to sit at the adjacent table. He started smoking and then asked if the cigarette smoke was bothering me, to which I replied, “No, no. I’m fine, thank you.” I turned back to my book only to be surprised when he leaned over to to ask, “You look so sad, are you? Why do you seem so sad?” I didn’t know how to respond. Tom has told me many times that I wear my emotions very visibly, but I thought, surely I’m not so obvious that a total stranger can see dejection written all over my face? Again I responded, “No, I’m fine, thanks.” He eventually finished his cigarette as I finished my wine, and when I signaled to the waiter for the check, the man sitting next to me suddenly asked if I would like to have a drink with him at a bar nearby. I declined and told him that my family was expecting me, but he persisted by saying, “Just one drink. A glass of wine perhaps? It’s just two or three minutes from here. You can come have a drink and then join your family afterwards.” My instinct was to refuse firmly and definitively, but I hesitated. Ordinarily I would’ve bolted from that scenario but at that moment I was feeling particularly low, or maybe I was vulnerable, I don’t know, but I wasn’t in my normal state of mind. My first thought was, Would Tom mind? I thought to myself, No, he probably wouldn’t. Then I thought, Why not? What’s the harm? We were in a heavily populated tourist area and it wasn’t like I was going to follow him down a dark alley. Maybe it would be an interesting experience to have a drink with a local. Why not?

“It’s close to here?” I asked, reluctantly. Yes, he assured me, just a couple of blocks away. I heard myself actually accepting his invitation: “Umm…okay…maybe just one drink…” Did I really just agree to follow a stranger to a bar? Apparently yes, because I was gathering up my things to leave with him, self-conscious because the couple sitting at the next table over had witnessed the entire interaction unfold, and I felt their eyes watching me judgmentally and imagined they were thinking, “Mon Dieu! What a slut! Oh la la!” I did not have any improper intentions. I was simply curious about his motives, and wondered whether I really looked sad or if that was just a pick-up line, and I wanted to see where a local would go to have a drink. I’d never done anything like this before and wanted to see what would happen, what it would be like to have a conversation in a foreign country with a person I didn’t know.

Like he promised, we were at the bar after a short walk, and it wasn’t until I was sitting across from him that I was able to examine his face and demeanor. He was skinny, almost gaunt by American standards. I guessed his age to be late thirties or early forties. His narrow face was heavily lined and something about the way he looked reminded me of a weasel. He had a weasely face. He looked almost as uncomfortable as I felt, and our conversation was awkward and stiff, with a lot of pauses and silences. At one point he went outside to smoke a cigarette. It’s weird, and hard to explain, how I cared and didn’t care about his opinion of me. For the most part, I honestly didn’t care what he thought of me. I didn’t feel the need to impress him; I definitely did not want to flirt. I didn’t want him to be interested in me, but a small part of me (my pride? vanity?) wanted him to find me interesting, or at least not boring. When we first sat down he asked if I was married and I said yes, with two children. Something flickered across his expression that I couldn’t put my finger on: disappointment, confusion, resentment? For a second I imagined that he was annoyed with me for breaking some unspoken but widely understood code of conduct for women who are approached by men at cafés: do not accept an invitation to have a drink if you’re married because you’re wasting his time and leading him on. Duh. But I hadn’t been thinking along those lines at all, not even close. I obviously hadn’t thought this through.

He went on to vilify his ex-girlfriend who was (according to him) superficial and frivolous, like all French girls (according to him). He complained that she used him and racked up massive debts on his credit card for clothes. He was done with French girls, sick of them. American girls, on the other hand, he found interesting. “People say to me, ‘Americans are stupid; they are fat.’ But I say to them, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ I love American movies. French, European movies are so boring.” I was both offended and amused by his pandering and his caricature of Americans. I had to come to the defense of my fellow Americans; I told him that America had such a diverse population that included all sorts of people, including really intelligent ones. And there were stupid and fat people everywhere. He agreed and said he wished he could meet someone like me. Then he asked if I was happy in my marriage, if everything was going well for me? I got really uncomfortable and stammered that I had a good husband and a good marriage, but that my husband and I had gotten into a fight, which was the reason why I was alone that evening. I explained that when you’ve been married for 14 years like we have, sometimes you take each other for granted and you’re not as nice to each other as you were at the beginning of your relationship. At this he expressed genuine shock. “You’ve been married for 14 years?? My God! You look like a baby!” I would have assumed he was lying if he hadn’t acted so surprised; it’s been a long time since anyone’s accused me of looking like a baby.

Throughout our conversation I had the feeling that he rather regretted extending his invitation, just as I had rather regretted accepting it. He didn’t seem to find my personality and wit, or lack thereof, very stimulating. I was boring and pathetic, even to myself. So I was surprised when he asked me to have a meal with him sometime, anytime. In fact, over the next several days he would be helping out his friends in the very bar where we were having drinks, and I could stop by anytime, either alone or with my family, and he would make me or us something to eat. He then wrote down his contact information and handed it to me, along with a business card for the bar. He asked multiple times whether I would be interested in having another drink with him or sharing a meal, and I was confused. Now that he knew I was married, what was he getting at? Did he think I was lonely? Did he feel sorry for me? Or did he think that because I confessed having had a fight with my husband, I might be receptive to an illicit rendezvous? He suggested that I could bring my family, so maybe his intentions were honorable. But then he emphasized that if I ever wanted to have a drink or a meal, or go on a walk with him, to just contact him and he would be free to take me out. I didn’t know what to think so I quickly finished my glass of wine and asked him to let me pay for my own drink. He adamantly refused, insisting that he had invited me.

I wanted to buy a baguette so he walked me to a nearby boulangerie, gave me a hug and we parted ways. It was nothing like a first date, or any kind of a date at all, but the awkwardness of the encounter made me feel so grateful that I didn’t ever have to date again, and I was relieved when it was over. When I got home, I almost blurted out to Tom and my mom that I just had a drink with a strange man, but stopped short because I realized how inappropriate that might sound to my mom. As soon as she was in the other room, I told Tom that I had a drink with a strange man, and he reacted exactly as I had expected. He smiled and asked what did I have to drink, and what did we talk about. When I explained that a stranger had invited me to a bar, and I went with him and had a glass of wine and made small talk, I think it dawned on Tom that the encounter wasn’t as innocent as he had assumed. He probably thought that someone had espied me at a café, sent a drink over, and approached to talk to me. When Tom realized that I had affirmatively accepted an invitation to have a drink, and followed a stranger to a bar, he said, “I don’t know what to say,” and got up and left the room. We had just started eating dinner and I was at a loss over how to explain to my mom why Tom had abruptly gone into the bedroom and shut the door. I couldn’t tell her the truth, which was that my husband couldn’t bear to look at me because of something I had done. Up until that point, I didn’t think I had done anything wrong. I thought I was being harmlessly spontaneous. Tom and I don’t get jealous over one another and we don’t try to make each other jealous. We have such absolute trust and faith in each other that there simply isn’t any room for jealousy. But now, looking back, my actions could be construed as the actions of someone who was scheming to make her husband jealous. That was never my motive. I would rather have absolute trust and faith over jealousy any day.

I swore to Tom that I honestly didn’t think he’d care if I had a drink with someone I randomly met at a café, and I wouldn’t have done it if I had known that he would react this way. He wouldn’t come out of the bedroom and I had to give my mom an absurdly implausible excuse about him having a stomachache because of some beer that he drank. I was, eventually, able to coax him out of the bedroom, because I can’t stand my husband being upset with me, and I will say and do whatever it takes to make him feel better and to reassure him about us and our relationship. I just wish he’d do the same for me.

We screwed it up royally. And it’s a shame because we had all the ingredients to have a really great night. Originally my mom had planned to return from Germany on January 2nd, but as a favor to us she returned on New Years Eve to watch the kids so we could go out that night. We made a reservation at a nearby brasserie/bar that had festive decorations and promised to have a DJ for its NYE entertainment. Our late dinner started with some delicious foie gras pâté and a dozen raw oysters, followed by lots of red meat: steak frites for Tom and beef tartare for me, all accompanied by plenty of wine. Dessert was a trio of crème brûlée with coffee. Shortly before midnight, the DJ set up his equipment right next to our table and the new year was ushered in with happy revelers dancing to pulsating music. Too bad we were fighting the entire time. It had started that morning, when Tom made an unkind remark to me. Apparently he didn’t think it was a big deal, certainly nothing warranting an apology, so I was left to fume all day as I waited for him to approach me. It wasn’t until we were on our way to the restaurant that we really started bickering, about parenting, negativity, passive-aggressiveness, defensiveness, being rude and inconsiderate toward your spouse; all standard, mundane stuff.

Tom is the most non-confrontational person in the world. His desire to avoid conflict is matched only by my stubbornness. He didn’t think we needed to openly address and resolve our issues because he was no doubt hoping that once I had a few drinks in me and was sufficiently buzzed, coupled with the fact that it was NYE, I would be willing to set aside any grievances and just enjoy the night. Stupid, stupid man. It’s really hard for me to pretend to be happy when I’m not, and with my husband it’s impossible for me to pretend at all.

Our tiny table was sandwiched in between the tiny tables of two other couples, and I bet no one expected that I would be loudly berating the shellshocked-looking man sitting across from me for a good portion of the night, least of all the shellshocked-looking man sitting across from me. If Tom thought that I wouldn’t fight with him in public, within hearing of other couples sitting on both sides of us, on New Years Eve, then he was dead wrong. I was never going to see these people again in my life, what did I care? I got really worked up and emotional and a couple of times had to dab my eyes, at which point Tom tried to change the subject by telling me a really boring story about his shaving experience, which story was not well-received.

When I get myself worked up into a rage, it takes me forever to get over it, even if I really want to. I didn’t want to be fighting with my husband at a restaurant in Paris on New Years Eve. I was mad at both of us for not resolving our stupid fight earlier. Very often, the thoughts in my head are at odds with the words that come out of my mouth. I say really spiteful things when I’m angry. In my head, I kept telling myself to just let it go and try to salvage the night. It’s New Years! A fresh start! Time to forgive and let bygones be bygones and appreciate your loved ones and all that crap. So when Tom asked if I had any reflections about the past year, in my head I thought about saying, “I’m really grateful to have had this sabbatical from work which allowed me to travel and spend time with my family,” but instead the words that came out were, “You ruined my day AND my night AND my entire year, and you’ll probably ruin the rest of my life!” When he had asked for a truce earlier in the night, instead of conceding I heard myself say, “I HATE YOU!! I HATE YOU SO MUCH!!!”

My heart holds onto anger with pitbullish tenacity, even when I know I’ll regret it later. I just can’t stop myself from feeling the way I’m feeling. It has to run its course and go away on its own, usually only after exhaustive scrutiny and analysis. I need to dissect and discuss every issue ad nauseam, evaluate it from every angle. I need points and counterpoints, proof, objectives, and resolution. Tom just wants to move on. He would be perfectly happy if we never discussed a single point of contention and all disagreements were resolved with blowjobs. But fights are never about a single issue or a single point of contention. There’s history and baggage and the evolution of a relationship, of a marriage. I wasn’t thinking only of his unkind remark from that morning. I was thinking, how did we get here? I remember we once went out to dinner while I was in law school, and a middle-aged couple seated near us at the restaurant kept looking in our direction. Finally the woman leaned over to us and said, “My husband and I have been trying to see your fingers, because we were trying to figure out if you were engaged or newlyweds. You look so happy and in love.” I smiled, rather smugly I think, because at the time we had been married for five years, and I was confident that we would always be madly in love with each other. I thought that my husband was incapable of being mean to me, and the euphoric stage of our relationship would last forever. I thought that we were better than other couples, and the way we felt about each other was special. Now, I’m confronted with the reality that we’re just like everybody else. We have the same arguments as everyone else. We play the same hackneyed gender roles that countless husbands and wives have played before us. There is nothing special or unique about us. How did we get here? How does any relationship get here, especially when you vow at the beginning of it, that you’ll never turn into one of those couples? How do you go from always sitting next to each other at restaurants because you want to hold hands and smooch while you’re eating, to staring blankly at each other from across the table because you’ve run out of things to talk about? How do you go from having sex twice a day, to twice a week, to twice a month, to only on special occasions? How do you go from not being able to keep your hands off of each other, to forgetting to touch each other at all? How do you go from hours of googly-eyed exchanges, to thinking that everything your spouse says is stupid and annoying, or tuning them out and not even bothering to listen? How does marriage go from being completely effortless to something that requires attention and work? I’m not saying that I want us to regress into lovesick puppies. I just don’t want us to be like pieces of furniture to each other. Even if that’s what happens to other couples, even if it’s the natural, inevitable course of relationships. Making a snide remark or being not-so-nice to your spouse once in a while is not shocking, unnatural, or outrageous behavior. It’s normal. My husband isn’t a bad person or a bad husband. He just acts like a guy who’s been married for 14 years. But if I’m okay with that, then in a few years he’ll act like a guy who’s been married for 18 years. And so on and so forth, until we’re like pieces of furniture to each other. It’s easy to not let him get away with it, to adopt a zero tolerance policy toward anyone who doesn’t treat me the way I want to be treated. The tricky part is being able to get over myself in time to not ruin everything and to be able to answer honestly when I ask myself, am I always as nice to him as I want and expect him to be toward me?

The new year itself was very anti-climatic when it arrived. Tom and I were sitting across from each other in silence, looking around and occasionally glancing at a large clock on the wall that we later learned was running slow. Around what we thought was five minutes before midnight, people at the bar started hollering and whooping and whistling and I pulled out my phone to find out that it had already turned midnight. We looked at each other and then he came over to sit next to me, put his arm around my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek. I knew I was supposed to turn my head and kiss him — that’s what I should have done — but I simply could not bring myself to do it. I was too hurt and angry to kiss my husband on New Years Eve. It was the first time since I started kissing that I didn’t kiss anyone at the beginning of a new year.

I saw young couples embracing each other, older couples locked in passionate kisses, friends wishing each other happiness and health. A few times some revelers tried to draw us out of our shells by shaking hands or encouraging us to dance, but for the most part we were bystanders observing the merriment around us without participating in it. I can only imagine what onlookers must have thought about us: the uncomfortable-looking man sitting next to his scowling companion, the unhappy couple. We’ve never celebrated New Years in a foreign country before, and we’ll likely never do so again in Paris. We (I) really fucked it up.

We had a fun day taking the kids to the Museum of Natural History in Paris, which included a children’s gallery with interactive exhibits and displays. It’s funny and sweet how much the boy idolizes his sister. He repeats everything she says and copies everything she does. He takes all his cues from her. If we ask him whether he wants to wear his hat, he cranes his head to see whether his sister is wearing her hat. He wants to be a fairy princess when he grows up (although occasionally he’ll have an independent thought, like when he says he wants to be a garbageman). At the museum, we told the kids they could each take a picture in front of any animal they chose, any at all. The girl chose the giraffes. What did the boy choose? Giraffes, of course.

One of the reasons why I wanted to have an extended stay in Paris was to be able to walk to the local market each day, browse the latest offerings, and pick what I wanted to eat for my next meal; essentially I wanted to live like a Parisian, or like how people in non-car-obsessed cultures live around the world. I love having an excuse to walk everyday, and preparing meals with the freshest ingredients available. Yesterday I stopped by one of several dozen groceries within walking distance of our apartment and noticed a package of fresh quail, which I had never seen sold in a Parisian grocery store before. I scooped it up and went home to prepare a marinade right away. When I opened the package, I was slightly grossed out to find the heads still attached, tucked under each carcass. In the U.S., quails are always sold decapitated, as well as thoroughly cleaned. It’s hard to find them fresh, though, so I usually have to buy them frozen.

The package I scooped up at the local market seemed pretty fresh because the birds retained some of their feathers and organs and looked like they were still bleeding. I dealt with more blood, guts, and feathers than I’m used to dealing with, and didn’t much enjoy having to behead each bird. The price of being a carnivore, I guess.

I marinated them overnight in tons of garlic, oyster sauce, soy sauce, pepper, and sugar. The next day I fried them and served them over a bed of watercress and mesclun. Not exactly a French preparation, but I don’t know how the French prepare quail and this is how I do it. The girl asked for a second helping of quail and the boy asked for a second helping of salad, so that made me happy. By the end of the meal, we all had small quail bones on our plates except for Tom, whose plate was disturbingly bone-free, despite multiple helpings. He enjoyed it a little too much.

 

 

 

Yesterday afternoon we shipped my mom to Germany for the second time. She went to visit friends for a week during our second week in Paris and now she’s going for another week to see another friend. Even though the plan had been for her to look after the kids while we lost ourselves in Paris, I hate to admit we tend to enjoy ourselves more when she’s gone. Maybe it’s because we’re living in such close quarters, but she can be hard to handle sometimes. It’s the same vicious cycle: her nagging, me snapping. Nag, snap, nag, snap. I feel instant regret almost every time I react to her and yet I can’t stop myself. The crazy thing is, I know she can’t help herself either. It’s got to be a compulsion that drives her to correct every single thing I do. Things that I’ve been doing for decades, things that anyone with half a brain can do.

She can’t deny that I’m more meticulous than her in the kitchen. When she washes vegetables, there’s a high likelihood that a rotten leaf or two or a few grains of dirt will end up in the finished product. That never happens when I wash vegetables. I’ve been doing it and other kitchen prep since I was prepubescent. And yet while I was trimming some leafy greens the other day, my mom insisted on hovering over my shoulder to check if I was doing it right and pointing out a leaf that she thought was slightly yellowing. I bit my tongue on that occasion, but I’m not always able to. Last week, she made rice porridge and gave me specific instructions on how to heat it up with a raw egg. If I was going to heat the egg with the porridge, I should set the microwave for 30 seconds. If I was going to heat the egg alone, I should set the microwave for 10 seconds, then add porridge, then heat for another 20 seconds. Even armed with instructions suitable for a five-year-old, I sensed that she still didn’t trust me to microwave porridge by myself. I waited for her to leave and then ladled some porridge into a bowl, cracked an egg into it and popped it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Almost instantly she leapt up from the dining table and ran into the kitchen — I’m not exaggerating when I say that she ran (she literally ran as if I dumped the entire pot of porridge on the floor, smashed a dozen eggs into it, and set the whole thing on fire) — went straight to the microwave and shut it off. She didn’t bother to look into the microwave because if she did, she would have seen that the bowl contained BOTH porridge AND egg, and I wasn’t microwaving just an egg, God forbid, by itself for 30 seconds because THAT WOULD BE THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD. She automatically assumed that I was doing it wrong, even though she gave me really fucking insulting instructions not five minutes before and even though she’s witnessed me flawlessly prepare Thanksgiving, Christmas, and miscellaneous holiday feasts for 20+ people year after year after year since I was 13. And deep in my heart of hearts, I knew that this was how she was going to react. When she shut off the microwave, I wanted to either slit my wrists or start screaming at the top of my lungs. So I flipped out. “Leave that alone!!! I know what I’m doing!!!!! Stop treating me like I’m stupid and don’t know anything! GO AWAY!!!!!!!!!!” She mumbled something about being afraid that I had microwaved only an egg and retreated.

The next time she questioned why I was doing something, I flipped out again.

“Why are you adding olive oil to that?”

“BECAUSE I’M MAKING SALAD DRESSING!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!! GO AWAY!!!!!!!!!!”

“Why are you yelling at me?”

“BECAUSE YOU DRIVE ME CRAZY!!! YOU ALWAYS THINK I’M DOING EVERYTHING WRONG!!! I HATE IT WHEN YOU TREAT ME LIKE I’M STUPID! THIS IS WHY I CAN’T STAND BEING IN THE KITCHEN WITH YOU!!!”

“Okay, OKAY. I don’t think you’re stupid. I just worry that you’ll forget if I don’t remind you.”

Now that she’s gone I can evaluate my feelings and our relationship with a little more perspective. As much as I hate her second-guessing me, I know I do exactly the same thing to others, especially my husband. I’m almost as compulsive about it as she is, so how can I criticize? It’s hypocritical of me to get pissed off at her for not showing more restraint. I don’t mean any harm when I’m being anal-retentive, I never intend to offend with my OCD. I can’t help myself sometimes. So why can’t I just chalk up her nagging to an uncontrollable compulsion and learn to not take it personally? In theory it sounds so easy.

When she’s gone I’m able to see more clearly the ways she tries to make our lives better. I can appreciate that I have a mother with whom I can be honest, a mother who’s willing to hear constructive (and sometimes not-so-constructive) criticism, and who in her heart of hearts truly wants me to be happy. It’s much easier to see these things and appreciate her when she’s in another country.

I have lovely children. I don’t know how long they’re going to stay this way so I’m enjoying them as much as I can for as long as I can. A couple of days before Christmas, Tom and I walked to the local discount goods store to do our Christmas shopping for the kids. We agreed that we were going to buy them only one “real” present apiece because we didn’t want to lug a bunch of stuff back to the U.S. We ended up buying two toys, a small bag of candy and a $1 box of cookies for each of them, as well as a box of cereal to share. I think we spent a grand total of $40 on Christmas presents this year.

When the kids unwrapped their gifts, there wasn’t an ounce of disappointment or confusion, even though they’d received many more gifts in previous years. They were perfectly happy with what they got. They’re not greedy little monsters, at least not yet, and I love them for that.

In the evening we took them for a long walk around Champs-Élysées and then to see Christmas window displays. They walked, and sometimes ran and skipped, for hours without complaint. They’ve evolved so much from the whiny, unbearable children that we dragged (and often carried) around with us in Vietnam. I’m so proud of my little traveling companions, and I love every holiday that I get to spend with them.

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I’m bitter because I suck at arts and crafts. I don’t understand, ever since I was placed in that special program for gifted and creative children in the fourth grade, I always considered myself above-average in the artistically talented category. I never nursed this putative talent or felt like I had time to exhibit it — it was always school, career, babies, blah, blah, blah. Those other moms who could create masterpieces out of baked goods or sew intricate Halloween costumes for their kids had to be stay-at-home moms who had way more time than I did. As for those working moms who still managed to write customized thank-you notes after every perfectly planned event hosted at their gorgeously decorated homes, well, screw those moms too. I told myself I could be like that if I really wanted to, if I tried.

Now that I’m on sabbatical and no longer have work as an excuse, I find that I need to come to terms with my ineptitude for anything requiring imagination or creative skill. Or hand-eye coordination. I can’t even follow a step-by-step YouTube tutorial on how to fold a simple origami Christmas ornament. (Even though I paused the video. Frequently.)

This year is the first year that we’ve ever had a real Christmas tree and I had romantic notions and illusions of grandeur about spending hour upon delightful hour making Christmas ornaments and decorations with my children. Our Parisian apartment has every kind of art supply you can imagine: paint, markers, crayons, colored pencils, tissue paper, construction paper, postcards (including Christmas-themed ones), doilies, multi-colored plastic strings, twine, glue, tape, etc., not to mention a mountain of popsicle sticks, toilet paper and paper towel rolls, and cardboard egg cartons that we’ve accumulated. I piled a stack of supplies and materials on our small dining table and imagined that they would soon be transformed into glorious homemade ornaments.

No matter how long I stared at the pile of art supplies, I could not for the life of me figure out what to do with them. I turned to Google in the hope of finding a cure for my creative mental block. All it did was taunt me with images of exquisite crafts devised by Pinterest goddesses whose artistry far exceeded mine. After a few unsuccessful origami tutorials, I had to resort to using brute force by cutting, butchering, and taping postcards into the shapes I wanted. Why make 18,000 intricate folds to achieve the shape of a box when you can just tape a bunch of squares together? It’s like, why bother making the effort to be sweet and polite to your husband when you can just yell at him to make him do what you want, amirite ladies?

Not only am I devoid of artistic ability, my coordination and fine motor skills are evidently sub-par, and my kids’ are worse than mine, so our family craft time didn’t exactly turn out the way I had envisioned. They would make a mess for a little while, get bored, and then leave me to my own devices. At one point I got so frustrated that I crumpled up the tissue paper I had been working with, rolled it into a ball and taped some string on it. It’s hanging on our tree, and it’s by no means the worst-looking ornament on there.

Things were unsettled for a little while (and it was unsettling to me to be so unsettled), but then it finally happened: I found our home in Paris.

I wanted so badly to get it right. We were no longer childless 20-somethings backpacking through Europe and willing to stay in a cheap hotel room above the noisy bars of the Latin Quarter. Even if I intended to spend my days roaming the streets of Paris, I had the comfort of my children and my mom, who is sometimes childish herself, to consider. And who am I kidding, I’m getting to be a crotchety curmudgeon in my old age. My wanderlust is nowhere near satiated, but it’s almost as vital to have a warm, safe, inviting place to come home to after your daily exploits. Paris simply would not be as enjoyable without a comfortable home base, so I had to get it right. After multiple email correspondences, rounds of phone tag, sleepless nights, negotiations, calculations, missed communications, miscommunications, another apartment falling through, and ultimately a leap of faith, we moved into another apartment exactly one week after our arrival to Paris. I have to admit I was crazy nervous when we entered our new apartment for the first time. What if it was worse than the apartment we just left? If it was halfway decent, why would it be available on such short notice? What if a trip to Paris in the wintertime with kids was a terrible, awful idea? What if I was wasting time and money for no good reason? What if my reality was never ever going to live up to my dreams and expectations and I was doomed to a life of misery? These were the thoughts running through my mind as we were unlocking the front door. Barely breathing, I stepped inside and looked around. At first I wasn’t sure what to think because the apartment didn’t look exactly like it did in the pictures. Those tricky French people and their cunning photography skills! But as we settled in and looked around some more, we realized that it was okay that it didn’t exactly match the website photos because it was beautiful and charming and perfect in its own way. It was meant to be our home for the next five weeks. It, too, was worn and shabby and furnished with old furniture, as well as lots of stuff from Ikea. But it was obvious that care and thought had gone into its decor because it was warm and inviting. It felt and looked like an apartment that was loved by its owner. By the end of the day I had fallen in love with it too. It’s EXACTLY what I wanted in a Parisian apartment. As an added bonus, we were thrilled to discover that the owner must have children right around our children’s ages because the shelves and closets were fully stocked with toys, games, books, art supplies, and crafts, even more than what our kids have at home! The kids were wild with glee, as were we. As we unpacked and explored our new surroundings, the day was peppered with exclamations like, “This apartment has soap AND paper towels, amazing!”; “We have a microwave now, yay!”; “There’s more than one pepper grinder with pepper in it!”; “Look at how many seasonings are in the cupboard!”; “OMIGOD I just found a bunch of chopsticks, Asian people were here!”; “The floors don’t squeak like they’re about to collapse!”; “The toilet is in the same room with the rest of the bathroom! And there are extra rolls of toilet paper!”; “WHOO HOO, there’s still hot water after 5 P.M.!!!”; “There are 18,000 books about Paris here that I want to read!”; “It’s so easy to get to any room without having to go outside!”; “Look how bright and sunny it is, our kids don’t have to play in the dark anymore!” And on and on.

Tom and I like to say that everything happens for a reason, probably because we’re always searching for meaning in life (at least I am). Sometimes you have to suck it up and just go with the flow and sometimes you have to put your foot down and figure out how to get what you want. It’s good to know when to do which, and I’m still learning that. For a few days we had considered just sticking it out at the old apartment and dealing with its sundry aggravations for the rest of our vacation because we were here to explore the city of Paris, right? What did it matter where we lived? So wrong. So so wrong. Getting out of there has made all the difference in our collective happiness. We agreed that we were meant to stay at the old apartment during our first week because that experience (more like an ordeal) exponentially enhanced our appreciation of this new apartment. Maybe we wouldn’t have fallen in love with it if not for the other apartment. Maybe we would have never have gotten to live in this apartment if all my planning months before had yielded different results. Maybe you have to experience deep unhappiness in order to be able to find true happiness.

Plus, we were lucky to get a feel for the 7th Arrondissement, to be steps away from Rue Cler’s cool shops and restaurants, and to be able to see the Eiffel Tower every day during our first week. But now we’re in a darling Parisian flat in the artsy, historical neighborhood of Montmartre, in the 18th Arrondissement, and it’s exactly where I want to be. I love that this is where I get to come home to.

https://plus.google.com/u/1/photos/117364714322873137486/albums/5960766369130937105?sort=1

I’m really trying to not be the high-maintenance, demanding, entitled American. I really am. The apartment’s freezing: okay, we’ll wear multiple layers. There aren’t any supplies: fine, we’ll go buy everything we need. The hot water runs out by evening: we’ll deal with it and do all of our bathing in the morning. But everyone has a limit to their patience and I’ve reached the end of mine. For the past two days we’ve been boiling tap water in the kettle for tea and drinking water, but it wasn’t until today that I noticed an odd film over my mug of hot water. I pried the lid off the kettle and peered inside for the first time, horrified to find rust, debris, and unidentifiable particles floating at the bottom. Scrubbing only causes more rust, debris, and particles to appear. My family and I, MY CHILDREN, have been drinking out of this kettle for two days!!! I’m freaking out, I can’t handle it anymore.

I send a very conciliatory email to our host explaining why we aren’t comfortable staying in this apartment, apologizing for any inconvenience, acknowledging that we’re not entitled to a refund if we cancel the rental agreement, but beseeching her to give us a refund anyway and let us find another apartment. To her credit, she graciously agrees to refund the remainder of the term. Which means I’m back to square one and hunting for an apartment that’s immediately available for the next five weeks, through Christmas and New Years. Am I on a fool’s errand? What if it only gets worse?

We lost an entire day in Paris by waking up at 3 P.M. Three o’clock IN THE AFTERNOON. My kids slept for over 18 hours. How did this happen? Tom and I woke up at three in the morning and decided to crash on the couch and watch TV until the kids woke up. We ended up dozing and the next thing I know, Tom’s bending over me with his cell phone in my face telling me we overslept because it’s now after 3 P.M., and mom and the kids are still sleeping! We go wake them up because they went to bed at 8:30 the night before which means they’ve been sleeping for almost an entire day. Apparently the kids had woken up at some point to pee but my mom made them go back to bed where they eventually fell asleep again. My mom was convinced that the kitchen clock was dead and had no idea what time it was. Now we’re disoriented and all jacked up and no closer to recovering from jet lag than when we first arrived yesterday.

That’s just the crazy part but by no means the worst part of our day. I forced the girl to get out of bed even though she was groggy. Then I forced her to eat a little bit of soft boiled egg and sip some hot chocolate even though she complained of not feeling well. Then she said her throat felt funny and threw up on the wood floor. Twice.

To top things off, the boy had a ruthless case of constipation which led to multiple and extended bouts of wailing as he sat on the toilet trying to poop. I can’t imagine what the neighbors must have thought to hear a child crying throughout the day and shrieking, “It hurts! It hurts!” It was heartbreaking to see my child in so much pain and to feel so helpless. After we tried all the home remedies we could think of, all I could do was hunch over him as he sat on the toilet and cradle his head while he sobbed hysterically in my arms.

The night ended with me and my son shivering in the bathtub as we waited for the faucet to produce hot water. It never did. Tom had to boil water in a kettle so we could bathe ourselves from a bucket. And I thought we had left Vietnam?