Made in America

My daughter felt compelled to tell me, yesterday, that because she had failed to "mind the gap" between the train and the platform, she made quite an entrance onto the Metro. Mon Dieu! An American in Paris.

As soon as I realized she had actually made it on to the train -- albeit gracelessly -- and not slipped through the gap, I chuckled. That's my girl. Why not be the person people notice when you walk into a room, even if you have to do a face plant to get everyone's attention.

There's a new Parisian in America. In suburban Midwestern America. She has swept into our little town, ever mindful of the gap between her and the rest of us, the ones who are far more likely to attract attention for face plants than grace. Bonjour, bonjour. I marvel at her entrance at our Starbucks each morning. Without spilling a drop of the foamy brew in the mug she has brought from home, she bends to dispense continental double kisses to the regulars. She is reed thin and tall, taller still in her three inch wedges. She is stylish no matter what she wears; her outfits are calculated, whether built around sweats or a leather jacket.

The men are smitten, and I am fascinated. Okay, maybe a little bit smitten. With her arrival I have become a tad more invisible, which is a good thing, I think, as I gaze down at my early morning get-up and vaguely recall the tired look on the face that gazed back at me from my bathroom mirror. Mon Dieu, indeed. As overwhelmed as I am with "chic envy," I want her to stay. Her je ne sais quoi is infectious, somehow. I find myself retrieving what little high school French I have managed to retain, and I pinch my cheeks to give my decidedly "un-chic" Brooklynese a French flare. I hold my chin up a little higher. I imagine that the distinctly American sludge in my disposable cup is a lukewarm cafe au lait. I cannot help but wonder whether our new neighbor's je ne sais quoi fades into something more predictable and mundane when she is back in Paris, on her own turf.

My daughter can pass for French on the outside, at least before she speaks. Boarding the Metro, she could easily blend. But Parisians can wear high heels and balance uncovered mugs of steaming cafe while they bend to dispense kisses. My daughter, like me, can be wearing gym shoes and carrying nothing and still walk into walls and stumble over our own feet. Which may not be all that impressive here in suburban Chicago, but can sure make us stand out in Paris.

By the time I visit my daughter in Paris next month, she will no doubt have assimilated a bit more. She might sound French, and she might even know how to walk gracefully onto a train, feet first. She remains, however, vigorously defensive of her American-ness, no small feat at a time when a strange man with cotton candy hair has fueled a widespread misconception that we are, all of us, irrevocably crass. Our stumbles and pratfalls notwithstanding, I like to think we are not all that bad.

She will learn to mind -- or not to mind -- the gap. But there ain't nothing better than good old-fashioned American je ne sais quoi.