Toujours Paris

A friend last night remarked how eerie it was that I had written only days ago about Paris.

I had thought it wasn't really about Paris, at least not by design. I was musing, as I often do, about life and love and other profound mysteries. The elasticity of the human heart. The beauty of a crisp autumn day. The sweet buttery taste of a perfect croissant.

The caption at the bottom of the television screen remained unchanged for hours last night: At least 153 killed in Paris terror attacks. This could not be happening again. Less than a year after coordinated attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish grocery store and a few other gratuitous kills, satire lives on and Parisian Jews still buy food and people walk around, feeling safe. Months from now, Parisians will again enjoy concerts and soccer games on a Friday night, and an entire country will no longer be on lock down. C'est la vie. La vie continue. 

I am glad I remember Paris the way I do, exactly six years ago, when I finally fell hopelessly under its spell. The news coverage of last night's carnage was, somewhat mercifully, blurred by darkness. Mostly, I listened. To the not-so-distant wail of sirens. To tongue tied reporters trying to articulate what is still, to most of us humans, unthinkable. I wondered if Paris would look familiar to me when the sun came up. I wondered if the croissants would ever taste as good.

When I returned home from my first visit to Paris, I couldn't eat bread. Especially French bread; even the still warm, extra long loaves cleverly packaged in white bags adorned with tiny French flags. I learned, soon after, that it's all about the water. You just cannot replicate French bread with Chicago water. You can come close, but you can't make a New York bagel here either. French bread.* New York bagels.* That's the best we can do.

As humans, we adjust to these things, the minor adversities and inconveniences that go hand in hand with our instinctive will to survive and our realistic expectation that life is not perfect. Life goes on, la vie continue, without French bread or New York bagels in Chicago; there are certainly enough simple pleasures out there to keep us content, to help us appreciate the ones that are harder to come by.

Life also goes on after the unthinkable happens. We don't forget but we keep going. A sparkling new tower lights up the sky by Ground Zero now, lit up in red, white, and blue stripes, in solidarity with our friends across the pond. Tragedy is a part of life; we mourn, and then we keep living. I like to think it's not only because of a lack of better alternative. There really is a lot of good stuff here.

My Paris post the other day, my 'love and loss and mysteries of the universe' post, was a little bit about game theory. About how love isn't -- or at least shouldn't be -- a zero-sum game. Love for one thing doesn't -- or at least shouldn't -- cancel out love for another. And, I suppose, we can only hope that the kind of hate that cast darkness over Paris and humans everywhere last night cannot take away all the good stuff. I marveled, only days ago, about the capacity of the human heart to stretch and always make more room. I despair, today, about the capacity of a frightening number of seemingly heartless humans to hate and destroy and fail to see what seems so obvious to the rest of us.

It's counterproductive to wonder when the next monster will come out from under the bed, hell bent on destruction. But on mornings after, when the sun comes up and the unthinkable mess is in full view, it's tough to focus on the croissants. No matter how many terrorists have blown themselves up or let someone in law enforcement do the honors, we know it's not a zero-sum game, and there are plenty more where they came from.

Social media enabled folks in Paris to mark themselves safe. It was reassuring, for those of us who immediately ran through our mind's Rolodex to account for friends and loved ones who might be in harm's way. It would be nice if we could think of "safe" as a permanent status, but we all know better.

We'll always have croissants and French bread and New York bagels, and we'll always have Paris. And, la vie continue, because that's how we roll, Well, la vie continue.*

Game Theories

I have been plagued, lately, by an irrepressible urge to visit Paris. By my calculations, a seven year itch.

My love affair with Paris was slow to bloom. It finally hit me on my third visit, my forty-ninth birthday gift from my husband. We were trying desperately to salvage whatever we could, and he was astute enough to know it was pointless to wait for my fiftieth. At least we'll always have Paris.

It wasn't the first time it occurred to me that love, or at least my capacity for it, could be finite. A zero-sum game. I remember worrying about it before my second child was born, a bit uncomfortably close on the heels of my first. I think it was my mother-in-law who reassured me, but I was skeptical. She was right, though. My heart stretched, and it did it again for my third. And, as time went on, for a few dogs.

With Paris and my marriage, though, game theory seemed to apply. Maybe it's because everything about the city was so perfect that third time. A mad cow disease scare had marred my first visit, dashing my hopes of gorging on steak frittes and forcing me, every evening, to stare into the dead eyes of some unfortunate sea creature. The second time, it was just too damn cold, and it's difficult to fall prey to any kind of romantic spell with three kids and your mom in tow. The third time, though, with my marriage falling apart, Paris came together. Crisp, sunny, November weather. A quaint hotel on Ile St. Louis where we had to ring a bell to wake the night manager if we returned after nine. It didn't matter that we could touch all four walls of the room from the bed. All was forgotten in the morning when we descended the narrow winding staircase into the dungeon to devour our designated basket full of croissants and French bread. Love was unraveling but, hey, we were in Paris. We got along.

Seven years, and I barely remember why we were coming unglued, but I can still taste the croissants. I can still hear the sounds of my shoes on the pavement, still see the crowds of annoyingly compact French women, so purposeful, so efficient, so stylish no matter what the time of day. It was our third time, and we had already done the museums and the cathedrals and the Eiffel Tower and, when my mother was with us, about seventeen Louis Vuitton stores. This time, we just walked. Sometimes together, sometimes alone, but each of us, I think, always alone in our thoughts.

Our last morning there, while he slept, I walked, by myself, to visit the new Holocaust museum. A wife without a husband, a mother thousands of miles from her children, a Jew on the streets of Paris (even in le Marais) -- I felt conspicuously alone. Not particularly unhappy, just alone. And a little bit in the dark, in the City of Lights.

I've thought about returning to Paris several times, but somehow the itch has become stronger now, at the seven year mark. Maybe it's just coincidence, maybe it has nothing to do with seven years or Paris and it has everything to do with turning fifty-six or being almost three years into a divorce.

Maybe there's no theory to the game at all, but there's one thing I know -- it's not a zero-sum. There's always room for more.

A Kid in a Cotton Candy Store

I admit it. I'm kind of an idiot when it comes to politics.

But I read recently that physical activity combined with a little brain exercise could help make me smarter, or at least improve my aptitude in a targeted area or two, and I'm all about the efficiency of killing two birds with one stone.

I decided I'd start with the things that elude me most -- my glutes and Donald Trump. An ass and an asshole. I like the symmetry. At the very least, if I can't comprehend them, maybe I can make them disappear.

As luck would have it, Sunday morning news shows are big on candidate interviews, and no self-respecting glute toning machine is without a television, so the gods were well aligned for a little bit of self-improvement. I adjusted the setting on my stair climber to a level where the little flashing light assured me my butt cheeks would get full attention and tuned into a talk show. I live a charmed life. Donald Trump was on.

I forgot my earbuds, which meant I had to actually read what he said, in closed captioning black and white. It was far more instructive than just listening. I'm a visual learner. I can tune out noise, but I cannot unsee the spectacle of what appeared to be words spilling out of a talking cone of rotten cotton candy.

I don't know much about learning theory, but I do know that repetition is always a good teaching tool, and Donald Trump, in that respect at least, is a master pedagogue. He hammered away at his two themes like nobody's business: diplomacy and energy policy. And he did it in language that even I, a political idiot, could understand.

Diplomacy: Ben Carson is a really nice guy. Jeb Bush is a really nice guy too. Even nicer than Carson. Or maybe it was the other way around, but I think he was saying both scored high marks in the diplomacy department.

Energy: Jeb Bush is really low energy. Ben Carson is pretty low energy too. Not as low energy as Jeb, but still low energy. Or maybe it was the other way around, but I think he was saying both need some work on their energy policies.

Then he launched into this whole thing about super PACs, and how Ben Carson relies too much on his super PACs. I started to get a little confused, until I realized he probably was talking about Ben Carson's six pack because, as we all know, physical activity is important when it comes to improving brain function and a six pack is not anything to sneeze at. So I think he was saying maybe Ben would be better than Jeb, although of course nobody would be better than the Don, even if he looks like rotten cotton candy.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

I haven't noticed much improvement in the tone of my glutes yet, but I feel as if my political IQ has skyrocketed. I am trading in my Ken Ken puzzles -- which will apparently do nothing to enhance my brain unless I am called upon to do some simple arithmetic -- and I am going to devote myself to following the presidential campaigns more closely. Then I will really know how things add up.

The Fiend-ly Skies

Air travel just ain’t what it used to be.

Last night, I knew something was up when a flight attendant snapped at a woman who needed something a few rows back. “Ask the other one. I have a job to do.” I felt a gust of wind as she wheeled the cart by me. She was definitely in a hurry, although I was a little confused about where her other job was.

Things had been going so well. Without spending a dime, I have somehow landed on what appears to be the opposite of a watch list, and more often than not there’s a TSA pre-✔︎ notation on my boarding pass. At rush hour on a Thursday evening, that’s huge. Like royalty, I breezed past the mile long line of regular folk snaking slowly toward security, and without touching a bin or removing my laptop or taking off my boots or my jacket I was through to the other side. Sometimes I appreciate being not worth a second look.

We had made up for our plane’s late arrival at the gate with a swift and uneventful loading process. Everyone obeyed the repeated warnings from the ticket agent, and nobody dared sneak through before their group number was called. I feigned patience as I held my position near the ropes, reassuring myself that even though there were at least ten precious and semi-precious metal groups before mine, Group 2 was still like winning the lottery for overhead bin space.

And then, we waited. Twenty minutes past the pull back time, belted in and ready for the dulcet rumble of wheels on the runway, we hadn’t moved. That’s when the flight attendant whose smile had seemed so genuine when I boarded let loose on the woman a few rows back and propelled the cart up the aisle in a death defying rush to nowhere.

Then came the perky voice on the intercom, explaining the delay. I hoped it wasn’t anything serious, like the hydraulic system, or a broken wing. Or a faulty oxygen mask in the cockpit, which is what happened when my mom and brother were flying to Chicago last month, and I could not believe they were holding up a flight just so the pilot could have a working oxygen mask.

It was worse than I thought. In row 27, a guy’s reading light was out. No wonder the pretty flight attendant with the fake smile was feeling a bit homicidal. The work order had been filled out, and the mechanics were on the way. To fix one guy’s reading light in row 27. Everyone within a five row radius offered to switch seats with him. He declined. The flight attendant who was not quite yet in a murderous rage offered him a little pen light. He snarled. The intercom crackled again. It would be another hour before the mechanics could arrive. Somebody, a rare person with a brain, made an executive decision. The doors were locked, and we prepared, again, for takeoff. Everybody was happy. Except the guy in row 27.

I felt a little guilty later in the flight when I finally gave up on sleep and reached up to turn on my fully functioning reading light. I felt downright terrified when I accidentally pressed the flight attendant call button instead. Thankfully I caught it before the scary one with the fake smile could send the cart hurtling up the aisle to slice off my toes.

The good thing about arriving really late when your flight was already going to be one of the last flights in is the swift exit, a perfect matching bookend to my TSA pre✔︎. And I still have all my toes. Things could be a lot worse.

Torn Between Two Teams

When night baseball first lit up Wrigleyville, we had already moved too far south of the stadium to be affected by the crowds or the glare. I could still remember hearing the distant roar of a cheer when the Cubs scored, still remember the packs of fans straggling through our neighborhood hours later, savoring the day's win, their faces ruddy from too much sun and alcohol. 

It's funny, sometimes, what we remember. Last night, perched, as I never dreamed would be, on a suburban bar stool watching the Cubs get one step closer to the World Series, I thought about those days in Wrigleyville. The days before the lights. The days before Harry Caray was just the name of a restaurant. The days before yesterday, when it occurred to me I would actually route for the Cubs if they play the Mets for the League Championship. 

That's all I was thinking, really, until I saw my brother's nostalgic Facebook post. It's difficult for anybody who was a Mets fan in 1969 to let go entirely, no matter where we end up. It was a magical year for the perennial losers (the Mets and I were about the same age, so it had literally been a lifetime); we rolled our eyes at the start of their winning streak in late spring, never imagining it would last more than one game. The wait was over. Back in 1969, I had no idea there was a team somewhere in the Midwest that had gone several lifetimes without winning, a team more beloved to generations of fans than the newcomers in New York could ever have been. 

Back to my brother's post, another in a string of recent posts, I assumed, about his own lifetime of Mets memories and about this year's amazing Mets. A team that didn't even have to fight for back door admission into post season play. Show's what I know. It started with a note of congratulations to his nieces and nephew, his favorite people in the world, born and raised in Chicago to love the Cubs.    

There was a picture of the commemorative program he had received at the first night game at Wrigley Field, twenty-seven years ago. The first night game only because the real first night game had been rained out the previous day. It is one of his fondest memories. My husband had gotten tickets for the three of us, and my brother was thrilled to join. It was the Cubs versus the Mets. It was a piece of history, much appreciated by a guy who has, I think, visited every baseball stadium in the country and still has not forgiven our mother for tossing out his baseball card collection. 

Like I said, it's funny, sometimes, what we remember. When I saw his post, I realized I had no recollection of the Mets playing under the lights that night. In fact, I had little recollection of the game at all. What I remember is calling my parents from a payphone in the stadium, struggling to hear them over the din, telling them they were going to be grandparents. I remember telling my brother he was going to be an uncle. I remember craving even more hot dogs than I usually do at a baseball game. I couldn't tell you what the score was, much less, who won. 

I am thinking about all of those memories now, the ones I've carried with me, and the ones my brother brought back to my attention. Those memories from before I had spent more of my life in Chicago than in New York, before I found out my parents would be grandparents and my brother would be an uncle and I would be a mom. Before I raised three children who love the Cubs. 

If the Cubs meet the Mets in the League Championship series -- and I hope they do -- I will be slightly torn, but my adopted home town team will have the edge. Yes, I will surreptitiously wear my Mets tee shirt under my sweater, as I did last night, but, as my brother said to me this morning, 109 years is long enough!

In the Venti Scheme of Things

I felt a little envious of the young, bleary-eyed woman who rushed in and out of Starbucks yesterday morning. Her oversized sweatshirt and her venti coffee helped dwarf her already slight frame. She seemed even tinier than usual, without her two-year-old twins in tow.

She is young with a touch of an old soul. I know she is tired just thinking about the day ahead, alone with her small children while her husband goes off to work, even though it is Saturday. I miss that kind of tired, the uncomplicated, explicable kind of tired. The tiredness born out of being larger than life to small children who just cannot imagine that you feel as small as they do, sometimes, at least in the grand scheme of things.

Those years are a blur of vivid moments, virtual selfies that never seem to fade. Me, wheeling a double stroller against a steady stream of morning commuters heading to the El, complaining out loud to my sleeping babies (much to the amusement of passers-by) that I needed sleep. Me, standing on a narrow strip of grass on a sunny fall day, a baby in my arms as I pivot to watch her older siblings play on adjacent soccer fields. Me, feigning interest at a parent teacher conference. Them, looking at me as if I had all the answers. Them, questioning my answers. Them, wondering when I became so dumb.

Thanks to social media, I can still get glimpses of their lives, even though I am rarely in the daily picture. Sharp and vivid, these photographs often don't seem as real to me as the ones in my head, the ones that capture three childhoods marked my seemingly interminable days that passed by in a minute. Days that made me feel tired and put upon and overwhelmed by responsibility. Damn I miss all that.

I ran into the young, bleary-eyed woman hours later; again, I felt a little envious. She was still wearing her oversized sweatshirt, but with one child in her arms, the other holding her hand, she had grown into it a bit. They were off to the local hot dog joint for lunch, and then, if mom had her druthers, a nap. I was enjoying a leisurely telephone conversation about life with my nineteen year old, thinking how nice it would be if we could duck out together for a char dog and cheese fries.

Missing Pieces

The reactions were generally predictable. Lots of leg crossing among the men, a more maternal empathy from the women. Eli knew something was up -- somehow figured out that getting "snipped" probably didn't mean a haircut. He amped up the obstinacy for a few days. It only strengthened my resolve.

I received periodic updates from the vet's office, His staunchest fan, Jenn, assured me she had showered him with hugs and kisses when she arrived in the morning. As soon as he was all sewn up, Jenn texted me to tell me all went well. When he woke up, the doctor called to fill me in on the details. When I finally retrieved him, his stumpy tail -- no longer overshadowed by the equipment below -- wagged as it always had. He looked as devastatingly handsome as always, content in spite of the perennial sad droop of his boxer eyes and the oversized lampshade on his head. I was overcome with relief. Even a friend's taunt that I had emasculated another one didn't bother me.

The lampshade lasted about fifteen minutes. I decided I would just be vigilant, monitor him closely to make sure he didn't lick his wound. I kept him away from other dogs who might try to help him out. At the first hint of a slurp, I wedged my left arm between his head and his missing pieces while I did whatever else I needed to do with my right. He had been sent home with sedatives and pain medication, and -- I'm not gonna lie -- I took a bit of guilty pleasure in administering both like clockwork.

Oddly, the only comment that got to me came from the most unexpected source. The homeless woman who has made our town her home -- the paradoxically articulate straggler who sleeps in an enclosure by the train parking lot and does her morning ablutions in the Starbucks restroom and spends the rest of her day in the local library -- asked me how Eli was doing. She has known Eli since he first arrived. From the beginning, she would follow his other admirers when she saw us outside Starbucks, politely awaiting her turn for a faceful of licks. She hangs back, and everyone else gives her a wide berth while pretending not to. She wears everything she owns, and she doesn't shower the way we "homefull" people do. Eli is the only one who doesn't seem to notice, or care.

I told her he seemed to have come out of it unscathed. (I was still telling myself that the lampshade was the worst of it.) She told me what a shame it was, that Eli would not be able to reproduce, that Eli was now the end of the Eli line. I had not even thought about that, except maybe when someone once suggested I breed him and make some money off his good looks and infectious droopy grin. She continued on, remembering a childhood pet of her own, how devastated she was when her parents did to him what I had just done to Eli, how she hated the thought of him not being able to live on in his offspring.

It does seem a shame. Not just that there will be no more little Eli's, but that this woman, once a young girl with two parents and a puppy and a roof over her head, a person who speaks with more intelligence and compassion than many people I know, sleeps in a parking garage and bathes in a coffee house sink and lives, during business hours, in a library. She is engaging, and people smile at her and talk to her wherever she goes, but there is always that tiny hint of discomfort. On both sides.

Except when Eli licks her face. It makes me think twice, at least for a moment.