A Few Things I've Learned from Living in France, In No Particular Order

 

1. To wear skirts again.
   
   
2. Fifteen ways to wear a scarf.
    
3. To embrace cold weather.
    
4. To pay attention to seasons for various foods.
   
   
   
   
   
5. To commiserate with French women on the terrible spatial organization of most large markets in Paris, and the remodel hasn’t changed a thing.
    
6. To weigh vegetables and put little stickers on them before going to the cash register.
   
   
   
7. To walk and walk and walk.
    
8. And to sit in cafes, enjoying the theater all around you.
   
   
   
   
   
9. To live (quite easily) without a car.
    
10. That when your melancholic man says there is only one thing that prevents his happiness and it is having to drive everywhere, and that if he lived in Paris and could ditch the car, all would be well, you should believe him.
    
    
    
     
11. That when you tell him you cannot live without your entire library, and that giving away 2/3rds of it will simply mean that you’ll have to replace it all after you move, he should believe you.
    
    
    
    
     
12. To say goodbye to Marley, and accept that no other cat will do.
     
13. That your greatest fear about living in another country, losing touch with family and friends, is easily solved by airplanes, phone calls, e-mail and Facebook.
     
14. That having international friends is a good idea.
    
    
    
    
     
15. That the street art scene is the most alive visual art in France now, and perhaps in most of the western world.
     
16. That it is possible to understand a French washing machine by living with it for three years, consulting a plumber twice, and having a Darty technician come to your home and explain that two soap tablets in the tray are appropriate for a regular wash, but only one can be used for a delicate cycle, and must be placed, not in the tray, but in the machine, and then the water will not leak all over the floor.
     
17. There is no cure for the French dryer sounding like a jet airplane taking off.
    
    
    
     
18. There is no cure for the French love of bureaucracy.
     
19. It takes a year to stop sampling all 365 French cheeses before you can respect your arteries and get a grip.
     
20. You can laugh at your doctor when she laughs at you for suggesting that sugar might be bad for your health. After all, she is French.
    
    
21. You can finally listen to your L.A. healer, Dr. Mao, and substitute green tea for coffee and still write.
     
22. You can write through grief, you can keep working in spite of losing the woman with whom you are closest on earth, your sister, Jane.
    
    
    
     
23. Socialism is fantastic for mothers and families and anyone who is vulnerable (let’s just say, most of us), but it’s not good for entrepreneurs.
     
24. But the French are right, you need to take weekends off and you need to, regularly, get out of town.
     
25. There are cultures where literature is so important that you can hear it discussed by writers and critics every night on TV if you want.
    
    
    
    
     
26. Ancient is beautiful, and living in a modern city in harmony with the beauty of the distant past increases the power of a place.
     
27. Paris is our city, but the U.S. is our country. We can see our own country more clearly from afar, its craziness (guns, greed, hubris and politics), but also its beauty (energy, resourcefulness, freedom of expression, warmth).

 

Marley: The Lion in Winter

Marley, our feline, family and friend: you're not feeling well. You’re eating a special food and taking daily medicine for a kidney ailment, but you’re still losing weight. It’s time to take you to Dr. M. for a check-up. 

You yowl in the elevator, then you’re calm, quiet, curious, as I pull you along Boulevard St. Germain in your cat caddy.

You growl at the alarming smells in the vet’s waiting room.

A door opens, a short yappy canine skids across the floor towards you. You hiss like a snake.

Dr. M. in slow-mo, as if walking in a dream,

John Lennon sculpted face and specs,

hands at home in fur, questions you.

I translate: your behavior is odd, changed.

You don’t jump up on the counter now,

sleep instead on your bed on the kitchen floor,

no longer come bounding out for our company,

you wander in beside one or the other of us for a while,

then return to the kitchen alone, as if disoriented.

You forget your cat box at least twice a week.

Dr. M. sinks his slow hands in your white belly fur,

feels around—how patient you are!—

then peers into your eyes with his light. This you barely endure.

We hold your head and paws while he presses a syringe into your front leg. 

You yell at him: you’ve had it!

One final indignity: claws clipped.

You are not amused; no, you are royally pissed.

Your eyes are fine, the doctor says, but it could be

a tumor of the brain or lungs.

The next day we have an appointment at a clinic

on the periphery of Paris, due north, a long Métro ride.

Richard places a turquoise towel around his neck,

and drapes you around his shoulders.

Won’t he jump down? I wonder. But no, you don’t.

Just in case, I wheel your caddy beside the two of you.

Photograph (c) 2013 Kaaren Kitchell

Your first Métro ride. Richard stands, with his Turkish Angora boa. You look around in amazement. You rotate your gaze in every direction, marble-eyed, down at the tracks, the tunnels, the cars, up at the ceiling, the ads, the humans, who eye you in amusement.  

Since we arrived in Paris, you haven’t been out at all except for up Blvd. St. Germain to the vet’s.

(I remember Grammy K., living in that high-rise care center in San Francisco, loving it when we sprung her and wandered the city streets.)

You stay close to Richard’s ears, lick them a little, your hind legs trailing down his back. I drape them around his shoulders again, but they prefer to trail.

A block from the clinic, you suddenly pant like a lunatic (a sixth sense as to where we’re going, or thirst?).

Photograph (c) 2013 Kaaren Kitchell

In the waiting room, Richard lays you down on a chair. You go limp, head and paws hanging over one side, tail drooping over the other.

I sign you in and bring you water.

Two young French girls ask your name.

Marley, Richard says.

Is your pet in there? I ask. They nod. What is his name?

Snoop.

Snoop Dog and Bob Marley, kindred spirits!

The vet comes out holding a tiny dog who looks like a fox with a tube coming out of his forehead. One of the girls reaches for him, cradles him on her lap. He sits there staring, forlorn.

Il est trés malade, says the other girl.

The girl who holds Snoop curls over him, sobbing.

We comfort her.

What kind of Frankenstein experiments are they doing in there? you wonder, still lying across the chair limp.

The doctor calls us in. He is young, handsome, warm.

You lie on the table, limp. The vet interviews us, examines you and carries you out of the room for the X-rays.

I go around the corner to find the bathroom. Returning, see the saddest dog I’ve ever seen, splayed on the floor, eyes wounded, his dewlaps spread like spilled water. 

He has neck cancer, the vet’s assistant says.

Will they put him to sleep?

She doesn’t know.

The vet carries you back into the room. It’s over!

You spring into action, explore every corner of the room, finally settle on a high counter near our heads.

The vet puts up the X-rays. Your heart: fine. So are your lungs and brain. But here, see the dark line along the colon? The lining appears to be inflamed. He’ll call our vet to discuss what to do. You need more blood work and an ultrasound.

We ask about the saddest dog. Oh, he’s on a course of chemo for three weeks, says the vet. He will look like that for another few days, and then he’ll be fine. Amazing!

All the way home, you’re alert and relaxed. Just a brief spell of white coat syndrome, just like Richard has.

Next day at Dr. M’s, a very young girl in a white lab coat with long dark hair tells us the doctor will be out shortly. She moves slowly, as if dreaming, comes over to you and coos.

Anouk is her name. She’s the veterinarian’s daughter, 11 years old, she wants to be a vet like her dad. 

More blood work means another needle. He’ll call us with the results later that day.

Drawing (c) 2013 Anouk McCarthy

The news is good. The renal condition is improving. He will give you medicine for the colon condition, and it’s not too difficult to treat. And you'll get your ultrasound the 24th.

Richard stops by the vet’s for the medicine. Anouk gives us her two drawings of you, looking like a little fox.

Marley with the plumed tail,

Marley the Prince (pronounced the way the French do, prance),

Marley with the Van Gogh eyebrows,

Marley with the turquoise eyes (now navy blue),

Marley, Mr. Floofypants, friend Dawna calls you,

Marley, little king of the block who adopted us

the day we planned our wedding,

Marley who wanted a home

with no other cats (or dogs or kids),

Marley with the white Elizabethan ruff,

Turkish Angora with buff-colored ears,

spirit neither shy nor neurotic,

fierce, sure of yourself,

certain of our affection,

rubbing white fur on us,

singing your feline song,

shedding your love

all over the house.

Drawing (c) 2013 Anouk McCarthy

Dragon

A great green dragon lies to the West, watching over the town. I look up at her ruffled spine, the green and gold of her flanks, and see her dragon breath drifting down from above. It looks like the mist above Chinese mountain peaks.

But no, it’s smoke from the Colorado fires, beyond the Rocky Mountains at the edge of town.

I’m standing outside the Whole Foods Market on Pearl Street in Boulder. What has brought me here, so far from Richard and our Paris home?

Love and health. Health and love.

On July 4, 2012, great news came from physicists at CERN in Geneva about the Higgs boson particle: the only manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles with mass. It is responsible for life on earth, human beings, the stars—everything in the universe, and the forces that work between them. Without this miracle, we would have no weight, would be ricocheting around at the speed of light.

This energy field that physicists have been predicting since 1964 can be seen from other perspectives, too. The perspective of love, for instance. The power of love to transform someone’s health, for instance, my sister, Jane’s.

Here are a few of the elements in Jane’s energy field:

Her daughter, Rachel, helping her to get to medical appointments and being vigilantly protective of her health.

Her daughter, Bayu, flying in from Wellington, New Zealand for a month and planning to return this fall when she has completed her art and design studies.

Her mother and four siblings ready to help in whatever ways we can.

A caring, expert Western medical team.

A brilliant acupuncturist and sage, Dr. Maoshing Ni, prescribing Chinese herbal teas and Eastern healing.

A gifted local acupuncturist.

A friend, Liza, flying in for several days.

Friends in Boulder and beyond.

Friend, Susan, connecting Jane to a healing group who are meditating on her health.

Jane’s own excellent health habits: yoga, walking and eating well.

A town where, for an entire month, I didn’t encounter a single surly or obstructive attitude (although the motorcyclist who honked at me as I fumbled for my ringing phone while driving was entirely justified).

A town that’s so wholesome—5,430 feet high (great for the lungs and heart), with clean air, open protected space, cycling, hiking, mountain climbing, free yoga classes, healthy food, people drunk on endorphins—that it might be the healthiest town in the U. S.

A town where the restaurant food is astonishingly good: the scallops and truffles at Riffs, the paella at the Mediterranean, the chicken salad at Brasserie Ten Ten, the vegetable omelette at Tangerine, the Coquilles St.-Jacques at Arugula, the vegetable tempura and beer at Hapa Sushi Grill, the guacamole and enchiladas Veracruz at Cantina Laredo. I haven’t had a bad meal yet. Even the gourmet cheeseburger at Salt the Bistro I ate with Rachel and Brandon (the first such meal I’ve had in some twenty years, making me feel like a real American again) was delicious.

Jane seems healthier by the day, surrounded as she is by an energy field of healing and love.

All this in a larger context that’s frightening: the fires in Colorado were so extreme this year that half the fire fighters in the nation were brought in to fight them. They have resulted in the loss of 346 homes, 32,000 people evacuated from their homes, and are the most destructive in Colorado history. When I last checked on July 13, they were still not contained.

A map of weather conditions across the U. S. showed an alarming degree of heat, dryness, high winds and out-of-control fires in western states.

We know there is an energy field all around us which affects us and which we affect.

Can we extend this force of love and healing beyond our families and friends, and offer it to the whole planet?

How?

How can we do this?