(Translation from German) “LIFE IS NO PONY FARM”
My last post was in December as I was preparing to exit Paris with Georgia and Roo. I was sad to leave. I had been excited to watch spring slowly chase winter from the ancient storied city. I knew balconies would bloom and overcoats would be shed to once again reveal the measured yet undeniable flamboyance of French fashion.
I was leaving just as I had begun to make some ‘friends’. It’s a term I use loosely to denote the charitably good natured people who chatted to me regularly at the gym and my usual cafes and haunts. The basic little conversations with me were a blip on their radar but formed a meaningful feeling of connectedness for me to my new home. By December, I had learned my way around the city more or less without needing to refer to my phone navigation, and that, in combination with what I like to think of as an improved attention to how I dressed even had people asking ME for directions to places.
I loved it when tourists would ask me for directions in halting French, and I would reply in English, that
“Yes, the Palais Garnier is the Opera house and yes, it is that big building up there with the gold on the roof”, or
“I would recommend Printemps. It is just up ahead to the right. Make sure to visit the two food floors at the top of the Mens building and plan to have lunch there if you can.”, or
“There are actually three Zaras (or three Starbucks) all close to here. Which one are you looking for…?”
Their faces lit with joy at their luck of having inadvertently asked an English speaker and my face lit with joy at having been taken as French.
So returning to our decidedly quiet corner of life on a West Coast Canadian Island was a bit of a reverse culture shock. I think the most alarming part was that it felt like nothing had changed at home. In fact the kids and I would marvel that the more days at home we logged, the more it seemed our time in Paris might not have even happened at all. But Christmas came and we enjoyed all the happiness and family togetherness that entailed and soon it was January.
Rupert slid back into school as if he had never left; Harrison went back to school, and Georgia was engaged in art school applications. It felt the world was ticking back along its indentured path and then Covid 19 came on the scene. Now life has changed for all of us on this spinning dot of blue.
But life for us personally in this little bubble of relative self-sufficiency and low population density has hardly been arduous. But as I follow my French ‘friends’ on social media, I feel pangs of sadness as I witness that ancient city of architectural beauty and continual motion, stop. The streets are bare, made so by roaming armed guards insisting people stay behind closed doors. A photographer friend sent me photos of the city as almost never seen before: entirely empty. (Credit to Marc Aussett-Lacroix)
The streets are in fact so empty that they almost appear photoshopped to me. Paris is NEVER empty. The City of Lights never sleeps.
I’ve always thought Paris is its famous monuments and its other gorgeous buildings, its parks, the Seine, and the way the light dawns and sets on it all. But without its people, Paris appears to have become like a beautiful car without an engine. Navigating the streets with throngs of people, and so so many tourists was tiring and often frustrating for us, but I must concede it was also the people who brought the magic: magic in the form of windows piled high with spectacular cheeses and bread and pastries, people standing and chatting (and smoking) and laughing and looking. It was the people on loud scooters, in speeding taxis, on sidewalks rushing, in restaurants clinking, and the lines of them disgorging from endless buses that were a massive part of the city’s vitality. I think old buildings have a soul, but without the life of any people, they don’t have a pulse.
And while the world’s people stay behind closed doors, we have taken to entertaining ourselves in wild and wonderful and weird ways at home. We’ve had a few ‘sophisticated Sunday’ dinners, where we make a nice dinner and get dressed up and have a dance party afterward. Last Sunday was Mothers Day and Georgia suggested we embrace an 80’s German Techno theme.
In preparation for the event, Georgia and Roo decided to create their own heavily synthesized song. They wanted to incorporate proper German lyrics, so went to our friend, Google to find some phrases in German. Turns out there are some very intriguing German idioms. Georgia has a couple of German friends and she said it’s amazing how they have a word for things that in English take a number of words to say. For example they have one word to denote the feeling when something is on the tip of your tongue.
Georgia and Roo got a kick out of researching these phrases and the song they composed, incorporating most of them is pretty fantastic. It ends with an inspiring ‘Happy Mothers Day’ and gave us some much enjoyed dinner chuckles. As the Germans would say, ‘now we’re in the salad’ with the state of the world. But it’s time to get over our ‘grief bacon’, and to recalibrate and remember what, or more importantly who is of importance to us in these journeys of life we are fortunate enough to enjoy. I don’t think it’s an ‘air castle’ to think there is still so much magic and beauty in the world and in ourselves. It’s important to remember that the challenges make the victories that much better. We can’t all ‘live like God in France’. We need to remember that ‘life is no pony farm.’
Hope you and yours are keeping safe, content and feeling loved. ❤️
German Idioms: