Paris Dreaming

by Katrina Lawrence

  ‘Oh oui, zay always are wiz Chanel,’ she purred, and added: ‘Iz almost like wearrrring a tracksuit.’ Although I was pretty sure that Madame had never worn sweat pants in her entire life.

  Mum and I took the jacket out that night, to hear Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at Sainte-Chapelle, one of the true jewels in the tiara of Paris. Dating to the thirteenth century, this Gothic treasure was built as a reliquary for what was said to be the crown of thorns. And that’s why you have the sensation of stepping into a jewellery box as you walk into the upper chapel, with its gem-coloured glass sparkling to the heavens. We took our seats and looked up to watch the setting sun’s final rays pierce prismatic shafts through the stained glass, and transform the rose window (surely the most exquisite portrayal possible of the apocalypse) into a kaleidoscopic, almost psychedelic, flower. As the chapel darkened to a moody sapphire-blue, and the golden flickers of the candelabras intensified, we waited for the musicians to spring into action. And then suddenly: da dum dum dum dada daaa! My heart leapt to my mouth, my throat tightened and tears pricked my eyes.

  Now, I’m no music connoisseur, but something about the strains of Vivaldi had pushed a button, down there under layers of denial, and triggered an emotional cascade. Often I cry for the beauty of a moment — the happy (more than sad) moments in a film, a movingly worded passage in a book, even (embarrassingly) advertisements for tissues that feature fluffy ducklings — but this was more than that. Reacting to extreme beauty, I think, is your body’s way of countering and releasing past sorrows. I realised that I hadn’t adequately mourned the soul I’d lost in miscarrying, who was now perhaps floating around up there somewhere, amid the divine lights and angelic tunes. I’m not the most dedicated Catholic girl around, but I take solace from religion when I need to. And sitting in this ancient chapel, former home to the crown of thorns — a perverted symbol of majesty that became one of suffering but also nobility — while listening to the sounds of spring, the season of hope and rebirth, was a painfully yet exquisitely healing experience. Such transcendent incidents refresh your perspective on life. You’re reminded that pleasure always follows pain, as spring does winter.

  Just as Cole Porter crooned, I love Paris in any season — but spring is when the city really sings, bursting into a stirring symphony of blooms. Mum and I were sitting in the Tuileries, on a pair of chairs in the shade of a Judas tree, a profusion of musk-pink blossoms, by a flowerbed of red and purple tulips. It was May Day, officially Labour Day, but traditionally the day of le muguet or lily of the valley. You see, even labourers stop to smell the flowers in Paris.

  We’d brought along a basket of magazines, but I found I preferred the real-life vignettes playing out before us. This park, after all, has a picturesque history of people-watching. Once the private gardens of Catherine de Medici, they were later fancied up (that is, made more French than Italian) and then opened to the public, with one caveat: you had to be stylishly dressed to gain entry. The original women’s magazines appeared around this time, and their fashion illustrators would often come to the Tuileries to find inspiration in the ornamented women parading around in their new ensembles, turning them into fashion plates delectable enough to adorn chocolate boxes. These were the watercolours that rose-tinted Emma Bovary’s dreams, and can be now bought along the Seine. They were the original street-style snaps. Perhaps this is one reason Parisiennes don’t leave the house looking anything but impeccable. Their city has long been used as a photo set, on which everyone is expected to look picture-perfect.

  I watched a Parisian mother (jeans, white shirt, requisite scarf) wheel an old-fashioned pram along the gravel path, her two older children skipping behind, the girl in a floral smock, the boy in a striped T-shirt and neat navy shorts, giggling as they blew bubbles at each other. It was as though an advertisement (brief: effortlessly stylish Parisienne with adorably shiny-haired children) had come to life.

  ‘She makes motherhood look so easy,’ I sighed.

  ‘By all accounts, motherhood is easier here,’ Mum responded.

  This does indeed seem to be true. All mothers in France have access to family allowance, and the government funds maternity leave and childcare centres, making it more feasible for women to get back to work, or at least find some balance in their hectic lives. It’s simpler, in other words, to be a superfemme in Paris than a superwoman in Sydney, where maternity leave depends on the generosity of your company, and the exorbitantly expensive daycare options are few and far between.

  Still, I don’t get the sense that Parisiennes put as much pressure on themselves to be so super. Perhaps this is because feminism panned out differently there. French women, by and large, haven’t felt the burning desire to prove to men that they can be just like them but also a whole lot more. It’s okay to be different. And it’s also okay to cut a few corners in the process.

  I had just read leading feminist author Elisabeth Badinter’s The Conflict: Woman and Mother, in which she commends the tradition of French maternité for its ‘part-time’ approach to motherhood. French women, she notes, have an unapologetic history of putting themselves first, which can be traced back to the seventeenth century, when mamans sent their newborns off to wet nurses so that they could quickly pick their old lives back up. Badinter is firmly in the guilt-free camp of parenting, and advocates anything that will better slot motherhood into a busy life, be that formula milk, disposable nappies, pre-packaged food or full-time daycare. The best mother, according to Badinter, is the one who knows she is, above all, her own woman.

  Badinter’s book is a rallying cry for women to resist the call of naturalism, the myth of the idealised earth mother, with its pressures to breastfeed, cook organic lentil stew and the like. The father of all earth mothers was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Having lost his mum at a young age, he held firm views on motherhood, which he placed high up on a rustic wooden pedestal. In his eyes, women had been put on this bucolic earth to raise lots of bouncing, breastfed babies. Badinter has little time for Rousseau, unsurprisingly, calling him — and the naturalist movement — manipulative.

  The earth mother cult was alive and well in Sydney. I had tried for a while to become her. I even washed and dried cloth nappies every day. In the end, I had to go back to full-time work, which necessitated adding formula into the breastfeeding mix, and admitting that life would be a hell of a lot easier if we started using supermarket nappies. I made the decision not to give into mother guilt soon after throwing off my earth mother rags. But I also knew that the superwoman cape didn’t suit me either. I still wanted to try to juggle as much in life as possible, but I was open to dropping a few balls along the way. I knew I had to be more lenient on myself if we were one day going to throw in an extra ball to juggle: another baby.

  I’d only ever pictured myself with daughters, for some reason. So early in my first pregnancy, I had naturally, and openly, hoped for a girl. When I discovered I was in fact having a boy, I was told some of the oddest things. A supposed close friend exclaimed, ‘Sucked in.’ A neighbour, a mother of girls, said, ‘You know, I was convinced I was having boys and wanted to die.’ And then there were the apparently consolatory comments. ‘Well, you’ll still be the princess in the family’ was one. And another common response: ‘At least you won’t have to deal with any of that weird rivalry mums and daughters have.’ That last one surprised me the most, because I’ve always had such a good relationship with my mum — which is perhaps why I originally dreamed of having a girl, so we could replicate the rapport.

  Of course, I’d heard some shocking mother–daughter tales — although, granted, few compared to that of Catherine de Medici, who was said to be the mère of all horror mothers to Marguerite, the most robust and spirited of her seven surviving children. Catherine beat her daughter ragged for falling in love with a man who didn’t fit in with her power-hungry plans, then forced her to marry against her will. Worse yet, she turned the wedding celebrations into one of French history’s darkest moments: the massacre o
f Saint Bartholomew’s Day, in which thousands of Protestants — including Marguerite’s new husband’s friends — were butchered throughout Paris.

  I thought about the troubled pair as we exited the gardens, walking through the ghost of Catherine’s Tuileries Palace, towards the Louvre courtyard, where much of the carnage took place. The Louvre has changed almost beyond recognition since then, continually rebuilt, mostly along classical Italianate lines. During the Renaissance years, Italy, not France, was the global style capital. King François I, a passionate Italophile, handpicked the heiress Catherine for his son for her rich dowry as much as her à la mode nationality. (The king also, incidentally, invited a certain Leonardo da Vinci to France, and bought his painting Mona Lisa, which would one day become the star attraction of his former abode.) When Catherine arrived at the royal court of the Louvre, she brought with her many new trends — in addition to perfume, there were the fork, pasta, artichokes and handkerchiefs — as well as a commitment to making her mark on her new city through architecture. But like the Palais des Tuileries, most of the buildings she commissioned have disappeared.

  ‘It makes you reflect on the transitory nature of power, doesn’t it?’ commented Mum.

  My mother was technically retired, but she had taken on a number of board jobs that, effectively, kept her toiling away full-time. Mum was unabashed in the pride she felt for a job well done, but was nevertheless philosophical about the importance of work. Having operated in politics for many years, she knew that what could be achieved one year could be all too easily dismantled the next — and so she ensured that her career was never so all-encompassing that it took away from her overall enjoyment of life.

  ‘You know, Catherine saw most of her children die, and her plans come to nothing,’ I said. ‘I wonder if she might have been happier, in the end, if she’d not worked so hard, and spent more time with her children, especially Marguerite.’

  ‘No doubt,’ nodded Mum.

  For our final Parisian dinner, we celebrated (and part commiserated) at Lapérouse, a seventeenth-century Seine-side townhouse that was transformed into a plush restaurant in the Belle Époque. The kind of place that could only be conjured into reality in Paris, Lapérouse is an opulence of red velvet, burnished gold and gleaming wood, and has long been notorious for its sequence of moodily lit salons privés. There politicians would wine and dine their courtesans and mistresses, who verified the authenticity of their gifts of diamonds by scratching the stones across the mirrors, which are still there today — complete with original etchings. If only these walls could talk!

  We wound up a narrow set of stairs into the main dining room, its walls adorned with golden lamps and pastoral frescoes, and its floral-trimmed ceilings suspended low, over what were once the servant rooms. So fine and exquisite is everything that you feel like you’re in a vintage dollhouse, and you half expect the food not to be real. Fortunately, it is. I ate a salad of crisp pale-green lettuce fluttered in pecorino cheese and truffles, and Mum opted for sole meunière, the classic fried fish dish that Julia Child first ate on moving to France, inspiring her to learn the ways of la cuisine française, and in turn spread the amour to the rest of the world.

  Mum was one of the many new brides who bought Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in the early 1970s. I can still picture, and smell, the Saturday-evening dinner parties she and Dad would host. I’d greet their glamorous friends — the ladies in lurex, the men in paisley shirts — in my pyjamas, before being sent to my bedroom, where I would strain to hear the chardonnay-fuelled conversation and inhale the aromas of duck à l’orange and apple tart. But Mum’s stint as a gourmande fizzled out when her career sapped her of the energy necessary for perfecting boeuf bourgignon. Meals in our house soon became platters of tomatoes, olives and cheese, anything we could quickly throw together at the end of the day. ‘Something’s gotta give,’ Mum once said with a shrug. I’m sure Madame Badinter would approve, even if Mrs Child (and Monsieur Rousseau) would not.

  Julia, incidentally, celebrated her fortieth birthday at Lapérouse, in 1952, after having moved to Paris four years earlier. The city transformed her in many ways, teaching her how to savour every moment (‘Life is the proper binge,’ she claimed) and fill her world to the brim with happiness, even amid her personal sorrows. The way I see it, Julia had an inner Parisienne just waiting to wriggle out. All it took was one bite of sole meunière. For others, it might be a whiff of musk-based perfume or the slinky feel of a Chanel jacket’s silk lining.

  ‘La vie est faite de petits bonheurs’ is a French phrase I love. It means: life is made from small joys; enjoy the little things, in other words. It’s another reminder for the French to live not just by the day but also by the moment, to sit down for lunch and relish it, to stop and smell those flowers. Remember, even Delacroix took time away from the big picture, to observe the little ones, to paint those delicate blooms. A still life, after all, is one way to still life, to slow it down.

  When I was pregnant, I was given a book called something like Meditation for Mothers. It warned me that I would soon have little time for yoga, or anything else much fun while I was at it. I’d have to find calmness in such moments as washing cups. This depressed me no end. And then I had Noah, and life did indeed hit the fast-forward button. But that fortnight in Paris reminded me that I didn’t have to stare at dirty crockery to still my mind. I could still look for, and find, small moments of beauty in life. And as beauty is best when abstract, you can find it all around you: by playing soul-inspiring music, relishing a plate of ripe tomatoes, or staring at the simple yet extraordinary elegance of a flower. That sounds very Rousseau of me, I admit, but I was far from being a patchouli-sniffing earth mother. At the same time, I knew that I didn’t have to be her alter ego either, the superwoman. I didn’t have to prove heroic feats of juggling motherhood and career. I didn’t have to wear a cape. Although perhaps I would add a Chanel jacket to my own bucket-list.

  CHAPTER 10

  MAMAN

  maman nf mummy, mum

  In which, aged forty-something, I pass on my love of Paris.

  If I couldn’t have another Paris baby, I could at least bring him up à la française. When I was pregnant with Otto (oui, another garçon!), I came across French Children Don’t Throw Food by Pamela Druckerman, and promptly tossed out all previous parenting books to make this my baby-rearing bible. It wasn’t that I felt we’d got parenting that wrong the first time around, it’s that we’d been warned a second child doesn’t so much double the complexity of life as quintuple it, and that we would ultimately have to choose between order and chaos — and who better to know about this duality of choice than the French, right?

  When it comes to parenting, the French opt for structure over spontaneity — the so-called cadre, or frame, of childhood. According to Druckerman, an American who has raised three children in Paris, French babies become civilised little beings — who sleep through, eat everything, accept being told non, and generally know their place in the world — in a matter of months.

  ‘You don’t need to read that book,’ scoffed a French colleague. ‘I can tell you why we all turn out the way we do: we were petrified of our parents.’ While French parents are said to be less strict these days, most still believe that, by exerting some tough amour early on, their children will grow into upright citizens who conform to society with elegant ease, which generally makes for a more harmonious life.

  Andy and I had been somewhat, let’s say, laissez-faire with Noah, determined not to let a baby, no matter how cute, control our lives. But all the improvisation — and the freedom to stay out late with friends while Noah snoozed under the table — came at a price: by the age of two, he took hours to settle to sleep, and instead of meals he asked for platters of hors d’oeuvres, as though he was still down the road at the local bar.

  Visualising Otto-to-be as a perfect French-style child with an innate talent for sleeping and eating, I stocked up on Sophie La Girafe parapher
nalia and Petit Bateau striped onesies. Curiously, I didn’t think to suggest names such as Louis or Gabriel. Andy and I came across the option of Otto early on in the pregnancy, and it just stuck. When said Otto finally reared his determined head in the world, he did indeed seem to suit his name. My father, however, was horrified, explaining that a certain Otto von Bismarck laid siege to Paris in 1870, shelling citizens before strutting a victory march down the Champs-Élysées. ‘I doubt Paris will welcome another Otto with open arms,’ he argued. (The name Otto, in fact, has been so démodé for decades that I drew blanks when checking its symbolism with French acquaintances, prompting us to go ahead with the palindrome.)

  The bébé experiment went partly to plan (Otto ate almost everything on offer from four months), but also partly awry (he never took our nos all that seriously). I realised that, ideally, a baby would best fit the pattern of a perfect French child if he actually lived in the country where every other child was wearing the same stripes. Try convincing an Australian kid that he must eat blue-cheese tartine when everyone around him is munching on crustless Vegemite sandwiches; it’s not easy. We finally had the chance to take the boys to France when Dad decided to celebrate his seventieth birthday in Paris. Noah and Otto, six and four at the time, had heard me talk about Paris incessantly, and were stoked. Before we flew out, I asked them what they were expecting. ‘Chocolate croissants for breakfast every day?’ said Otto, hopefully. ‘The best place in the world,’ replied Noah.

  We began our journey at the Happiest Place on Earth. Disneyland had opened just outside Paris in 1992, to the expected Gallic grumblings of American cultural imperialism. Still, it eventually became the number one tourist destination in Europe — ahead of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, which must have offended French sensibilities no end. I’d betrayed my inner Parisienne by having already visited Disneyland several times. Sure, I could see that the olde-worlde Main Street USA, with its candy-box cuteness, was still as American as apple pie — not as française as tarte tatin — but the park had been Frenchified somewhat, I reasoned: you could buy croques-monsieurs along with burgers, Chip & Dale had been renamed Tic & Tac (for no apparent purpose beyond sounding more French) and, really, France is the original home of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, both stories having been penned by Charles Perrault over 300 years ago, when much of what we now know as America was in fact called New France.