The Childhood Day

I've woken up and wandered downstairs. My dad is asking me if I feel taller and you know what, yes, I do feel taller now that you mention it. There's french toast on the table and I drench a slice in the fake maple syrup that I love. It must be winter but through the windows behind where my mom sits I see a fuzzy green color.

Now in the basement, mom and dad are tiling the floor. Mom adds texture to the walls by wiping a sponge across the wet paint. A millipede scurries across the finished floor and I spot a chipmunk in the window well, which dad rescues with a towel.

For a moment I'm at preschool. There are people everywhere and based on the expressions on the other kids' faces I feel like I should be scared, but I'm just curious. Everyone has a box with a change of clothes. Tony has a stutter and Heather hides under a chair with the front page of Ellen magazine covering her face. We sit in a circle and a nameless child snuffs out a candle after walking around the globe. We eat cookies.

I'm back at home and I'm running laps around the backyard. Mom is timing me. I'm listening to my Puzzle Place tape in the attic and coloring. I'm driving the car down the driveway from dad's lap. I'm getting free pudding from a factory tour and ice skating all by myself.

These aren't all the memories I have from that point in my life, but they are most of them. When I recall a single one they all come streaming out like long-suppressed tears. It seems crazy that so many years can get boiled down to such condensed moments, to a single day that was my childhood. It feels like it wasn't so long ago, but 20 years, that's a long time. 20 years from now will I remember my time in Europe as a tiny string of moments? Which ones will remain? I've already lost so many.

Dinner with Geneviève

Wednesday is my free day so Geneviève took me to dinner at one of her favorite restaurants. It was just at the end of the street across from our building but at her glacial pace it took us about 10 minutes to walk there. The restaurant was contained in a small room that featured what I personally would call "crap" but what some more enlightened people might call "art" covering every inch of the walls. The 5 tables were waited by a single woman who also cooked and ran the bar. When we arrived Geneviève and the woman greeted warmly and exchanged small gifts.

I was told I had to try the aubergines, so I did, and followed them with a chicken dish. Geneviève took her usual. She also ordered a half-liter of Bordeaux which I was happy to taste but which she ended up doing most of the work on: "je bois comme un trou," I'm drinking like a hole, she repeated many times throughout the dinner.

She told me stories about herself as a young woman, about her children, and about her life. She too lived in Switzerland for a time, just after the war, and it seems that this is the period in her life that generated the most interesting memories. For example:

The Good Lord came down from heaven to see how things were going. He found himself in Switzerland. Spotting a farm, he realized his thirst. He approached the farm and the farmer greeted him, 'good morning, my Lord.' 'Good morning, farmer! What a beautiful country you live in. And such healthy animals. It seems you lead quite a nice life.' 'Yes, my Lord. Is there anything I can do for you?' 'Well, I'm quite thirsty, might you have a glass of milk?' 'Of course, that'll be 10 franks.'

She told me she hadn't been able to tell most of her stories about Switzerland to anyone, not even her children, because she knew they wouldn't believe them. We tried to explain the Swiss to ourselves. We failed. Of course there are exceptions, but an incredible lack of suffering removes the Swiss people from the common experience the rest of us know as "life," we decided. I realized that not once did I see a musician trying to eke out a living by playing in the Zurich street. Nobody ever asked me for money. "Il faut prendre chaque opportunité de souffrir du monde," Geneviève told me. One must take every opportunity to suffer at the hands of the world. This will stick with me for a while.

Geneviève never wanted to have children. In hindsight she realizes that it was her husband who wanted them, and her biology that allowed her to concede. But having children changed her mindset completely. It was just another way in which she suffered at the hands of the world. And she became a better person for it.

The food was nothing special but throughout the meal I saw more and more of myself in the old lady sitting across the table from me. At the end she had a chocolate mousse and I an espresso and then we walked back slowly, her arms grasping mine for support the entire way.

I'm still annoyed when she interrupts my studying to tell me a story, or when she asks too many questions about my dinner. But I try to remind myself that she's a human being who's lived a lifetime of adventures and that I need to respect her.

The Old and the New

The old lady who rents me a room in her apartment emerges from her quarters wearing just a towel. This is not something I ever hoped to see. She asks me if I'm eating breakfast, which clearly I am. She asks herself what she wants, perusing the fridge. Her eyes land on my hummus. "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" she demands, bewildered by the off-white paste that's surprisingly not foie gras. I try to explain and she pretends to understand. "Bon appétit," she says, and I am thankful for the unusually short duration of the conversation.

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Valentine tells me she wants to take her own shower like a real adult. I'm not sure she realizes yet that adults tend not to spend half of their shower time washing and brushing pink plastic ponies. In the end she has dry spots and soapy spots on her back, and the removable showerhead has spent as much time pointing out of the tub as it has pointing in, but she has taken her own shower. Does she want to dry herself, too? Of course not, she doesn't know how to dry herself. And she wants to be carried from the tub to the bedroom. S'il te plaît.

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Geneviève, the old lady, walks past my room. I make the mistake of smiling. I'm halfway through an MCAT Biology practice set, but now I will listen to the summary of her 7 children's lives for the next 30 minutes because.. how did this come up again? I try to laugh when I'm supposed to but I'm quite annoyed. It is nice of her to offer this room for rent, fully furnished, I remind myself.

le petit déjeuner Parisien

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Eléonore starts screaming as high and as loud as she can. Then it's Valentine's turn. They both break out into giggles. I mention the neighbors to no avail. I tell them I'm old, my eardrums will pop. My grimaces give them even more of a reason to continue. I would be more angry if not for the fits of laughter in between. Who am I to punish fun? To quicker remove the innocence of childhood? The walls are thick, the neighbors can't actually hear. It's only me who suffers. I tell them each to give it one more go, everything they've got, before bed. The sting of death lingers in several hair cells in my inner ear. I didn't need to hear that pitch, anyway.

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Geneviève's son comes over to help move the frigo back into the kitchen after the painter has finished. The man is as old and unfit as Geneviève herself, it seems. I offer to move it. I know I could be done in a few seconds. But he groans and moans for an hour getting everything into place.

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on peut aller au parc?

On warm days we go to the playground after school. I sit with the other nounous and try to learn their African dialects. I watch a 3-year-old dressed like a rock star, overcome with glee at having just hopped on one foot. She experiences a fit of joy that in any adult could only be attributed to extreme intoxication. A relatively older boy flies his toy car around, explosions of saliva erupting from his mouth. Two others wrestle and roll on the artificial ground. A fourth glides across the playground on his three-wheeled scooter. He moves slowly enough that his sister can chase him on foot. She touches his back and he stops to look around. He catches her devious smile and points, angry-eyed, straight at her. How dare you touch me, his expression screams.

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I am in the prime of my life, I suppose. Old enough to function on my own and yet young enough to function on my own. Understanding the world as it is today, I do what I want, for the most part. I learn. I remember. And I live both the life I dreamed of and the one I won't regret on my death bed.

A Short Message from a Droplet of Flesh

I'm in Paris now. In the quatorzième. What a time to move to Paris. The military rifles displayed by the gendarmes who litter any and all public areas stare me down as I walk to the métro. I pass a woman who is Charlie Hebdo. I pass a market that is Charlie Hebdo. I pass a billboard also claiming to be Charlie Hebdo.

Valentine, the 4-year-old, asks me about the "méchants." She asks where they go if they don't go to paradis. She asks if a bonhomme is killed by a méchant, and at the same time the méchant is killed by the bonhomme, where does the bonhomme go? I have much more difficulty answering this question than I did any posed at my master's defense.

With adults the questions are easier. Just mention coming from Switzerland for immediate sympathy. Sympathy, that's not a word I've used much in the past year and a half. Boy, how things change. I'm just a droplet of flesh being pushed this way and that by the social currents, each adjective I use to define myself is a new dimension in the state space of life.

What am I doing with my life? Bah, the currents will decide. The currents will push me where I need to go. No use trying to live against them. I'll submit some applications and put on my biggest smile at the interview but in the end it's all up to the currents. There's no such thing as lost. You are where you are and wherever that is it's definitely a place that one can be so you might as well make the most of your time there. Check as many items off the bucket list as you can before you find yourself somewhere else.

Why do people put up with unhappiness? That feeling that something could be better is enough for me to leave everything I know. I guess most people are neutrons, unaffected by the changing currents. But I'm more of an electron. A fleshy, nerdy electron.

For now my main job is to think and to explore. To regain my sympathy and to tick off the list. I am not Charlie Hebdo. Who I am can't be described in 4 words, or in any number of words for that matter. By the time I got halfway done trying the description would have changed anyway.

I think soon enough I'll be ready to go home. The meteorologists predict a tsunami heading for America and its spacious grocery stores and banks ready to accept what little remains of my money. It will be nice not to have to apply to live somewhere. Why does anyone have to apply to live somewhere? Because he was born on the wrong side of an imaginary line? That's stupid if you ask me.

Well that's all for now, à la prochaine, whenever and wherever that might be.