Diet Coke and Thimerosal?!

Despite its progressive health care system, French medical advice can seem pretty old-fashioned--and not in the good way. So unless your OBGYN moonlights as a Yogaphile osteopath, she'll most likely assume that you're looking for a nice 1950s-style, heavily anesthetized birthing experience.
Breastfeeding? Well, if you're sure you want to go to the trouble. Doesn't matter too much, though, because the baby will spend his days at the crêche by the time he's three months old anyway. In the meantime, are you suffering from morning sickness? Diet Coke works wonders. (Ah, yes, lovely thing, aspartame.) And here's a prescription for some anti-nausea medicine. It's not recommended for pregnant women, but it can't do that much harm. And you should also get the swine flu vaccine, of course. Thimer-what? No, no, if it weren't safe, I would have heard something. Now, have you chosen a hospital? What? A doula? (Looks searchingly at my French husband, hoping for an intelligible word from one of the future parents.) Uh, no, I highly doubt that a respectable public hospital in Paris would let someone like that in the delivery room.
Any other questions?

Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo. [Online image] 1952.

Parallel Universes

When I'm home in California, I do the same types of things that I do when I'm home in Paris: I go to the pool; I cook spicy Mexican food with the radio turned up high; I do Yoga; I go out for coffee.
But life is so different for the other "me"-- as Nancy Huston puts it in Nord Perdu--living on the other side of the Atlantic.
While the LA me enters empty swimming pools and square stucco coffee shops with quiet, coffee drinkers in khaki shorts politely typing on keyboards and sipping skinny lattés, the Paris me kicks though crowded pool traffic to be greeted by winking café waiters busy serving middle-aged women mid-morning chardonnay and working men stout pints of beer.
My two universes aren't completely parallel, though, because the two "me"s come together sometimes. Like in yoga class when my eyes are closed. Or when I bite into a really good veggie burrito. Then I can fade out the glittering ocean or sparkling Eiffel Tower; smiling, wide-eyed English voices and mischievous Parisian wiles--and just feel home.

Paul Hogan as Mick Dundee. [Online image] 1986.

"La Grippe !"

With flu season upon us, it's been comforting knowing that my GP is right downstairs, ready to see me at a moment's notice; that my gynecologist is on call even on the weekend, answering my anxious emails about my little soybean and kissing me on both cheeks when she sees me; that across the street my pharmacist will greet me with kind, concerned eyes when I need to fill a prescription and ask me if I'd like a cup of coffee.
Oh, yeah, socialized health care is a bitch.
Universal coverage? What a drag. I mean, don't we have the right to stay sick if we want to?

If only Americans could see that the widespread epidemic that threatens us most is not borne of swine. It's our inane fear about having our so-called God-given rights taken away.

Somehow I don't think Jesus would have seen the liberty in people dying for lack of medical care.

Olivier Martinez and Juliete Binoche as Angelo Pardi and Pauline de Théus [Online image] 1995.