Where Are You From?

Lucille Ball, Keith Thibodeaux, and Desi Arnaz as the Ricardos. [Online image] 1956.

Whether at home in Paris or back home in California, I get asked the same question. Where are you from? It's like I have "foreigner" stamped on my forehead no matter where I go. (Well, stamped on my tongue is more like it.) After 10+ years living in France, my English does have a bit of a lilt to it, and I end up "searching my words" (and, yes, translating French expressions directly into English). And as for my French: well, I never could pronounce "r," "ou," or "u." My French in-laws love trying to make me say words like "citrouille" just so they can hear the tortured syllables escape my American mouth, as my brain searches in vain for safe alternatives: "potiron"? There's only one thing I can do: swallow my pride and admit that the person asking me the question has the home advantage. . . though I do have the advantage of having two homes.

Bringing Up Bébé

 

Katherine Hepburn as Susan. [Online image] 1938.

I didn't like Bringing Up Bébé from the minute I heard about it. And I never would have started reading it if my French mother-in-law hadn't sent me a copy last year while I was on vacation. I mean, an American mom in Paris writing glowing anecdotes about "French mothering" (that has be an oxymoron, by the way)!? She can't be talking about the same French moms I see on a daily basis. Ok, I'll admit (grudgingly) that Parisian moms may have the guilt-free "work-life balance" down better than we English-speaking expats. But if embracing the mantra, "the perfect mother doesn't exist," means that you have no qualms about pushing your Maclaren down the street with one hand while dangling a lit cigarette from the other, I'd really rather continue living with my Anglo-Saxon guilt. 
As for the whole relaxed-and-seductive French mother spiel: of course they're cool and collected and sneaker-free! They're holding down a desk job all day--not chasing after a toddler! I still remember running into my husband's French colleague (and mother of two) last spring. She was out on her lunch break, and I was hurrying to the bus with my son after a Gymboree class. "You look tired!" she told me in surprise. A few months later, our two families spent a summer afternoon together because we were vacationing nearby. "I'm exhausted!" she said, admitting that being an around-the-clock mom was hard work. I managed what I hoped was a cool and collected smile of empathy, while my sandaled, vacation-happy feet took me for a triumphant victory lap--without the least bit of guilt.
 

Plastic or Nothing?

F. Huffman & D. Savant in DH

Asking for bags at a Paris grocery store (La Grande Epicerie aside) can feel a lot like pulling teeth--deeply rooted, French teeth. You hold your breath as the checker eyes your groceries--trying to eyeball the bare minimum of bags needed to carry your bananas and yogurt home in one piece--before doling them out begrudgingly, one by one.
Walking down the street later with your coveted sacs--especially if they're brightly colored Monoprix bags--you can't help feeling a bit triumphant. You can already see their pink glow lining your bathroom wastepaper basket or enveloping your bathing suit after tomorrow's swim.
But now all that is ending. Later this month, Monoprix will no longer be giving customers plastic bags at checkout. So it's back to buying drab army-green trash bags--or splurging at Fauchon when you're in need of some sacs en rose.

Switching Sides

"Not the other breast," my French husband whispered to me during a wedding ceremony last week, as he saw our baby finishing up on one "side." Breastfeeding has come a long way in France, but a few societal barriers remain. And nursing in a church seems to be one of them. I've breastfed in just about every public place possible here: on the bus, in restaurants, parks, and cafés. Even in front of my French in-laws. But as I left the ceremony mid-feed to continue on the chilly stone steps outside, I couldn't help feeling like I'd come up against a wall. Like when I mentioned La Leche League to a French mother I saw breastfeeding her one-month old. (LLL has the same bum rap here that yoga did six or seven years ago. People just assume it's a cult. That said, you should probably avoid attending "free" yoga classes in Paris.)  Once I was sitting down, though, enraptured by my baby's eager mouth, "always thirsty for the pure spiritual milk," I decided to think positively. After all, my husband actually understood now how breastfeeding works: switching sides and all. And my in-laws now knew first-hand what nursing on demand meant. So in some small way, I was showing the unsuspecting what breastfeeding was all about. Maybe one day it would even make it to Wii Fit. A Balance Board has got to be warmer than church steps.

John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer as Jim and Pam Halpert. [Online image] 2010.

Let 'em Cry, Let 'em Cry, Let 'em Cry!

As a new mother in Necker's maternity ward, I just assumed that my roommates (I was there long enough to have two) both happened to have severe emotional disorders--or hearing problems. What kind of person would just sit there chewing on tepid pintade while her newborn screamed? But my roommates were not the odd balls out in French motherhood. Apparently the French still believe that you can spoil a baby. Give into her caprices now (i.e.: pick her up), and you'll spend the next eighteen years with an obnoxious, whiny, manipulative monstre.
My Parisian gynecologist summed it up when she saw me flinching on the examination table as my two-month-old hollered in his stroller, just out of my reach. "Does that really bother you?" she asked as she continued the post-natal exam. I realized she was talking about my son's cries.
Yes, I'm afraid it does. Sucks to be human.  

Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable as Scarlett and Rhett Butler. [Online image] 1939.

"Le Troisième Sexe"

My mother had told me that one of the best parts about being pregnant is how nice everyone suddenly becomes. I still wasn't prepared. For any of it. Parisian bus drivers who overnight began waiting for me with open doors, telling me not to run. Salesmen offering to carry my purchases for me. Fellow shoppers letting me go ahead of them at check-out. My mother-in-law asking me how I am.
The transition would probably have been a lot easier in the States, where people's natural kindness would simply have been super-sized. Here in Paris, it's like being in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers--only the alien duplicates are the ones with feelings. The strange thing is that pregnant women aren't even a rare commodity here. And I think I'm beginning to understand why. What's a little morning sickness and labor compared to nine blissful months of solicitude in a city where the customer notoriously counts for rien? And did I mention my mother-in-law?!

Dianna Agron as Quinn Fabray. [Online image] 2010.

"La Crèche"

In her controversial Le Conflit : la femme et la mère, French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter sings the praises of the French crèche system, which enables mothers to go on with non-mommy business as usual after giving birth. (Of course, they're supposed to wait until baby's two or three months old, or they risk getting as much slack as Rachida Dati did when she showed up for work five days after her C-section.) Badinter explains in Le Conflit how crèches are simply today's version of sending your infant into the country with a wet-nurse--a choice that even middle-class Frenchwomen made in order to focus more time and energy on their social and wifely duties. Of course, instead of spending their days primping and prepping for salons, today's respectable French mothers are supposed to hold down a 9-5 job. So as soon as they've entered their sixth month of pregnancy (or third month in child-laden Versailles), Parisian women sign up their unborn babies for day-care. And as soon as their babies are three months old, they drop them off daily (with formula and bottles--even the French have given up wet-nurses) at the local crèche. The up-side is clear to Badinter. French mothers get to "have it all": a professional life; a feminine (nursing bra-free) identity; and motherhood. But at what price?

Catalina Sandino Moreno as Ana. [Online image] 2006.