Not living with it

Read the post below before this one to make sense of it.


There was a knock at the door, next to where I was working on the terrace plans on the dining room table. My office at present.

"Madame?"

"Oui, Georges. Entrez." I said "come in", but he stuck his head in the door.

"Vous avez deux minutes? Même pas?"

"Même pas, mais j'arrive."

"Vous avez vu les volets?" I crossed my arms across my chest and decided to tell the truth.

"Oui. Ils sont très bien faits, mais ils ne sont pas la bonne couleur."

"Non?" His eyes scanned the shutters laying about the yard, leaning up against the trees and the house.

"Non. Ils étaient sensés d'être cette couleur," I touched the dark eggplant paint on the French door to my left. His eyes followed. "Mais ils sont beaucoup plus rouge bordeaux." I looked over at the several shutters leaning against the house, gleaming in that 5 minutes of afternoon sun. His eyes followed. He nodded.

"C'est pas pareil," he agreed, "mais, c'est tout ce qu'ils ont eu. J'ai du choisir des échantillons des couleurs qu'ils utilisent, et c'était la plus proche."

"Ils n'ont pas utilisé la couleur que Joaquim a préparé? Mais pourquoi pas?" He explained that they didn't have it. I explained that I understood that, but that they can make a custom color. Anyone can make a custom color, or, if they won't, then I needed to know that so that I could decide what to do. "Bon, le problème est que ceci introduit une troisième couleur, et même Joaquim disait tout au début, quand on a commencé ce projet, que ça c'est à éviter. C'est trop. Ca change tout." He nodded again. "Ecoutez, c'est très, très bien fait. C'est exactement ce que nous avons voulu au niveau de finison, mais la couleur change tout qu'on a fait jusqu'à présent."

"Vous auriez du me prevenir, pour quoi vous me l'avez pas dit?," I wasn't expecting a reply to the question, "Why didn't you tell me?" It was rhetorical. He didn't reply. He looked at me, a little helplessly. Same old same old, since the beginning of the story. He looked at the shutters leaning against the house, wine red against the ochre stucco and the dark gray bands that are supposed to get much darker, dark chocolate brown, and nodded.

"On peut les peindres ici. Joaquim connait la couleur, et on peut rajouter une couche ici."

"Avec un système de projection, pas une brosse?"

"Oui, avec un -- ", here he made a spraying sound. I repeated it.

"Vous pouvez le faire."

"Oui. C'est bien fait, quand même. Ils ont traité les volets avec une oxidation --"

"Contre la rouille? C'est très bien. Je vois que c'est bien fait."

"Mais c'était la couleur la plus proche. Je peux vous le montrer. J'ai toutes les couleurs dans le camion."

And, indeed, it was the closest to the color Joaquim had made in response to my description of what I wanted. Joaquim, who seemed a color magician at the time. But, I explained, the sunlight changes everything.

"Je n'ai même pas remarqué tout de suite," I consoled him, pointing to the ones leaning up against the linden tree in the shade. "Quand on regarde ceux-là, ils ont l'aire bien; c'est la lumière qui change tout." It's why, I explained, we ask for samples on the same material, so that we can see them in place and confirm that what you see is what you get. That's the way you have to work when you are an architect and an artisan. You'd love working in the States, I added, where everyone is demanding and everything is possible and that's normal.

I suggested that to avoid further difficulties, we take care of the final color of the house first. They are to add a chaux-based patina to the banding and the ochre to darken it and make it match all the way around the house, more here, less there, "Comme ça, on peut être sur que ce qu'on fait avec la peinture ira avec la couleur qu'on obtenir pour les motifs." The "motifs" being the dark bands.

"J'en parlerai avec Joaquim ce soir. C'est la meilleure chose à faire," he said, nodding. The best thing, I added, to avoid losing any time and effort. "Et le portail, ça va --"

"Le portail!" I laughed. I had completely forgotten to mention it. George's brilliant solution to keep the gate and be able to lock it after the demolition of the pillars to either side. "Mon mari m'a chargé de vous dire qu'il trouve ça brillant. Moi aussi."

"Il fallait une solution pour pouvoir fermer le portail," he smiled.

"Vous l'avez trouvé. Et les fenêtres, quand est-ce qu'on les attaque?" Audouin keeps asking me when they are going to do the windows, the replacements for the ones in bad shape.

"Il faut qu'ils fassent gaffe," he says, "parce que leurs gars vont fermer pour les vacances." He had a point. Everyone closes for vacation in August.

"Il y a un petit problème, Madame," admitted Georges, lowering his gaze.

"Un problème? Un petit?"

"Un petit, mais peut-être un grand pour vous." I was starting to get worried, and then I saw where we were going.

"Ils ferment pour les vacances?" I suggested. He looked relieved not to have to say it himself.

"Oui. C'est fou. Tout ferme ici." He just discovered that? Georges, who goes to Portugal every August for the month, until this year?

"Et ça voudrait dire qu'il faut qu'on attende jusqu'à novembre?" He had said that they couldn't do the additional paving work until then because of their schedule. They have promised things for September and October.

"Ah, non! Septembre. On continue ici jusqu'à ce que le travail soit fait." At least the part in the present contract.

That's the state of the renovation, until we have another problem.

"Madame, je peut entrer mesurer?" Georges just knocked again. Of course he could come in and measure. "En plus, ils ont tout mélangé, les salouds."

Of course the bastards mixed the shutters all up. They expect them to be tagged.
....

The wrong color shutters

The shutters, or volets

The shutters have arrived, at long last, painted the wrong color.

I haven't gone out to say hello and anything else yet. I did call my husband. He didn't reply to his beeper. I called the operator at the hospital.

"Je voudrais parler à mon mari, si c'est possible." They know me. They always chuckle because he gets hundreds of calls a day, and I rank myself as low priority, even when I really need to talk to him.

"Je vais le chercher pour vous. Ne quittez pas." I thanked her and waited.

"Hallo?"

"Les volets sont arrivés, et ils sont pas la couleur choisie."

"Tant pis. Il faut vivre avec." Fine. We'll live with it. I wasn't having any of that. I wasn't happy with "fine".

"Ils sont beaucoup plus rouge bordeaux. Ca change tout. Ils n'étaient pas cette couleur quand ils sont partis à l'atelier pour la peinture. Ils nous ont donné un échantillon, et ce n'est pas ça. On décide quelque chose et ils font ce qu'ils veulent?" They had started to paint them with a brush after hand-sanding them, and while the work was lousy, the color was terrific. This is not it.

"On les ferra nous-même."

"Ils sont bien fait, mais ils sont la mauvaise couleur." We can't paint them ourselves. We'll ruin the factory paint job, unless we use a projection system, but that's besides the point. We paid and they used the wrong color.

"Je te rappellerai plus tard." I knew he was too preoccupied to be concerned with a color issue. I, on the other hand, am only concerned with color issues.

Now they are out there with a measuring tape, trying to figure out which shutter goes where, preparing to install them. It would have been too easy to tag them.

Here I am, preparing to live with them. The right color is on the door just to the left.

I'd like to use the "f" word right now.
....

We were there

Le Tour, Champs-Elysées

26.07.09

Right there.

You don't see us, Audouin and I? Look closer. We're right behind the group of CRS (compagnie républicaine de sécurité, white shirts) next to the television van.

I would have taken far less interesting pictures myself, except that I left the memory card in the memory card reader at home.

We stayed for the "tour d'honneur", when each team parades up and back down the Champs-Elysées, stopping where we were at the turning point just below the Arc de Triomphe for their team photos and a little readily supplied adulation. I like being "that close" to our heros. Audouin thinks the TV is better, but he went with me this year being a good sport. I wanted to be there, not just 45 minutes away on my sofa.

"Tu ne verras pas beaucoup."

"C'est pas grave. Je veux savoir comment c'est, et faire parti de la foule. Soutenir les coureurs."

That's all I wanted. To be there, and maybe catch a glimpse. Be with the people who came from all over Europe and the world to meet the riders after three weeks and 3500 km in this beautiful country, and a corner of Switzerland near Sam and my beloved Chamonix-Mont Blanc. Our neighbors on our corner of sidewalk were from Vancouver, Canada, Portland, Oregon, Australia, Beligum and Suresnes. They looked like everyone in the world. We all waited patiently, and then my phone rang.

"They're in some stupid suburb near Paris. 73 km from the finish," announced Sam matter-of-factly, keeping me posted. Amazingly, there were no Jumbotrons. Nothing to keep us informed. Two guys hawked official TDF products in a nearby van, but not the slightest news of the race. They do 8 times around a loop from the Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre, or more than 50 km in the heart of Paris. They weren't far. We'd been waiting only nearing an hour. It rang again.

"They're still in some stupid suburb."

"What do you see?"

"A bridge."

"That could be near Paris. Do you see water? The Seine?"

"Could be. I see trees." The voies sur berges? "Oh, wait. The zoo of Vincennes. They're coming in from the Bois de Vincennes." I turned and informed the crowd around us, waiting expectantly for the news coming from the TV in Moosesucks.

"Your son preferred to stay where it is cool?" I nodded. It was 90° in the shade on the Champs.

And then there was a helicopter in the sky, where we looked up past the top of The Drugstore Publicis.

"Je pensais que c'était pour des travaux tout ça," said my husband. I laughed. He was referring to the curved bits of glass and steel added some years ago to the façade of this venerable all-night Paris destination for those in need of cigarettes or aspirin at 3 am. This is what it has become today, all branché. I remember the one on the Boulevard Saint Germain, ceramic tiled tunnels with glass displays into the various boutiques selling an improbable variety of things, and the late evening trips over there for Marlboros (my then fiancé's, not mine) and ambiance from our apartment a few blocks away. We loved that there were always people on the street and things to look at, a weary waiters in black and white, a corkscrew alongside his own cigarettes in his apron pocket, willing to oblige with a ballon de rouge in a café. It closed some years ago, and everyone sighed, "L'amélioration du quartier," and shrugged their Gallic shoulders. Qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire? C'est le monde qui change autour de nous.

There's probably a boutique or café branché sitting there now. I couldn't tell you which. I don't remember.

"Non, c'est pour faire jolie. C'est éclairé la nuit, bleu, violet --" I looked to our neighbor from Suresnes for validation. She nodded. "Comme notre petit coin de Times Square."

"Tout petit," said the woman from Suresnes.

"Ca doit être plus jolie la nuit," he said, still staring at the bits bolted to the façade.

And then the motorcycles were there, first the Gendarmes, followed by the race motorcycles and the lead cars, 10,000 euro bikes like hedgehog spikes on top, and the first rider, more motorcycles, more cars, the first group of riders, 2, then 4, 6, followed by still more motorcycles, team cars and finally the peloton. In less than a minute, it was over for the next 8, while they picked up speed to race back down the Champs to the Concorde, past the Tuileries and under the Carousel du Louvre, up the rue de Rivoli, the Concorde, up the Champs to turn in front of us again 7 more times.

"Je vois le maillot vert, mais pas le maillot jaune, Contador. Où est -- oh! Il est là. Tu l'as vu?"

"Non," I said, straining to get higher still on the tips of my toes to see through the forest of arms with digital cameras on top that had suddenly sprung up directly in my path of view.

"Dans le dernier tiers du peloton."

"Il s'en fiche. Tout ce qu'il faut c'est qu'il ne tombe pas." I saw our neighbor from Vancouver listening and translated, "He doesn't care where he is in the race at this point. All that matters is that he doesn't fall down and not finish." She nodded.

"I'm here for my husband. He races. He's training for the Canada Ironman. The triathlon, you know." That BC and AK "you know". We turned to watch the sky for the next appearance of the helicopter, at the vanguard of the race leaders.

The best moment? Actually, I hoped it would be seeing Lance Armstrong, but it might have been seeing Andy Schleck light up the Champs with his smile in the radiant sunlight of a late July evening during the photo session for the teams at the top of the Champs, where we were, after the podium and the interviews.

Knowing Lance Armstrong was right there, lifting his bike and smiling for the cameras, and knowing it wasn't easy to be on the same team as Alberto Contador this Tour made it a little bit harder. The French loved him even more this year, though. A complicated relationship, like all relationships. The French know they are. They don't trust them when they aren't, or people when they are less than imperfect.

PARIS -- Lance Armstrong had to go away and come back to be the athlete the French wanted him to be -- imperfect.

The Page 1 headline bannered across the Sunday edition of the French sports daily L'Equipe said "Chapeau, Le Texan," which roughly means, "Our hats are off to you, Tex." It was a shocking turnaround for those of us who remember the year the newspaper displayed a huge photo of Armstrong's back, rather than his face, on the podium, not to mention numerous other stories over the years that attacked the credibility of his performances and disparaged his personality as aloof and mechanical.

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/tdf2009/columns/story?columnist=ford_bonnie_d&id=4357232

Now that he has come in third -- "mieux que je m'attendais", said my husband, who has always admired Lance Armstrong with a small reserve for not being as great as Eddy Merckx, who "won them all", and not "just the Tour", and for winning it without fail -- the French are ready to welcome the return of the King of the Tour, its best student, most valiant rider, and biggest fan with all the enthusiasm they held in check. A favorite son.

....

Demolition men

The entry court

24.7.09

Tied to a chair, and the bomb is ticking
This situation was not of your picking
You say that this wasn't in your plan
And don't mess around with the demolition man

Pourtant, oui ce fut bien parti de mon plan.
But you don't mess around with the demolition man.

He does what you tell him to do, so you'd better be sure of what you tell him.

"Madame X, auriez vous les clefs du portail?" demanda Georges, appearing at the French doors. "Je l'ai changé," dit-il, referring to the gate, a little smile making a twinkle in his black Portuguese eye when he asked for the keys and one of us to go with him to the gate to make sure the keys "still worked".

Hm?

"Oui, je dois les avoir --," I turned and saw Sam, who was just coming down from his room, "Tiens, Sam, tu ne les aurais pas, non?" He stuck his hand in his vintage work-out jacket pocket.

"Yeah."

"Tu irais avec lui? Je travaille là." He nodded and headed out the door behind Georges. I copied more pavers from one terrace to the next one.

"Tu aimes bien le bois?" Sam came back reporting Georges had asked. I lifted my head, "I told him yes," he went on, "He was joking. I took him seriously." He colored, feeling a little sheepish to have been proven a little gullible.

Curiosity piqued, I went out in the falling rain to look, just as their car drove by the demolished pillars. I raised my hand to wave. It was only a little after 3 pm, but it had been raining steadily. Besides, there are natural break-off points in the work. They had come to one.

And Georges had come up with a pretty "chouette" solution to keep the gate in place a few days longer, and I didn't even get to tell him.

Chapeau.

The plans advance. I found a supplier of recovered paving stones. I have square meter prices and delivery dates coming in.

I have not spoken to my associé, my mari.
....

I can be thin forever

Sam's dragonfly, or luciole, photo

June 30, 2009

Could it be that gluten, sugar and lactose (a sugar, yes, I know) make your brain function better?

The end of my brain function and my blogging activity associates quite nicely with my telling myself I can be thin forever and the consequent adieu to breads, dairy and refined sugars, and my brain starting to feel a pressure and a blankness I can't quite describe. Or, is it really to do with my fear of failure? Not about changing my eating habits -- that's going quite well and is surprisingly easy so long as I do eat, which I do, regularly --, but about making design decisions here that will prove once and for all that I am nulle and utterly lacking in real creative talent. (Trust me, it is very scary.)

And maybe a little fear of spending the money needed to realize my induction into the Hall of Failure.

Maybe my little bit of perfectionism and its associated tendency to overdo?

Yesterday, I was taken to the warehouses and offices of Weinerberger brick in Monthléry, south of Paris. Georges informed me the other day that he needed the thin brick for the chimney so that he could take the scaffolding down from the courtyard side of the house and get the entry courtyard work going. This also meant that I'd have to get serious about picking the brick for the paving, which had been something of an issue with my associate, otherwise known as mon mari.

Georges, to be clear, is not my husband; he runs the work on the renovations.

"Mais, pourquoi tu ne veux pas mettre des pavés de Paris? Ils sont beau," said my husband. I don't disagree. I know that Paris paving stones made of granite are nice. I know, also, that they are easy to find and install. I just didn't see them with this house, here. And like Louis Benech, I like brick on the ground. However, these are not objective grounds for decision-making. They are sort of whiney, "but I like it" grounds that can be elevated to the standing of You see, pavés de Paris are sort of gray and cold, and I see something more luminous and warm with the ochre of the house. Also, they establish a more rapid rhythm, without direction, a different textured mineral carpeting underfoot. In truth, they'd be just fine, another option is all.

"Tu vois, les pavés de Paris sont un peu gris et froid et je vois quelque chose de plus lumineux, chalereux avec l'ochre de la chaux de la maison. Aussi, ils établissent un rhythm rapide, sans direction, une autre texture pour ce tapis minéral sous les pieds." A vrai dire, ils seraient très bien aussi, juste une autre option. He nodded, a little too dubious to please me. I started to feel insecure again.

What if I am wrong? I live in dread. Dread. The sort that makes you dream just before waking about your son's résponsable de niveau and his choice to stay in ES at his present school, despite everyone's recommendations otherwise. It's his life, right?

Things are great.

I approached Georges in the garden the day before yesterday and informed him that I was taking his request for information seriously.

"J'ai rendez-vous avec le type pour la brique demain matin. Je l'aurais choisie pour l'après-midi." He looked relieved.

I grabbed my motorcyle gear and headed down to leave for my 10 am appointment outside the cinéma at the shopping mall, Parly 2, in Versailles. I was already sweating as the temperatures were heading up into the 30's again (this is Europe, we use Celsius, remember?). I pulled the huge rolling gate open and stuck the key into the ignition to release the direction. The sun was shining directly onto the instrument panel, but did I see no indicator lights? No. No no no. I pulled the bike out over the tall grass, weeds and concrete threshhold, and hopped on, sweating freely now after my exertion. It might be best to check before I closed the gate again. I hit the starter.

Nothing.

Not one tiny sound. The battery was as dead as a doornail.

Audouin! Tu m'as refait le coup!, I howled to the skies, climbing back off and pushing it back through the tall grass, over the threshhold and the weeds and grass on the garden side. He moved my bike on Sunday, leaving the ignition in the position that leaves the The kickstand wouldn't go down. I didn't have the right angle. Another bead of sweat trickled down from my unwashed hair under my helmet. I hadn't counted on being that hot, but there was no time to think about remedying my appearance. I was late, and if there was any non-vacation morning traffic on the drive to Versailles, I was really in trouble. I moved the bike to where the kickstand would take, retrieved my stuff from the rear case and headed up to stow my helmet, change my boots for sneakers and exchange the motorcycle keys for the car keys.

No workers. Still. I had waited, hoping to see them before I left, and stuck a note finally on the cement mixer. It hadn't fallen to the ground.

Mr. Becquart was looking a little hot around the collar and out of patience when I pulled in to the space one car over from him at Parly 2.

"Monsieur Becquart?" He nodded. "Vous avez reçu mes messages, j'espère?" He nodded and inclined his head toward the seat next to him. I climbed in, feeling the tiniest bit like a fraud. He was taking an architect to see their facilities and choose brick. Architects have offices and do lots of lucrative (for their suppliers) projects. So, I was playing a little lose with the truth.

"Alors, vous êtes architecte. Vous avez un cabinet à Mantes?" He didn't lose time. It would be necessary to obfuscate. Just a little.

"Je fais des petits projets. Mon but serait d'en faire plus et surtout dans la rénovation résidentielle." There, that said everything, and nothing. We talked the state of architecture and the building trades in my two countries, I being sure to get in as much detail from my professional experience as I could, all the way to Monthléry, where he introduced me to his supériere -- Vous avez déjà utilisé la brique apparente dans vos projets? he had asked hopefully, but rather doubting a positive reply; Oui! Beaucoup, I was able to tell him, perfectly truthfully, Mais pour la plupart aux Etats-Unis --, where I chose my brick, and then we talked family and terroir, the French sense of place and of the land and home, all the way back. I was feeling like an architect again by the time I got back into my car. It lasted until my husband arrived.

"Alors, as-tu trouvé la brique," he asked, leaning on the sample box.

"Oui, c'est là, sous tes mains." He opened the box.

"C'est combien?" He didn't lose much time either.

"Je ne sais pas. Pas beaucoup. La brique n'est pas très cher." That was like putting a bandaid on a limb amputation.

"Il faut le savoir. Si on le met comme ça, sur le champ, ça coutera plus cher car il en faudra plus. Il faut savoir."

"Mais, ça ne fait aucun sense. C'est toi qui voulais une brique moins large car tu préfères l'aspet, mais si on ne la pose sur le champ, ce n'est même pas la peine de se faire des soucis entre une brique à 65 mm et une brique à 50 mm, ce que tu m'as dit que tu préfères nettement. En plus, il y a eu une brique que j'ai beaucoup aimé, mais je ne l'ai pas choisi car elle ne vienne qu'en 65 mm!" It's true. The brick I thought I'd love only came in 65 mm, which Audouin said he didn't like when we looked at the catalog together the evening before my architect brick expedition. He had gone so far as to eliminate any he liked if they weren't available in the narrower dimension, and Monsieur Becquart had been of the same opinion. The fill spaces for the brick are narrow, and the wider brick might not complement the scale of the space.

"Oui, mais c'est une question d'argent. Il faut le savoir et puis décider." I suddenly felt even more exhausted than when I walked in the door from Monthléry. What, I asked myself, is the point? The answer came then. The point is give him the information, and he will bend as the willow to your will.

That is when he will feel empowered to let me decide.

"Ou, peut-être on peut les couper en deux..."
....

And that's the way it is

Before there were women,
Election night 1964

Harry Reasoner, Roger Mudd, Eric Sevareid, Mike Wallace, Robert Trout and Walter Cronkite

The television of my childhood. The console with its large built-in speakers sat in front of the plate-glass windows of our single-story tract ranch house in suburban Syracuse, NY in the early 1960's. A black and white image broadcast The CBS Evening News, The Wide World of Sports, Lassie, Mr. Ed, Daktari, Lost in Space and The Disney Hour (it's true, Walter Conkrite did channel Walt Disney, now that they mention it), Perry Mason and The Twilight Zone, The Late Show with Johnnie Carson (I watched from the hallway until my mother gave in and let me come sit and watch), and -- if we were really lucky -- Cinderella and The Sound of Music. That was before The Sound of Music ran every Thanksgiving and It's a Wonderful Life became the Christmas staple. My list could go on.



Television asked you to be patient. Your favorite show broadcast in its time slot, and if you missed it, you had to wait until the reruns in the summer, when there was a better chance your mother would let you stay up to watch it.

Television was stable, and nothing was a more stable fixture than Walter Cronkite at our dinner table, announcing the count of the US soldiers lost in Vietnam every evening, informing us of the marches in Selma and Washington, the bomb blast at the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four little "negro" girls, the national guard opening fire at Kent State, students falling, the first steps on the moon, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, and the shame of Watergate. He was a voice who told us who we as a nation and as Americans were.

Ever since I moved to France as a permanent resident, married to a French man, and actually lived more of French culture than sidewalk cafés and cinéma, museums and monuments I understood what de Toqueville meant when he said that American democracy loves comfort. I understood, too, how little our two revolutions really had in common, and what I love is how much the present political atmosphere feels like the French Revolution (the 97% rose up against the 3%), which was a true revolution.

Ours, as someone I know said -- in reply to my longstanding argument that ours actually had next to nothing whatsoever in common with the French Revolution, with which ours is compared as the inspiration of the French in their own, and which fact is commonly taught in our middle and high school years, and even as early as elementary school (at least when I was in it), -- he learned in graduate school, was really but a rebellion.

In our American colonial rebellion, I argue, the 3% got the 97% to help free themselves of taxes to the crown, with a nice helping of freedom and rights along the way, inspired, it is true, by the Enlightenment philosophers, but with much of the work to improve the lives of the 97% left undone. They have continued to delude themselves into thinking they are just like the rich, only they don't have as much money, but the opportunity is just around the corner. Our "American Dream". A cynical convenience of the ruling class to keep everyone else satisfied in the idea that ours is a society without class.

But there is a greater consequence. A society without class creates desires that are unrealistic, ambitions that cannot be fulfilled; those who make money selling those who have little things they don't need on credit they haven't earned don't want them to know how short-term and dangerous is their game of self-enrichment. The rich get richer, while the middle class joins the poor. Le pouvoir d'achat French President Nicolas Sarkozy called "purchasing power" during the election as candidate, promising the French that he would put more wealth in their hands if they voted for him. It's the economy, stupide.

Give them the notion that they can afford more, and they will be happy, but the French have long known what Americans do not like to accept, and this, in part, explains their long faces and long-suffering fatalisme (you know, what Americans traveling in France take for French rudeness): that economies cannot grow forever, that human beings should not work 10 hours a day, 50 weeks of the year, and not every child is "above average". Their cars are not only smaller and consume less, they can drive more kilometers. Their electricity is not only nuclear and hydro powered, but wind turbines dot the landscape. Their health care is not only available, it is available to all and affordable. Their salaries do not buy as much, after taxes to pay for their health care and retirement, but they are more equitable, their vacation time affording them time to spend with their family and friends. Life, they know, costs. Everyone, they accept, deserves dignity and basic services, like education, health care and a decent retirement, and everyone will pay for that. Their middle class exists, their working class lives well enough, and the rich contribute more than everyone else; everyone has a place in the Republic.

This is the time, thanks to Wall Street's implosion under the pressures of greed and derision, corporate America's melt-down under the load of the costs of retirement and health care, and the GOP's unraveling right along with them, leaving the lunatic fringe and white/right supremacists as its only constituency in its refusal to see all Men as created equal and the march of society's progress, for that revolution; for the 97% to take charge and create the society and the government worthy of our founding documents.

And, here is one moment that sums up the thoughts of a man with his finger on the pulse of American society and politics on the existence of a ruling class in America. Note that the edge of regret, as though forcing himself to speak of something he would rather not have to, much less acknowledge.



And that's the way it is, Saturday, July 18, 2009.
....

On becoming who you are, the bac

The coreopsis, deadheaded

I stopped myself short of finishing all the dark chocolate shavings in the box of "Special K" with dark chocolate, and I made a cup of green tea rather than polishing off the sweet white apéritif wine (I'll get to that after).

Don't ever say I have no self-restraint for my emotional and destructive eating problem. Sam doesn't deserve to have a mother as big as an American house, on top of having to pick himself up off the floor after the year that-never-should-have-been. If there's a silver lining, it's that every bad experience either adds to your destruction or helps you grow, and there is always a chance that it will be the latter.

Of course, just like there was always the chance that he'd do worse on the épreuves anticipées this year than last -- and lose the benefit of the first year's better results --, there was also the chance that it would be the former.

It comes down to the person, which is better than it coming down to me because, clearly, I haven't been as stellar in my mother performance as I was positively certain I'd be. Absolutely convinced I'd be nominated for an award I'd win and accept, glowing with pride in... myself. Which, of course, is precisely what it's not supposed to be about.

He did better only in science, and that carries less weight than everywhere else where he did worse. While he had 12 points in advance toward the baccalauréat last year, he now is 4 points behind.

It's a terrible thing.

"Ma crainte est que Sam, qui a beaucoup travaillé pour ces épreuves, et j'en suis vraiment déçu pour lui," dit son beau-père, "en tire la leçon que le travail ne sert à rien."

"I'm not going back to school next year," said Sam. "There's no point in working."

Right on cue.

Worst, maybe, in his case, it is true.

When I took him to see the director of admissions at the highly competitive Lycée International in St. Germain-en-Laye after his last year of collège (middle school here in France), when we were looking for a school for him for lycée (and I knew they couldn't take him), she took his creative writing samples to the head of the American section of the collège and the head of the 9th grade English program, who were down the hall in the teachers' lounge.

"It doesn't really make sense for me to read them," she had said, "when there are specialists available," and she had excused herself for a moment, returning to talk with us before she went to retrieve them and the womens' comments. It was before she had a chance to excuse herself again that we heard people entering the reception area behind us, and two heads appeared at the door to the office.

"Ah! But it is they," said the director, introducing Sam and I to the two women, one of whom advanced and stuck her hand out for Sam to shake.

"I wanted to meet for myself the person capable of this writing." She was beaming. The shorter woman next to her was nodding enthusiastically.

"Yes," she said, "it's wonderful."

"There is something of -- of a young Kurt Vonnegut to it," said the taller woman, who had introduced herself as the principal of the collège. I felt very confused. Sam had always had a writing problem, since he was in elementary school. That's why he had done this writing for a writing specialist. We hoped that would help unblock his written expression and jump start him. She seemed impressed. Sam looked like you could knock him over with a feather. "It's so unusual. It's wonderful."

"The discussion," the admissions director attempted to bring everyone back down to earth, "is what to do with this young man, who is having difficulties in school."

"Oh! He should write. His spirit is not made for ordinary school," she continued. "He'd be better off to leave school and spend his time walking in the woods and writing." The admissions director looked panicked, aghast. The shorter woman, the English teacher, was still nodding decidedly.

"But, he has to go to school!" the admissions director fairly exploded.

"Oh, yes," said the principal, as though dealing with a buzzing fly, "but what about a school with a writing program? Perhaps there is a high school program, a private school somewhere, like the Ohio Writers Project, but for high school students. Or maybe he could finish in independent studies through the CNED and spend his time writing." She was bubbling with enthusiasm. The admissions director looked like she regretted having solicited the opinions of these two women. Sam looked fascinated.

"I don't want to be a writer," he said as we walked back to the car. I didn't want to go to NYC and Barnard when my mother first mentioned it, either.

He went to Notre Dame and proceeded to do supremely mediocrally. In fact, he is outdoing himself and everyone else in mediocrity. And then came this year's disaster repeating the year, only to do far worse and lose ground on the bac.

"Peut-être tu ne devrais pas lui dire pour qu'il profite de son week-end au Cap Feret," suggested my husband when he called me back between patients.

"Il faut que je lui dise. Il sait que c'est aujourd'hui. C'est pas possible de ne rien dire. Il va demander."

I called the school and discussed it with the head of his grade level, who contrary to anything deservedly unpleasant we could say about high school teachers here really cares about him and believes in him. I told her what Madame Silva at Notre Dame les Oiseaux had said. She didn't agree.

"Elle lui propose une place dans leur établissement, mais seulement en L (literature). Elle dit qu'elle l'aurait pris en ES pour redoubler sa première avec les notes qu'il a eu cette année là, mais que ses professeurs diraient qu'il n'a aucune chance de réussir en terminal ES avec ses notes en mathes et eco."

"Mais, elle ne lui donne pas ses chances!" she exclaimed, rather to my surprise. I had, in truth, suspected like Sam that they were trying to off-load him, but she seemed genuine. "Comment elle peut savoir ça?" she added, speaking to herself.

"Elle dit qu'elle est obligée de montrer ses notes aux profs, et ils diraient que c'est pas juste par rapport aux élèves déjà dans la classe d'accepter un élève de l'extérieure avec son niveau."

"Je vais parler avec Madame Gosse, et on va l'appeler."

"Vous savez," I said to her, "il aurait fallu à Sam pas mal du culot pour se défendre des tels arguments." She laughed despite herself.

"C'est vrai. Mais je vais en parler avec Monsieur Cortez et Madame Gosse. Savez, il peut toujours revenir ici, mais c'est pour lui que je m'inquiète. Les professeurs de l'année prochaine le veront venir et ça risque d'être dur encore pour lui."

"Malheureusement, il sait qu'il n'a pas beaucoup de choix. Il préfère revenir à Notre Dame à Mantes et avaler la pillule. Le problème c'est je ne sais pas comment il l'avalera."

"Le cadre du lycée ordinaire lui convient peu," she added. Exactly what they had said at the Lycée International. "J'en ai vu des élèves comme lui qui ont du mal au lycée, et ça va très bien en fac. Il faut qu'on lui trouve le moyen d'y arriver."

"Oui, en enfant avec un QI de 140, et il n'arrive pas à réussir au lycée."

"J'en ai souvent vu des enfants comme lui. Ils ont du potential, mais il ne réalisent leurs capacités que plus tard, dans un cadre moins académique."

"Et peut-être il est un créatif et ça me fait peur parce qu'il aura, peut-être, un chemin peu certain et difficile devant lui." She made the assenting sound, the one that is usually accompanied by a nod.

Sam called me in the seconds after I hung up. I tried to make the small talk about his arrival in Bordeaux, his problems with his bank card, inability to get the change for the tram to the bus to Cap Feret and so forth last as long as possible. We both knew why he had called. It wasn't to tell me about his trip.

"The bac results are ready online," he informed me.

"I know. I checked."

"And?" I wished he were close enough and little enough to let me take him in my arms, not almost 18 and in Bordeaux.

"You didn't do well. You went down."

"How much?" I told him. He had done better only in science, which by no means made up for the ground he lost everywhere else. It seemed impossible. A bad dream. He had spent another 4 hours a week all year working with his tutor, a young doctoral candidate. He had written, read additional works, discussed with her, prepared his arguments, and he did worse. That is possible here. It is subjective. Your grade depends on your corrector.

"What? It's not possible!" He asked questions. He tried to listen. "I feel like I could hurt somebody. Like I could have a fight and hurt someone."

"I know, Sam. It will feel that way, and then it will start to pass." He took a breath.

"I'm not going back to school."

I understood. I had had the same first thought.

"Sam, Madame Mouray is trying hard to find the best solution for you. She hasn't given up on you. She says that she has seen students like you, and that often you come into your own in university." He wasn't ready to hear me.

I called him later, after his tutor called him to encourage him not to take it too badly.

"I can't succeed in school," he said. I was starting to believe him.

"You need only to finish, Sam, and pass the bac. Your path is not a straight one, and your talents are not easy ones to realize. You are genuinely funny. It's rare. Take the other night at dinner, you made Céline laugh, and I could see it surprised her. She started to feel genuinely interested to you, and you made her laugh more than once. It is your force."

"Yeah, but the teachers hate me for it."

"I have never asked you to be anyone but who you are. You can't lose the part of you that is you, but like they said at Lycée International, you are not like the others. It's true. Like Audouin says, you have a real esprit littéraire, and like they said to you at Lycée International, you should be writing. When you have an idea, write it, and see what comes next. When you make someone laugh, note it and develop it. In 6 months, you will look back and find some of it garbage, but you'll see something that is still genuinely funny and good."

I told him about Al Franken. Harvard won't be in Sam's future, but writing can be. I know his brother, a MIT grad and photographer, who lives here in Paris, where he's friends with a friend of mine, and sort of mine, too. It would help if I were to go into the city more often. She and I decided to get Sam together with him. Sam wants to be a photographer.

"In any event, I thought I want to do law, but I am not academic. I fail at school. I can't see myself doing another 7 years of it."

"In truth, you might make a good lawyer, but when I see you, I see your point of view and your ability to get it across in a single remark and make people laugh. It is rare. I see you as a journalist, maybe writing for TV, perhaps advertising. In any event, you were told to start writing, and I think it's time."

"I should just take my camera and start taking photos all the time."

"And then you can write about them, why you took them. The photo journalism photos, the ones that make you laugh, the stories you are asking them to tell."

"I regret ever having come here."

"I thought about that. I decided no. It was the best thing that ever could have happened, and school is nothing next to it. You are bilingual and bicultural. You can make Americans and Brits laugh in English and the French laugh in French. You have seen more of the world. No one can ever take any of that away from you. It is you."

"Laurine had a 17.89 average, you know."

"Yes, that's great."

"I think it might have been the best one. Quentin only had 17.46 after her." I was struck. He sounded proud of them.

"Enjoy your weekend, Sam. Congratulate your friends on their results, be happy for them, talk to them about your feelings, and have fun. There will be time to think about all this when you are back next week, and Madame Mouray will be waiting for you. We'll both feel better then, and we'll figure it out."

He made the assenting sound, the one that is usually accompanied by a nod.
....