February 9, 2010 : About yesterday...

Bonjour!

I am always relieved when February 9 arrives. On my birthday, February 8, I never seem to behave like an adult. There is something about that day, some expectations that bloom from seeds planted long ago, that resurface on that one day a year to plague me, and anyone around me.

I'd like to blame my Dad. At one point, he devised a great system for our large Bronx Irish Catholic family: the birthday girl/boy chooses the dinner menu. Ever since then, it's been downhill.

I chose cow's tongue and succotash. I was a strange kid, but there was method to it. I remember my brothers cajoling, threatening, punching, all to get me to change my choice. But no dice. This eclectic dinner was my revenge for a whole year's worth of bullying, so with glee I watched those brothers still in the house at that time force their way through lima beans and corn in a milky sauce and cow's tongue. Sometimes the tongue was very visibly a tongue: a tongue with tastebuds, enormous cow tastebuds that stood up to be counted. Sweet revenge!

In a family of seven children, you can feel lost. Unseen, unheard, sometimes. Invisible, maybe. But at dinner time once a year, I was seen, alright! Yeah, yeah, there was trauma - the wishing for the bike that never came and the promising gifts that tune out to be another pair of pajamas, sure ... ah, but the cow's tongue and succotash! :-)

Now, adult, I still expect my birthday to be special. I expect, reasonably or no, to be seen, to be feted (even though it was my mother and not me that deserves celebrating for what happened on the day I was born). I awake in the morning with hopes.

You might say that it is ridiculous, that birthdays are for children, that hope sets us up for disappointment. And if you asked me early yesterday afternoon, I would have said that it had been exactly that: a big fat disappointment. But I believe that in each of us there is still a child that needs feting, that ought to be celebrated. And being a child means having hope, reasonable or not.

Yesterday, a friend here left me a birthday note, mysteriously saying to be ready for a promenade in the afternoon. Damn, I said to myself (already very positive, no?) The weather is crap, I have lines to memorize and I don't want to go on a promenade - whatever the hell that is - in rainy freezing weather when I need to memorize my lines. (Prone to hyperbole, I ignored the fact that it was actually not raining.)

So I asked for more info, hinting that an outing on such a day might not be a good idea, hoping that we would change the plans. When I heard that changing the rendezvous was not possible (hopes crashing), I knew that reservations had to be involved. So I played the guessing game, asking "Do I have to dress warmly?", finding another hope: that perhaps it was lunch on one of the bateaux mouches - the boats that ply their trade lazily - and cozily - up and down the Seine. Very touristy, but warm, good food and service, and two hours, tops, so time to memorize lines.

"Yes, dress warmly." (Hopes crash.) You see, not only was it NOT a bateaux mouches ride, but I was going to be cold. I am "frileuse" - what the French say for folks who can't stand the cold. I would just rather be warm. So you don't catching me skiing, anymore, for example; I would rather go to wherever it is warm and do the water thing, or the exploration thing, there, anywhere where it's warm. So I remind this thoughtful person of who I am, of all the evidence that reveals me to be this "cold sissy". Also, that I can be a volatile personality. Did it matter?

No. At 12:30, I was embarking on a small house boat with lawn furniture on the deck under a canvas canopy. It was a very charming wooden boat, waiting for us just steps away from my apartment. "This is very thoughtful," I thought, "This is thoughtful and charming and he put a lot of thought and effort into it." I was just about to vocalize these words, trying to say something nice, when I heard Kathy from the Bronx, little Kathy with big brothers who hate succotash, yell, "You aren't going to LIE to him, are you? Because I for one am already freezing my &*^^ off! I get to choose the succotash! Where's the succotash?!" I tried to explain to her then that this is what adults do: adults play nice; adults lie, quite often even, to keep the peace. She would have none of it, though, so we compromised and I said nothing, arranging my lips in a smile that I hoped gave the impression that I found the boat charming.

It was freezing on that boat. Yesterday was windy, with a cutting wind wet inside. And the beauty of Paris was hiding yesterday, at least from me. The river was swirling and mud-brown, and to our left and right passed the big barges with their cargoes of different-colored dirt. I wrapped myself in blankets and tried to stop myself from complaining, but it was a shipwreck. I couldn't help myself. Kathy was pissed: "Yes, it is true that I love the Seine and boats, but in June, maybe, or July, not in February!" Once I started, I couldn't stop, and though the words were softened by adult Kathryn they were lanced by Kathy. To interrupt the scene, I suggested we go inside to warm up.

The inside of the boat was cozy, all wood, a charming houseboat with a history, no doubt... a history I was trying not to add myself to. The cabin with the windows was small, so we squeezed in at a table next to the boat's captain, who was wrestling to keep us straight. I knew the feeling. It was cozy, yes, but private, no... and definitely not healthy. The smell of diesel was overpowering. I get sick from gas stations, much less this diesel smell, and my friend knows this. He looked at me nervously, as if I were a deer that might bolt. Maybe we should go back outside, he suggested. Good idea.

We got more blankets and went outside. I was wrapped in 4 of them, then, underneath, above, all around, until I was a red cocoon with only my eyes visible. My eyes darted this way and that, and I said soft, barbless banal things like, "I love Paris' bridges." or "Aren't these blankets a lovely color red?" But I had already shown my true colors, and the efforts at softness made the contrast all the more painful, I think. We passed under bridge after bridge (Paris truly has magnificent bridges) and I imagined that the hardy (foolhardy?) tourists who had braved the elements looked at me, curious. I tried to see me as they would, a red-wrapped figure huddled on the ships deck, anonymous. Maybe someone famous? No, Michael Jackson gone and as there was no impression of comfort, the riddle no doubt lay unsolved.

It seemed then that there were cormorants following us, or one persistent cormorant, and that was good. I am writing an inspirational book with cormorants in it (Okay one cormorant, mostly their cousins the pelicans, actually) and the sight of them comforted me. I saw a cormorant riding the waves with a dignity and an agility that I was not evincing, as I messed about with my own cold-wet-boat-waves. I felt guilty. Deep breaths.

I asked then if we could cut the journey short and not do the whole 4 hours. They said okay, all of them, and I was relieved. It had felt that they were against me, my friend and the crew of this iceboat, laughing at the one who was cold. But now there was ever renewed hope. Again my friend suggested that we go underneath for something warm to drink, and I gladly accepted, asking for hot chocolate, a Parisian specialty. Alas, no hot chocolate (crash!). Nonetheless off to the kitchen for some hot tea (though the French do not as a rule know tea, and I recognized another crash in the making.) Nonetheless, I agreed, anything to get warm, for the cold had got into my fleece-lined warmest boots and now gripped my toes hard, squeezing the ends.

Paris disappeared from the windowless deck below. I gritted my teeth and reached for my tea, a namby-pamby blend, but hot. I looked around, but did not see the milk. My friend cleared his throat and said, hesitating, "There is no milk. I already asked and and they don't have any." (CRASH!).

"No hot chocolate in PARIS, no milk, no tea, I hope this isn't something you paid for, because this is unacceptable!" Kathy had taken over and was now on a roll. "This would never happen in the US, they know service in the US, I should just go back there, what the hell am I doing here, what the hell am I doing on this boat, what were you THINKing?" Hoping to stave off the flow, Kathryn then interjects, acknowledging, "It was a very thoughtful idea, just such a shame about the weather," but she is interrupted by Kathy, who snorts, "Oh, yeah! Cold weather is not foreseeable in early FEBRUARY!" Kathryn of course apologized right away, "It is a shame Kathy doesn't know how to behave when someone has been so very thoughtful." In retrospect I am surprised that he did not simply plunge off the boat into the waters, sure to be warmer than it was within, with this crazy schizophrenic birthday girl/woman.

Even I knew I needed a time out, so we went back outside with ever more blankets (I was up to 6 by now) and we sat. There was only a bit of time left and so I waited for it to end, hopeful, waited to get warm, waited as I saw our dock go right past us.

Hey, didn't they say we could get off a bit early? My friend went to see what was up. Some story ensues, and ten minutes later the boat turns. As we turn to head back to the dock, during the last fifteen minutes of our trip, the hail comes. We are outside on the deck, and there is a canopy, but these big-bricks-of-ice hail stones are bouncing off the roof of the cabin onto my grouchy head. (er - crash?)

No. It was too much. I started to laugh. My friend, wary now, looked to see if I was being ironic.

But no, I was really laughing, laughing hard now, laughing with the hailstones on the deck of that houseboat on the Seine in February. Laughing because I finally got it. My old demons were back taunting me, and in force. The idea was to see if this time I could rise above it, get past my anger, get past my succotash power trip, stay present in face of circumstances that tweak my especially soft spot: submitting to the will of others, "playing nice", looking outward for confirmation rather than finding it within. I got it, so I laughed.

I laughed also because BOY had I blown it, at least in part. On the positive side, I realized also that I had tried: I fought the good fight, stayed conscious of the fact when I was losing it, tried to get past the anger rooted in past events, past the cold and the dismal day, past the ill-prepared and uncaring staff and the diesel fuel, past the victim I was painting myself to be... to see that underneath nothing was threatened. No one had died. Nothing, in fact, had changed. And I finally saw humor in the thing.

Thanks to my friend who gave me such a marvelous birthday gift... who needs succotash?

Peace from Paris.