growing up

Seven weeks passed since Adam's first day at Ecole Bilinge.  He came back with a report card half in French half in English, a big smile signaling the beginning of his two weeks vacation, and of course, a few good stories about the last day at school which was all about... food.  

It was quite humbling to ask his help to decipher the French half of his report card.  

As much as we all adore his teacher, Madam Gros, her hand writing is ilegible.  With Adam's help we understood that she is very happy with Adam performance this year except his unacceptable hand writing.

That evening we went to an Indian restaurant to celebrate the end of Adam's semester, my last Dr check up and the start of our first vacation.  When Pete and I asked Adam about his messy hand writing he reassured us that it really doesn't matter for his generation since they communicate almost entirely through typing and even this is soon to be changed to oral dictation, and then in no time to thoughts recording.  "Really" he said calmly, "you don't need to worry about it." 

 

Before we regained our balance to make an argument he continues with the same matter of fact manner and asks: "Can we stay here one more year?"

Well, I guess we just got an A from Adam for our last semester -- and he is not an easy grader.

More than this ever-surprising city, the delicious food, and the beautiful language I think what makes this year so wonderful for Adam is the simple fact that Wednesdays are off.

God gave us the Sabbath and the French gave us the Wednesdays.  It wasn't easy to stay away from all the wonderful enhancement classes in art, crafts, music, theater and sport offered on Wednesdays.  We kept it free, mostly thanks to Lorelei's suggestion, as a day to recover and connect -- a day free of plans -- a base for spontaneous urges.

I don't know how I will go back to not having this fueling station in the middle of the week. How would I give up sitting in a cafe with a good book watching Adam drinking his hot chocolate buried in "Charlie Bone," "The Lord of the Flies" or "The Lightening Thief." 

This year, I got to know my own son in ways I never did before and I think that Adam got to see that I function beyond cooking, cleaning, getting ready, working or doing errands.  

Last Wednesday, we went together to the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers -- a museum for technology and the history of science which left to my own devices, I would never visit.  We stayed there almost for four hours -- fascinated, yet able to take only a small fraction of what it had to offer.

During lunch in the Cafeteria, we discussed "speed," something Adam always was captivated by and his interest always puzzled me.  He told me that speed is a relationship between two things: distance and time.  I told him he just wrote a poem and he thought it was very funny of me to think that.  So, that is how we get to know each-other in our Wednesday's escapades. 

****

This morning I heard the piano early in Adam's room.  On my tiptoes I got into his bed and listen to him for a while.  He continued to practice his Jazz scales as I examined the details decoration of the cieling.  Pete left for work, aunt Cindy was still sleeping in the living room, a vacation day with no agenda and no plans.  What would become of this day?  The warmth of his bed, the ragtime blues that fills the room and the soft light of a winter day in Paris filled up the "now".  

I reach to Adam's nightstand and grab his book "Akimbo and the Elephants."  Adam improvised on a minor scale as I sank into the innocent sadness of a boy who discovers that people kill elephants only to sell their tusks.   Adam noticed my tears and told me he is going to switch to major chords to cheer me up, and confides that he also cried when the baby elephant found his mother shot dead by the poachers and trumpeted his heart breaking cry. 

I am thinking of the conversation with my friend Taly from last night who described her moving speech at her daughter's Bat mitzvah.  She compared the parents to Noah who released the dove three times. The first time, the dove quickly comes back, the second time it comes back with an olive branch and the third time it does not return.  

When I step out of the present and think about what will change, when I watch Adam growing in front of my eyes, I feel an acute sense of loss  -- but the loss wouldn't be so grand if these moments weren't so sweet.

 

The bishop has a crush on the queen

There is so much newness in our life right now that even I find myself comforted by some routine activities we have established here.  One of my favorites, other than coffee and fresh croissant in the morning is going to the park in the weekend with our ping pong paddles, a book for Adam and a chess set for us.  The French, who love games, greet us with interested looks and random comments. The setting is beautiful and relaxed but usually this reality quickly dissolves as I dive into our chess game.

Most, if not all, of my games with Pete I lose -- some games with more dignity then others.  The last defeat seemed like Pete handed me an innocent mirror to look into -- therapy for free.  

It was a good game I was holding on to the end with an equal number of pieces as Pete and a slight strategic advantage.  However, in the pastoral setting of the park, I only could feel the desolate desert and being trapped in its vast motionless space.  Where did these feeling come from and why did I lose the game? Pete wanted to know.

In the end game there is lots of space on the chess board and very few pieces. But in spite of the broad open spaces the pieces cannot move much.  The few pawns we had were blocking each other -- locked in a stubborn embrace like Sumo wrestlers.  My panicked king turned into a lonely mad warrior running around between his cornered solders trying to create ways for them to save him -- ordering them to the front lines with the hope that they will turn from frogs to queens.

"All you needed to do was to hang in there and use your King" Pete said later -- and I couldn't. He added passionately: "the King is the strongest piece, he holds the truth, he doesn't need protection, he can survive without all his army, I think you underestimate your power".  It struck me that he said "your" power not "his".  Yet, all I could think of was how vulnerable my king is; exposed and alone and how the fear from the looming checkmate trapped him in my/his own mind.  

If it was therapy I am sure the option of Serotonin inhibiters for my king will come up but since I am not a believer in medicating too quickly the human condition -- I do try to understand my king first.

Adam who by then had finished his book and was starting to play with victim pieces lying on the side of the board, started to write a song titled: "The Bishop has a Crush"

The music is really catchy and the words go something like this: 

"The bishop has a crush on the Queen

the pawn has a crush on the rook

and maybe even so 

it could be yes it could be no

the pawn wont let go of his book"

His fresh angle on reality never ceases to comfort me.  

If you can't understand it -- just sing about it.

A total juxtaposition to our habitual park visit was the event of Nuit Blanche.  Yet one more celebration in Paris -- a white night every year in October in which all cafes, restaurants, art galleries, and churches stay open throughout the night covered by installation, projections of movies, slides and sculptures of light. 

Here the options are countless and the vast space is truly open -- here I feel in a blossoming orchard.

Pete was tired and Adam was in deep sleep so I left by myself at 10 pm to see where my feet would lead me on that white night.  This year most of the art was centered around the five main train stations in Paris.  Gare du Nord, Gare de L'est, Gare de Lyon, Gare de Bercy and Gare de Lazar all mundane and gray in their daily function were transformed into glorious monuments dressed in regal attires -- like  beggars with gowns and pearls.

The Parisians: young teenagers with bicycles and beers, women pushing strollers, families of 2, 3 and more holding the event map, older couples equipped with flashlights and heavy coats and the eternal tourists all united with the hunger to see, to be surprised -- to be transformed.

I always felt that to describe art is like explaining a joke.  Instead of reducing the magical night into sentences, I will just post a few photographs I took during the night.

Before signing off, I will just say that with this experience in hand, I am looking forward to enter another end game and see if I can plant an orchard in the dessert.  

And if I can't...

I might just sing about it.

  

   

French care and health

It is one thing to stand at a culture's doorway: observe, admire, judge, note, detect, be mystified, bemused, or challenged and another to be thrown into the culture's machinery and be forced to function.  I was an excited outsider for a while applauding the different French ways of being and doing.  In the last two weeks, however, I was thrown into a position of unprepared insider and it has shed a different light onto my journey here.  

This last experience also highlighted to me how lonely and empty it can feel without the immediate love and care of our friends and their presence.  With all the political craziness and the wishes to run away as I was watching Sarah Palin on Youtube -- being so far from the people I love clarified a few priorities to me.

After two month of on and off symptoms of bleeding and abdominal pain I realized that the "stress paradigm" should be checked medically.  That meant to pick up the phone call the right place, explain the symptoms, my previous medical history and the current situation all in French -- and that probably explains the numerous avoidance scenarios I came up with.  

After the very first step of calling a Dr who came to our home, just like in Michael Moore's movie, it was clear that I needed a surgery pretty quickly.  It did not leave much time for understanding all the options as well as explaining all the nuances.

To make a short story shorter.  I had a few sonograms and soon after, a surgery and the only way I could do it was to regress a bit to a child state and operate - no pun intended - on intuition and luck rather than information and research.  

The anasthesia was the metaphor of  letting go with a bare minimum information. I went under trusting my body in the hands of the French system. Even before, having had to take a taxi at 6 am by myself when it was dark to a foreign place; trying to read between the lines as to when, where and how was also trusting that somehow things, different as they are here, would work.

When I opened my eyes, at about 2pm, Pete was sitting in the recovery room with me.  We were happy that I would be able to make it on time to pick Adam up who manifested his anxiety in his own way telling me that he loves airplans because he feels in control sitting in the cock pit, being above the world close to the soft clouds.

  

The luck part -- or synchronicity -- or probability -- or sheer coincidence is the most interesting to me.  My dear friend Hagit pushed us before we left to Paris to participate in a retreat at Spirit Rock. There, my dear friend Lee, introduced me to Eleanor who happened to live in Paris and attended the retreat. Eleanor was my only contact here.  Her best friend happened to be an established and well known surgeon in Paris.  

That is how I ended up in Dr Olivian's experienced hands.  I am well now.  I feel much more energy, a slight sense of victory but most of all I am back to being in awe as to how it works so differently here and why.