Julia in Paris

A few weeks ago (this has been on the to-do list for too long), Sarah, Anna, and Benjamin all had competitions in Paris. Matthew has taken to muscling in on the concession stand management at the football games and couldn't miss an opportunity to handle LOTs of money while simultaneously bossing (nicely) people around. David took Matthew duty, which left Julia and I looking at each other with the same twinkle in our eyes: Lets go to Paris! So under the guise of sibling support, we loaded up the car and attempted to pack an unrealistic amount of experience into 8 hours. Here is how we did:We stayed at a really great small hotel run by a friend of a friend. The place was great--nice location, lots of quirky Parisian charm, and a magical convergence of fates that allowed us to park right out front.First stop: Lunch at a corner bakery--Patisserie to all the purists. She shared a few bites.
Next stop was Notre Dame and ALOT of souvenir shopping combined with the heart wrenching decision on whether to wait in the line to climb the towers or move on to:
Of course Mona won. This is, in fact, the entire reason that Julia wanted to go to Paris in the first place. She took this picture and made the following observations:

"It is bigger than I thought."

"She is pretty in a weird sort of way."

"That Leonardo, he was kind of good."

"I think I like Raphael's ladies better."

We then moved on to the second real reason for a trip to Paris: The Eiffel Tower. After waiting in line for 45 minutes, they closed the upper viewing deck 7 people in front of us. Undaunted, we sailed up to the first platform on a double decker elevator and waited patiently until the upper deck was re-opened. We arrived on top just as the sun was setting and the first thing that Julia did on exiting the elevator was...wait for it...run into the gift shop! Not even a glance over the city. Not one oooohh or aahhhh. Straight to the tacky pencils and brass Eiffel key chains. It was a bitter pill. I left her there to admire the tacky while I admired the view.

Paris is lovely at night.

When we made it back to the bottom, Julia spotted just what she had been looking for in all those gift shops: A glass, multi-colored, light-up Eiffel Tower, sold by the thousands across the bridge from the tower by a United Nations of emigrants who probably know how to barter in every language known to man. Julia paid 5 euro. She was thrilled. Our last entertainment of the evening was watching, and listening, as the wave of international street-hawkers took off at full speed, Eiffel Tower key chains clanging in cheery cacophony, right toward, through, and past us followed by the Parisian street police. What a day.

P.S. The volleyball games and cross country meet went well. I did show an uncharacteristic amount of self sacrifice and restrain as I drove past an amazingly tempting Brocante (massive French yard sale) that stretched for a good 2 kilometers on the way to the school. Sigh...

Homecoming

IT IS HOMECOMING...in Brussels. We had a fabulous weather and a full weekend. The football team even won their game which is saying something. Sarah and Anna each had two volleyball matches and Benjamin came in third on his cross country team and 11th overall in a field of 100+. Signs of autumn are everywhere--the kids have to drag me away from collecting chestnuts, and leaves are falling. Here are some pictures so you can enjoy with us. Happy fall.

Another Brush with Fame

Yesterday I sat next to Harry Reid and his wife at church. We did not talk health care. I do, however, have a great story about the Senator and the Avon lady...
J. Willard Marriott's granddaughter whacked me in the leg on the way into the bathroom. She is three and completely adorable and doesn't know that she is an heiress, so I will cut her some slack.

Goodbyes

When I was growing up, I loved family reunions. I loved the food. I loved the singing. I loved crawling around in the barn and milking the cows and driving tractors. But most of all, I loved my cousins. There were six of us within about six years of each other and we couldn't wait to get into trouble together. When you are a kid, cousins are better than friends because even if you don't see each other all that often you are still buddies, and better than siblings, because you don't see each other all that often.

I am old now, and I still love my cousins. Today I went with my cousin Paige to see my cousin Ricky. He is 44 years old and I still call him Ricky--I may be the only one left on the earth that still does--but he never quite made it to Rick with me. Ricky and Paige and I got into a lot of trouble and had quite a lot of fun together as kids. We had some pretty monumental water fights, scared the daylights out of each other in the outhouse, broke a porch swing or two, played hide and seek in the cornfields, and took long walks in the Virgina woods. We sat together looking at stars in the middle of the night.

Ricky has ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, and hasn't much longer to live. He is in hospice and can barely talk, but still has a smile that radiates love and mischief. We visited for a while, sharing stories about our kids and our memories, Ricky trying his hardest to convey his memories too. We laughed as we always do when we get together. We said goodby knowing what those words meant. We smiled our smiles of love and mischief.


After we parted we climbed back into the car and sat silent for a minute or two. Paige and I did. Elevator music was playing on Aunt Evelyn's car stereo, and Dad was on mom's cell phone trying to tell some old guy named Emmet that $300 was not a bad price for a running vehicle and he wouldn't take less. Mom and Evelyn were deciding where to go next and what shopping still needed to be done. Paige and I looked at each other with a little smile. I'm not sure if she was thinking the same thing I was, but I had one of those moments when realities slide out of their usually gentle, inconspicious path and just force you to notice. I wish that I had made a space for myself to appreciate the poignancy of that time with my cousin. He is moving out of this world and into another. He knows it and I think he is OK with that knowledge. He appreciates the richness of every last moment.

When you are living, life just keeps on going. Even when you need it to stop just for a moment in deference to those whose lives won't. I think that is why grieving is so difficult. Life moves us forward and we can't change that, even when we would like to. We are the ones that do the leaving.

Work Permit Round Two

Yesterday I went to renew my work permit. Despite the fact that I had been assured that the renewal process is much easier than the initial application, my heart started thumping the minute I sat down in the little vinyl chair inhabited by thousands of backsides from all over the world. I came prepared with multiple copies of every document provided by the embassy plus a few extra from my commune (5 euros each). I didn't sign anything until the guy pointed to the line, confirming my hunch on were to write Natalie Passey, which always seems to end up as Nathalie on the printed forms.

I must digress for a moment: There is no "th" sound in French, so why do they insist on putting the "h" in my name when it doesn't belong there and they can't say it anyway??

Ok, back to the story.
I even waited for 5 minutes at the lunch counter to get change that would work in the self-photo machine just in case they needed a new photo (which they didn't so I have 5 up for grabs--I am not smiling--kind of indicative of the whole experience). I thought I had covered all my bases.

Belgium is a special case.

I was missing a form.

A form that they had in my file from last year but needed again for some unfathomable bureaucratic reason. Unfathomable to me and unfathomable to the guy from the US Embassy who I called lickety split to get me out of this mess.

After the requisite second guy came into the office and I passed the cell phone across the table and they chatted quite animatedly in French for a LONG time and fax numbers and e-mail addresses and dossier numbers were exchanged and I got my phone back, the second guy smiled quite pleasantly at me and said "He will fax me the form, which is very good because without the form, you never know, it could take 5, 6 months to renew your permit."

Now the really great part of all this is that just before I entered the office I had been reading a charming book in which the main character discusses the theory of Phenomenology: how reality is arbitrary and conscienceness suspect. So, I decided right then and there to expunge the Ministre du Travail from my conscienceness. It no longer exists.

I feel much better now.

Cracovia

Once a year David travels to an obscure location for a meeting of one of his NATO committees. I missed the last three--Croatia, Moldova, and Estonia--so I wasn't about to miss another. This year's meeting was held in Krakow, Poland.
First, a brief lesson in Polish:
W's are pronounced like V's
The W sound is represented by an L with a line through it.
The rest of the letters are a mystery.
For example:
Dziekuje (with a little squiggly under the e's) is pronounced jen-coo-ya.
It means "Thank you" and it is the only word that I can consistently remember and say with recognizeable accuracy.
I could go on, but suffice it to say that I am no longer complaining about French.

Krakow, linguistic mysteries aside, is a really wonderful little city. Think Prague dirtied up just enough to look lived in with a few hundred (OK, 123) churches borrowed from the Baroque effusion of Italy plus one tiny room each of the Louvre and the British Museum. Throw in a Pope and a heretic and you just about have it. It was nice, and very digestable. My new second favorite church in the world (St. Chapelle will always be the most sublime) sits on the market square and glistens with jewel tones and varnish. I happened in on an Solidarity Mass on Monday night and watched as Lech Walesa marched out through the nave at the head of the procession. I actually don't think I would have been able to pick him out of the group if someone hadn't told me he was there. I think a big bushy mustache is essential for membership in the Solidarity movement. Several nights later the conference arranged for us to climb the bell tower at 9 pm to hear the trumpeter enact his hourly ritual. Hundreds of years ago, as an invading army approached the city, a guard sounded the alarm from this very bell tower. As he trumpeted the warning call, an arrow pierced his throat stopping the alarm. After the bell tolls the time each hour, a trumpeter plays the same tune and stops mid-note to commemorate the event.

Both Pope John Paul II and Copernicus studied at the Jagiellon University and studied in this room in the 14th century Collegium Maius.

Isabel Czartoryskich (I have said that name 300 times and still can't get it right) amassed a fabulous art collection in the 18th century, including this Leonardo Da Vinci.
This is a modern artist's take:

I like Leonardo's economy better.

The Franciscan Church houses this magnificent stained glass window depicting the moment God separated light from darkenss. Pretty edgy for turn of the Century, huh?

The Castle hill houses a respectable Renaissance Palace and a stunning cathedral pieced together over the centuries.

We had a fabulous but really quirky middle aged guide with a classic Eastern Block dye job and a bizarre penchant for bathrooms. She kept calling our attention to them in a conspiratorial fashion, opening closed doors and ordering: "You must look. It is a beautiful room. The President's bathroom." or "This toilet. It is made of sandstone. Only the king could use it." I prefered the tapestry to the toilets, but to each his own. Cracow was great--another place that I had never known about but thoroughly enjoyed. I keep asking myself, "What else am I missing?" I have nine months to find out.

Brush With Fame

Dave left for Kazakhstan yesterday by way of London. He e-mailed last night with news that Usain Bolt was on his flight. I say Bolt was on his flight and not the other way around because Usain may be the fastest man but Dave is my man and therefore takes priority. Because David may well be the most considerate and conscientious human on the planet, he did not ask for an autograph ("What the heck?"--several unnamed children). He did say that he was a pretty normal looking guy...well as normal as any 6'3" gentleman squished into a airplane seat can be. Sarah wondered if he had any bodyguards with him, but we decided that that would be completely unnecessary as he could outrun anybody coming after him. This all lead to a great discussion on the way to chuch this morning on how many times Mr. Bolt would lap us if we were up against him in a 50meter race. I just love that his name is Mr. Bolt, don't you?