The Almond Miracle

©️TheMadeleineDiaries

Well, after complaining for several weeks about how much I missed home, I ended up going back for the children’s Spring Break. The original program was college tours with my sixteen-year-old. But I guess I needed to touch base, however chaotic the process ended up being, with my knack for last-minute, anxiety-driven travel plans. So, I found myself booking tickets and packing my three younger children three days before we were supposed to head down to Washington, D.C. I hate doing things that way, but I have found it impossible to proceed differently since we left Paris last summer. As if any kind of rationality was denied to me whenever France is involved. And I am beginning to understand that it will probably always be that way. It was hard to be there, when I first arrived almost three years ago. And it was even harder to leave, when I thought moving back to New York would be the happiest day of my life. It turns out, I have changed, and New York has changed too. Not to mention the entire United States, which is undergoing a change so dramatic as to be quite terrifying, at least to half of the people living here right now. I have found, the hard way, that there are moments in life when by the time your deepest desire is fulfilled, it has ceased to be relevant, and you wish you had been a little less inflexible in your aspirations.  

So, complex feelings indeed, around this whole Paris business. And complex feelings while I was there last week, also, no matter how much I had been craving my hometown, family, and friends, over the past two months. In fact, a mere few hours after I had landed, I found myself wondering why on earth I had thought this was a good idea. As we were wandering the streets of Ile St Louis, Berthillon ice cream in hand,  to fend off jetlag and the urge to take a much-needed nap, I realized that this was certainly lovely, but also that I had nine more full days of figuring out how to keep my children busy. Yes, my parents were around, but we can’t all stay in their small apartment, and I know from experience that the help I end up getting never quite measures up to what I had in mind upon landing. This hit me while waiting in line for Notre Dame, in the blinding sun, grateful for the perfect weather after a freezing and long-lasting winter in New York but also dying to go to sleep and leave my children in the hands of an ever-patient, infinitely generous Mary Poppins of sorts. Who would figure out dinner and keep playing with them past 11 pm when they were still not asleep – and wouldn’t be for the rest of the week.

It hit me even harder the next day, when I faced the prospect of a weekend filled with playdates for my boys. Yes, seeing old friends, and making sure that we all stay connected to our Parisian life, was the point of this trip. I had no other plans than to meet up in Luxembourg with a collection of school-aged boys, and to catch up with friends around a good meal and a glass of wine. I had not planned, however, that my husband and son wouldn’t be able to join us after their college tours, and that I would find myself on my own, trying to entertain children by myself every day. And I had not planned that the prospect of scheduling all these get-togethers would fill me with exhaustion and existential dread. I really have a thing with planning, and scheduling, these days. I am happy to see people, but I would like the meetings to happen on their own, without any email or instant messaging involved. And at a reasonable pace, without the pressure to sandwich twenty different families or individuals within a 9-day frame.

So, there I was, crying on my bathroom floor by day three. Thankfully my friend C. had the inspiration to get beers for us, and chips, while we watched the children at Arènes de Lutèce on that jetlagged afternoon. And I had the wherewithal to accompany each subsequent meal with a glass of wine, or two, after going mostly alcohol-free for the past few months. In fact, alcohol was a decision I made right away at the airport, after a frantic day of packing, when I got myself a beer at Shake Shack while the kids were devouring their hamburgers and fries. An obscure part of me already knew that I was going to need a little help on this trip. And boy was it proven right. As surprising as it was to me, I have rarely felt quite so overwhelmed as a mom as I did during this trip. Even though my children are now older, and I no longer have the baby and toddler “excuse”. I guess I hadn’t thought hard enough about what it would be like to interrupt my well-oiled routine – including writing for this blog – and lifesaving hours of library solitude. I saw the Paris landscape in my mind, and I was craving it. But I didn’t see myself in it, alone in an Airbnb with my three busy, and seemingly constantly hungry children.

That is the tricky part with Paris for me. The cliché trap, if you will. I always feel this pressure to like it, to enjoy every part of it, because, after all, it is Paris. I felt that keenly over the two years I spent there with my family. Because my childhood memories of it were not necessarily that joyful, and going back was quite triggering, I purposely surrounded myself with expat mothers who would have a different, more joyful perspective on the city. And it worked, in a way. I don’t think I would have enjoyed Paris as much as I did at times, were it not for these enthusiastic women. But it also made it harder to experience the darker feelings that lay underground. How could I not enjoy such beauty? Such food? How could I not be grateful every minute I found myself walking on those medieval streets? How could I remain insensitive, resistant, even, to the Paris magic? How could I always be so negative? Why I am always so negative? How could I prefer loud, crazy, dirty New York City to this historic, croissant-filled paradise? The pressure to love Paris when it made me miserable was the hardest part of my time there. And something I struggled with at a lesser degree, during this Spring Break visit. How could I feel so tired, dying to send my children back to school, when I had spent months daydreaming about this paradise lost? How could I not enjoy VACATION, like civilized people do? How could I be so ungrateful, in such a beautiful setting with the perfect weather? I guess I should accept that no matter how beautiful and sought-after by travelers worldwide, Paris will never be easy for me. It had to repeat this to myself when I arrived back in New York this weekend, and found myself, of course, exhausted by jetlag again and sobbing over the life I left behind last summer. I will always be longing for the other place. I might never feel quite at home neither here, nor there. And maybe that’s ok. At least, fighting the ambivalence hasn’t resulted in solving it, so far. So, I might as well be comfortable with my own madness and seemingly permanent dissatisfaction and yearning.

And come to think of it, in the midst of my exhaustion and general motherly burn-out, there was one moment when I truly experienced the Paris magic. Let’s say three, maybe, but one was truly unexpected. The first was the light streaming through the stained-glass windows at Notre-Dame and hitting the warm, beautifully restored limestone arches on the other side of the nave. The cathedral was so crowded that I failed to be moved when we first walked in. We had just landed a few hours earlier after a red-eye flight, and my capacity for esthetic revelations was limited, I supposed. I found the church too big, and too clean, almost. But then I raised my eyes, and the magic was there for all to see. Light is what makes this cathedral, something we definitely did not get during our fun but limited immersive experience at St John the Divine last Fall.

©️TheMadeleineDiaries

  The second moment also happened in a church, but I knew exactly what I was after then, and knew I would find it. It is the painting by Delacroix in the first left-side chapel in Eglise Saint-Sulpice. I found myself sitting in front of that painting almost weekly last Spring, when I was pondering our upcoming return to New York and realizing that I didn’t want it as much as I thought I would. I went there for clarity, repeatedly watching Jacob fighting with the Angel. Surely, I would somehow find a resolution to my own conflict and see the light, somehow. It turns out I never quite did, and just had to obey necessity, in the guise of my husband’s job. Gazing that painting again, now that I am on the other side of that painful move across the Atlantic, helped me see that there might not be any relief to be found in either place. Just inside of myself, if I can figure out how. I’m not quite there yet, but will remain hopeful.

©️TheMadeleineDiaries

The third epiphany came in the humbler form of an almond croissant. Our apartment was near the venerable Tour d’Argent and its new adjoining bakery. I admit to being unimpressed with the large, overly puffy (in my humble opinion) chocolate croissants our host kindly left for us the first day. So, I went there almost wearily on our last full day, to get breakfast for the airport the next morning. Then I saw the baker slide warm almond croissants off a tray behind the window and remembered that I used to love those as a child. In New York they are quite worthless, a dry and stodgy affair that is never a good idea (again, my humble opinion). When I sat down at the kitchen table upon return, however, the first bite was nothing short of a miracle, a mini-Proustian-madeleine of sorts. My neighborhood bakery on rue Sedaine was back, and the “goûter” I would buy with my mom after school. Almond croissant was always my favorite order, because I knew I could count on the slightly underbaked dough, and creamy marzipan. There is nothing worse than an overcooked almond croissant, in my opinion. And this one was just sheer perfection. Enough to make me want to stay forever and establish residence in that very bakery. Yes, there is madness, and ambivalence, and dissatisfaction. But there are also perfect almond croissants, and that might well be where lies the true genius of Paris. That, and Delacroix of course. And all the details I enjoy while walking around. The beauty I miss dearly when I am in New York. But nothing quite satisfying as a perfectly mastered “viennoiserie”.