Mom in France

You'll Never Be Bored Again: 1st-Year Reminiscences

The rush of baby-hood to toddler-hood and the day-to-day of being a parent is a rushing stream and I can only barely reach the branch to take a rest and feel and watch the water swirling around us.  It's difficult to stop and think:  Yes, one  year ago I was doing such-and-such with Boo.  Or: one year ago Boo was only inside me and not this active boy I see now.  Or even further beyond:  9 months before was our wedding and little did I know it was the last non-Boo moment of my life.  I hope I enjoyed the champagne and dancing that night.

Two months before Boo's due date we went to the emergency room because I was having mild contractions.  I was put on bed rest and told that I would be starting my maternity leave early.  That first week was really hard:  I felt good and had a really hard time just stopping and spending my day on the sofa.  I felt guilty: I mean, who wouldn't want a great excuse to just rest and hang-out with no responsibilities?  But sitting there for hours my anxiety grew and I was really bored, bored, bored, surfing the internet and watching brain-candy on tv.  A friend arrived on the third day with a bag of such brain-candy and told me to relax: I would never be bored again after this.  Her words ring on an almost daily basis.

As Boo's birthday arrived I realized that the day is really for us, the parents.  Coming one-year full circle I felt, really for the first time, my old self falling away.  I have become something new over the past year: a full-fledged parent.  I could feel again that same spring air that we drove through to the hospital, see the lights of the delivery room and the hospital smell of my bedroom.  I was there again, fleetingly, in those first early days.  And for the first time in a year I mourned my old life.  I mourned carefree weekends and time alone with E.  Of parties and late-night dancing.  Of jet-set life of easy,  one-bag travel.  I realized in taking that breath of reflection that that life is just gone.  Am I sorry?  No - definitely not.  But I still took the time to miss it a little.

If my life if more harried and less me-centered, it is also more rich.  E and I don't just love each other; we also love Boo.  I find that I appreciate my own parents more (especially my Mom), and have renewed affection for my brothers, for family in general.  I have made space also for my new family and Boo's family, my in-laws. I'm also more forgiving about the messiness of life and of the events that happen moment to moment:  It simply goes by so fast. 

At one year E and I can take off the "Trainee" badges and be officially parents. We navigate the current as best we can, enjoy the cool water and the passing scenery.

Croissants

Do you remember your first croissant?  I'm sure mine was the Pillsbury kind that came in a tube.  Although they had been Americanized (in so many ways) and called crescents.  I loved to peel back the pre-rolled, pre-cut dough and roll the little triangles.  Just out of the oven they were gooooood.

My first "real" croissant must have been somewhere in suburban northern California where I grew up.  Maybe in my high school french class on one of the "culture" days our french teacher brought them in from one of the french bakeries in the bay area.

On one of my early trips to France from Boston I bought a cycling magazine for a colleague who was a fanatic and whose parents were french.  It was an full spring weekend and E and I walked down to his (now my) village and bought newspapers and magazines at the new stand and sat in the sun on the village square with our coffee and croissants.  My colleague later told me that she practically liked the flaky crumbs out of the crease in the pages.

Are croissants that much better in France?  Yes, they are.  Just like you can't get a good muffin in France.

Boo had his first croissant a couple of months ago and he shares with us when we go down the village on the weekends.  It was one of the first things that we did when I realized that he is growing up in France.  He is French!  He had his first croissant at an age when he won't remember.  He will only know our pathetic attempts at muffins.

Where We've Been

This month is a holiday month in France with 3 holidays in the first half of the month.  For us, it's a travel month.  This past weekend we were in Biarritz on the Basque coast where Boo really experienced the ocean for the first time: