Clothespins and French Lessons

Do we ever really discover new ground or do we simply return to old ground with new eyes?

As I hung laundry in our small little apartment, I found my thoughts momentarily drifting to my childhood backyard. As a child, I watched my mother hang clothes from a line, and I was surprised (and slightly disbelieving) to find myself doing the same activity 20 years later.

At the end of the day, a 350 square feet apartment in the 13th arrondissement in Paris couldn’t be farther from acres of land in Northwest Indiana, yet here I was, hanging laundry—the exact same activity, regardless of the location of the clothesline.

In those childhood days of hanging laundry, I remember these large sticks, fashioned by my father, which seemed unwieldy but were designed to tighten the line. In my little Paris apartment, Josh traded large homemade poles for an elaborate system of stretching a single clothesline throughout our entire apartment. Our clothesline stretches past every door and window in our apartment, yet it only 20 meters long. Once again, the activity and necessity of tightening the clothesline is the same, regardless that we have a mere micro-acre.

[I could offer reflections on baby bottles, given that Josh and I found ourselves at a curious, but entertaining, fondue restaurant last night where wine was served in bottles—baby bottles. It seems, however, that I really don’t have any memory of “the last time I drank from a baby bottle,” so letting this one go makes sense.]

I didn’t have to drift back to my childhood to find myself retreading familiar ground once again. My first French lesson in France is tomorrow and imagine my surprise when I learned that the books that I will be using are the same ones that I used for my brief (and only mildly successful) classes in Washington, D.C. It seems that I will get to return to the same books that made me crazy in Washington, but with a new level of commitment… and urgency.

Before when I turned the exact same pages, I felt like a hobbyist at best and French seemed like a code word for “interesting adventure”. Now, as I look over these pages, they seem like keys to the kingdom. If I can actually learn the difference between avoir and etre, then maybe I have a chance at communicating with that corner vendor on the Rue Mouffetard who has beautiful greens or the butcher across the way who has the perfect chicken or the grocery store clerk on Rue Broca who is asking me if I need bags for my grocery.

To be honest, my expectations are fairly low. I don’t expect to be able to fully participate in French conversation, even by year’s end, given that the French take their conversation as seriously as they take their coffee or their baguette, but I do hope to at least consider myself a passive participant in time.

Finally, I find myself returning to a dinner table with new eyes. In life, I’ve been fortunate to rarely lack a place to share Sunday dinner and this was one thing I thought for sure would be absent for the foreseeable future.

But, in this new chapter, I have a whole new appreciation for the daily routine, which now gives me the chance to sit with Josh each night, at our table. In our lives before, there seemed to be endless good reasons why we found the dinner table only a few times a week at best. Now, our dinner table, with a short glass of wine, is the touchstone of our days.

I also have found myself extremely grateful for the invitations to join others at their tables in this time of new beginning in Paris. Iris, Sue and Beth (and their families) graciously invited us to share a meal, a tart or a snack with them in our first weeks here. But more than just offering delightful culinary treats, they truly opened their homes. We left each home having full of tips on life in Paris (including French telecom tricks, possible job leads and where to buy toaster ovens). We also left each home with a bag full of goodies ranging from extremely helpful books on how to live in Paris, to the ready made tart crust—which is the French woman’s secret to good tarts, to a borrowed pot and extra butter. At these tables, at a time when we are still figuring out what community is even possible, I felt lucky enough to feel comfortable, even for a moment.

So maybe I won’t spend all year re-seeing my old life through new eyes, but for now, seeing the new in the old or the old in the new makes Paris feel like another place that I could begin to imagine as another one of my homes.

sPg