Remembrance of Things Present

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Nous. Avec le pain au chocolat

The candlesticks and matching chandelier

​In this amazon age of corporate convenience, we are all urged to shop local.  This was even before small businesses became COVID’s silent fatalities.
 
To be honest, it was low on my priority list, until as a stranger in a strange land, I was recently re-awakened to the joys of shopping local.
 
Turns out, there is a heavenly trifecta of local stores five minutes from our new home. One is a consignment shop you’d think was a one-of-a-kind Crate and Barrel, from which we have yet to leave empty-handed. The second is a huge local bookstore, founded in 1981, where slow browsing is not only allowed, but encouraged. And finally, a bistro called “La Quiche Parisienne” run by a Frenchman named Bruno and his wife Sabine. 
 
Since La Quiche’s décor is American, I was startled by how authentic their food is.  If Proust stumbled upon his madeleine, I have discovered my pain au chocolat.  
One bite into this flakey, buttery pain, and I could taste my years of middle and high school.
 
Those years had become a secret inside of me, but were brought to my consciousness by a simple croissant. Looking back, I now realize we were living in the last days of post-War France. The metros still had cars reserved for those wounded in the war. Everyone over the age of 40 (which seemed so old to my 12 year old self) lived with both a memory of the purpose of community and the faded scars only a Nazi occupation could inflict. 
 
I was aware of this, and yet not aware.
 
We lived on Rue Windsor, named for the Duke of Windsor, whose Duchess, the scandalous Wallis Simpson, was still alive, cloistered in a chateau about a two miles down the road. 
 
It was the last days when people really lived locally.  Next door to us at #11 was a music conservatory; the students’ piano tunes serenading us on hot lazy summer days when the windows were open. Next to that was the year-round marche (farmers’ market) which celebrated the seasons. Three times a week, we honed our French by learning words for the sweet juicy fruit we devoured. 
 
Our neighborhood had every shop you could want: a tabac/brasserie engulfed in a cloud of cigarette smoke, a boulangerie/patisserie whose sweets honored each holiday with jaw-dropping colors and designs, a butchery which proudly hung, along with more sanitized slabs of beef, carcasses of pigs and chickens the sight of which made my siblings and I run. A cheese/dairy shop, whose rancid odors forshadowed its presence, keeping my siblings and I at a run, and around the corner, a seldom-entered pharmacy whose interior always made me think of the recently slain John Lennon’s living room: white white white.  **Note to Helicopter Parents: my parents would send us preteens to these shops by ourselves, armed with only our pigeon French and a purse full of francs. Imagine...**
 
Finally, there was “Comestibles” the local grocery, run by “Monsieur Bigot” (whom my father dubbed Biggie Bigot).  Biggie Bigot, (think fat version of the Muppet’s Swedish Chef) was ancient, though in retrospect, possibly pushing 70. Shopping at Biggie’s was not for those with a timetable or for the faint of heart, thanks to his rancid breath (probably from smoking all those Gitanes at the tabac across the street).  Biggie kept himself mentally sharp by adding all the items in a purchase by hand, muttering the numbers to himself as he wrote them down on paper and added them together. This is how I learned those difficult French numbers over fifty. “Soixante-seize et quatre-vent-trois font cent-soixante neuf et…”  He would then hand us his handwritten receipt of our items, accurate to the smallest denomination of coinage: five centimes (probably about 0.005 American cents in those days).  
 
This became the life we got to know, and the vendors got to knew us.  Whereas my siblings and I were initially ignored and then begrudgingly served at the boulangerie, as we kept returning, we earned their esteem, and even their fondness.  I would order, “un baguette s’il vous plait”, to which I would be corrected, “UNE baguette”. The next day, I would say, “UNE baguette s’il vous plait” to which they would smile (Sacrebleu! A smile from a vender in Paris?!) and jokingly say “un baguette”…We learned the delicate distinctions between a baguette, a batard, a fiscelle, and a pain.  (I still struggle, however, with distinguishing whether any random word is “un” or “une”.)
 
When I was in my mid-thirties, I returned to the charming rue Windsor. But my idyllic neighborhood had disappeared. The butchery and cheese shop, the music conservatory and Biggie Bigot’s – gone.  Apartment buildings belied that there had ever been a vibrant community.  The bistro was empty: for sale.  Everyone drove to supermarches now, and plied their freezers with food for the week, a l’americaine. 
 
Paradoxically, while my years in the City of Lights appear picture perfect, if I’m honest, I realize I’m actually happier now.  How can I say this, in the midst of a pandemic, with the challenge of social distancing? It is largely because back then, I thought happiness was an “outside job”, meaning someone or something other than myself would/could/should make me happy. This belief contributed to my feeling powerless and insecure.  
 
Here, now, today, my daughter and I get our weekly (not daily!) baguette et croissants. Upon seeing us, Bruno leaves his kitchen to tell me (in French bien sure) about a great restaurant I need to try downtown run by a friend of his, and Rebecca (the barrista) checks in with Lillie because she reminds her of her younger self, out for special times with her mom.  I have plans to see if I can work with owner of the bookstore to start a local book group. And Clairon from the consignment shop gives us a special deal on a pair of gorgeous crystal candlesticks that match our chandelier at home.  Because we keep coming back. Because we are home. This, I know, is happiness.
 
When you come visit, I’ll be sure to bring you to my neighborhood nirvana.