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CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 5

We Go to Paris and Fight the Whole Time We Go to Paris and Fight the Whole Time

I am standing outside of Notre Dame Cathedral. The air is cool and a light gray mist graces my cheeks. The gothic church’s stone and stained glass soars above me in Parisian extravagance, and all I can think is that I need to find a bathroom. And, if my husband ever comes out of that cathedral, I am going to kill him. Right here, I think, in front of all these cool Parisians.

I am pregnant. And I don’t really want to be pregnant. I am scared and stuck and, of course, my husband and I took a romantic vacation to Paris.

Paris does not have any bathrooms. There is one in our hotel room, but trust me, there are no other bathrooms in the entire city. I should know. My husband ambles about and takes pictures, looking at plaques below statues (Who does that?) and commenting on things like history and culture, while I nervously eye some sophisticated Parisian bushes that might offer some cover for my next potty break.

I was three months pregnant. We were in Paris, and I really wished I were home on our very American couch.

Here’s how a Parisian vacation with your husband of three years should look: making out by the Seine, enjoying some crepes, and then taking twelve million obligatory pictures by the Eiffel Tower.

Here’s how our Parisian vacation played out: freezing rain, grim determination, and a lot of crepes. I ate more crepes than a French teenager after football practice. There was a small kiosk right by the hotel that made them about the size of a car tire and slathered them with Nutella. Crepes upon crepes.

And, I drank absolutely no wine. No cognac, either. We didn’t seek out the dark Parisian bars with sullen bartenders and a lot of gleaming bottles. No wine tastings. No wine cellars. There was no wine on my Paris vacation. This was just wrong and terrible. A tourist should be allowed to drink herself through her European vacation. It’s the American Way! Europeans drink wine over here at lunchtime, and it’s okay, d’accord? (Translation: “d’accord” means Paris is to drinking as the Kardashians are to eyelash extensions.)

I have had the pleasure of visiting Paris a few times. By “a few” I mean three, and one of those visits just involved the Paris airport, but still—it counts. My first real trip to Paris was on my own, and it was simply magical. In the great words of Mariah Carey, “I had a vision” of Paris, and it was all that Paris gave to me. My first morning in that glorious city, I walked out of my hotel room and looked to the right, and there, framed perfectly by the narrow road and white hotels, was the Eiffel Tower. It brought me to tears. I quickly hid behind large sunglasses and a disinterested slouch; I was going to blend in here, and sniffling and pointing at the Eiffel Tower was no way to get on my Parisian cool.

My first night in Paris I went hunting for what I envisioned the apex of Parisian experiences: cognac and no filter cigarettes—so strong the packaging doesn’t even offer a warning, just a hotline for the nearest cardiologist.

I found a bar, composed myself into what I hoped looked like a tired model just going in for a nightcap before heading home to her Parisian apartment, Parisian cat, and tousled Parisian bed. I slouch-walked in, sidled up to a stool, managed to order “un cognac, s’il vous plait” with so much disaffection the bartender might have thought I was slipping into a coma at any moment. And I drank up.

It was awesome.

I have never forgotten that cognac, that stool, the bartender’s dirty towel, or the loud couple to my right talking in their nasal snarl. It was like being on a movie set, and it was all I had ever wanted. Me, my cognac, and Paris. We were in love. The cognac and me were pretty much inseparable for the rest of the trip.

The fact that I programmed wine and cognac on repeat during the trip is understandable. I was terrified. I wanted so badly not to be pegged as a tourist. But I knew I was in a city where I barely knew the language, and I was terrible at reading maps, so at some point my cover would be blown. I walked around feeling like I was being watched and judged by the Cool Parisian Task Force, agonizing over my accent, my scarves, and my lipstick. I received the best compliment of my life when I ventured into a patisserie and managed to order an entire box of macaroons—cookies that are the color of Easter eggs—without breaking my cover. It wasn’t until I accepted my change that I blew it and thanked her in English. She widened her eyes in surprise, and I realized I had fooled her! Maybe, I fit here!

Paris was so daunting. The Grand Prix of fitting in. If I could do it here, I could fit anywhere.

And that was so very important.

Now I am here in Paris, some four years later, and nothing fits. Not my jeans. Not my jackets. Not my communication skills with my husband. I can’t slide into a warm cognac to help ease all these jangled nerves and anxious edges. I am a spectacular mess of not-fitting. My husband has not-fitting down to a cheerful science, mainly because he insists on wearing white tennis shoes for the duration, which is clearly against Parisian law. I am unable to care about the Louvre, St. Chapelle, or the Seine. I am very interested in crepes and places where I can sit. We head over to another monument, and my interest extends only to the benches surrounding it. I do love those crepes and devour numerous ones before lunch with a low moaning sound that makes Brian eye me uneasily.

Yes, it’s possible I would have chosen the crepes over my husband. Along with the startling realization that bathrooms are too pedestrian for the French, I came to understand that traveling with my husband is rather difficult. He is an engineer and has a plan for everything. When Christmas comes, and we receive a large electronic gadget of some type, he is gleefully in that box, sniffing around for the instructions. He unfurls them with great pleasure and will proceed to read them with a pile of unopened presents still sitting before him. I am not sure he is human.

I am of the firm conviction that instructions are a waste of time. I “throw things together.” I “rig stuff.” I don’t “follow the straight and narrow,” because “that’s for pansies.” Why? I don’t know. Straight lines are boring. In the case of this trip, some basic instructions like, “Plan ahead just a bit” would have helped. I didn’t plan anything for Paris, down to bringing the wrong type of clothes to wear in the frigid weather. When my husband gently inquired about all this, I responded with remarks like, “Details are annoying” and “Leave me alone.” As much as I value planning and organization, for some reason, I decided we were on vacation so I adopted the theme of, “Hey, let’s just wait and see!” This all stemmed from a deeper theme of “I am absolutely terrified of this trip for some reason!” Incidentally, quotation marks gloss over a lot of fault lines in my personality. In hindsight, there should have been a bit more planning on both our parts, but I had insisted I would do it all, and then I didn’t.

Before we left, it would have been good to look over the materials list for our trip:

• 1 Newly pregnant wife so tired she can master napping while standing. Oui!

• 1 Overenthusiastic husband who is fired up about the availability of ESPN in France. Oui!

• 2 Completely differing views of how this vacation should proceed. Oui!

We were doomed.

We were also doomed, of course, because I was scared about being pregnant. Yes, I was also scared that Brian would wear K-State everything and mangle his French—those fears were pretty much realized at the Paris airport. I was scared we would get lost a lot, and we did. And I was scared that I would somehow get separated from Brian, and there wouldn’t be any crepe makers or a bathroom for miles around. This, thankfully, did not occur. But mainly I was deeply freaked out about having a little one growing inside me. I was so not ready for this whole baby thing. And this scratched at me because I wanted and needed to fit in. Fitting in would be: going to Paris, taking a lot of pictures of “le baby on board,” and glowing about it the whole time.

Instead, my anxiety levels were at code red, which means disaster was set to strike at any moment. Feeling ill at ease and abnormal were actually normal for me. This trip packed all those uneasy feelings, along with a tiny baby and an uncomfortable bladder, into my tired body. I was surprised I was able to buckle my seatbelt over this entire bloated malfunction on the plane. But of course I did, because we were probably going to crash and die, most likely while we were over the ocean. The latest technology was kind enough to show me exactly how much of this trip was over the water through a handy-dandy massive screen detailing our trip on the cabin wall right in front of us. Of course Brian found this to be helpful and interesting. I just stared at the expanse of blue on the screen and nervously looked around for extra flotation devices. I would be floating for two.

Today I know that anxiety is a real ailment, not some floating feeling that surfaces from time to time, but an actual, diagnosable problem. Anxiety can be dealt with and treated. It didn’t have to be scooted around in my brain as something silly. Clearly, my issues with anxiety were not going to go away, but so far, I had only dealt with them in the most logical way I knew how: have a glass or two of wine and voila! I am okay. Edges are muted. Fears are eased. Or, at least they are all spread out, like melted butter on toast.

At that point I had six more months of no more smoothing the sharpness and folding the corners down. I had to deal. And I had to be happy about it because it’s a baby after all, not a prison sentence. How I hated myself for not wondering about the magic that was going on in my nether regions. After three months in, all I could feel was nauseous, and looking at a glass of juice made me want to pee. I didn’t feel maternal or glowing. Just bloated. And very angry with myself.

Self-directed anger tends not to sit well with me, so I argued with the nearest target instead: my rather clueless and thrilled-about-all-that-water-below-us husband in the seat to my right. And the fights continued, all through the trip.

“Look, there’s a museum over there about World War II. Cool!”

“I need to pee.”

“You do? You just did over at the museum about all the dead people under the city. Again?”

“I don’t care about World War II. I just need to sit. My hips are widening as we walk. I feel like I’m giving birth right here, for Pete’s sake.”

He eyed me and my hips and looked very unruffled.

“Dear, it’s impossible to go into labor this early in the pregnancy. Unless, of course, there are complications or something.” As the words left his mouth, I saw it: that slightly befuddled, blank expression he makes when he realizes his inner engineer just said something very cold and clinical, which is about to clash with the overly emotional vat of weeping that is his wife.

“How could you say that to me? I just can’t believe you would even say such a thing.”

“I’m sorry. I just meant that—”

We had now become the battle of the loud talkers. Very Parisian people walked past us and smiled. They were right at home with irritated loud talkers.

“You do not care at all about my comfort. I am miserable, and all you care about is if we have enough museums stuffed in us by the end of the day. I hate you.”

“What? You hate me? Really? No. Listen, we’re on vacation.” He gestured around helplessly, to help remind me that we were in a different time zone and all. I sniffled in the background. “I just . . . well it seems to me you’re being just a bit—”

“Don’t you dare say it!”

He said it. As the word “over-dramatic” left his mouth, I already contemplated how much it would cost to buy a separate plane ticket home and a separate house to live in when I got there. Brian, who at this point had realized this trip didn’t have “fun-filled vacation” written all over it, fumed off in disgust to look at something about Hitler.

I fumed off to find some place to sit, in the sullen hope that somewhere close by I’d find a gleaming, tacky McDonalds with a large booth, and, of course, an even larger bathroom.

TOP TEN WAYS TO TRAVEL LIGHT AND STAY SOBER WHILE DOING SO

1. Sobriety is not a prison cell. Repeat that one million times.

2. Release all expectations. Release them to your Higher Power, your God, or just scream them into a pillow, if need be. Traveling can be wonderful. Expectations of wonderfulness are not.

3. Plan ahead. Don’t wing it. Don’t fly by the seat of anything. Know your triggers and plan ahead.

4. Avoid airport bars. They are triggery and full of people who are, can you believe it, drinking. The gall. Instead, get a Cinnabon. They have fewer calories than four gin and tonics. And ultimately, they’re less embarrassing.

5. Plan also for failure. You will get lost. You will have a meltdown at the Eiffel Tower because the line is four kilometers long. You will eat snails. It will not go as planned. It is times like these that the Serenity Prayer is really handy.

6. Sober travel sometimes has to be, well, more expensive. Sometimes, recovery has to trump searching for a cheaper hotel or meal. Rest is crucial. Food is crucial. Not getting angry because your room is the size of a stamp is crucial.

7. However, if the only place you can find to grab a bite is a pub with gigantic, sloshy vats of beer, and everyone in there seems happy and sloshy too, and you start to feel a little bit left out, then pack a lot of food that’s really bad for you, like about sixteen million Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Get mega packs. Also, keep your phone handy with meaningless games like Candy Birds or Angry Farm or whatever. There will be times of tired waiting and thinking. Stop thinking and numb out with technology and sugar. They’re good for you!