Mawiage.....

So, I have been thinking a lot about marriage lately. Partly because I am old enough (kind of); maybe almost mature enough (although....is anyone really mature enough for marriage before they actually just jump in? No).

Possibly because the opportunity seems to be waving at me from the near-ish future. Maybe. I don't know. I can't think about it or I start hyper-ventilating.

Also, my brother is getting married, which is just a brain explosion of gigantic proportions. I almost can't handle it. This is the kid whose arms I scarred with my nails. This is the kid who tried to push me down the stairs. This is the kid I locked outside of the house, on a winter's day, with no jacket. This is the kid who tried to yank out a fistful of my hair.

We have loved each other so much, so deeply. In so many unique and magical ways.

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 Marriage. Every time someone close to me actually goes through with it, they are usually subjected to an intense session of questions, courtesy of yours truly. I have interviewed so many people. So many couples.

And still: I struggle with how it works. More specifically: how do you trust that if you take that leap, it's going to be ok?

HAH. And the answer is, she says with much grinding of teeth, that you can't be sure. You can never be sure of anything. Ever. At all. Except - I am obliged to say, otherwise he might smite me: God.

What I have figured out though, is that a good marriage, a happy marriage doesn't just happen. There are things you can do, just as with every single thing in life, that can make it flourish, or cause it to wither.

I know this, because I have read two books in the subject in the past two weeks, I have a folder in my computer bookmarks devoted to Youtube videos by John Gottman, and I have read so many studies and articles dissecting every part of marriage that I'm surprised I actually have time to watch The Real Housewives of Miami. Which is also for educational purposes: how not to be a good wife.

I now have conversations like this:

Mary: I read a study saying that pre-marital counselling was a sign of future marital success. The statistics are mind boggling.

Spanish Boyfriend: *pause* *silence* *the beginnings of a look of desperation*

Mary: I know, it's so interesting. Apparently the breakdown of most marriages rests in not talking about important things beforehand and not being able to communicate well. Apparently if you try to deal with all that beforehand, it really makes things work better.

Spanish Boyfriend: Uhuh. *desperation has turned into panic*

Mary: I think we should do that.

Spanish Boyfriend: *Face of: Dear God. Please. No.*

He doesn't really think it's not going to happen, right? It's absolutely going to happen

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I do have one conclusion. Happiness in marriage relies (along with an ocean of grace).....on you. It rests in your very own hands.

Be Patient, Generous, Forgiving, Charitable. Don't assume you are right. Always apologize. Praise abundantly. Don't be critical. Ask nicely, don't command. Be respectful. Don't mock. Don't bad mouth. Be cheerful, joyful even. Be attentive. Be considerate. And don't stop.

In short: Be virtuous. Be the best you were created to be.

Short of being married to a psychopath or a complete narcissist, if you act the way you want to be treated, you will be treated in the same way. It might take a while, but then, that just gives you the opportunity to hone your patience. Yay!

Sarcasm aside, there is something completely freeing in all this. This means - aside from life's curveballs, and yes, in spite of them - that happiness in marriage, happiness in life itself, is not some arbitrary thing.

Please note that I am not saying all that is an easy thing, either. In fact, I imagine there are some days that it is fudgingly (family friendly blog) hard. What I am saying is, though, that marital bliss something which can be worked at and achieved in very concrete ways.

It is not the luck of the draw. It is not dependant on how many doves flutter around you as you say your vows. It will be what you make of it. And if you make a mud pie....it's kind of no one's fault but your own.

*Said the unmarried girl with all the solemn wisdom which the weight of 25 years has bestowed on her.*

Creepy Vans and Angelic Toddlers

Obviously, many interesting things are happening in my life, as this blog has been so sorely neglected.

Like, the other day I was walking home from the market, thinking long deep thoughts to myself and enjoying the mellow breeze playing in the daisies. I know: It is the end of October and the breeze is warm and there are daisies and roses everywhere. 

Quite suddenly - interrupting my sunshine and daisy revery -  a van pulled to the side of the road, and the driver motioned for me to get in, and that he was heading in the direction of Couiza. 

Little did he know that I was absolutely and completely outside on purpose - to enjoy the beautiful weather - and that I had no intention of crawling into a van that was a doppelgänger for every van that has ever appeared on  the evening news, as the vehicle of a "person of interest" in a kidnapping.

No joke. This van was an absolute caricature of all vans that have been accessory to a kidnapping or murder.

Seriously, buddy. Girls these days don't hop into just any vehicle that stops for them. No. We are smart. BMWs and Audis are where it's at these days.

This isn't even the point of my blog ramble today - no. Not at all. Moving on.

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Today I would like to proclaim that little French children are the absolute bomb.

A while back I was at a cafe in Paris. I watched in awe as a little guy - not more than four years old - sat at a table for about two hours, cutting politely at his duck, eating with a fork, and rarely interjecting into the conversation of his elders. He seemed completely content and at peace - as if nothing could be asked of the world except duck and sparkling water.

And then, the other day, I was at the bakery I frequent for an afternoon tea, and as I sat on the outside patio, I became witness to yet another miracle of French parenting. This time the kid could not have been more than three. His mom and her friend were sitting and chatting over coffees, and he was sitting between them, devouring an eclair with the aplomb that only a three year old can manage. 

He finished, politely wiped his mouth, and slid off his chair to play with the toys piled off to the side, and kept by the bakery for just such occasions.

He biked on the path around the patio. He disappeared around the corner of the bakery to collect rocks. He played with a little truck. And the only time he interrupted his mother was to give her some flowers he had picked, at which point he skipped off again. "Ooh la la, ma petite!"

For the next hour, he happily hummed to himself and obtained a thin layer of dirt from his explorations of everything in sight.

Occasionally he would take a rest on the chair next to his mother, and she was quite happy to have him listen in; there seemed to be an unspoken agreement that he was quite welcome to join the adults, as long as he did his best to act like one. Never did the afternoon seem to revolve around him, cute as he was.  Beyond the delivery of flowers,  and the occasional head pat, mother and child were both quite happy to do their thing. 

Maybe it's just me, but in North America parents seem to exist in order to cater to their children. Beyond the ridiculous amount of paraphernalia that is carted around, anytime a child is in the near vicinity there is a mild uproar as he is attended to and praised and nattered at and catered to in every way shape and form. 

This French mother neither jumped up when her little boy tripped and fell, nor exclaimed at his abilities with the toy car, or at the fact that he ate his whole eclair. He didn't interrupt her conversation looking for affirmation or comfort, and she didn't interrupt his play with needless inquiries and streams of encouragement. 

Something tells me this is how it should be. The adult world exists, not to revolve around children, but as something for children to grow into. 

Perhaps if North Americans had this approach, children would actually know how to play and entertain themselves, and parents wouldn't be so stressed out and resentful of their offspring. 

I don't know about you, but there is no way in hell that, as a fully grown adult, I want to sit in the dirt and play with a truck while trying to have coffee with a friend, or curl up on a couch and pretend to like Dora the Explore in order to get a kid into bed.

NO. I protest. I draw the line.

Kids: Be kids. Adults: Be adults. Enjoy your separate lives. And if they must join, let it be the child stretching up to maturity, instead of the adult descending into toddlerhood.

Done. End of story.

The Razor Blade

The other day I was sitting in the bathtub shaving my legs - that's as inappropriate as I'm getting, promise! - and I noticed that the razor wasn't torturing my legs, like it had been doing the past few weeks.

Let me explain. Really: It's super interesting.

Ok maybe not. You can stop reading now. Thank you, and goodnight.

I have one of those Schick Quattro razors with the disposable heads, that are supposed to, with those four sharp blades, give you a mind blowingly close shave. That's a lie - your legs will still be spiky the next day - but it's the only razor that this klutz can use without hacking her legs apart. 

A few weeks ago I changed the head, and about a week after that I clued in that every time I shaved, my legs felt as if they had been rubbed with sand. They felt like hell.

In my mind I went "Hmm. Weird. Possibly this new head is faulty."

But I did nothing about it. I usually change the head about once a month and it was NOT TIME TO CHANGE IT YET. Therefore, I didn't.

So, my legs bled and burned their way through the next three weeks.

Fast forward to me sitting in the tub amongst Eucalyptus bubbles and the razor gliding in a smooth and pain free manner across my legs.

"Wow," I thought in awe, "it WAS a faulty razor blade head. You dummy! Why did you torture yourself?! This is the life. This is the way shaving should be. This is what my feminist foremothers fought for - a pain free leg shave. No wait. Maybe they fought to not ever shave their legs at all. Confused. Whatever."

In short: I should have changed the head way back when it sand papered my legs. Obviously.

And then because I am melancholic and read anything into everything, I stared into space for about ten minutes as the water got cold, and thought about all the ways I don't change things, even when they obviously aren't working. All the ways I make my legs bleed simply because it's not time to change the razor blade head, even though - no matter the reason - it needs to be chucked about three weeks too early.

I think it's a peculiar brand of stubbornness. Perhaps, even, pride. If a thing really isn't working, it's just plain dumb to keep moving forward with it, without either leaving it behind completely or, if that's not possible, changing what you can.

What's that Einstein quotation. Yeah. That one: the one about how insanity is when you do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Except I didn't even expect different results. Not even that! I just concluded that my torture was inevitable since giving up on the path I'd chosen was, apparently, out of the question.

And so amongst the bubbles, I had this moment of epiphany:"Stop it! JUST STOP IT. If something isn't working, fix it. Change it. Leave it. Move on. Something. Anything."

In short: If something is causing pain, I don't have to sit and endure it. But guess what? It's not just me. I know too many people who don't change the razor blade soon enough, or ever. And they bleed and burn.

There are too many things we CAN'T change about life. And those things - those things must be endured.

But if you can change it, change it, silly.

Dare Greatly

So, I'm writing a book.

I say that, having the dead ghosts of the start of about half a dozen books languishing on various external hard-drives in various parts of the world.

This one though....is completely planned and discussed and my main character even has a face. Thus, as my creation, I am rather attached to her. Quite possibly I might not let her die halfway through her story.

Mostly, I am doing it as a discipline. As in: I WILL stick this out for a full 90,000 words, or else I will NEVER EAT CHOCOLATE AGAIN. DAMNIT.

That, my friends, is a threat worth attending to.

Also, I have a batshit crazy brain, so I tend to always have something on hand to distract it with. Sometime it's a fictional house I am redecorating in my head. Sometimes it's travel plans to exotic places. Currently, it's perfecting this story line and deciding the exact shade of my character's hair.

Besides the need for distraction, I just have way too much to say about everything, including the things I know absolutely nothing about, as well the things that are interesting to absolutely no one but myself. I need an outlet. Seriously.

Just ask the man who has to wake up everyday to an email of approximately five pages, possibly even ten, about not much more than the thoughts that have crossed my brain in the two hours since I last spoke to him.

"Do I really have to read this?"

"How is that even a question?"

End of story.

Then there is the fact that I just really want a movie deal. Because that's where the money is, yo. Write a book, get Bradley Cooper to star in the movie version.

I mean, he would be my first choice. Why? I have no idea. (But seriously: RIGHT?!)

I would also be happy with Ryan Reynolds, Brad Pitt, or Channing Tatum. Also: Will Smith. I will change the male lead's skin colour for YOU, Will! My brother!

No wait. Wrong.

My lover!

But in that, I am just being remarkably trendy because everyone and her rat wants a movie deal.

Guess what, though? Writing a book is hard work. The majority of it lies in the small stuff. You can have the whole story line perfectly pictured.....but you still have to fill in all the opening and closing of doors. All the walking and talking. All the facial expressions.

And there is this constant, nagging feeling that it just ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH.

And THEN you open up your favourite book and read. And you just KNOW it isn't good enough. Because great writers are born, and not made. There is a certain instinctual joining of words and expressing of ideas that only a great writer can thrust on a page.

It was Eights Week. Oxford - submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse - so quickly have the waters come flooding in - Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men still walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days  - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning. It was this cloisteral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour. 

I read that and I get sucked in, left breathless. What must it feel like to have that flow through your fingers?

Yeah. I wouldn't know.

But that, my friends, is no excuse.  Because, in yet another peace of glorious writing, there is this to think about:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.


 Now isn't that just the best motivation to enter your arena - whatever it is?

The Lovely French

Everyone always speaks about how unfriendly the French are.

Let me tell you this. Having nothing but two years of Junior High French under my belt (meaning: almost no knowledge of the language at all):

I have ordered everything from sandwiches to complete meals in Paris.

I have bought (way too much) bread in various bakeries in various towns and cities across France.

I have somehow criss-crossed my way across the country in trains, buses, and taxis.

I have exhaustedly slumped in the seat in a Cafe and mumbled something about a "thé vert" or a "café au lait," or if things are really bad and it's a hot day, "rosé s'il vous plaît."

In every instance I have been treated with nothing less than completely polite patience.

They know right away that I am an English speaker (how could they not), and they either switch into MY language in THEIR country, or  - if English is not at their disposal -  they do their best to help me anyway.

Seriously. I have nothing to complain about. In fact, I am endlessly grateful.

Besides that, in the small towns, like where I am, people constantly greet each other. Everyone is so damn friendly.

On the street, in the grocery store, in the cafes, there is a constant exchange of niceties.  A person exiting or entering a restaurant automatically says a general hello or goodbye to anyone who is within earshot.

And then things like this happen:

Mary (passing an elderly couple on the street): Bonjour!

Elderly Lady: Bonjour, ma belle!

Honestly. Can you GET any sweeter than that?

No. No you can not.

Children

The other day, I was lying on the couch in my living room reading. In the apartment above me I heard the characteristic thumping and chatter of children.

"Cool," I thought. "Kids in the building. Maybe I can play with them."

Let me qualify that statement by first saying that I am not really a lover of children. I am not really....maternal. I like my own siblings - I am mildly obsessed with my baby brother, even though he hates me - and sometimes the children of close friends grab my heart strings a little.

But I am not one of those women who looks at a child and gets a throb in the general direction of her womb and goes "OHMYGOSH....I WANT THAT TINY HUMAN."

No. Mostly, I think of how terrified I am of night feedings and explosive diapers and the the boundless energy that little people seem to have. 

And let's face it. The children of other people are generally brats. No one raises their child as you yourself would raise him, and so behaviour that, to another person is completely normal, might be utterly abhorrent to you. THAT'S frustrating. But it's more a problem of the parents, then of the children themselves.

However, I would agree that children are a somewhat necessary part of life and I hope that, if I have one of my own someday, the oxytocin kicks in majorly, and I come to love Minime as as much or slightly more than I like quiet and chocolate.

By all accounts this is possible.

But back to my upstairs neighbours. While I might not be utterly enthralled with the majority of children, I am very used to having them around. After a certain period of not really being exposed to any, I get this vague feeling of imbalance. There really is something about how young children view the world, and how they put words together, and how unconditionally they love you - or hate you - that I find fascinating.

Hence - after a month with no children - my desire to go play with the thumpers and squealers upstairs. But how to make that happen? Go knock on the door?

"I just moved in downstairs. May I take your kids to the bakery, and then to the river to practice skipping stones? Maybe we could also play hide and seek in the woods?"

*Slam*

An opportunity presented itself later that day, when the cleaning lady dropped off some extra bedding for me. 

"So.....are there kids upstairs?"

"Oh no no no."

"Oh! I thought I heard..."

"No! Don't panic! That was the electrician. He came to fix some things, and had to bring his kids as he had just picked them up from school."

"Oh! Ok."

"No. You don't have to worry at all. Not about THAT. No children in this building. Don't worry your head."

"Oh, but I wasn't....."

"I know. At your age you're not going to want children around."

"At my age....?"

"Well, ring me if you need anything. Bye!"

I was slightly taken aback. But guess what? If I had not been raised in an environment where children flowed at the same rate as Niagara Falls, I would almost certainly have the attitude which desires a complete segregation from children. 

I would not know them as occasionally interesting little beings who are fun to be around. I would not see them as a normal and necessary part of life, in spite of the chaos that swims around them.

I would hear them upstairs and groan, and I would think of myself as needing to be separate from them until such time as I deemed myself ready to somehow join their world with mine.

Having always moved in an an environment where the presence of children is taken for granted and accepted, I now wonder: what must it be like to grow up in an environment consistently hostile to you, simply because of your stage of development?

As a child - today, in this world -  a quarter of your siblings and friends have been aborted, when you appear in public people moan, and your own parents and every other magazine and latest study discuss quite freely the burden of raising you. And don't think that children don't, on some level, know this. They are scarily intuitive little beings. Of course they feel environment surrounding them.

All this at a stage when what you need is love and complete security. No wonder there are ever increasing rates of childhood depression and anxiety. Wouldn't you be sad and scared in a world that seemed to hate you?

In short: Give a kid a hug. Smile as you pass one on the street. Let them know that the world needs them and loves them. Sure, many of them might be brats, sure they can pains in the hiney, but in the end, it's not their fault. And a little love goes a long way.

Butter Can Bring World Peace

The other day, as I was walking down the road to the Intermarche - yes, I am back in France - I had this thought: It is impossible to be sad here.

Sure, there might be moments of sadness - everyone has those - that is normal. But in the midst of such beauty and such peace - because peace is the striking feature here - it is much easier to choose happiness rather than the alternative. 

On top of that, how is it possible to be anything but gleeful, when you can pop around the corner and get.....the most glorious loaf of light brown, slightly sour bread, still warm from the oven?

And then....drift into the store next door to grab butter the colour of the sun?

And then .... walk down wide lanes shaded by leafy green trees....and through narrow cobblestoned side streets which - believe me - have enough stories to tell to fill a lifetime with. Really. I can just tell.

How much, I wonder, is the lack of beauty in our lives, and the fact that we eat Becel instead of butter, and Wonderbread instead of Paillasse, responsible for the excessive use of, say, Zoloft? 

Maybe if everyone lived in beautiful places that insisted on taking life slowly, and ate real food made as it should be, we would be much better off.

I am beginning to think that if everyone in the world lived in the equivalent of a small French town, happiness would be the norm, rather than the exception.

Also....this is nice

Hypnosis

I was lying in bed the other night, in the throes of jet lag and insomnia, trying to convince myself to go to sleep. Somehow yelling "GO TO SLEEP" at myself tends to make me more panicky, and so sleep really was not happening anytime in the next fifty years.

So I tried that trick of relaxing your body starting with your toes. But I lost focus before I even got up to my ankle.

Then I tried deep breathing for a little bit: "slow inhale.....slow exhale...." but the focus on my breath made me think about my heart, and for some reason I have been worried about having a heart attack - everyone worries about that in the middle of the night, right? - and so started having a panic attack instead of descending into sleep-fulness.

Side note: How likely is it that at some point, someone, somewhere is going to use this blog as proof that I should be institutionalized?

The only rational option then became to find something to hypnotize to me to sleep. Obviously.

That's right: I did a Google search and for $24.99 got two hypnosis sessions, led by a man with a quite yummy Scottish accent, about calmly making decisions.

The thing is, it actually worked. I fell asleep.

So, early this morning - still in the web of jet lag - I decided to try it again.

The thing is, I must be the worst hypnosis patient. Ever.

Five minutes into the recording, he told me to start counting backwards from 300, by 3s. I did NOT remember this happening the first time I listened.

How did I miss the fact, the first time around, that I was supposed to be occupying my conscious mind with backwards counting, so that my unconscious mind was left free to explore the possibilities of my life?

I HAVE NO IDEA.

So I started to worry that, by not participating well in my hypnosis sessions, I would get wires crossed in my brain and end up more messed up than before. Things started to become stressful at this point.

And then on top of this, there was the problem of counting backwards by 3s, from 300.

This proved more of a problem than anything, to be honest.

"300....297....ummm....294......291.......OK....288...WHY AM I NOT BETTER WITH NUMBERS? Ok....*quick finger count*.....285......Right? Yes.....Ok....283....WRONG......282....."

And then I got hungry, so went to make myself an early breakfast instead of trying to get back to sleep, and ignored the rest of the recording.

Conclusion: That was $24.99 well spent.

Life Is Not a Punctuation Mark

I had this major epiphany the other day. Part of me wonders if I am excruciatingly slow on the uptake not to have realized this before.

I think I have always thought of "life" as a series of events:

"When I turn five, I get to go to kindergarten."

"When I turn 13, I won't be a little kid anymore. Maybe I can start using makeup!"

"When I turn 18, I won't be a kid at all and I will have to vote. What if I mess up and choose the wrong person?"

And of course, everyone has their "When I...." moments.

"When I get married...."

"When I buy my first house...."

"When I get a dog...."

"When I have a baby...."

"When I go to Africa......."

"When I take over the world..."

"When I figure out how to properly blow dry my hair...."

No? No one has that last one as a life goal? Whatever. You lie. Everyone wants to know how to blow dry her (or his, I suppose) hair properly.

My point is this: if you approach life from the point of view that you are living it only when you have achieved that milestone, and the next one, and the next one....you aren't really living life at all.

Am I just sounding super obvious here? Did everyone else know this but me?

Those milestones, those goals, are just the punctuation at the end of a sentence. They are exclamation points, questions marks, periods. They aren't the story. The real story is everything that happens in between. The real story is the words filling up the page, not the marks that end the sentences.

How absurd would it be to insist that the heart of a book lies in the placement of its periods and question marks?

No: the heart of the book, of the story, lies in the magic of the words.

When you think about life that way, it makes walking to the store rather important. Walking to the store isn't merely to get a chicken so you can impress your cute co-worker, so you can date him, marry him, and then have his triplets.

No. Walking to the store is a whole page unto itself. It's something that must be lived through - and why not joyfully? - on the way to whatever punctuation mark you come to next.

In a way, this makes everything kind of important, because everything you do is your life, and you only get one chance. I'm not saying that you get all hyped up and nervy and act as if on every choice rests the future of the free world. Oh no.

But what I am saying is that whatever you are doing, whatever you are in the middle of: this is life. So enjoy it. Love it.

And stop trying to find the next exclamation mark. Just settle for hopping to the next word.