For the first few months of Colette's life I was nervous about leaving the house. I would hover above the changing table hesitating about what she should wear. The long sleeved onsie or the short sleeved one? Pants? Socks? The wooly hat or the sun bonnet? Would she be too hot? Too cold? I would end up jamming several additional and almost always unnecessary accessories into my purse then finally head out the door.
One might attribute these jitters to new-mommy-syndrome and concern about the well being of my new baby but in fact it was a fear based reaction to the glaring (
thus caring) grannies of Montmartre. My neighborhood is a mecca for old people. Lord only knows why, considering that there are more steep slopes, craggily cobblestones and steps in our part of town than in any other arrondissement, but be that as it may, Montmartre is packed with Mamies, Grannies. The Mamies of Montmartre have appointed themselves as the monitors of safety. They roam the streets, markets and parks looking for unsuspecting young mothers who may have misjudge the meteorological micro-climate of Montmartre or underestimated the infinitely delicate nature of their child's tender neck skin, and they pounce.
I was attacked once while doing my shopping. There we were, Coco in her sling and I looking over the selection of oranges at the vegetable stand when out of the corner of my I a see a sweet old lady saddling up to us. It all starts off well, she brushes Coco's cheek with her nobly finger and tells me what a beautiful child I have made. But after a few minutes of cooing and ooing and ahhing she strikes, "Bit of a breeze today [raises her eyebrows and sighs as she looks disapprovingly at Coco's obviously too thin cotton onesie] don't you find it breezy?"With her one sing-songy question she clearly called into question my ability to parent and alerted all other grannies with in earshot to the problem.
Washing and drying clothes in Seattle with my parent's american style stacking mega-machines: 60 minutes.
When I left Seattle four years ago the locavore and seasonal food movement was really starting to take hold. Weekly produce markets were popping up all over the place, meat lovers sought out happy meat and restaurants were dropping farmer's names like rockstars on their menus. Conscious eaters were taking an interest in heirloom vegetables, asking questions about what farmers were feeding their cows and changing the way they navigated through the continuously well stocked produce sections of American supermarkets. Eating seasonally in Seattle was a choice that required a certain amount of work, you had to turn a blind eye to the pretty red strawberries in October and head for the pears, ignore the racks of lamb in December and wait for the spring and summer months, even though asparagus was available all year round you had to figure out when the season was and only buy it then.
One might attribute these jitters to new-mommy-syndrome and concern about the well being of my new baby but in fact it was a fear based reaction to the glaring (thus caring) grannies of Montmartre. My neighborhood is a mecca for old people. Lord only knows why, considering that there are more steep slopes, craggily cobblestones and steps in our part of town than in any other arrondissement, but be that as it may, Montmartre is packed with Mamies, Grannies. The Mamies of Montmartre have appointed themselves as the monitors of safety. They roam the streets, markets and parks looking for unsuspecting young mothers who may have misjudge the meteorological micro-climate of Montmartre or underestimated the infinitely delicate nature of their child's tender neck skin, and they pounce.
