Paris - the Rue de Lilas, transport and the finer points of Air B@Being

We found our air B and B studio flat just down the road from the block in which my nephew Leonard and his family live.  The young woman who owned the place was waiting there with her boyfriend to hand over the key and I guessed she’d probably not rented out her place before.  She seemed anxious and reluctant to leave.  You really need to be a bit cold blooded about your place to let strangers take it over and she wasn’t. There’s an umbilical cord that needs cutting, which mercifully she managed to do in the end so I could flop down on her bed, tired after the six hour run from Lyon to Paris.  It is a pretty flat, all furnished brightly with Ikea stuff and three poppies, human size, have been glued on to the white wall, stylish and cheerful.  I feel a bit uneasy though.  So much of her is left behind, her toothbrush in the bathroom for example.  It takes a while not to feel like a guest without a host.

Claire, Leonard’s rather striking wife met us with the key to the underground car park where they have a space they never use on account of being bicycle people like Gwen and Stephane.

Back in Sydney there is a plan for a new neighbourhood where the old rail yards once were.  “There will be hardly any cars” the planner said airily “and the population will be mostly under 38”  “What when they grow up?” I asked at the meeting.  “What when they have kids?”  Well France is proving me wrong.  Families seem to manage perfectly well without cars here. People use all sorts of things to get about as well as bicycles – portelettes, the old fashioned scooters that used to be only for children can now be seen with young and old on them, skateboards and the rather absurd two wheeled platforms that hum along with their human cargo upright on top – all these are taking over in this interesting Paris neighbourhood where blocks of flats dominate and public spaces are full of people, especially children. 

There are brightly dressed women of African origin and men dressed in jabalahs with caps on their heads. But everybody has bags of shopping and nobody seems startled by anybody else.  There’s an amiability about the place which makes me feel at home.  One building here until recently accommodated over a thousand refugees, mostly from Eritrea.  Now that building has only a hundred and fifty in it and the rest of its occupants have dispersed into other places.  Like Lesbos this place must have had its stresses during the current migrations.

Claire, took us up to the family flat after we had dropped off the car in the deep and rather dank car park.  Leonard rose to greet us and it was so good to hug him and give him the two cheek kisses in the French way.  The kids emerged with twinkling curious eyes to see their grey haired uncle and aunt from far away.  Unlike Gwen and Stephane’s kids they were on their own ground and so not shy at all.  There was Albane, twelve with a wild crown of curly hair

and the identical twins Ysoline and Cebelie who are six. Kisses were scattered everywhere and I was introduced to Nacre, the hampster. “Can he go on the table?“ asks a twin. “Why not” says Leonard benevolently and the little thing patters amongst the plates of lovely cheese.  Albane brings me a funny note on a piece of paper with a wolf drawn on one side.  It says “1(picture of a heart) for you” The twins get Albane to bring out her exercise book of wolf pictures.  Usually, little girls of about twelve draw horses all the time but not Albane.  For her it’s wolves with the occasional dragon, all different, all vital and doing different things.  “Why wolves?” I ask “Not an elephant or a giraffe?”  She smiles secretively and says she doesn’t know.

The twins are fascinating.  They operate as an intense little unit, dressing a soft

toy pig and chattering away to each other.  At one point one disappeared and returned in a silken fancy dress but mostly they are together intent on some mutual purpose. I asked how their sister Albane felt when they were born and apparently she loved them from the start.  The only problem about having twins, their mother says, is that her love must be seen to be shared equally between them “Even down to the kisses or there is trouble”.

 We all go to the Sunday market together as Grant and I are going to make dinner for them as we did with niece Gwen’s family in Lyon.  The market is marvelous with beautiful tomatoes and artichokes the size of footballs, chickens that look authentic in a way supermarket ones don’t, yellowish and a bit bristly.  I want to buy some radishes but the man on the stall says something I can’t understand. “He says you can have a cucumber with them for three Euros” says Leonard. I accept and move on to the fish stall.  There are strange things I think are big prawns but are called langoustines.  I get some and say I need a lemon. ”Just take one” says Leonard.  “They are free”. Grant goes off to hunt for ice cream fot the kids and Claire goes back to make a what she says will be a light lunch and Leonard has some small mission so I rashly say I’ll mind the kids in the park while they perform athletic feats on the playground equipment.  One of the twins starts run off and look for her mother and I am dumbstruck. Which one? How do I call her back?  But its OK, big sister is on the case and catches up with the little blonde elf.  I tell the twin firmly I am her maman for the moment but I realize to my relief that actually I am redundant. Albane is watching over them with a worldly big sister wariness.

We have lunch and look at lots of photos – the children when they were truly tiny. Albane weighed less than a kilo when she was born and the twins were four weeks premature.  I am in awe of this couple who must have had such a hair-raising initiation into parenthood.

Our spaghetti dinner was a success and the girls had a bit of a rumpus on our bed while we had nuts and cheese.  It was a very good night and this time I just didn’t think about partings or any of that.  Maybe that’s the secret. To live in the minute. What’s the point of doing anything else?