Paris Letters (23 page)

Amitiés (Best wishes),

Janice

31

A Wedding in Paris…and Beyond

In the days leading up to the wedding, Christophe mentioned that I was running out of time to change my mind. I joked, replying that he shouldn’t do anything that would make me change my mind. I added that I probably shouldn’t do anything to change his either. He, in his infinite kindness, said that I could do anything and he would never change his mind. “Who loves who more?” His arms crossed. Chest out. Grinning.

The only time I had doubts about marriage was back when the lady from the city hall was taking her sweet time approving the dossier, akin to a big folder of the Vacation Request Forms of my past. Would she ever let us get married? But I never had doubts with Christophe. It would be my great pleasure to marry this man. In Paris! I still couldn’t believe it.

Making it official was important to Christophe. Yes, it was important for him to show me how much he loved me by committing to me, but I also sensed he was starting to feel like he had family again. He’d gone twenty years floating without much more than a few phone calls at Christmas and the occasional visit to Poland. He shyly asked me one night if he could call my mother his mother, explaining with his manly reasoning that this is tradition in Poland. Tradition or not, my mom would be pleased to add him to the pack. He breathed easier. The worry lines in his forehead decreased. He seemed to get younger as the wedding day approached. Young and happy.

For my wedding day hair, Sylvie snipped my bangs here and there, pinned in a dainty and sparkly tiara, and curled my hair into long relaxed tendrils. It was me, only much better. She, my sister, and my mother worked together to get me into my wedding dress. An elegant A-line floor-length gown, fitted at the bodice with halter straps wrapped around the back of the neck and a simple belt with a few sparkles. I looked and felt like a princess.

Christophe arrived to fetch the team. In some cultures, it’s bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony, but in Paris, where there is no aisle to walk down at city hall, the bride and groom walk in together and leave together. A nice metaphor for life. We’re in this together. Two by two. I thought he would wear his nice gray suit, but he walked in with a black tuxedo. Seeing him took my breath away. He looked even more like James Bond in his suit. “A black tuxedo?” I said.

He swallowed hard when he saw me in my gown. “I couldn’t wear my gray suit,” he said. “I am picking up a princess. I need to look like a prince, not a chauffeur.” He took my hand and kissed the back. “Let’s go, my princess.”

The ceremony was at the city hall in the 5e arrondissement. This wasn’t by choice. It is law that you get married in the city hall in your district. Every arrondissement has its town hall and mayor. I suspect this is for an easy division of labor for the thirty-five-hour workweek. You get married by the mayor or his deputy or you don’t get married at all. There are no exceptions. But we were delighted to be getting married at city hall. Ours was a spectacular space with gold gilded walls and chandeliers that drooped with large, sparkly crystals. It was an iconic landmark, right between the Pantheon where France’s biggest thinkers have their final resting place, and the Jardin du Luxembourg, the park that is my preferred resting place during my urban hikes.

Our group of fifteen gathered outside the great hall and we walked into the marriage room. The mayor arrived, with a red, white, and blue sash across his chest, looked at my last name on the register, and asked, “Highlander?”

I nodded. Even here. Even now.

He continued. “Immortelle?”

“On va voir.” We will see.

We had Team Poland, Team Canada, and Team France in attendance. Together, our united nations crew sat through twenty minutes of legal proceedings that had been set by the government since Napoleonic times. Each spouse owed each other respect, support, and assistance. “Oui.” We were both responsible for the material and moral guidance of the family and were to provide for the education of the children and prepare for their future. “Oui.” Each spouse was to contribute to the marriage expenses in proportion to their respective means. “Oui.” We were to protect our children in their security, health, and morality, ensuring education and allowing their development, showing regard to them as people. We were to make the children a party to judgments relating to them according to their age and degree of maturity. “Oui.” And finally, after these super romantic vows, we were both asked if we would take the other to marry. “Oui!” When we were to exchange the rings, they provided a silver saucer and gave a gesture to simply “go ahead.” No big blessing of the rings. No “with this ring I thee wed.” I suppose the French fought long and hard for a separation of church and state. We shrugged, and Christophe picked up my ring and put it on my finger. I did the same with his. A big kiss followed, flower petals were flung, and a marriage license was handed over in a blue velvet folder. Later, I opened the marriage license and noticed that my birthday was wrong. Le sigh. After all the birth certificates and copies of my passport I provided, it seems I would have to return to city hall later to correct an administrative error. But, for now, champagne.

Our group walked together to Jardin du Luxembourg for photos. Someone popped a cork, and glasses were filled. Rounds of cheers and laughter followed. After the photos in the garden, the group meandered down rue Mouffetard, and Christophe shook hands along the way with colleagues and shopkeepers who came out of their stores to see the wedding procession. When we arrived at the restaurant, our local Tourn’Bride at 104 rue Mouffetard, I threw my bouquet. It went soaring high and well over the ladies with arms stretched and landed with a thud behind them. Oops. My sister fetched it, and I offered it to Carole, wishing her good luck with a wink.

One of the men pulled out a chair and sat it in the middle of the street. I sat and Christophe slowly removed my garter, invoking sniggers and jests from invitees and onlookers. He sent it spinning into the air where his nephew caught it. (A few weeks later he would ask his girlfriend to marry him and she would gleefully accept.) We laughed and walked into the restaurant for dinner. It was there when Milena, the youngest of Christophe’s family from Poland, stood to say a speech. She was a doe-eyed, quiet brunette, still learning English. And though she was merely fifteen, she spoke like a true matriarch. She spoke of how Christophe’s mother wished to see him married and taken care of like her other two sons, but she knew she would die too soon. His mother always wore a gold necklace with a leaf pendant. Upon her death, the family decided that Christophe’s wife would have this necklace and they tucked it away for twenty years until this day in Paris where her only granddaughter would present this necklace to me.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

I was so proud of this young woman in this moment, and instantly so aware of how important it was for the women in this family to keep traditions alive. After all my letting go of the material, along came this young girl to remind me that some things are worth keeping. That some mementos mattered. Milena was strong, assured, and sweet as she struggled to say all this in English through her tears. And now, I had more than a necklace. I had someone to look to for times when I will be charged with tasks of a matriarchal nature. Eventually, it would be up to us.

Later that night, I changed out of my wedding dress and into a white sundress (one of the wedding-related event dresses from Karen Millen). A few of us took a riverboat down the Seine to the Eiffel Tower and watched the light show. Quelle romantique!

In the wee hours of the next morning, we hopped a plane to Toronto, another to Calgary, and yet another to the lake in the mountains. We spent a glorious week sitting on the porch and barbecuing with friends. Why did we have our honeymoon with a group? Because the trip was planned well before the wedding was even considered. And as Christophe pointed out, our whole life is a honeymoon. “The matching robes!” One morning, as the waves lapped quietly against the shore, we decided that it would be a good day to do it all again. I pulled out my wedding dress, he pulled out his tux, and we gathered for our own ceremony at the edge of the lake, this time with seven friends. My friend Mary conducted the ceremony and was also the maid of honor. She had scrounged up the readings from her wedding, which suited us just fine. One person recited a reading from the Dalai Lama, another recited a Native wedding blessing, another did the Our Father. Christophe recited his vows in Polish, and I recited mine in English. We pulled off our rings and set them on a silver saucer similar to the one in Paris. But this time all of us hovered our hands over the rings and gave them a blessing, serving of a visual reminder of this day when our love was sealed.

With this ring, I thee wed.

Wind rustled in the trees. The train from across the river tooted its horn. We kissed.

Tanned and relaxed, a week later we flew to Ontario to do it all a third time. We had the reception at the golf course where my brother-in-law Brian was the greens keeper. While my sisters and mother were planning the event, he said that he’d try to keep the grass green by the clubhouse. And my other brother-in-law, Otto, helped deliver and assemble a massive wedding cake my sister Carla made for the event. This was a true family affair.

This was the first time Christophe had seen just how large my immediate family was, a whopping ninety-four invitees. “It’s wonderful,” he said. “A dream. And now it is my family, too. Merci, merci encore.” After I spoke to the crowd, thanking everyone for this and that, he said a few words. He turned to me and said that before, he didn’t believe in God, but then one day an angel sat down at a café and he believed. For a man of few words, he certainly knew what to say and when to say it.

I always thought I would get married in Canada and honeymoon in Paris. Not the other way around.

Our rings were from Poland, my dress from Belgium, and the marriage license from France. It was an international wedding, rather fitting for a Polish French boy marrying a Canadian California girl.

32

How to Be an Artist

After that day at the Vatican three years before when I went to confession, I finally got glad about all the dreams that hadn’t come true. I didn’t have a boyfriend. I didn’t have kids. I didn’t have a mortgage. I had nothing holding me down in California, which was the groundwork that made it possible for me to leave and find a life more suited for me in Paris. That priest was right. If I didn’t have it, I didn’t need it. I finally got glad about that instead of just wondering why I didn’t have it yet. It would come in time. But back then, it was just me thinking of my dreams and scribbling them down in my journal.

I became kinder to myself too. I let myself stay home and paint rather than go out “just in case my soul mate was there.” I started enjoying the process of unraveling my apartment and of not having as many choices in my closet. I walked more. I bought myself flowers. I started this journey by getting rid of clothes, but eventually I slowly peeled off the layers of judgments I had placed upon myself for failing to get married by the ripe old age of thirty-four. For failing to find happiness in my chosen career. For creating a life that wasn’t much fun. I let myself off the hook. I forgave myself for the judgments. The truth is that I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. And at some point, I had the good sense to change my usual self-inflicting, unnecessary, and lame New Year’s resolution from an uncreative “lose ten pounds” to a simple practice of writing in my journal. It was this slight change that got the ball rolling.

Doing yoga, murmuring through a rosary, meditating, going for walks, and yes, writing in a journal—these were all outward actions of the same thing. They were daily practices that slowed me down enough to help me unwind a life that wasn’t working and start building a life that did. For me, the journal worked best. For others, talking it out in therapy could work best, or even just shutting up. Silence is a great way to hear our inner wisdom. I didn’t realize when I started my grand journal-writing experiment that I had all the answers inside me. Sometimes my inner wisdom took on the form of Mr. Miyagi, Percy Kelly, or Ernest Hemingway. I would ask a question of them in my journal and let the pen roll. I didn’t care if I was making it up or channeling. Either way, it was a way to access my inner wisdom, and it was always soothing and insightful.

When I was twenty, I was living in Toronto and loving my new career as a copywriter. I was in a bookstore leafing through greeting cards. One card stood out from the rest. It was a small card with one sentence written on the front. The card is long gone now. Perhaps I used it to write a letter to Áine. But I never forgot what the card said on the front:

Write to learn what you know.

And what did I need to know? First and most obviously was that I had all the inner resources I needed to effectively deal with my situations. And secondly, I needed to realize that I was an artist. Not the one who paints letters about Paris. The artist who is the head honcho creative director of her own life.

We must know how to design our lives. We are all artists, and each day is a canvas. Writing in my journal each day was how I redesigned my life. I became conscious of just how much I disliked my day-to-day existence. I would get up, react, and repeat. I had created a fast, busy, messy life. There was no one else to blame. I designed it, tried it, didn’t like it, and had to erase and redesign. But I didn’t know I had to erase and redesign until I carved out a container of time to write each day. Finding the time was challenging. Sometimes I stole time during office hours to write. Sometimes I lied to friends, saying I was busy, so I could stay home and write. I did whatever I had to do to be with my practice. At first I felt guilty about this, but eventually I began to make it a priority. I insisted on it, even at the expense of a few billable hours or hurt feelings of friends.

That journey led me to Paris and into the arms of the lovely Christophe. I started to see Paris differently. No longer with the bright enthusiasm of a tourist, nor was I blind to it as a longtime resident. I started to see Paris as a canvas. A blank wall near a fountain became a place where I could write a letter. The cobblestones of a street would meld to become words on the page. The lapping waves of the Seine turned into words written with a drippy fountain pen.