Nick headed off for Brussels this morning, so it’s just me and Jolie for about 36 hours.
You hear that? That’s 36 hours during which I have no intention of making the bed. None. I mean, there’s clothes just all over the apartment, dog toys scattered everywhere, and I may not even run the dishwasher before I go to bed.
Anyway.
The day got off to a bit of an unfortunate start, though, because my husband occasionally slips up on the finer points of sharing a household, and absconded to Belgium with all of our toothpaste.
And the dog has officially noticed that it’s dark out and Nick isn’t home, because she’s gone into psycho guard-dog mode, and keeps scaring the life out of me by barking her head off at literally absolutely nothing.
While I wait for my next Jolie-induced heart attack (she will trade it in any minute now for hearty snoring), I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned in my year here. It has been, you know, just over a year; the anniversary slid by while I was busy showing off the wedding photos.
I mean, I’ve learned some bluntly tangible things: how to make a blanquette de veau, that I can love to eat things that I have always been afraid of, how to share advice with other dog owners in French, that I can laugh at (some of) my mistakes, that it will always be easier for me to relate to outsiders than to insiders, that I have a talent for some kinds of bravery and not others, and that “magic wand” in French is “baguette magique.”
I am so not making up that last one; look it up.
It’s also been an incredible lesson in what happens in the absence of the American dream. To see why people come here, what they do, what they feel entitled to want, why they marry, even–it makes me feel so absurdly spoiled and entitled. But then…we’ve been taught that we can be President someday, and I think that there is something in most of us that secretly feels like we are letting down the world when we become anything else; anything less. And now I am here, among these women doing their best, and proud of their accomplishments, but who affect no more of the world than a glass of Sancerre on a Tuesday afternoon can get you, and–I have been one of them, for a year, and it’s not what I was ever led to expect that my life would be.
So am I to blame for that, or are my expectations?
It’s been a year, and I have learned a great deal about both my abilities and my limitations, and I suspect that some changes are coming for me in any case, but…there’s something to be said for a fresh perspective.
Also? Harry Potter’s scar is in the shape of an “éclair.”