It started, as these things do, without a lot of hoopla – my mother and I arriving at the Place de la Concorde during her first-ever trip to Paris. The day was brilliant, the sun glittered off the Seine, and our jet lag made us woozy with the city’s beauty. But then, to my surprise, my mother flung her arms out wide and let escape a sound loud enough for every Parisian within earshot to turn. “I’m baaaaack!” she cried, her joy bursting forth in a teary laugh. It was at that startling moment I became convinced that what she always had felt was true: in a previous life my mother was French and had lost her head to the guillotine – the deadly blade that once stood in that very spot.
Now, she has lost her head in a different fashion. Or maybe it’s her heart. At 70-something, this mother of five, grandmother to seven and lifelong Francophile is cashing in her fantasy and becoming a French madame.
Who knew she had it in her, this utter oneness with a buttered baguette for breakfast (it used to be plain toast), this bliss while browsing Monoprix, this absolutely transcendent expression she gets when she says to the pear man at the market in something that’s actually French, “deux belles poires, s’il vous plait, Monsieur.” My mom. Now she is my maman.