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[fairelabise]

Final Installment

I made a short film about finding my heart while I was in France. 

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NEW BLOG

Claire and I now have a shared blog between us! We’re using pseudonyms! Each post is a letter sent to the other! Follow us at www.nikiandvincent.tumblr.com. We post every Thursday and Sunday

BUT: Family and friends who read this, be warned, I’m not censoring myself on this one. I haven’t shared the link with my parents or my close friends. They will probably read it one day, but not yet. There’s nothing awful on there… I’m not going to gossip… It’s just a self-censoring thing, so read at your own risk of feeling like you know too much about me. 

Bisous <3 

[fairelabise]

NEW BLOG

Claire and I now have a shared blog between us! We’re using pseudonyms! Each post is a letter sent to the other! Follow us at www.nikiandvincent.tumblr.com. We post every Thursday and Sunday

BUT: Family and friends who read this, be warned, I’m not censoring myself on this one. I haven’t shared the link with my parents or my close friends. They will probably read it one day, but not yet. There’s nothing awful on there… I’m not going to gossip… It’s just a self-censoring thing, so read at your own risk of feeling like you know too much about me. 

Bisous <3 

[fairelabise]

NEW BLOG

Claire and I now have a shared blog between us! We’re using pseudonyms! Each post is a letter sent to the other! Follow us at www.nikiandvincent.tumblr.com. We post every Thursday and Sunday

BUT: Family and friends who read this, be warned, I’m not censoring myself on this one. I haven’t shared the link with my parents or my close friends. They will probably read it one day, but not yet. There’s nothing awful on there... I’m not going to gossip... It’s just a self-censoring thing, so read at your own risk of feeling like you know too much about me. 

Bisous <3 

[fairelabise]

Part 1: Bastille Day

I’ve decided there is no real end to this whole thing. I’m in bed right now. It’s 11pm on the 14th of July. I can hear the fireworks going off in celebration of Bastille day. A year ago I chose July 16 for my return flight because I wanted to see those fireworks, because I wanted to celebrate too. Things and plans and people change. And despite my past self’s grand plans, I’m really glad I’m in bed right now and not clinging to my purse while standing in a crowd at Champs de Mars. 

I leave the day after tomorrow. I expect culture shock and lots of hugs and all the meals I’ve been missing. I expect to feel like an outsider, I expect everything to come a bit easier than I’ve become accustomed to, I expect to miss France with all my heart. I want to leave easily, to just slip out unnoticed. I said goodbye to yet another friend tonight after a marvellous picnic in Parc Monceau, I’ll say another goodbye tomorrow after having coffee with Johanna at Le Petit Monceau for the last time in a long time. 

I achieved what I set out to do when I wrote my blog description back in September.

I got cultured; I’m bilingual, I know how really really rich people live, I’ve studied the French and their coolness and the way they look right in when they want to. I saw other countries and became well-versed in the magical ways of this one. I know what a good baguette tastes like and how to automatically get better service at a cafe. 

I was a good au pair for les petites filles. I have written extensively about this and them and all our wonderful times, and I am proud to have shared something real with a real live family that isn’t my own. I know them better than some... they know me better than some. They are my French family. I was depended upon and became the type of person who carries tissues and water at all times. I read the same stories over and over and was hugged tight by a tiny girl who means everything to me. I don’t know what it feels like to be a mother, but having been here, and having known this love, I can’t help but feel like I might know something about the love a parent feels for their child. One of the differences, I guess, is that I am one of many au pairs and babysitters and nannies. I’ll be remembered for certain things and forgotten for others. That’s how this works and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that time won’t freeze and 6-year-old will get tall and go through puberty and learn things the hard way. It breaks my heart that I won’t be here to see any of that. 

I found love. I found it in friendships that will last lifetimes, in the PLU community, in the invisible bonds that link all people with wandering souls. I found love in the galleries I photographed for Violet7, the mornings I spent with the nanny, the nights I spent dancing, the nights I spent talking, the moments I spent not understanding what 6-year-old was saying, and the moments I understood everything. I found it under bridges and up here in my petit studio. I found it when I left for a short time and came back and suddenly Paris felt like home. I found a love for myself that I didn’t have before. I got here missing a boy who didn’t ever love me back and feeling a bit like a liar-girl who made everything out to be better than it actually was. I got here feeling unsure of exactly where I stood in my own life. I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel sure of the future path I’ve chosen, I feel sure that I am becoming a lot like the person I would like to be. I feel sure that feeling unsure is part of the deal and that being unsure, but fearless always is best way to be. 

I was like Amelie at times. I ate creme brule, I watched life pass by from the sidelines and it filled me up almost all the way. I decided to participate and I watched life go from banal to REAL within seconds of making that decision. I stayed fond of the banalities because they are the framework. 

I wish I could write that I don’t want to leave, or that I do want to leave, but the truth is that I’m leaving. Leaving will feel like leaving. It will be sad and busy and it will smell like an airport and then an airplane and then I will momentarily forget France because I will be home. And home will smell like home and feel like home even though part of my heart will be gone because I won’t be here. I wish I could write that I learned one big, important thing this year that trumps all the other things I learned. The truth is, this year feels as unclear and messy and montage-y as ever. I guess only time will give me an accurate read on what the hell I’ve even been doing here for the past 10 months. Being here was fun, scary at times, challenging, real, glamorous, important and above all else, right. I’m leaving completely sure that I was supposed to be here this year. 

Part 2: July 15, 2015, The Day Before Departure 

Tonight was a lot like my first night in this glittering city. My host parents took me to a restaurant that is owned by the same people who own the Cafe Marly (restaurant overlooking les Pyramides at the Louvre, also where I went on September 5, my first night in Paris). This restaurant was by the Palais des Invalides. I watched the sun set against the beautiful palace. The two oldest girls weren’t there. It was 6-year-old, her parents, Dominique and I. I had lobster pasta. Dom and I both forgot to assume that three courses were part of the deal and had to speed-pick appetizers at the last moment. I rode home in the back seat of a fancy car with a blonde haired angel sleeping on my lap. She’s grown a bit since then and felt heavier, and this time around we actually knew each other. Like knew each other. My deja vu was very real and very overwhelming. The last time I felt that way feels far away and like it’s too perfect to even exist. It also feels like those first night feelings happened tonight, and this is my first night in Paris. I’m new again, I’m embarking on an adventure that will shape my life. I’ll never have to leave, I’ll never have to be anyone but the person I am when I’m craning my neck at a tall-and-beautiful-something-old or when I’m in a cafe writing a poem and looking out on a busy street. I started this blog with romance, and I’ll end on romance. I’m leaving my heart here. The way I have lived this year will colour the rest of my life in shades of rose rose rose. 

Goodnight, goodbye, je vous aime, au revoir. 

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5 DAYS LEFT.

I’m getting rid of non-essential things and I’m packing my bags. I’m trying not to leave any traces of myself here. I’m going to need those traces when I go back to Calgary and when I head to Vancouver in the Fall. 

I’ll post again before I leave in a feeble attempt to summarize the year. 

I’m bad at goodbyes and I hate them.

07.11.15

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I’d like to start writing again. Do the play thing. I’d also like to let the records show that no matter how much I exaggerate the amount I wrote while I was a Young Woman In Paris I really didn’t write much at all. Tavi Gevinson says she turns her wifi off and writes in the early morning. Maybe that could work for me. I need it to be easier. I need it to pour out of me. I have a terrible fear that it will never do that. I have another terrible fear that it will... and I will be forever lost to a world of my own thoughts and words and not much else. I have to start writing again.

I’ve said some goodbyes of late that have felt catastrophic and monumental. 

I said goodbye to 13-year-old and 11-year-old last Friday. Both were surprisingly emotional. The whole year with them has been a weird balancing act of friendship/sisterhood/nannying. They’ve both referred to me as all three at some point or another. So I went to their rooms on the night before they left and I hugged them each tightly about a hundred times and said thank you, I love you, I’ll miss you. I clumsily tried to express to 11-year-old what the year had meant to me and she looked at me and said, “actually, it has been one of my best,” in her perfectly imperfect French-accented English. She said it with such grace and honesty and love. She was crying, but those words came out so clear. I will say goodbye to 6-year-old the day before I leave. I’m trying not to think too much about what that au revoir is going to feel like. 

Claire was here and then she wasn’t. We said au revoir even though we didn’t mean it. I have found in her a soul mate I didn’t know I needed, a likeminded creator who loves beauty and will fight for what needs to be fought for, and a dazzling muse-friend with inverted insides that tell the story of just how strange and wonderful she truly is. Those words are tiny in comparison to the enormous times we have had together. Concerts and cafes and photoshoots and failed short films and strange parties with stranger people and pastries and music and four o’clock in the morning and that look she always gives me when she knows we’re sharing something important. She gave me that look on our last day together, while our sisters trailed behind us, asking each other first-date-type-questions and snapping pictures like it was our first day of preschool (last day of preschool).

Picture above is Claire and I grimacing and frowning at the prospect of no longer being our French-selves and our together-selves. 

07.03.15

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Hey birds!

My sister is in Paris. She’s sleeping on my floor on a mattress with pink bedding, just like all the guests who stay here in my petit studio that will soon belong to someone else. It’s July! I go home in July!

Having Audrey here has been dreamy and wild. Nothing like a sister to call you on your bullshit and tell you the TRUTH. We’ve laughed a lot and listened to a lot of Dixie Chicks and seen some great and crazy things. We were in Amsterdam for the weekend where we stumbled upon a band of sexy Dutchmen and one sexy Dutchwoman rehearsing for an upcoming music festival, ate the most amazing hot dogs in Vondelpark, played Mariokart with some friends from a long time ago and sat on the edge of canal watching boats pass for hours. Yesterday we took a day trip to Auvers sur oise and had a picnic by the church that refused to give Vincent Van Gogh a religious burial because he allegedly committed suicide. Today is Audrey’s last day and the temperature is supposed to go up to 39 degrees. We’ll be seeing a mid-day movie (Inside Out), climbing the arc de triomphe and hiding indoors until it’s evening and we can picnic under the glittering tour eiffel. 

In other news Claire, my fellow au pair blogger (clairetheaupair@tumble.com) is here! Or she was... (another post on that goodbye later). She and her sister were in Paris and so we had some sister times in cafe and saw each other for what will be the last in time in a while. Endings are weird. Claire has shaped my year in a lot of beautiful and unexpected ways.

Pictures above are my beautiful sister and beautiful Amsterdam and beautiful Auvers sur oise. 

Bisous bisous (it is with an ‘S’)

07.01.15

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There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

Henri Matisse (via leuc)

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After an absolute SURGE of blogging madness, another standstill. Sigh. I’m no good at this stuff. 

A list:

Dom was here and that was so so fun

We visited Auvers sur oise, the town where Vincent Van Gogh died. It was spectacular and quaint and lovely. Just this teeny town that’s basically dedicated to him. There’s a great used book store there and we had Indian food of all things... 

6-year-old fell in LOVE with Dom. It was so cute. 

I am feeling weirdly burnt out. I really just want to be home.

In six days 11-year-old and 13-year-old leave for a four-week camp in Maine, which means our Final Goodbye is in six days. 

I talked to the future au pair for the family on Skype... she seems great. Truly great. I’m working hard not to be possessive about my life here and the kids... Sure, she’ll be doing a lot of the same things I did and having a lot of similar moments, but ultimately my experience is unique because I had it, and no one else did. That needs to be enough. We will inevitably be compared to one another. That’s just life. 

Possessiveness is a quality typically attributed to Tauruses. Dom and I got super into astrology during her visit. It’s basically been non-stop reading aloud of passages from the stack of library books we got on the subject. 

I’m doing my shut-in thing again. Time to convince myself that the outside world is as good as (dare I say, better than?) the worlds inside my head and my room.

So I’m off. Off to celebrate La fete de la musique and the beginning of Summer and the end of so much. 

Bisoux bisoux (I think I’ve been pluralizing incorrectly this whole time) and an enormous shoutout to my fantastic Dad, who’s a hero and an artist and kind soul and the best dad around. Happy Fathers Day to you!

06.21.15

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So Photo 1 is some graffiti in Belleville that spoke to me. The first line reads: You are at home. The second reads: Oh really?

Photo 2 is the end of the hottest day I’ve experienced here. Looking out my window right now makes me laugh because it looks so lush and serene, even though the day was anything but. Despite the peaceful view, today was 32 degrees of misery bouncing around boxy, smelly, dirty Paris. I think the weather put people in a panicky state. There was more rushing, more furrowed brows, more public displays of angst. I was horrifyingly affected by it. I also had to take the girls to the pool today (usually their aunt does it). The pool is in Neuilly. Neuilly is far away. We took the bus. Me, the 3 girls, plus cousin Marie on the sticky, hot, full bus. 

I’ll stop whining now and conclude the events of today with the statement that I have never been that sweaty in my life. After getting home and having dinner it started to rain heavily for about 10 minutes. And then it stopped and I was calm and life carried on. 

I’m breaking records here with the amount of blogging I’ve been doing. I think it is because I’m lonely. Lonely lonely and listening to the album Fire Within by Birdy. Dom gets here soon, and I have a pretty cool weekend coming up. Life is moving. Slowly through the heat, but it is moving. I am also moving, soaked in sweat and restless from 9 MONTHS EXACTLY of doing this adventurous, ridiculous, important thing. 

9 MONTHS! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTXDCh2YiA 

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back in my skin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjw8_9_hUvU

Claire showed me this song. I am changed and better for it. 

So I’ve been thinking about the things I haven’t done. I know, stupid, unnecessarily painful. But I’ve been doing it. I don’t know all the best brunch places. I can’t list as many cafes as I’d like to be able to. Half of the things I know about Paris I learned in the last month. I have great friends, some of them are gone. I branched out and could have branched out further. I have a version of Paris in my head that probably looks nothing like what Paris actually looks like. 

HOWEVER,

I haven’t been doing nothing all year. 

Progress has been made. I’m transformed. My empathy increased. I got less selfish. Maybe more selfish too. I speak another language. I had a lot of time to spend in my own brain, which I’m going to compare to a caterpillar in a cocoon even though that’s overused and ridiculous. But it’s accurate! I am in the process of coming out the other side more outgoing, more loving and happier for all that cocoon-y Parisian solitude. 

So maybe I haven’t done anywhere near all I had time for/should have done/could have done.. but I have to get okay with that, because this dwelling is useless and unproductive. And I have felt a lifetimes worth of love for the children I care for. I was thinking about 6-year-old meeting my sister, Audrey later this month... and I couldn’t contain my excitement. Two highly influential people who make me laugh all the time... Meeting each other! The joy!

Agh I’ve made this blog post before... Sticking to my normal format of Here Are My Doubts And Troubling Thoughts BUT Here Is The Bright Bright Bright Side Of My Parisian Life. And it always boils down to loving the girls with my whole heart. That says something. That says something big and important and painful because loving is painful and risky and the only thing that even matters. 

I AM A SAPPY SAPPY BLOGGER. WHERE DID MY CYNICAL EDGINESS GO???????????????

Bisous bisous. I’m going to go wash the face mask off my face. 

06.03.15

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Notre-Dame on a moody day in May with my beautiful parents and my new friends, the gargoyles

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I wish you could know the girls’ names

They would make so much sense if you could know them! In a lot of ways they ARE their names. I feel like I AM my name a lot of the time... It’s nice to call someone something that says something about who they actually are. Marina. I like being called that. It’s kind of moody and it moves when you say it. Also it has an R. I associate Rs in names with bossy girls, which is very me as well. Claire has an R. Fitting. Hi Claire. 

I don’t call the kids by their names on here for privacy reasons. I suppose I could, but they’re young and if I told their parents about the blog they would want to read it! And then they would read about the bad days! And then I would lose my calm, cool and collected cucumber facade! I would be emotionally unstable girl! I would be no-wonder-she-got-pickpocketed-and-burgled-she’s-nuts girl! 

6-year-old and I have this profound love for one another that makes me want to cry. She’s huggy and affectionate almost always. She knows me and cares about little things like the fact that I wear magical necklaces and like the colour black. I like that she’s accepted me. I like witches more than princesses, and she loves me for it. We sit on the floor of the kitchen and talk after I’m done washing dishes. We dance a lot to Taylor Swift songs. She has made me 4 colourful elastic bracelets. I have made her 2. Her name is Italian and I think I’ve said it more times this year than I’ve said my own name in my entire life. She knows how to write her name. It’s a soft name, nothing rough or aggressive about it, and yet it has sassy vibes. Highly appropriate because her eye roll is ON POINT and DANGEROUS. 

10-year-old and I talk about pop culture almost all the time. Every day is a new series of questions like: What is your favourite Taylor Swift Song? Do you like Lady Gaga? What is Madonna’s deal? Do you like the Christine and The Queens music video for Saint Cloud? Have you listened to Shy’m yet, Marina? In Noirmoutier she was talking about how much she hates having babysitters and nannies on vacations with them. Then she realized who she was talking to and said “Oh but I don’t mean you... You’re more like a sister.” And on some level, she meant that. I could tell. It meant everything to me. And it broke my heart, because I feel the same. Her name is a perfect French Girl Name. It’s quick and dainty and a girl who wears that name is fun and the life of the party and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

13-year-old and I don’t have a lot in common. We bond over movies and teen fiction that I read when I was her age and the fact that school is hard and homework sucks. She’s mature for 13. She has glasses that magnify her eyes a bit. She towers over me. Sometimes we get into discussions about language and we teach each other annoyingly difficult linguistic nuances in French and English. Of the three, she’s the most serious, the most athletic. She’s the quiet and watchful and caring older sister. Her name is short to write down. It’s a quirky name. It’s a girl-with-glasses name. It’s perfect for her. Edgy, yet simple. 

05.31.15

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Une Liste:

The end is coming. I have to find a way to stop thinking about only that. 

Henri Matisse is swirling around my brain. Brilliant man. His career arc itself is a masterpiece.

5-year-old turned 6. She was the most horrendous birthday girl. It was awesome and terrifying. 

I miss my parents so so so much. The time they were here was wonderful and I needed it badly. My mom kept saying “I miss you already, I can’t believe we’re going to have to say goodbye again.” I, of course, told her to “calm down I’ll be home in like two months.” Well two months is now six weeks and I still cried in the metro like a baby after saying goodbye to them again. I feel way too young for this. 

I picked SFU. I am going to live in Vancouver in the Fall. I am going to be a Drama Major in a city on the sea. 

There’s this English Theatre Festival here called the Montmartre Dionysia. I went last night and then danced at the bar next door afterwards. Generally good stuff! Nice to see theatre in English! None of it cracked open my world... but the thing about all the art and all the people we end up coming across is that only some of them will even leave a dent in the world.

I made a TO DO list today and felt instantly better. My life lacks structure! 

I am feeling incredibly moody and pessimistic, as you can probably tell. 

The nanny I work with is a really great and important person. She has been my France mom, my every-single-week-day breakfast date, my French language conversation partner and my friend. I am going to miss her dearly. 

I Facetimed with my mom today and said “I don’t feel settled here anymore.” And I don’t. This isn’t home anymore. My mind is weeks into the future. My mind is packing suitcases and taking pictures off the walls. Home is my red Calgary bedroom and sitting on the front porch with my sister making music and poetry club at Caffe Beano... And in six short weeks I get to do all those things for six short weeks... and then I get to do the homesick, city-learning New Life Thing all over again. 

Home used to be here. My beautiful Paris view (neighbour’s apartments & a two-towered church), my poetry open mic nights, my magical alleys, my weekends with Claire, sitting on the kitchen floor with 6-year-old waiting for dinner to heat up. And now... I guess that’s not home. I guess all that is a home of the past. All that is what will come to mind when I think about The Year I Lived In Paris. 

So my mind is on The End and my mind is in a puddle. The sunny-then-cloudy weather feels hot and thick and heavy and I wish it would rain. And where the Hell did May disappear to? 

05.30.15

[fairelabise]

Henri Matisse, Goldfish, 1911

[fairelabise]

#parentsinparis

They got in on Thursday. They met 5-year-old, which was magic and meant a lot. I got to show off a bit... and so did she! We did our little show in which we speak French and argue a bit and play dress up eat hot dogs and sing songs from Frozen (in French: La Reine Des Neiges). And my parents were there to witness me in all my au pair girl glory! 

Thursday evening we walked around Notre-Dame and Shakespeare & Co. I took them to Claire and I’s cafe, Le Mistral. They loved it, I loved it, seeing them is doing me a world of good. 

Friday we left for Den Haag! Saturday we took the train to Amsterdam! And Sunday at 11:45pm we were back in Paris! 

Today was Montmartre. This visit is a hurricane of love and adventure. Holland is the coolest. 

05.18.15