Bonjour Happiness

One of the happiest memories of my life was going to Paris in 1996. I was coming out of a very bad relationship and there was intense drama the night before I left that involved a duck (yes, she was called Catherine) and one of four posters disengaged from a four-poster bed. Enough said.

Anyway, I went there upset as hell...and in Paris, something else took over. Somehow I could figure out the Metro, somehow, everyone was nice and not at all what I expected, somehow, the air, as Julia Ormond said in the movie Sabrina, was pink. La vie en rose.

Anyway, I loved the letter so much I copied it down. Way back when.

Dear Dad,

This is my last letter from Paris. I may even be home before you get it. Don't worry about picking me up. I'd like to surprise you. Amazing. It's gone by so quickly. Gertrude Stein said, "America is my country but Paris is my home town." I'll always feel that way about Paris. I want so much for you to know what it's meant to me.

It's turned cold out, but I don't feel cold. Across the street, someone is playing La Vie En Rose. They do it for the tourists but I'm always surprised at how it moves me. It means seeing life through rose-coloured glasses. Only in Paris, where the light is pink, could that song make sense. But I'll have it in my pocket when I get home and I'll take it with me wherever I go from now on.

Love to you Dad.

Sabrina

And I thought of it as I picked up this book I bought at the Jakarta airport (because that's what you buy at the airport, another book, and that too, one on France). When I came across this passage, I just knew I would have to include it here.

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And this brings me back to my French grandmother and how she took hours to give me a shampoo and set, her fingers working the soap through my hair, slowly rinsing it with warm water, and toweling it dry, then sitting by me, wordlessly separating the strands and slowly removing the snarls with her fingers, one by one.

The beauty and meaning of this gift was brought back to me when Jessica Lee and I visited Besancon. We stayed with Marie Joelle, a fashionable Frenchwoman who owns her own hair salon. Marie Joelle spoke no English and at that time, my French was still quite rusty. Nonetheless, we were sympathique and we communicated with simple phrases and gestures. On the final day of our visit, Jessica and I were in the salon and Marie Joelle said she wanted to shampoo my hair for me. At first, I was taken aback. I even felt that she was possibly being critical by offering this. Perhaps she thought my hair really a mess and I was in desperate need of help! But no, she just wanted to give me this gift.

And so she did. She put a smock on me and had me sit in the salon chair, I leaned my head back in the sink while she leaned over me, working the warm water and then the fragrant shampoo into my hair.

Slowly but surely, I found myself crying. Tears streamed down my cheeks and ran down my neck and into the soapy water. I could not explain this to Marie Joelle, but I knew that this was more than the gift of a shampoo. This was the gift of bringing my grandmother back to me, the experience of my childhood, recalling her accent, the softness of her voice, the perfumed smell of soap, the feeling of gentle hands on my scalp. The kindness of this simple act and generous act.

I will tell you this now: I have lived a fairly comfortable life. I have been given many gifts in my life, but the gift of this shampoo was by far one of the most important gifts I've ever received.

And to me, this is the essence of French joie de vivre. It is a gesture. An experience. It is the fleeting moment in time that can never be repeated and must be appreciated now before it flies away gone forever.

It's about being present and alive to the ordinary moment. It's about friendship and the knowledge that nothing lasts forever. It is Zen. And for the Frenchwoman, I believe, it is the heart of her happiness.

Jamie Cat Callan, Bonjour Happiness