A long-standing tradition has been celebrating the holiday season with my mom in Europe. Before I lived in Paris, I would go with her on her trips, whether it was to drink Belgium beer in Brussels, have hot cocoa in Zurich, a winter Pimm's in London or for the past three years, sip on vin chaud and stroll the Christmas markets here in Paris.
My mom arrived on Friday on a 48 hour lay-over and after her afternoon power nap, I met her at the hotel and we went on our annual European holiday stroll. Wanting to show her the lights in the fancy part of town, we walked through the 8th and window shopped along avenue George V and Avenue Montaigne and came out to my mom's favorite view of the Eiffel Tower at Place de l'Alma.
After crossing the bridge which brought us closer to the Seine, she stopped me and pulled something out of her purse. It was a FedEx box addressed to her. "Open It!" she demanded. Since I didn't have a swiss army knife on me and my nervous habit of nail-biting has returned with a vengeance, opening it while leaning up against the stone wall of the quai with bike riders whizzing by was posing a bit of a challenge. I finally shredded it open with my apartment key and saw a purple tin looking back up at me. "What is it? Christmas cookies?" I asked my mom. "No, it's Colonel." she said as if bringing our cremated cat to Paris was an obvious guess. Yes, my mother brought the ashes of our kitty who passed away last month to Paris and was secretly carrying it around with her for a better portion of the day.
The long running joke in the family was that Colonel was a retired French military man. He was a solid gray cat with white paws, a patch of white fur on his chin that we would call his goatee and he was moody, so you know, naturally he was French.
During one of my mom's Paris trips in the 90s, she found a mini red beret to torture him with where we staged photos of him wearing it with a little French flag tucked under his paw. You don't have to guess that he looks absolutely pissed in these photos. "You kids kept claiming that he was French this whole time, so we'll leave a part of him here to finally see his homeland," my mom said with complete seriousness, "None of this Field of Dreams shit where the vet insists on us sprinkling his ashes. Our kitty is going out in style."
We walked along the river, past Trocadero and with the spoon in my bag that I took from work last week because I ate a yogurt on the way home, scooped out two teaspoons of his ashes and sprinkled them in the Seine in between the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. Now there is a part of him in Paris with me.
After our little ceremony with my mom screeching in my ear that I was doing "it" wrong, as if there's a technique in spreading ashes, we walked through the 7th and into my old neighborhood of the 15th. "I want to see the boys!" my mom exclaimed. Oh no, "the boys". I knew exactly who she was talking about. The "boys" are the two drunk homeless men who live on Avenue de la Motte-Picquet who we always bring food to when we're in the neighborhood. We stopped at a boulangerie on Avenue Suffren for sandwiches, water and desserts to give them because they can't live alone on their vile bottles of Vieux Papes.
Upon arrival with our holiday gifts, one of them was already passed out drunk on the sidewalk but his side kick was coherent and graciously took our offerings. "Share with your friend when he wakes up!" my mom scolded him which I then had to translate. His face always lights up when vouvoie him - hey, it's only respectful. I admit that their "set-up" is a bit of an eyesore in this residential rive gauche neighborhood but as I well know, everyone has a story and if this is where life is currently taking them, who am I to judge?
My mom has already left and our time together, as always was entertaining, comforting and festive. Between the ashes, the homeless men, the vin chaud, we certainly take on the holidays a little differently but the most important thing is that we're together, no matter where in the world we are.
