Unlikely Diplomat

It’s time. Time for my third international move in 3 years. Time to sort through all my personal belongings and see if I can remember what’s in storage, what’s in my dad’s basement, and what needs to go in my suitcase. Time to mentally prepare for a 9+ hour flight with an almost one-year old. Which means it might also be time for me to start experimenting with children’s Benadryl and exploring the legal ramifications of child abandonment in open air space. I feel like there might be some helpful loopholes there.

But most of all it’s time to say goodbye. And that, my friends, is the absolute worst part. I hate it. I actually hate big life changes in general. I cling to the familiar routine, grasp desperately for the comforts of home. But at the same time, I know deep down I have to change, I have to go. And once I power my way through the stress and upheaval and deep, nostalgia-tinted sadness, I’ll be fine. In fact, I’ll come out on the other side relatively unscathed and probably even happy. Because while I hate the prospect and process of change, I really do enjoy the end results. I get to see the world with Husband and the Babe, after all. And if I’m really lucky, I’ll get some very stern Austrian nurses yelling at me to pooooosh in a few months. It’s hard to not get excited about that!

I just wish I could wrap all my friends and family and maybe a few of the really nice Whole Foods cashiers in bubble wrap and have them expedited to Vienna immediately. But since I can’t, I’m doing my best to see everyone and say goodbye and remain positive about the amount of schnitzel in my future. To help, added one very important saying to my  limited repertoire: auf wiedersehen. That means “goodbye.” For pronunciation, channel your best Heidi Klum and pretend like you just kicked someone off the runway. At least that’s what I’m going to do.

So, until next time dear readers…when I’ll be writing from the other side of the Atlantic again! And I’ll have a lot more material to work with. Namely, all the comedy that comes with cultural faux pas and baby induced sleep deprivation. See you soon!

Picture this: A gloriously sunny Saturday in Paris, with summer-like temperatures and perfectly blue skies. The kind of day for sunglasses and flip flops and lazy lounging in a park somewhere, preferably with a picnic in tow.

Now picture us: two newbie parents, trying to profitez during our last months in Paris. We pack up our happy, gurgling bébé and take the bus toward the Jardin du Luxembourg, stopping at Cosi along the way for sandwiches and bubbly water. All is well.

We walk into the park, already filled with people quietly reading or otherwise relaxing, and find a tranquil bench spot under the trees. A family sits down next to us and unpacks a basketful of picnic goodies. We take a nice, deep relaxing breath and dig into our Cosi sandwiches.

And that’s when the bébé starts to fuss. Just a warning fuss, nothing major. So Husband gets up to walk her around a bit. But the farther he walks, the more urgent the fussing becomes. By the time Husband makes it to the other side of the lawn, it’s become a full-fledged cry.

I wave him back and get situated so I can pull out my secret weapon: boob juice. And while whipping out my boob in public isn’t my favorite thing to do, it does usually defuse any volatile bébé situations. So I pull on my hooter hider (an ingenious cover-up thingy) and take our now screaming bébé out of my frazzled Husband’s arms.

She immediately quiets. And none too soon, because people were starting to stare. But just as husband and I are mid parental-high-five, bébé’s gulping becomes frantic. Her little legs and arms start flailing under my boob cover. And then she lets out a wail like no wail I’ve ever heard in my life: an ear splitting, gut wrenching, I should probably immediately check her for stab wounds or broken bones kind of wail.

And it was like everyone in the park stopped and turned their heads toward us in unison. I could feel their eyes shooting daggers at us from their once idyllic perches across the garden. I knew they thought I was a horrible mother. I could feel them willing us to get up and get as far away from them as possible.

Defying all reason, logic and physical possibility, bébé’s cries continued to escalate. And I started to sweat, wrestling with her under the cover to try and get her to eat. Maybe it was gas? Or maybe she was too hot? I peeled off her pants but the screams just kept building and building. Husband looked like he might cry. Or faint. Or walk away and never come back.

At one point the father of the family next to us said “Don’t worry, you’re not bothering us at all!” Which I think he sincerely meant. But it only made me wish even harder that lightning would strike and incinerate me on the spot.

Exasperated and burning with embarrassment, I handed bébé back to Husband for the Bjorn treatment to see if that would help. I watched them walk away, following that unearthly, inconsolable wail when I couldn’t see them anymore.

That’s when the French woman walked up to me. I could see her coming and tried not to make eye contact. But it was too late. She put a hand on my shoulder.

“Madame, you should not be ashamed of breastfeeding your child in public. A mother feeding her child is the most beautiful thing in the world. That cover thing isn’t necessary, it was making your baby too hot.”

I wanted to die. But before I died I wanted to tell her lady, public boob-feeding is the least of my worries! Do you not hear the way my child is screaming? I think she was swarmed by a cloud of invisible angry bees!!!!!

Thankfully Husband returned before I could reply and we made a speedy exit, heads hanging and eyes averted. And by the time we got on the bus home, bébé was smiling happily and drooling on herself. I still have no idea what her problem was. But I’m confident that she has permanently traumatized us. And possibly gotten us banned from the Luxembourg for life.

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la honte (lah ont) – Literally, “the shame.” But the way it’s used I think it’s more like “the horror! the horror!” As in,

“My bébé was screaming uncontrollably in the tranquil French garden while I flung my boobs around trying to feed her and strangers stopped to stare. Oh la honte!” 

Have you ever tried to take a newborn on vacation? Well from my experience, it goes a little something like this:

After nearly a month of sitting on the couch in the same pajamas doing nothing but breast feeding and watching “Doctors” on the BBC, your husband takes one look at you and decides that maybe it might be good to take a shower and get out of the house. And since you are completely delirious from the 32 minutes of sleep you’ve gotten all week, you say what the hell! Let’s drive 2 hours to Brussels and drink some beer!

Because that’s what responsible parents do, or at least those who want to prove to the world that life does not end when a baby arrives: They spend 3 hours packing up what seems like all of their worldly possessions and hop in the car to spend one night away. I mean, really – if I’m not going to be sleeping, I’d rather not be sleeping in a cool city, not resting comfortably in a swank hotel.

So we made it to Brussels without any major catastrophes, and le bébé was a peach right until we pulled into the hotel. That’s when she started screaming bloody murder in the lobby as we frantically tried to check in. But we got to our room and fed her, and other than a few wide eyed stares in the hallway that I’m pretty sure said “dear god I hope their room is far, far away from ours,” we were good to go.

Freshly changed and ready to tackle the world, we loaded up the Bjorn and went in search of our first gauffre liégoise. If you haven’t experienced the wonder that is a liégoise waffle before, let me explain: this is no regular Belgian waffle. It’s born from a yeasty ball of dough that’s full of pearl sugar, yielding an irregular shaped, crisply caramelized exterior and brioche-like buttery interior. A good one doesn’t need any accompaniments to be absolutely spectacular.

But I digress. Bébé in tow, we ate waffles, went to the Magritte museum, and even stumbled upon a Belgian Beer festival. Which was a bit too rowdy for someone carrying an infant on their person, but inspiring enough to make us seek out a place to get one nice tall glass of Delirium Tremens.

The Delirium Cafe seemed like an apt choice, and as we descended into the cavernous space we weren’t disappointed. Covered from floor to ceiling in old drink trays and filled with big beer barrel tables, the place was perfectly grungy and cozy and fairly busy for a Sunday afternoon.

Husband sat with le bébé while I ordered up a couple of cold ones. Which means I got 30 seconds of time to myself AND a beer – things simply couldn’t get any better. I returned to the table feeling almost like a human being again, and a fairly cool one at that. We clinked glasses and took a first, delicious sip.

“This is the kind of place we would have stayed at all night, pre-baby!” I yelled.

“Yeah! It’s pretty awesome!” shouted Husband.

“What?”

“I said, IT’S PRETTY AWESOME!”

“Oh. Yeah! It is!”

We sipped in silence for a moment, fighting the urge to ask each other about the status of le bébé’s diaper. Somewhere someone turned up the music, just as a big group from the beer festival tumbled in. And before I could even control what was coming out of my mouth, I looked at Husband and said,

“I feel like this is bad for the baby’s ears. I wonder if we could ask them to turn down the music?”

I wish you could have seen the look on Husband’s face. It was a look that said sure honey, go ask the bartender to turn down the music. FOR YOUR BABY. IN A BAR.

We nearly fell out of our chairs laughing, finished our beers and got the hell out of there. And I spent the rest of the evening wondering which made me more of a parental loser: coming this close to asking everyone in the bar to keep it down, or taking my child to the bar in the first place.

But before you decide and call child services, let me say that there was another family there with a 6 year old. And they ordered her a Duvel. So I’m doing something right, no?

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perdant(e) (pair-dahnt) – loser. Lah-hoo sah-her. As in,

“I’ve turned into a total perdante. Might as well order me up some mom jeans.”