Eric Vincent and our Dinner on the Seine

Evening of August 18, 2007

This has been perhaps the most magical night of our trip: a private sunset cruise on the Seine, on the houseboat of French singer and songwriter Eric Vincent, who is good friends with my father-in-law. It was tough finding parking in the Bastille area, but well worth the effort.

Eric welcomed us onto his well-appointed barge, which he pilots expertly, and took us through the Canal Saint-Martin and a lock, the Écluse de l'Arsenal. The kids enjoyed waving to tourist boats and yachts passing by, and I thought of another item for my list of "Two Types of People": those who wave back and those who don't. My son pointed to one particularly garishly decorated barge and said, "Look, Mommy, it's your theme!" and I thought, What on earth could he mean by that? It's so gaudy! But then he explained it looked like Christmas to him, and I realized how sweet it was for him to want to make sure I saw it.

We sailed down the Seine past one gorgeous bridge and edifice after another, each with its own long history and associated stories. Quasimodo and The Scarlet Pimpernel were definitely there with us in spirit! Flashes of literature and history came to us almost every moment - medieval times, the French Revolution, the World Expo. We appreciated our new perspective of Notre-Dame from the water, and of the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, and the Palais de Justice and adjacent Conciergerie, half-cleaned, half still dingy with years of pollution.

In front of the Palais de Justice I recalled Eric Jager's magnificent work The Last Duel, relating the story of how a knight, Jean de Carrouges, dramatically brought a complaint to the King of France against a squire named Jacques Le Gris. It was in the Palais de Justice that he cried out in a loud voice for all to hear,

"Most excellent and powerful king and our sovereign lord, I present myself, Jean de Carrouges, knight, as an appellant to your court and do hereby accuse this squire, Jacques Le Gris, of a most foul crime against my wife...I demand that he now confess his crime...And if the said Jacques Le Gris denies his crime, I do hereby offer to prove my charges with my body, on the enclosed field, as a gentleman and a man of honor shall do, before your royal presence, as judge and sovereign lord."

My husband and I have traced these two noblemen's journeys by happenstance, following in their footsteps from Normandy to Paris, adding a serendipitous historic pilgrimage to our other, more spiritual one. You can almost still hear these voices from the past, and those of memorable characters from literature, as you sail past the important places of Paris along the Seine.

Besides being a city of great art, architecture, history, and literature from past ages, Paris is pulsating with the music, dance, and story of our own age. On nights like this the banks of the Seine are alive with song and dance. During the summer there are tango lessons on some of the quais, and when we spotted one in progress Eric pulled the boat right up next to it so we could enjoy the sights and sounds and do some tango-ing of our own.

Further down a lone trumpeter was practicing under a bridge. My daughter waved, clapped, and swung her hips from side to side in a little dance of celebration, and the trumpeter turned his instrument toward her as she danced on deck and played her a little jazz ditty as we sailed by.

After that it was time to head back to the place where Eric docks his boat to have some dinner. Eric's wife, Claudine, is a beautiful Franco-Vietnamese woman who once owned a restaurant on a Greek island. She is an amazing chef and prepared a delectable salad of lettuce and gésiers. Although I knew what these were, I got over my nervousness about trying exotic foods and tried them anyway - and am I glad! They were delicious! There's a great picture of them here for curious cooks/foodies who may not be familiar with them. I have this crude photo of the salad, too, but it's hard to see the gésiers well. The main course was like a French version of a Brazilian barbecue. We enjoyed three tasty grilled meats: chipolata sausages, merguez sausages made with lamb and tomatoes, and chicken marinated in olive oil, soy sauce, and spices. A gigantic bottle of Saumur red paired beautifully with these.

I had to speak French the whole time, and though I'm grateful for the wonderful 3 years of training my excellent French teachers in high school gave me (the equivalent of 5 years in the space of 3, actually), I have such high standards for myself that I kept feeling like a complete donkey. It's one thing to be a beginner at a language and make errors or awkward phrases; at that point it's endearing or cute, but once you've progressed to a certain level, it's not cute any more - you just sound stupid or pretentious or awkward or all the above. I kept thinking of Mark Twain's words: "The gentle reader will never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad." Thank goodness the company was basically composed of family who love and encourage anyway.

Eric played for us after dinner, and it was a moment I'll never forget. He sang and played a recent composition, Jardins suspendus, which he hasn't even recorded yet. It was such a privilege to hear a master musician and composer in his own home at his own table, making music. I wish I could remember the lyrics; all I know is it was difficult not to be a bit moist in the eyes hearing this lyrical song inspired by the war in Iraq.

Eric talked about his writing process afterward, another privilege I enjoyed greatly. He spoke of being taken by surprise when, to his delight, additional layers of meaning in the song came to the surface for him after he had already written it. To me this was just evidence of his genius as an artist. I've often thought artistic wanna-be's like me must sound so pretentious or laughably arrogant when we talk about "our work" or our creative process; with Eric Vincent, we had "the real deal." We had evidence of a talented poetic mind right in front of us, but instead of feeling envious, as is my tendency, I felt awed and inspired, like someone at the feet of a great teacher taking it all in. It was great. Later in the evening I tried to tell Eric how special it was for me, but it came out awkwardly, of course, which was frustrating because it was all from the heart but sounding so impossibly inane. Oh well - he seemed the kind of lovely, generous, kind-hearted person (with self-deprecating humor, to boot) who would give me the benefit of the doubt.

The end of the evening was one of wine and music. Eric played a few more songs for us, then pulled out his violin to accompany my father-in-law as he strummed "The Frozen Logger" and other American folk songs on the guitar. My brother-in-law took the guitar then, and he and my husband sang some Cat Stevens and James Taylor favorites. Throughout all this passersby on the boulevard above would stop and lean over the stone wall to listen for a while. One of them even pulled out a fancy camera and tripod - French papparazzi in search of Eric Vincent, perhaps? No matter - we sang to our hearts' content and ate our fill, on a boat in the middle of Paris, long into the night.

Epidurazilla

I couldn't go back to sleep after getting called to place an epidural for a laboring woman at about 3:45 this morning, , so here I am, walking down Memory Lane again. After a string of fairly gentle call nights, I was due for a busier one, and I got it. It's 5 a.m. I've had two hours of sleep.

My call started yesterday. My first case yesterday involved an elderly man with numerous medical problems including a serious heart condition that made me warn the nurse on my team - a smart, reliable guy with years of E.R. and O.R. experience - "FYI - if he codes, he dies." I wanted to be sure we were all on the same page. With the kind of heart lesion this guy had, conventional CPR, using external chest compressions, was not likely to help him. My seasoned O.R. nurse said something like, "Yeah, let's not go there today." No, let's not. The patient did fine.

After that there was a cute little 8-year-old who needed her broken wrist fixed. She did fine too.

Then I drove to one of our other hospitals, where I got paged to do an epidural for a woman whose baby had died inside her. It was her first pregnancy. I was sad, but glad I was able to contribute to some physical pain relief, even if I couldn't make a difference to her emotional pain.

As soon as I left her room, there was a flurry of activity because another woman needed a C-section for worrisome fetal heart rates. Placing the spinal in this woman, who was morbidly obese, was difficult. We got through it and got the baby out, which was a good thing because it had been swimming in meconium.

After I was done with that, the vascular surgeon paged me and said there was a young guy in the E.R. who had pulsatile bleeding from his arm after he smashed it through some glass. When the E.R. nurses brought the patient down to the O.R., the smell of alcohol emanating from his mouth as he answered my preop questions was so overpowering I thought I was going to pass out. I anesthetized him, watched over him, woke him up. He looked happy as a clam later when the recovery room nurses were wheeling him upstairs to his room.

By then it was past midnight. I was too wound up to sleep. I read a little more of The Last Duel, which is riveting, an outstanding piece of writing and research. I hear it's Martin Scorsese's next film project, and what a worthy project it is. I'm thrilled for Eric Jager. Eventually I got to sleep, but I awoke a couple of hours later when the phone in the call room rang - 3:45, epidural please. *sigh*

Which brings me to Epidurazilla. No, not the 3:45 woman, who actually turned out to be fairly pleasant when she finally got some pain relief after holding out for hours without. But the way she walked right past me - actually, around me - in her room without even looking my way triggered a memory. I hadn't dredged up this memory in a while, but I found myself thinking of a woman from a hospital in my past.

Believe me, I understand labor pain. I understand how it can not only blind you to the people around you but also make you perfectly disinterested in being in any way civilized to anyone. If you're like me, all you can think about is the PAIN - when it's coming, how you're going to survive it when it's here, and what you can do so it won't be so BAD. When I was having contractions at 9 centimeters of dilation, between humiliatingly loud sobs of agony and blubbering whimpers of dread, I wanted to ask my husband to cut off my head. I hope I was still somewhat nice to people, but you know, I may very well have turned into an Epidurazilla myself, especially when I assumed the position to receive my epidural, had to hunch over with my nurse standing in front of me, and found that her enormous breasts were an inch away from my face and suffocating me. Yet as I recall I was a paragon of obedience and cooperation.

But I digress. Back to Epidurazilla, a ghost from OB wards past. Epidurazilla was pale, skinny, educated, and rich. She came to the hospital with a plethora of accoutriments. A CD player and George Winston piano CD. Burt's Bees lip balm. Popsicles, which she ordered her labor nurse to fetch and over which she showed considerable exasperation when people had trouble locating them, even after she sent her husband out to help (read, supervise) the nurses.

When I arrived in her room after her nurse paged me there for an epidural, I began to introduce myself, "Hi, I'm Dr. - "

"SHH!!" she cut me off, with an irate swat of her hand. I had unfortunately begun to speak just as a contraction was beginning. My mistake; I'm usually pretty good at timing the conversation, but I was a little off that time.

I understand not being able to focus on someone's words when your insides feel like they are being yanked from Alaska to Dubai, ripped into pieces, and set on fire. I've been there. But usually the NICE women either pant until the contraction is done and ask you to repeat what you said, or manage to groan, "Sorry-doc-just-a-sec..." I had never been shushed and swatted at before.

That pretty much set the tone for this woman's interactions with the entire staff. The more I listened to her snapping at people and ordering the hospital staff around, the more I felt like saying, "Yes, Massuh" to her face. She was impatient with the questions I asked her as part of my preop evaluation and with the directions I gave her to facilitate placement of the epidural. She gave me the impression after it was placed that she felt quite entitled to have it there now and what took us all so long to serve her anyway? It was clear she was used to relating to people as their superior and had scads of servants at home waiting on her hand and foot.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but when I checked on this woman the following day during my rounds, I was civil, and even dutifully kind, but nothing more. Usually I'm warm and sweet, but I couldn't be my usual self with her. That's ultimately a reflection of me, not of her, I regret to say. And to her credit, at the end of our conversation, she did thank me.

Overall I was so appalled by what I saw of this woman's demeanor with the nurses, and other docs too, that I googled her. And there it was, confirmation of what I suspected. Engagement announced in the society pages of a prominent national newspaper. Wealthy family united in marriage to another wealthy family. Advanced studies in Paris. Ivy League degree.

She must be one of the stereotypes people think of when they think of Ivy League schools. So then I started to wonder, have I ever been like that? I went to a "prestigious" college. I speak a foreign language or two, on a good day. My family is relatively well-off and well-known in our country. Part of what bothered me about Epidurazilla was the familiarity of her behavior. I've seen it before. The stereotype of the master or mistress who's mean to the servants or who barely even notices their service comes up on Philippine TV shows a lot. Although some of the wealthiest people I know are also the kindest, most humble, most generous people, I know there is a basis for the stereotype. But there was more to it than that. I think I was also bothered by Epidurazilla because I recognized in her a capacity for narcissism and elitism that I fear within myself. I think when I met her, I thought, "I could totally have become that, under the wrong circumstances..." My husband doesn't think so, bless his heart; I'm touched by his faith in my character; but we all know the potential evil that lurks within us, and I don't imagine for a second that I'm any less vulnerable to its traps than the next person.

I said to a couple of my friends, "Please, if I EVER start speaking or behaving like an entitled prima donna, please whap me across the face, okay?" My husband's pretty good at being honest with me if I fail to be at my best, so I'm hopeful all these allies and teachers can help keep me in line.
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(The photo shows one of my friends placing a lumbar drain, not an epidural, but the procedures are similar and for the most part, with a little local anesthetic, well tolerated by patients.)

The Gift of "Small" Moments

This weekend was truly lovely. We acquired two additional sons temporarily - our good friends had their wonderful boys, ages 10 and 13, stay with us while they went on a long-awaited trip - and as a bonus we also got to know their cute bronze-winged Pionus parrot (Pionus chalopterus).

The brothers were adorable trying to figure out what key to start singing the Hebrew blessing in before dinner Friday night - both are musicians, one with a deeper voice than the other. "Baruch-no, that's too high...Baruch-ato--no, still can't reach that..." But they found their note and set the tone for a nice evening.

I love the way family prayer, sung or spoken, can re-center our scattered lives and bring us together around the table from the various forces that tug us away from that center every day. When we four are alone as a family we often resurrect the old Catholic tradition of saying the Angelus at dusk, another call to pause and refocus busy lives on love and family. It's balm.

The rest of the weekend was truly relaxing - seemingly ordinary, but to me quite special. We enjoyed a blueberry pancake breakfast at a farm in Concord, went on a hay ride, played our favorite family card game, ouistiti, two nights in a row, maneuvered around a birthday party here and a tennis game there, discovered a tiny local lunch place that serves breakfast all day as well as some exotic items (falafel), and spent time enjoying the weather in Harvard Square hopping from book store to book store (my favorite!). My daughter has big plans to sing for her supper on a street corner. She gave her last dollar to a boy who was playing Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen, fairly well, too.

I envied all the students reading and writing in the Yard. I do get nostalgic for my college days; I remember only what was best about them, not the stress. We took position at an old favorite spot of mine, one of Widener Library's broad "sphinx pedestals" as I call them, and watched tourists and students crossing each other's paths below. It was wonderful to be able to just watch and have no fixed time-table.

***

Today I bought a book called The Last Duel, by Eric Jager, in a used book store called Raven. It's a gripping tale of medieval Normandy, the true story of a fight to the death between a squire and a knight whose wife had accused the squire of raping her. The result of the duel was supposed to demonstrate God's judgment of who was right and who was wrong in the matter. Or, as one of my "temporary sons" intelligently said when I told him about the book, "So, whoever was more physically fit would turn out to be innocent?" It was the last time a dispute was mediated in this manner, hence the title of the book.

It's amazing to me that people ever thought God would work like this, and flabbergasting to me that they sometimes still do.