My wife and me and Paris makes three

My Wang and I sat staring at my laptop for about five minutes.
Processing.........processing............processing......................................................................
And finally, after about a full five minutes of strait staring at a blank screen, finally the message from my mom, "Ruta's coming!" appeared.
Both my Wang and I started jumping and clapping together, as is local custom.
My wife was flying standby, which means that you get a nice cheap ticket, but you only get on the plane should there be an open spot or should someone not show up for their flight, but who doesnt show up for a trans-Atlantic flight? Turns out, historically speaking, about twenty people. Who are these people? "Oh, I'll just stay here in bed, eating bon bons and watching Days of Our Lives instead of flying to Paris. They probably don't have my soaps there anyway."
So, thanks to twenty lazy American housewives who cant be pried away from Luke and Laura, my lovely and talented wife made the flight. I told her she would, but you know women (especially if you are one); they never listen to their husbands. To quote my father, "Oh, woe is me."
Regardless....
It seems that if Paris was a vibrant and colorful place before, then my wife has brought the City of Lights into the age of technicolor. I love being here all the more when she is here with me.
She arrived on a Friday morning. We rented a little apartment near La Bastille. She got-in in the AM while I was at work. Brave soul that she is, she trudged all the way from Charles de Gaulle airport to La Bastille by herself with all her bags. This is not an easy trip. It requires two train transfers, innumerable stairs up and down, and that is followed by a good 15 minute walk (with your bags in tow), and all of this when she didnt exactly know where she was going. She's so tough. Later that day, she wrestled and pinned down a bear that had escaped from the Paris zoo with her bear hands. As a favor to us for her bravery, the mayor of Paris has required said bear to don the traditional French maid costume and serve us mint julips on our veranda. Good thing for that bear that we are vegetarians.
Anyway, she waited at the apartment until I got off of work. I got off extra late that day, and so made the mad dash to La Bastille as fast as I could, forgetting as I ran, the address of the apartment. I know the area well enough, and had been here before to check the place out before we rented it, but I couldn't remember the exact address.
I was walking down Rue Faubourg-Saint Antoine thinking of what I would say to her, when I finally did see her after over a month apart. If you dont know me, I am somewhat of a sap when it comes to the woman I love. And by "somewhat of a sap" I mean that I make Luke and Laura's torrid love affair look like an episode of Cops. Moving along...
So what do you say when you see the woman of your dreams after a month apart, and you are finally reunited in the little flat you have rented on the street where Les Miserables is set?
Well, turns out, I dont know and didnt have to.
(If this blog were a musical, this is where the strings would come in.)
Like I said, I am walking down our street, head full of scenes of meeting her, plotting what to say first, what to do, what will she be wearing, am I different? how to welcome her, and where the hell is this apartment anyway- when she leaned out of the window of our place, waved and called down to me. She actually say me coming down the street! (The strings and woodwinds would be rising here, to build the dramatic tension)
I took off running, threw open the door to the building, ran (really, really ran) up the three flights of stairs to our little door, and before I got to it, she ran out and I grabbed her, and I kissed that good woman with every second and minute and hour I have spent waiting for her to come back to me.
It was one of the great kisses of my life.
(The trumpets now, for the crescendo)
I didnt even say anything (this is an accomplishment for me); she didnt say anything.
When the kiss was over, I just looked at her and held her, and the kiss was so good, that I kissed her again.
After all of that was over, we caught up on the goings on about Paris and Chicago, her flight (poor thing had to fly coach, imagine!), and the neighborhood we are in.
It was great... until that night and the following day.
Turns out that I had a lot of pent up anger and frustration here, and thought it might be best to take it out on her.
See, for every night I spend sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower, for every afternoon spent wandering the Champs Elysses, for every open faced cheese sandwich at Hemmingway's favorite cafe or great book read in the Jadin du Luxembourg, there is someone missing to share it with. I am learning French, this is true. My English is also pretty good. But nobody here can understand my English well enough to convey what I am feeling, and my French isnt good enough to convey it to them in their language. And try as I might, my Mandarin Chinese just isnt coming along like I would like it to, so I could tell Wang.
It is so difficult to be having the greatest time of my life, and have no one who is here and warm and listening to understand. So, in typical male fashion, I bottled up all my emotions like a cheap bottle of champagne, shook it up, nice and hard, for a month, and then exploded all over her.
She, um, wasnt thrilled.
She understood though, and with that out of the way, I have been feeling much better, and we have been having a wonderful time. The night after she arrived, we went to a little restaurant called Ciao, that is right down the street from us. We sat at a side walk table, and talked and talked and talked. I bought her a rose from one of those guys who sell, um, roses. He wanted twenty euros for three roses. I told him no and haggled him down to three euros for one, long stemmed red rose. She loved the rose; I have always wanted to do that: sit outside at a Paris bistro with a romantic someone on a warm autumnal evening and argue with an Albanian about the price of a flower. It was super.
Since then, our days have been spent walking. We walked all over Paris, and for about 6 hours straight on Sunday. We ate at a favorite falafel chain here in Europe called Maoz (yes, like the Chinese dictator) that we discovered last year in Barcelona; we wandered the tiny streets of St. Germain; napped and read our books in the Luxembourg Gardens, and we even stopped to hear some great live dixie jazz on the street the other day.
During the week, I get up at about 5am, and go to work. She reads or goes to farmer's markets and shops Paris. I come home about 5pm-ish, and we have dinner or talk or whatever. It has been great.
This Sunday is our one year anniversary of marriage. For those of you who were there, I cannot believe it has already been a year. Seems like only yesterday my sister and I were dancing like fools to "Its the End of the World as We Know It," and my brother in law was hitting on one of the brides-maids (before falling asleep on the television in our suite, after forcing her out of bed to hang out... yeah, bet you forgot to mention that to your Marine buddies, Joe). A year later, I live in Paris, my sister lives in my brother in law's house, watching his cats, while he is living in Iraq. Wow. I mean, "And now for something completely different" is the understatement of the year.
This Sunday, we will rent bikes and ride along the Seine. We'll go to dinner at a veggie restaurant here that is reputed to be very romantic, and before all of that, we're going for a drink with the guy who rented us this apartment. His name is Sylvain, and is super good vibes. Just the other day, he stopped by to pick up the rent, and we were discussing Dostoevsky and Camus before he left. He has a boat on the river, so we will meet him there for a drink before heading out to eat.
Sounds good to me.
I have been telling Ruta that her being here has made me notice the difference between being a tourist and living someplace. I know that my sister in law Leah will understand this: she lives in Brazil now for about eight months (wow, my family travels a lot)- when you arrive in a new country, regardless of how long you are staying, you are a tourist. You stay for a while, see the sights, do the tourist stuff, but there has to be a point, and I'm not sure when it is, that you stop being a tourist, and start being a local.
I notice the way that Ruta looks at Paris, and I am excited by things again. She can see the cafes or the lights or the gardens, and it is like I am seeing it again for the first time. I see this stuff almost everyday, so it is just Paris to me. But through her, I get to relive that discovery, that feeling you get of overwhelm that there are places like this in the world: I get to see that in her everyday.
It is beautiful, and it makes me realize that I dont know if this is home yet, but I feel much more at home, now that she is here with me.