War Stories

http://polaroid41.com/war-stories/
Tuesday March 31st, 2020 – 12:53pm.

Just over two months ago, on Wednesday January 29th, we picked Elliot up from school at 11:30 (school only goes half days here on Wednesdays) and on a whim we decided to have lunch at Elliot’s favorite restaurant, which is just downstairs from our apartment. His favorite restaurant, much to my delight, is decidedly not a ‘kid restaurant’ but an actual honest-to-God restaurant with an awning that says “Café du Midi – Brasserie – Depuis 1875.” Café du Midi, brasserie since 1875.

Let me remind you, I’m from Minnesota, a state that only became a state in 1858, a mere 17 years before this restaurant opened its doors. I come from a place where nothing is old and have made a life for myself here in a place with so much history. After over 15 years in France, I am still not desensitized to the magic of old places. The restaurant is long with hardwood floors, straight backed wooden chairs and burgundy booths that line the walls. A bar stretches along one side and servers weave their way between six steel structural poles and closely spaced tables. Elliot orders an orange juice which comes in a glass bottle and a cheeseburger ‘rare.’ The burger is as big as he is, I swear. It comes with a salad, which he ignores, and ‘frites maison’…real French fries. I can’t help marvelling at the fact that my little boy is French and that this is his favorite restaurant (not to knock it, but at his age my favorite restaurant was Wendy’s.)

1875…I’m standing at the bar to pay the bill and suddenly I’m struck by the thought that just over 100 years ago people sat at this very bar, drinking coffee and reading headlines about World War I. Which of course wasn’t called World War I at the time because we didn’t know there would be another… it was called la Grande Guerre, or The Great War. Today in France it’s also often referred to as the ‘la guerre de quatorze – dix-huit,’ or the War of 1914-1918.

For a few moments, I am caught up in these thoughts: four long years of wartime and the only way of getting news was from newspapers, public announcements or letters. I imagine regulars sitting at the bar, reading the headlines, worrying about sons on the battlefield, hoping the end was in sight. I pay the bill, the hostess gives Elliot a square of dark chocolate for being such a polite little restaurant go-er and my thoughts fade as we head out to continue our Wednesday afternoon : a flurry of judo lessons, homework, dinner prep, bathtime, bedtime…

We didn’t know that in just six weeks time simple things like school pick-up, lunch in a restaurant and after school activities would all be out of reach.

Fast-forward two months and here we are, two and a half weeks into “le confinement.” Across the country, and literally all around the world, over 2.5 billion people are being ordered to stay home. Despite the French president’s insistence, we are not actually at war, but I am part of a generation who has never had their freedoms restricted and this is the closest thing to a wartime experience any of us have known. In the face of other tragedies, we have come together. After the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, going to a concert or sitting at the terrace of a café were acts of solidarity and defiance. Now the enemy is an indiscriminate, invisible virus and solidarity means isolation. Never have so many people around the world been faced with the same crisis at the same time, never has there been such a collective and widespread experience, and yet the very nature of it requires us to go through it more or less alone....

(polaroid and full text available at: http://polaroid41.com/war-stories/)