Beginning somewhere towards the first few hours of this weekend, had me sprawled on thick carpets carried on someone's back all the way from some persian market or another, covered in little blond giggling things.
All my cousins out here are BROWN. Very BROWN. Brown skin and brown eyes and that healthy brown glow, yet their children somehow all came out looking like me with my too-pale skin and pale eyes and radioactive white glow.
They were thrilled with my hair and my generous lap and some strange muttering flitted among the adults about how it might be handy to have a canadian imported babysitter around...
So Nathan and Annouk and Didier's little boy (Didier who I haven't seen since 1995 or so when we punked him out and dragged him to all the nastiest parties) puked happily onto my shoulder for hours.
Ahhh, Didier, cousin I don't know how many times removed is still the nicest guy and insists that we don't actually share any blood and now that it's over with that guy there it's too bad he's married with children cuz you know "I always had a sweet spot for your smile..."
But he meant it kindly. And another Andre who I'd never met before, turned 30 on Saturday and was thrilled with the half pound of chocolate from the patisserie around the corner. Turns out it's one of the most prestigious patisseries in town, little did I know...
I got to Sarah's a half hour too early on Saturday, bristling with nervousness, and we talked quietly of computers (her latest passion), and the things we've learned, I in my frantic twenty five years and her in her invisible eighty and some - she has more youth in her face than my mother.
Helene showed up halfway through this complicated moroccan dance that Sarah was trying to get my confused feet to follow, and ten minutes later the three of us were sweating up a storm to some ethiopian neck-dance that strangely resembles courtesan dances from India that Kruti used to show me.
Wonderfully bitter cheesecakes and apple juice later, the little giggling beasts were bundled up and sent home and Kashia (a new polish cousin) and I tried to discuss yoga in polish and then off I was bundled after kisses and gifts of leftovers to Helene's.
We were going to go to some party that she didn't want to show up alone for, but instead once I crossed the threshold of her incredibly warm appartment in the 5ieme...
Time slowed to the muggy crawl of ethiopian streets and we talked of dreams and heaven and love and hours later I realized the metro was closing soon and I hadn't seen half her photos or heard half her ideas... This crazy princess with her corduroy skirts and unplucked eyebrows and madly shining eyes.
She's been in Paris for so many years and it has entirely untouched her.
Sunday the rain played games with us, and little (six foot and a million inches little) Guillaume was at my door just as I was on my knees scraping cat poop off my carpet, apparently being chased out of my bathtub traumatized little Willow and his litter was unreachable during my eblutions.
Seb came by with enough croissants for six, we ate and giggled and tried imitating Guillaume's most excellent Quebecois accent and then packed him up in the cage behind Seb's car and tortured the caged animal all the way to Nomad where he rented rollerblades in time to find out that the marathon was cancelled.
Hours later at La Main Jaune, that annoying blonde guy stripping of his shirt to show me his ultra-tuff tattoo, we raced and my quads are still wonderfully sore from pushing so hard, my back still ocasionally twingeing from skating backwards holding the hands of some widely grinning little boy who wants to be my boyfriend when he grows up.
Little guy went from falling with every step to chasing me around the rink, skating backwards and wiggling aforementioned generous butt to bad technoized seventies music.
We skated well, and hard, laughing at failed pickup attempts, Seb and a sweet asian girl, blonde boy and his scorpion stories intended, apparently, to impress me...
I was barely walking when we got to the train station, but the half hour to Poissy and Guillaume's awkward jokes were enough down time to see relatively straight, and the thick turkish coffee that we had at the gare while waiting for Eric was just enough to get me through to three in the morning, several bottles of bourgogne barely cushioned by the meatballs and chocolate mousse later.
How we finished a twenty-person chocolate mousse (from aforementioned patisserie, apparently it's also the richest cake to be had in Paree) in two dinners, I have no idea.
Even if it was four big people and three screaming children later.
Poor Amanda and her chicken pox, irritated and screaming, but all it took was Snow White on DVD and a good game of bad dog later...
She was screaming with giggles by the time the guys got back from work last night to stories of what Annie and I got up to all day and why we were so damned sweaty.
The two eldest, Sue-Helene and Jean-Eric spent the day racing to the river briging back sang-sues, snails, tadpoles and pounds of worms, and I raced their fat golden lab to the river a few times, slipping in the mud and glorying in the greenery and river-stench.
Little Amanda and her half-hearted puking in my lap... Something about four year olds and my lap, eh?
When it came time to leave after dinner last night, she rather decidedly announced that I should just not go home and live in her bunk bed, but I had an orange cat up to no good back in Paris and promised to be back for a night on the weekend.
Somewhere in there a whipped cream fight was initiated by Eric's response to a particularly non-PC comment of mine, and photos from the too-shiny digital camera should be incoming eventually.
None of this is coherent, or as in order as I would have liked, and the million memories and realizations of three incredibly full days are still trapped behind my cortex.
But it was good. Laughter came from the belly and kiddie puke is an entirely different smell than the alcohol-infested bile of desperate adults.
And now I'm off to the bank and to work to sign a few papers, e-mail Sarah back and thank her for this or that offer and wish her a happy Purim.
Happy everything, happy TV-Olympic watching, just so long as your time every once in a while gets to feel this full.
...and there's a terribly sad song on the radio about Cinderella's prince running off with Sleeping beauty that infuses some of the magic with a certain sweet sadness, but the sleeping beauty in the book that Mapie loaned me won't end that way.
I've got a lot of e-mail to catch up on, the last one from Sarah herself talking in cultured tones about how I have to stop by one of these days and see if I like any of her perfumes.
I'm going to go practice my token QUebecois phrase in front of the mirror and see if we can't un-posh a little of this horrendous frenchie accent of mine.