London, Lebron, Paris and Rome. Part II
Paris 2010. Also, Caught in the Middle of Midleton's Worst Flood!
Bonjour Les Amis!!!
Welcome to my 32nd Newsletter Friends!
In this newsletter, we continue looking back at my 2010 tour and this time we are in Paris! Then, I share recent news of the frightening flood that Ari and I just experienced here in Midleton Cork, because I am just still in shock and I really can’t think about anything else…well, besides the latest US mass shooting and the potential start of Armageddon in the Middle East, but truly, there is only so much a person can take in a weeks time.
But first, Paris!
Ah, Paris!!!
Journal Entry
July 15th 2010
Bon Jour Paris!
Those times when I've had just a little too much wine and I've had the most delightful conversation with a friend or lover while sharing a beautiful meal, and we're walking arm in arm in the moonlight, just refusing for the night to end. Or those hot summer nights when the breeze starts in off the lake and cools everything down just a bit and you sit outside as long as you can because you know how rare that perfect climate is. Or simply the glow of candlelight in a romantic restaurant, bouncing off the silver and crystal, and the feeling that you are enjoying the best food and company life has to offer, THAT is Paris!
It is all of those moments, when your heart sinks deeply, then springs into action. It's that pause, when you're so close to someone, someone that you've loved for a very long time, and just the touch of their hand makes you feel dizzy and weak and you lose yourself in the curves of their fingers as they pass through yours. When you can hear the beating of your hearts as you lean toward each other and your lips touch for the first time. The Eiffel Tower lights up behind you, the songs are sung, the wine is drunk, and the dance of love begins.
What a magnificent city… Everything I dreamt it would be and I am happy to discover it on my own because it is teaching me to put so many other kinds of love ahead of the love of a man. Maybe I can learn to love myself here.
Journal Entry
July 17th 2010
My last day in Paris started with Quiche Lorraine, a salad with champagne vinaigrette, and French bread for breakfast at Café AuLait, at an outside table across from the booksellers along the Seine River across from the Louvre. Now, I'm sitting in the Terrasse Rodin in the center of Musee D’ Orsay having a breakdown. I’ve loved these paintings my whole life, from afar, paging through my dad’s great collection of art books since I was young. And now I am here in person, seeing the originals, getting lost in the details, richness of colors, and textures of the brushstrokes. I just finished the Van Gogh and Gauguin galleries. I started crying as the themes of both painters became apparent to me; these great paintings depicted ordinary people in everyday life. Van Gogh didn't hide the flaws of the people he painted, he celebrated the humanity of imperfections. In one painting, a man and woman lay in a heap of hay, The Siesta, following a great lunch after a morning of hard labor farming, just exquisite!
I love these painters with all my heart, and I'm overcome with shame that I squandered my talent on abstract paintings. I promise, I absolutely promise to take lessons with Mario at Tower Press when I return. I am inspired by Paris to stop wasting my talent and time on what comes easy. I’m good at so many things, but I long to be great. In America life is so easy, success is easy, and maybe that's why I walk around self-deprecating myself. I want to be a student, and a scholar of art, literature, film, and food.
So, self-teach Bridget! Cook and bake every day, and learn something new. Study painting, one day a week with Mario, oil painting. Read the great masterpieces, busy yourself Bridget, life is short!
Taking another minute to sit and let my thoughts gather at the Musee d'Orsay. Now I'm absorbing Toulouse Lautrec, Monet, Degas, Pierre Bonnard, and Renoir. While my ignorance and wasted time troubles me, I find one very remarkable trait that I share with all of these great artists. They found beauty in the least likely places and preferred to hang out in the rougher parts of town with what some would consider the riff-raff of society! Hard-working people who knew how to have fun! Whores, drug addicts, brutes and musicians! Characters! Now, if I'd been studying art prior to this trip, I might think that I'd been taught to emulate artists’ lives, but I do these things instinctively.
I am most happy drinking, be it coffee or whiskey, engaging total strangers in conversation, and I am deeply moved by the struggle of the poor or underprivileged. I have no interest in those for whom life is easy, I may even have contempt for them! My attraction to men with bulging muscles and protruding veins, harsh jawlines, and rigidly lined faces may be for the same reasons. I just don’t find pretty and perfect things interesting and clearly sculptors like Rodin and Michelangelo don’t either!
The museum has just closed and I am sitting on the Pont des Invalides. Artists are sketching the river boats, bridges, and buildings along this part of the Seine. The breeze is sweet and lovers sit on benches, caressing one another as a man plays clarinet. It is truly moving. Everything I've seen today has brought happy tears to my eyes. It's 6 PM and I plan to stay out and about this town all evening. Traveling alone is incredibly liberating. I have never been happier in my life. What an experience!
I walked along the Seine among the amazing houseboats that are popular with famous artists and celebrities. There was an old man doing a one-man show under one of the bridges. He played his accordion to the tune of Nat King Cole’s “The Very Thought of You,” played drums with his feet, and had two horns on his sides, a trumpet and a saxophone, and a violin case on the other. Every instrument was quite contained in his self-made contraption. He smiled pleasantly and nodded his head up at passersby, who dropped coins into his hat, which lay on the ground just in front of him.
I left my riverside walk, ascending steps to the Pont de la Concorde, and crossed the street to the Obelisk and the Plas de la Madeleine. I walked through Gabriel Park, full of lovers, lying on the grass, eating fromage, and drinking wine or talking arm and arm on the park benches. I caught a glimpse of a beautiful restaurant inside a very elegant building, or mansion a bit like the Baricelli Inn. I'm sitting here now because I didn't let the tuxedos, white tablecloths, and wine collection on display scare me. I’ve ordered a half bottle of Saint Nicolas de Bourgveil, La Mine 2008. I don't know what La Mine means in French, but I'd like to think it means all mine like Paris was this incredible day! I've asked my server to choose for me, between lamb and veal. He chose veal, which comes with basil pesto gnocchi. I'm going to Rome tomorrow so I've tried to refrain from eating foods I’d consider to be Italian, but this French waiter has my complete trust!
This restaurant Café Lenôtre sits at the beginning of the Avenue Des Champs Elyses, and I'm going to walk this evening to the point of exhaustion. I am not intimidated by this dish I am eating. I swear I’ve learned to season food so perfectly, that I can’t have much respect for intricate designs or complicated techniques if the dish lacks flavor, which this does, sadly. Doesn’t change how I’m feeling one bit though, I LOVE PARIS!!!
To Be Continued!
Meanwhile in Cork!
Caught in the Middle of Midleton’s Worst Flood
October 18th, 2023 Around Noon
It’s a ghost town in Midleton today and I was horrified pulling up to my trailer to find the construction crew absent. I’m staying positive amid this wind and pelting rain. It’s actually warmer than it was yesterday, around 60 degrees, but I am so happy I finally remembered to bring a long hooded sweater and a spare pair of gloves.
A man was coming to see me with prospects of purchasing the trailer for his coffee business while continuing to sell my food and allowing me to focus solely on that, but he canceled due to the weather. I probably would have stayed home if it weren’t for that meeting. I don’t expect to be busy, so I have only made a few things (4 paninis, 6 salads, and 1 batch of Greek Pasta). Lately, I have had more nice conversations than sales, but these things take time.
I remember a stand-up comedian’s bit about coming to Ireland and walking into a bagel shop whose delivery man never showed. She asked the shop owner why she was open if she had no bagels and nothing else to sell. The woman replied, “In case I had a nice conversation with someone like yourself!”
As positive and happy as I feel now that I’m out of the house, I admit, that I was in tears listening to this morning’s news on the radio. President Biden arrives in Israel today and the stakes of his visit couldn’t be any higher.
I wrote on Facebook this morning, “Um…I think President Bill Clinton needs to come out of retirement to assist on this one. I was taught to pray for peace in the Middle East since I was a child. It’s clear more is needed. What? I don’t know, but I don’t think Biden can do it alone. I have never been more frightened for the world.”
Biden was supposed to meet with the president of Palestine as well but canceled after a hospital was bombed. Both sides are blaming the other for the blast that killed hundreds. Biden’s first words seemed careful but I’m not sure he should have said anything at all. “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you, but there are a lot of people out there not sure.”
Other team? OTHER TEAM??? This is not a sport! This is war and terror, death and destruction. There is a war fatigue in me, where part of me wants an end to all the fighting- a clear outcome. The US is being drained of its military resources fighting, well, funding these current wars. What’s gonna happen when Russia and China come gunning for them?
Meanwhile, a Palestinian-American 6-year-old boy was stabbed to death near Chicago by a paranoid 71-year-old, who stabbed his mother as well, a dozen times. He had been a friend to the family, their landlord, but felt suddenly that he was in danger and that they should move out.
I pause
I cry
Because the world has gone mad.
I pause
I cry harder
Because I think how normal everyday people are becoming murderers of children based on fear of their race or religion or the stories they’ve been fed by those who profit from lies.
Thankfully, a guy just approached my trailer looking to buy a scone and snapped me out of my deep and dark wallowing. I explained that I only sell paninis and salads and, finding it strange that he walked past the Grumpy Bakery to get here, I asked if they weren’t open. He said they couldn’t open their door because they were flooded.
Side Note:
(Just before 1 pm, my neighbor called to say that her friend who lives on the main road sent a video of her house being flooded and that it prompted her husband to spring into action and he was going to the school to pick up our boys. I sent her a quick thank you and a video of the giant puddles forming, but by 1:30 things started to seem more serious and I took this video.)
8 pm
Well, now that everyone who was stranded with me is warm, dry, and safely at home or camped out for the night at the Midleton Park Hotel, I sit by candlelight and release all the tears I’ve been holding back since I found myself trapped at the other side of town and racing with the clock and plowing my way through the rushing current of the quickly rising flood waters that seemed to be coming from every direction.
It was one of those things that seemed funny at first. People were laughing, rolling up their trousers, taking off their shoes as they attempted to cross the water, but then changing their mind and direction as they realized it was deeper than they thought. It got a bit more serious as I noticed the panicked looks of the drivers going by with no choice but to continue in a line of stop-and-go traffic as the water rose to the bottom of their car doors.
I quickly boxed up 6 pastas and six salads, made up bags of one of each, and brought them to the line of cars full of students. Again there was laughter. “Thanks! Who knows, we may be trapped here for hours!” one man said as if it could never happen. Likely though, it did.
I was startled by how deep the water was when I came out to the cars, much deeper than it looked. It was lucky that I did that because I went into emergency mode back on my trailer. The water was knee-deep and rising quickly. I unplugged everything, emptied the mini refrigerator out into a garbage bag, and threw it in my cooler bag which was already packed and on my trike. I threw everything electronic into my backpack and locked up the trailer.
One of my regular customers, a Cork County worker approached me with a sense of urgency, I was crushed that I had given away all the food and was about to apologize when he said, nearly out of breath, “You’ve got to leave the trailer and find shelter.” He looked at my trike and said, “You won’t be taken that thing on the main road I’d say! It’s a river and you’d be swept away!”
I said that I HAD to get home to my son and asked, “What about the alley to the Granary? I could cut down the alley and sneak around the back.” He answered, “But that will only get you so far and I’ve no idea what that’s like. LISTEN! I must URGE you to stay here, to go inside one of these shops.”
I mounted my trike and said, “Wish me luck!”
Famous last words, I’d say.
It was scary at first. The water was halfway up my legs as I pedaled against the current down the street away from my trailer, but as I reached the turn-off for the Granary, I felt so smart and I happily cycled down the dry alleyway. But then I came out the other side and stupidly, stupidly entered the main street which was indeed a river, a rushing river, rushing against me. People watched in horror as I pedaled with all my might to get through it. I put my head down and I just knew I had to give it everything I had to give if I was ever gonna see Ari again.
Amazingly, I got to a clearing, and when I was far enough away from the water, I turned back to take a video with trembling hands and quivering limbs. I pumped up my arms, feeling victorious, and I continued on, but when I went to turn down a street that would take me home there was a huge crowd of people blocking it and waving me to keep going straight. Martin, the man who sold me my house, was at the front and he yelled, “You’re not gettin’ home this way Bridge, or any other I’m afraid!”
I was confused. The roundabout in the center of town seemed pretty clear and I weaved my way through stopped traffic thinking there must be an accident ahead. Another crowd was gathered on the raised median, including several of my neighbors and I could not believe what I was seeing behind them. It wasn’t an accident, it was water and this was no river! This was a lake and it was claiming the lives of all the main street businesses and our main grocery store. The current was dangerously strong making it impassible even at its shallowest point. No one could safely cross.
My phone was about to die and I called Ari on his Disney Watch begging and pleading with him not to get into a car after seeing all of the cars on the main road get swallowed up. I couldn’t hear what Ari was saying but I heard my neighbor say, “Tell your mother you are safe and that I know a way!” I was shouting, “No! No! Please stay where you are, everything is flooded down here!” I took one last video, hoping to send it to him but my phone died.
I told my neighbors that were there, that I had to find higher ground in case the water continued to rise and I went into the town circle in the center of the roundabout and I tried to push my trike up a small hill but it was too heavy and the ground was like muddy quicksand so I just stayed put and worried.
Fire trucks began to arrive and I saw rafts being carried toward the crowd that I had just left. I asked people walking past where they had come from and what was it like. Most looked shell-shocked and said they had to just leave their cars and start walking. A girl walked by happily eating from a fresh-looking bag of crisps (potato chips), wearing a St. Brigid’s jumper (sweater) looking rather dry and I asked, “Oh my God! Is Tesco open?” She said, “Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” To which I responded laughing, “You’re about to find out!” She continued on, staring at her phone, oblivious to the flood waters she was about to encounter!
Sure enough, when I arrived at Tesco minutes later, it was like another world. Many people I saw had no idea how bad things were less than 100 yards away. I was about to go and buy socks to change into, but then I thought of Ari and my phone being dead, so I sloshed along, soaking wet and freezing to the mobile phone store to buy a charger. The clerk looked at my phone then came out from behind the counter and grabbed the charger I needed saying, “Last one! What’s going on? All I’ve sold today is chargers!” I told her about the flood and she said, “I wondered because I was supposed to go home an hour ago but my replacement never came.”
I told her sympathetically that her replacement was not coming and that no one could get in or out of Midleton. She asked if she should just close and I said, “If this is your last charger, I’d say you could close the shop.” I managed to find a small table and chair near an outlet and I settled in hoping I’d recognize someone and get them to save my spot and watch my stuff while I ran into Tesco for dry socks and maybe a warm scarf. Slowly the scene started to look like a cross between a refugee camp and an airport that cancelled all their flights. People were everywhere and the little coffee kiosk couldn’t keep up with the demand for hot drinks to warm everyone. A sad-looking woman just kept running a floor-drying machine up and down the corridor as people continued arriving weary and soaking wet.
As cold and miserable as I was, I wasn’t about to lose my seat and the ability to charge my phone to go buy socks. Amazingly, a former neighbor of mine was at a table near me, and seeing me peel off my wellies and socks when I couldn’t take it anymore, she offered me a nice pair of pink and gray fuzzy socks! She said she had panic-shopped because she and her young son were stranded as well!
When my phone finally had enough of a charge, I saw that Erin (my sister in Cleveland) had sent a message. “Hi, Bridgy! I just talked to Ari and just saw pictures of Midleton. Holy Hell! Call me when you can!” I was so confused about how she talked to Ari, so I called her to say I was safe but stranded and told her I’d call her back after I called Ari.
This started a series of phone calls with Ari and messages from neighbors checking to see if Ari and I were safe. Ari who was safe and warm at a neighbor’s, was begging me to come home. It was 4:00 and for him, this whole ordeal began at 1 p.m. I told him that everyone was saying that there was no way to get home right now and that a tide was coming at 8 pm that the water could go higher. I heard several people saying that they were heading to the Midleton Park Hotel for the evening and I thought about securing a room for myself.
Looking back, I never told him that everything’s gonna be okay and that mommy’s gonna be home soon. I feel bad about that, but if there’s one thing I am as a parent with Ari, it’s honest. Right or wrong, I don’t sugarcoat anything. He’s growing up in a day and age where believing everything’s going to be okay can get you killed. But still, perhaps at that moment, I could have been more reassuring. I did not know at that point all that he’d been through earlier.
I sat there in the corridor outside Tesco, shivering and scrolling through Facebook looking in disbelief at pictures of my beautiful town being destroyed. I searched also, to see if any of the neighbors I had seen earlier had made it home. Unfortunately, no one had gotten through. I thought about the familiar faces I had seen of friends and neighbors near the rising water outside SuperValu, especially of a woman who lives across the way who had a baby in her arms that she minds and her two children close behind her. Everyone had that same look of diminished hope as they walked slowly, peering past fire trucks and flood waters to try and find a way home to our estate, worrying about relatives or pets left at home.
I don’t know how much time had passed, but suddenly I looked up to find one of my neighbors, a gentle giant of a man wearing a bright yellow raincoat, had come to rescue me! “Common Bridge! I know a way to get across, but you’re gonna have to walk through waist-high water to get there, you should do it now before the tide comes in. You’ve gotta get home to Ari before then.” Not only did he get me home safely, but he picked up others along the way as well!
I asked the Tesco security guard if I could pull my trike inside the door and leave it there overnight. He said I could but that he couldn’t guarantee its safety from the flood or possible theft. I grabbed all the food I could carry in my backpack which was already weighted down with my laptop, speaker, and credit card machine from the trailer, and headed out into the flood waters with my trusted savior!
I learned later that before coming for me, he had helped countless others and that after being told by firemen to stop rescuing people with his kayak because it had become too dangerous, he returned home to get his BMX bike and continued for hours.
Journal Entry
October 19th 2023
This flood is fucking my head up big time. When Ari told me last night how he got home from school in the flood I was stunned. I had just assumed that my neighbor who picked him up drove his car and found some sort of secret passage home that no one else had known or that he had beat the worst of the flood waters. Even when my neighbor told me how brave Ari was crossing the deepest and most dangerous part of the flood, I pictured him in the back seat of a car. But no, my neighbor knew not to take a car. He ran to the school on foot to get our boys and he carried his son on his back across the water while my brave boy followed carefully and courageously in his exact footsteps, even when the water reached his belly.
I don’t know. I guess I was in a fog and still in shock because it really didn’t sink in until Ari retold it to me when he was in the bathtub later. I sat on the toilet listening to him, because he did not want to be alone, understandably. He said that he kept calling me to come home from Tesco because he was scared to sleep in our house alone and with the power out.
My poor baby! I didn’t even think to tell him that he could stay at the neighbors if I couldn’t get home. When he got out of the tub, I dried him off and then hugged him tightly and said, “I’m so sorry Ari. I brought you to Ireland, to Midleton, because I thought it was the safest place on Earth! I NEVER expected anything like this. Never thought we’d go through anything this traumatic!”
We hugged some more and then I made good on my promise, that he could sleep in my bed and we could cuddle once he brushed his teeth and got on his pj’s. But like a dumbass, I ran downstairs to quickly return some emails and messages from people who expressed concern for us, and he fell asleep waiting for me to come to bed.
Feeling like an absolute failure, I laid down next to him and stroked his hair thinking about when my phone was dead yesterday, and I didn’t know if he would make it home from school or if I would make it home from work. I thought about the fight I put up the night before when he wanted to sleep with me. So when we finally connected, I told him that he could definitely sleep in my bed and that I’d cuddle him all night. And I fucking blew it.
I woke today feeling an unexpected pull home to Cleveland for so many reasons. My mom could use some help till her back is better, someone to do the laundry and cook and clean for her and my dad. I should be there for them and for my siblings and their kiddos too. And Ari needs more family surrounding him, teaching him, like Grandma Mary did during her special visit last month.
My dad just ironically commented on our family's WhatsApp that he went to bed last night picturing me pedaling upstream and he said that that should be the title of my autobiography.
Ari just asked me what anxiety is because he thinks he has it. Wow! He’s feeling some PTSD too. I asked him why he thinks he has anxiety and he said it’s because he’s scared it’s gonna happen again and that the flood is gonna come up to our square this time and he’ll be home alone. Then he said, “When I heard you say that you couldn’t get home yesterday, I just started freaking out!”
Part of me wants to take him and run back home, to my parent’s house. I mean even though my house and my food trailer are fine, my feeling of security just vanished and my business just feels fucked! At first, I was thinking this could be a blessing. I could be the only place in town serving food unaffected by the flood, but then I realized, I might be the only person in town period. I didn’t have many customers to begin with, certainly not enough to turn a profit, and now they’re all unemployed or unable to open their businesses.
It’s so fucked. How can I face this again so soon after Covid destroyed my last business? How in the Fuckidy-Fuck am I feeling wiped out again?
Yes…Pedaling Upstream indeed! But how long can I keep this up?
And Finally…
One thing that the flood has taught me, is just how wonderfully supported I am by my neighbors and friends. Two heroic men, one saved my son, one saved me, both belong to other women. Maybe it’s time I started looking for a hero to call my own. A husband for me, a father for my child. How I longed the night of the flood to cry and bury my head into a big and burly chest and feel strong and capable arms around my weary and trembling body. Or for a steady, soothing voice to tell me everything’s gonna be alright.
It’s true, I’ve been pedaling upstream most my life, going against the grain and going it alone, mostly. Maybe it’s time to hand over one of the oars or stop fighting the current altogether. Maybe it’s time I found my prairie song and happy ending. Maybe!
Thank You For Being Here With Me My Friends!
Cheers!
Bridget