Vignettes from Deb, just some short topics: 3/5/2015

*** We’re sitting on “our” bus down by the Louvre, while our driver takes a break. Outside the window, a beautifully dressed woman pushing a stroller with a little girl, maybe a two-year-old, dressed in a puffy red polka-dot raincoat and shiny red galoshes. They pull up next to a puddle and the woman gets the little one out of the stroller and puts her down in the puddle, and then starts showing her how to splash the water with her galoshes. The two of them stomped and danced and splashed until all the water was gone. Then, back into the stroller, and off down the street.

 

*** Tiny bright yellow miniature daffodils in a group at the base of one of our olive trees on the little terrace outside our kitchen. Like a patch of spilled sunshine. And two pale pink ruffled camellias blooming on the large terrace.

 

***Bus images: Little old people with walkers, tottering onto the busses to go to the huge hospital we pass on our route. Young mothers with strollers and shopping bags. People of all sorts hauling cumbersome packages. Everyone endlessly patient and accommodating, knowing that everyone needs to get around in the city as best they can. Every bus stop has a digital sign giving the estimated time of the next bus.

 

***A predicted clear day, and then a burst of tiny hail and rain causing everyone at the bus stop to huddle closer under the roof. People grimacing and making sarcastic comments about weathermen. Some things universal.

 

***Parents and grandparents meeting kids to walk them home from school. Each child gets a highly anticipated afterschool snack, usually on the walk home. Some moms obviously take turns bringing home several children to the same apartment building. Spotted one such, with a group of hungry little boys gathered around her, waiting for her to get their snacks out of her huge purse. Looked a lot like a bunch of baby birds in a nest, clamoring for attention.

 

***Well behaved dogs everywhere, padding along by their owners, loftily ignoring strangers and for the most part, other dogs. Any barking outburst shushed immediately, and the perpetrator shamed. Dogs so quiet in restaurants you have no idea that they are there, lying under chairs or in laps. Still dog messes on the street but so much less than years ago that I’m amazed. And grateful.

 

***Parisians still live in neighborhoods, often not straying far from home. And little “all in one” stores help make that easy. In Madrid, they were called Chinese stores for the usual owners. Don’t know who owns them here, but each one has a truly amazing variety from purses to frypans, flowerpots to toys, all sorts of plastic goods, inexpensive jewelry, screwdrivers, doormats and flower seeds, all in about 12 square feet, stacked to the ceiling and hanging from it. I’m pretty sure that if they don’t have it, you don’t really need it.