The Paris of our dreams

Quite sheepishly, I found myself crying through most of "Julie & Julia" in the theatre, grateful for the projection-glow darkness, wadding up lumps of damp old napkins in my purse. So much of it was sob-worthy: the brilliant Meryl Streep [about which there is really nothing more to say]; the joyous reverence for food and its loving preparation; the familiarity of a girl writer [living in Queens, no less!] trekking to a bleak day job; the spectacular patience of wonderful men; and, of course, the cheerful Paris of our dreams. 

I came home, smug in my disdain of blogs and finding, already on my bookshelf, a first-edition copy of My Life in France co-written by Julia--whom we all really feel comfortable calling by her given name by film's end--and her grand-nephew, Alex Prud'homme. And then everything was conflated: I read Julia with a mental voiceover by Meryl, and, in my mind's eye, could see so clearly the marvelous Parisian flat of the film--though I've just been told by the Real Julia that their apartment had no heat and had a kitchen on the third floor. The book included photos taken by the Real Paul: And there was a gray and white image of the Real Julia leaning out a window of the Real Flat . . . all which seemed vaguely Unreal. The narrative was breathless and thrilled; everything in Paris was wonderful despite the winters hunched over a coal-burning stove installed in the sitting room with both of them bundled in layers of long underwear typing with stiff, numb fingers.

And yet, it was hard to reconcile that it was only three years after the end of WWII. Yes, there were still ration cards and passing mentions of France still regaining her footing after the war. But it was impossible to imagine that the Europe of Julia's rapture was the Europe that Władysław Szpilman had just survived in Warsaw. [I still haven't recovered from "The Pianist," which I could only watch while periodically stepping out to do laundry in the basement.] But I guess that's just the point: It wasn't the same Europe.

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My own memory [deeply unreliable] of my three days in Paris is rosy, fashioned from too many sentimental films. My vision of Paris is the same as that for any other city that becomes a vessel for all aspiration--London, New York, Shanghai, Casablanca--which means it's all entirely impossible. It was March, gray, and cold, yet I remember being beside myself with happiness. There is a photo of me smiling while standing in a horrid green hooded coat on what I remember being the Champs-Élysées [but probably wasn't]. I was staying with my old journalism school friend, Todd, his wife, and their three children; the bed was in the laundry room, and I recall feeling very grateful for their kindness [that part is true for sure]. I raced through the usual suspects: the Notre Dame, the Louvre [I had such low expectations of the Mona Lisa--expecting it to be the size of stamp--that I was actually pleasantly surprised that I could actually see it from the back of the crowd], the Sacré-Cœur, Montmartre, and the Shakespeare & Company bookshop. I remember nothing of what I ate except for the croissant at Orly airport [the best ever!], and an incredible pot of pasta that Todd's wife, Jenny, made for lunch with astonishing carelessness from a plastic tub of crème fraîche that she just picked up down the street. 

The Paris of Julia Child's experience seems to have passed through a parallel time; it is city completely devoid of grief. Perhaps it's a testament to her own love of life that she saw only abundance and reasons for happiness. By the time I was there, in 2000, that Paris was long gone. There were already the roiling tensions and resentments over North African immigrants and its accompanying Islamic traditions. It was late winter, and the city possessed none of the legendary light about which so many had written. But I wanted to believe it was still there and that, if I went back again, the wintry clouds would shift, revealing all I had imagined.

"The Pianist"

Watched "The Pianist" this evening, which only makes one question one's own fortitude: morally, physically, and spiritually. Would one have what it takes to survive? And, if so fortunate, what would be the quality of that survival?

Under construction

Smell the sawdust?!

I have just started here, feeling strange. Like it's the first day of school, and I have just arrived with my newly sharpened pencils. You can still smell the wood shavings.

I like pencils. In the end, I am just a girl with a pencil--so it feels strange to be here in the virtual ether, tapping into a square box that blinks back me. When I was still living with my parents, I wrote at an old roll-top desk that had belonged to my grandfather. At one point, its dark brown stain was green with age and cigarette smoke, but my father and I refinished it after we moved to the farm on Back Orrville Road in Wayne County, Ohio. The finish has held up, and my father uses this desk now. But when I was in high school, the newly refurbished desk sat in my room, and I did my homework on it. I wrote in a series of journals, on loose-leaf notebook paper held in folders with metal fasteners. On the desk I was a pencil cup covered with red fabric and tiny white dots; the seat cushion I'd made for the chair was in matching fabric. I wrote entirely in pen, and still do now. But I love pencils--precise German drafting pencils and mechanical ones with the ever-consistent tips. They never disappoint.

My uncle helped build the bomb.

My uncle helped build the atomic bomb. 

I have it right here, a photocopy of a certificate from the United States War Department:

 “This is to Certify that Warren Lowe, University of California, has participated in work essential to the production of the Atomic Bomb, thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of World War II.” It is signed by Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, 6 August 1945.

 Beneath the text is a seal the size of a hockey puck: “Manhattan Project,” it reads. “A Bomb.”

 My uncle, a chemical engineer, sent me this inside a Thanksgiving card when I was a junior in college. He also included two photos of himself, one a grainy photocopy of him in a graduation mortarboard, and a second clipped from a Chevron employee magazine.

I was self-absorbed with upcoming finals and more than vaguely creeped out—both by the contents and the fact that he referred to himself in the third person, as if talking about someone else. “Eventually you will appreciate your education later (sic),” he wrote. “Although Uncle Warren received scholarship, he worked 8 hours daily throughout college in order to help support his family.” The letter was dated Saturday, November 22, 1986.

Nine days later, Uncle Warren was dead. He was 64 and had just ordered a bright white Cadillac, which my Aunt Caroline drove until her death this summer.

I filed all this away, both physically and mentally. It was disturbing to consider that my uncle was prescient enough to post these testimonies before dropping dead a week later; it was too much to dwell on the reality that a family member had helped create the atomic bomb.

My uncle was born in 1922. He was a research assistant in the Manhattan Project Radiation Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley from 1943-45; perhaps it was thrilling to work on a top secret project as a young man. Obviously, he was proud of his contribution.

But he was proud of his work even as 110,000 of his fellow Asian Americans were imprisoned at internment camps throughout the West Coast and Hawaii, labeled a security risk. He was proud even though some of his Chinese American neighbors in the Bay Area wore buttons proclaiming, “I am Chinese,” to differentiate themselves.

He was proud even after he knew that hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He was still proud to have done his part in the war effort—forty-one years after the Allies accepted the Japanese surrender—to mail his niece proof of his role in that bloody victory.

It was not a conscious act of expiation that I, a writer, ended up becoming communications manager at a non-profit called Religions for Peace, the world’s largest and most representative multi-religious coalition for peace. It was not because of my uncle that I’d co-edited an anthology called Topography of War: Asian American Essays, which tells stories of how conflict can last long after the bombings have ceased.

In fact, I’d really managed to thoroughly not remember my uncle’s work until last month, when my family learned that Aunt Caroline, Warren’s widow, had died. Paranoid and reclusive, Aunt Caroline lived alone in a house engulfed by trees; inside, there was paper strewn around the house up to her knees. Authorities were finally able to contact my father because they found a letter from him, postmarked 1997.

Only in looking into Aunt Caroline’s death did I come across the mention of the Manhattan Project, which led to tearing through a closet late one recent humid night. There, in those treacherous bundles—letters from high school suitors, notes from a classmate who later committed suicide—was a card with “best wishes” from Uncle Warren.

“Help us to remember that the key to life and living,” the card’s inscription read, “is to make each prayer a prayer of thanks, and every day Thanksgiving.”

I last saw Aunt Caroline three years ago, when my parents and I visited the Bay Area. We took Caroline to lunch; for decades, she had dressed completely in white, with wide white sun hats and large tinted eyeglasses.

Afterwards, when she found out I wanted to visit a See’s Chocolate shop for some souvenirs, she exclaimed, “Wait! I have a gift certificate!” Quite astonishingly, she quickly located a voucher for a one-pound box; it was in the trunk of the by-then faded white Cadillac, which had yard-long scrape on the passenger side from an ill-gauged defensive driving maneuver.

“Uncle Warren knew I loved chocolates, so he bought me twenty” coupons! she beamed. She took my arm as we went into the store to pick out the chocolates; the cashier, even more amazingly, accepted the voucher without a blink, even though it had to be more than twenty-five years old. As I took the box from the cashier, Caroline giggled, “It’s from Uncle Warren!”

 Nothing is black and white in war—or love. We can only try to love with honesty, even if our minds and hearts are conflicted.