from Silicon Valley to the City of Light: a California Expat in Paris

Category: Coronavirus

empty shelves in French store coronavirus

Stuck in Paris during Coronavirus: What I Want Everyone to Know Back Home

A Strange Bonjour

Bonjour from Paris, where a bizarre new reality has taken hold, just as it has in the United States. No parties these days, of course, and no la bise. I did attend a party 14 days ago. One of the couples with whom I talked and exchanged la bise is now self-quarantined at home with Covid19 symptoms. I almost didn’t go to that party. At 9:30 that night, I was still telling myself, “Bad idea to go to the party.” But we were in the early stages of the virus in Paris, and none of us wanted to believe it was coming for us. The World Health Organization was still eleven days away from calling it a pandemic. It seemed socially awkward not to go, and I wanted to see my friends and drink champagne, so I put on my party dress and got on the metro.

The party included a lot of parents from my son’s school. Due to the timing, I believe they had to have contracted the illness after the party, but their sickness is a reminder how quickly everything goes from normal to not-normal, how rapidly we have to realign how we interact and go about our daily lives. They were both feeling perfectly fine two days ago, and then she noticed a little scratch at the back of her throat yesterday morning. Later in the morning, she had a fever. Soon thereafter, the fever was much higher. For her husband, it began with tiredness that quickly progressed to fever. It happens fast. So fast. You’re fine, and then you’re not.

Chances are, you already know someone who has coronavirus. If you don’t already, you will soon — probably within days. Whether or not they’ll have access to testing is, of course, another story.

Overwhelmed Hospitals

In Paris, as in America, it’s very difficult to get tested. The problem here isn’t a lack of tests so much as a lack of capacity. With packed hospitals and strained health care workers, the medical system is focusing on the critically ill, asking everyone who doesn’t have severe symptoms to stay home. Only a day ago, only the sick were supposed to self-isolate. How quickly that has changed.

In the past couple of weeks, I posted three times on the blog. Between Feb. 27 and March 9, things changed, but the mood was pretty much the same. Between March 9 and March 13, the numbers of confirmed infections and deaths rose, but the public response didn’t catch up with reality. Thursday night, Macron finally announced the closure of the schools. Friday morning, I awoke to the headline, “All Travel from Europe Banned.” Not normalhappens fast.

Here are my posts from the last couple of weeks on The Reluctant Parisian, tracing the mood of the city as reality crept in

Feb. 27: Parc Monceau, Parisian Noise, and Waiting for Coronavirus (plus audio)

March 9: Coronavirus in France: What It’s Like in Paris Right Now (plus video)

March 12: Waking Up in Paris to a Travel Ban (and why is there still a salad bar at the Monoprix?)

Why I kept my son home before the schools officially closed (and why you should too, if you can)

Several of my son’s friends’ schools back home in the Bay Area closed early, when there were far fewer reported cases in all of America than in the Paris region. This includes Catholic and private schools in San Francisco and on the Peninsula. Even if it seemed annoying or unnecessary to parents at the time, even if it presented significant scheduling issues, early school closures are one of the most effective ways to slow the spread.

My son’s school was open last week, but the last day I sent him to school was Tuesday. From everything I was reading, the risk of being on the metro and in classrooms was too great. You don’t know intimacy until you’ve ridden the Paris metro, where the distance between your body and other bodies is zero centimeters, and the distance between your mouth and other people’s mouths is four to six inches. On Thursday, the school held an assembly, packing 90 kids into a poorly ventilated room. Earlier in the week (Monday), the kids had done yoga, and the teacher had instructed them to press their faces into the dirty mats that had just been used by other students. When the school nurse visited my son’s class to talk to them about coronavirus, she told them they only needed to wash their hands for 10 seconds. The urgency and the common sense just wasn’t there.

When I wrote on our 9th grade WhatsApp group that I’d pulled our son out of school, I discovered that some families wanted to do the same, but without any direction from the school, many felt uncomfortable doing so. Forgive the bold type, but I feel passionately about this: you don’t need permission from the school to keep your kids home during a pandemic. You’re the parent. It’s your choice.

The Are-We-in-A-Movie Moment

On Thursday night, in a sobering address to the nation, President Macron finally announced that all schools will be closed beginning Monday. Spring break starts in two to three weeks, which means schools will be shuttered for more than a month, allowing France to slow the spread at a crucial time. My son’s school is going online. The kids are still expected to “attend” school every day. They’ll still learn; they’ll just learn differently.

If you have children in schools that are still open, please consider keeping them home if this is a possibility for your family. If you can work from home, do. When communities speed up social distancing by even a single day, it can have an enormous impact on how fast, and how widely, the virus spreads. A few days of missed school is so minor compared to the uncertainty of the virus entering your home. While children have fortunately fared well so far, many healthy adults in their 30s, 40s, and 50s have developed critical complications.

My husband is still going to work, of course, because the federal government must keep functioning. I worry about him every day, as there was already a confirmed case in his workplace last week. Although he needs to see a doctor for a non-virus health concern, doctors and institutions here and at home are overwhelmed, and besides, it’s not a great time to go to the doctor if you can avoid it. This is another reason social distancing is so important. You’re not just trying to protect your family from this virus, but also from any other condition that, in normal times, would warrant a trip to the ER or to the doctor.

Social Distancing

For many families, it’s difficult to skip the playdates and the playground, the small social gatherings. For young professionals, it’s difficult not to meet up with friends. It’s difficult not to go to your place of worship or grab a coffee or baguette or takeout. Social distancing is anathema to our way of life, but what we know now is that serious, unusual, even painful social distancing is essential. It is far better to be safe and socially awkward than to engage in risky behavior. Right now, so much of what we’re accustomed to doing every day is risky.

Remember what they told you in health class circa 1988.

If you’re my age, remember your AIDS education from the 80s: “When you sleep with someone, you’re sleeping with everyone they slept with.” These days, when you shake hands with someone, you’re shaking hands or hugging everyone they’ve shaken hands with since they last scrubbed their hands. Even more concerning, the virus can last a few days on surfaces, so when you touch the metro pole or the Philz Coffee counter, you’re touching everyone who’s touched those surfaces.

Lean in to the unprecedented gift of dedicated family time.

One good thing is that we’re all going to be spending a lot more dedicated time with our immediate families. When was the last time you got to hang out with your school-aged kids without the pressures of sports, recitals, extra-curricular activities, playdates, school events, and volunteer functions? Whether your’e a family with kids at home or a couple, when was the last time you were just home together, with no events on the calendar, watching movies and playing board games and talking? When was the last weekday you woke up and made pancakes and sat around together for breakfast? If you live alone, when was the last time you stayed in every day, working without distraction, reading, writing, listening to music, and, okay, catching up on Homeland?

Sure, there’s still schoolwork, and there’s still work. For those who are able to be home with our kids right now, there’s no forcing your kid out of bed early in the morning to get dressed for school. There’s no rushing to the train or the metro or piling kids into the car. No lunchboxes to pack. There’s no coordinating different kids’ schedules, figuring out who has to be where, and when, which parent will do what, who’s driving, who’s meeting whom, etc.. This is a tremendous gift, even if it comes at a cost. It has never before happened in my life as a parent. Probably not in yours, either.

Of course, many families will not have these luxuries. For millions of families, there will be new and complicated burdens — those with health care workers in the family, those with no adult to stay home with the children, those with differently abled children who depend upon the school environment and teachers, those who are facing food shortages, devastating loss of income, medical deprivation, and other catastrophic situations. And those who lose loved ones to the virus.

These are such complicated issues, I think all of us are waiting to see how our governments and communities will respond. One thing has become clear in the last few weeks: We need to listen to experts and scientists beforea crisis happens. We desperately need a well-oiled, well-funded federal government that can respond robustly and rapidly in emergency situations. Those who denigrate federal workers and institutions, minimizing the crucial work they do for our country every day, cheering on the dismantling of the necessary systems, are now discovering like never before how much they need those workers and institutions. Underfunded, understaffed institutions threaten the welfare of every citizen.

Dreaming of California

I think longingly of our home in Northern California, surrounded by trees and beauty, with the long walk down the back stairs to the wooded canyon, where the big deer like to hang out. To wait out the isolation there, instead of in a cramped Paris apartment with our disco-playing, clog-wearing, house-renovating upstairs neighbors, would be a dream. That said, our family wants to stay together, and my husband has a job to do. So we’ll be here in Paris, waiting it out.

Fortunately, there are books. There is music. There is Monopoly and backgammon and Risk. Oh, and Netflix. Soooo much Netflix. And you can still walk outside and notice beauty. The weather is lovely in Paris right now, the cherry blossoms (or some kind of blossoms) blooming. I go to the park near our apartment in the morning, before the crowds, and look at everything in bloom. It soothes the soul. It gives me hope. It offers consistency, normalcy, and calm.

May you find your cherry blossoms wherever you are. May you enjoy your newly intensified time with your people, your pets, with the ones you love the most. May you make something, read something, remember something that has been buried beneath the busy-ness.

Eventually, we’ll be walking the halls of the schools and universities and offices again, seeing friends, grabbing a coffee that’s better than the coffee we make at home, eating a pizza that came out of an actual brick oven, giving la bise and hugging and shaking hands, watching movies on the big screen instead of living a scary end-of-the-world movie in which we’re all unwitting extras. We’ll be sending our kids out into the world to play their sports and hang out with their tribes. We’ll be back in the busy thick of it, remembering our strange hibernations, the weird solitude and surrender to a life-changing spectacle that gripped the entire world.

Until then, be safe and well….
A bientôt,

Michelle Richmond
The Reluctant Parisian

Read more & listen to audio on The Reluctant Parisian

park monceau snack stand

Coronavirus in France (update): Waking Up in Paris to a Travel Ban

 

Coronavirus in Paris Update: March 13,2020: A few hours after I wrote this post, Macron addressed the nation live on TV. He closed all schools, creches, and universities beginning Monday. Watching the address felt like watching a disaster movie play out in real life. It was a moving, sobering, speech, in which the embattled Macron exhibited leadership and intelligence.

Paraphrasing: “This is the worst health crisis France has faced in a century. This virus has no passport and knows no boundaries…” His call for unity in Europe and the world was a stark reminder of how much has been lost in terms of credibility and leadership in America in the last three years.

“We are just at the beginning of this crisis,” Macron said. “In spite of all our efforts to break it, this virus is continuing to propagate and to accelerate.”


Coronavirus in Paris Update: March 12,2020

A couple of days ago, I wrote about what it’s like in Paris during the Coronavirus outbreak. At the time, stores were stocked, schools were open, and life went on as normal.

Today, I awoke to the news that the U.S. had “banned all travel from Europe to the United Sates.” I will admit to experiencing about two minutes of panic. I clutched my husband’s arm and said, “Don’t go to work!”

He laughed and said, “I have to go to work.” Which is pretty much always the story.

I said, “What if we can never leave?”

He said, “You’ll feel better after coffee.” Which also is pretty much always the story.

For those of us prone to disaster thinking, a full-blown actual disaster is a mine field. You see, three weeks ago, before Coronavirus was much of an issue in France, I woke shaking from a dream in which Young Reluctant P. was trying to shove me out the door, screaming, “There’s no time! We have to go somewhere else now!” It was one of those dreams so vivid that, for a few moments after waking, I still thought it had actually happened. In the dream, my son was wearing his Raiders sweatshirt. I woke because I could actually feel the pressure of his hands on my arms.

The dream has come back to me many times over the last couple of weeks. But, as Mr. Reluctant P. reminds me, if all my vivid nighttime dreams–both the good ones and the bad ones–came true, we’d be living in Sea Cliff with an unobstructed view of the Golden Gate Bridge, I’d make blueberry pies from scratch that I’d serve to Justin Trudeau*, who would be wearing a flannel shirt, and I would have to take a surprise math exam every few months–as an adult, in a room full of high school students.  But none of those things ever happened. Not Sea Cliff. Not the math exams. Certainly not Justin Trudeau and the pies.

I went online and read that a certain someone’s statement had been inaccurate, and that US citizens are still allowed to return home. I read on WhatsApp that my son’s school was planning an assembly today. I thought: that is such a bad idea. So I didn’t wake him up for school. (He soon woke up anyway, because the world may end but my upstairs neighbors will still renovate their apartment all day every day, and the power may go out but the workers will still magically power their industrial-strength drills with fairy dust.)

When I went out later, I noticed that those grocery store shelves, full two days ago, were looking a little sparser. What disappears from store shelves first during times of scarcity reveals a lot about the culture. All of the regular pasta was gone, but you could still get whole wheat pasta. All of the white toilet paper–gone–but there was a whole shelf full of miniature pink toilet paper rolls.

Should you be the rare American in Paris who prefers Harry’s American Sandwich Bread in a country where fresh-baked, inexpensive bread is available on every street corner, you’ll be happy to know that Harry’s American Sandwich Bread has not left the building. Yet. Maybe not ever. If the bakeries close, all hell will break loose. After all, one of the most common French phrases  is “Long comme un jour sans pain (“as long as a day without bread”).”

Empty shelves in Paris Coronavirus

Nobody wants Harry’s American Sandwich Bread

Oh, to Be Back With You (California)

I worry about my friends and family back home in California, where the virus has been spreading rapidly. On the other hand, our community in Northern California, despite testing limitations, is handling mitigation so much more stridently than France. Governor Newsom has advised against even small gatherings where people cannot maintain a distance. Meanwhile, in France, with more than 500 confirmed cases in the Paris region alone, we still have public salad bars at the grocery store. I saw one today. I think salad bars are a bad idea under any circumstances, ever, but it seems particularly ill-advised during a, you know, pandemic.

A salad bar in Paris during Coronavirus outbreak

 

Macron keeps saying the government is taking appropriate measures to address what will be a very longterm epidemic.  But he hasn’t yet encouraged people to work from home. He hasn’t urged businesses to allow employees to work remotely. Nor is he advising schools to allow students to study from home.

I understand that closing schools causes disruption by preventing parents from working, and I understand that parents in professions that can’t be done from home need a place to send their children. School is a safe and crucial place for many kids and a necessity for their families. That said, Macron could limit the spread of novel coronavirus by making it clear that work, whenever possible, can and should be done from home. That would give a large percentage of Parisian families the ability to keep their children home from school.

An Oasis

I went to the park near our apartment mid-morning to get some exercise. I’ve completely stopped going to the gym, which is smelly under the best of circumstances, crowded, and poorly ventilated. The park is a miniature oasis, a godsend, a way to get a little greenery in the concrete jungle of Paris. It was recess time for nearby schools, so the kids were in the park in their bright green vests, as they always are at recess time.

In some ways, seeing large crowds of children playing tag at the park was comforting. The children seemed happy and healthy. They were loud and rowdy, as children should be during recess. They were enjoying themselves. On the other hand, a few schools with children of different grades were all running around at the same time. The CDC has advised against grade-mixing to slow the spread.

Because school groups aren’t allowed to play on the grass in the, the children were, as usual, all crowded into the dirt pathway that runs between two gates. I know you can’t and shouldn’t stop children from playing, but surely the groups could spread out a bit. Less tag, more Simon Says and jumping jacks. I’m not a teacher, and I understand it’s difficult to wrangle children, who desperately need to get their energy out. This is just a case where schools could use more serious advice from the government.

 

Face-planting on Dirty Yoga Mats in the Midst of Coronavirus

My son’s school held a school-wide assembly this morning. Earlier this week, they had the kids doing yoga in a basement room. The yoga mats were dirty and had not been sanitized. The room is poorly ventilated. The kids were instructed to place their faces against the mats. It’s just…why? The nurse came to homeroom to give the kids a lesson on hand washing. When one of them said, “Shouldn’t we wash our hands for 20 seconds?” the school nurse said, “10 seconds is enough.”

Long lunches die hard.

Restaurants are still in full swing at lunch time, which seems like a bad idea. But France is slow to change. When your routine is to have lunch with all of your office-mates every day, there is little effort, without government advice and leadership, to abandon those lunches in restaurants and simply carve out a space at your desk to eat. Eating lunch together is deeply embedded in the culture. But cultures must adapt in bizarre times. And this is, indeed, a bizarre time.

As WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom said yesterday, many countries are not taking Coronavirus seriously enough or acting fast enough.

“This epidemic is a threat for every country, rich and poor. And as we’ve said before, even the high-income countries should expect surprises,” he said. “We’re concerned that in some countries, the level of political commitment and the actions that demonstrate that commitment do not match the level of the threat we all face.”

This includes the slow response of the Trump administration, which until yesterday was far more concerned with limiting the damage to Trump’s reputation than actually informing Americans of the facts and providing proper guidance. The United States still lags far behind other countries in its ability to test patients. This became symbolically clear when Tom Hanks, who was diagnosed with coronavirus along with his wife, Rita Wilson, told his followers that getting tested in Australia is easy, fast, and free.

There’s  no putting the pandemic back in the bottle. Nations will now determine, by action or inaction, the severity of the pandemic.

DIY hand sanitizer

Meanwhile, I checked in with my gardienne today and was happy to see the aloe I ordered from Amazon.fr last week had arrived. My husband managed to find a bottle of rubbing alcohol near his workplace. My sister in Napa, whose husband is an infectious diseases expert (whose funding for years-long, highly effective research on just this sort of pandemic was entirely cut off by the Trump administration two years ago), had sent me a video about how to make hand sanitizer with aloe and rubbing alcohol.

So I am feeling excited about the prospect of becoming, at this late moment in my life, a DIYer. I will mix that aloe and alcohol. I will get my hands dirty…I mean, clean. Like all of us, everywhere, I will adapt.

Peace out. Stay safe. Much love from Paris. Still dreaming of California.

–Michelle Richmond, March 12, 2020, Paris

*p.s. after writing this post I saw that Justin Trudeau is in isolation.

empty in Paris coronavirus

Coronavirus in France: What It’s Like in Paris Right Now

coronavirus in Paris

Hi, everyone. As coronavirus continues to spread in France and around the world, I thought I’d share with you a video of what it’s like to live in Paris right now. (Scroll down to watch the video, shot in my apartment, because: Coronavirus).

No Kissing – The Ban on La Bise

Just when you think everything is business-as-usual, you go in for la bise and realize Macron told you not to. You only realize this because the other person is backing away. La bise is the traditional French kissy-kissy greeting. When we moved to Paris, it was hard to get used to kissing everybody, but now that we’ve been here more than a year and a half, it’s even harder to stop kissing everybody. It turns out, as much as I dislike socializing, j’adore non-committal, low-contact kissing.

Mr. Reluctant P., on the other hand, is elated about this turn of events (the ban on la bise, not Covid-19), because he dies a little death of the soul every time he goes to a meeting with his French counterparts and the kissing starts. He’s a man who likes his personal space as much as he likes his Mallomars. At these meetings, they start the kissing before they serve the wine (and they always serve wine at the business lunch), so he is not even a tiny bit relaxed for the incoming bises. Watching my husband try to avoid la bise is like watching a tennis match: he’s got game, but French people have more.

Dreaming of California Style “Abundance of Caution”

Mr. Reluctant P. and Young Reluctant P. and I very much want to be home, even though home is a hotbed of coronavirus in the US at the moment. Some of my son’s friends’ schools back in Northern California have closed out of “an abundance of caution.” You never really know how much you love “an abundance of caution” until you live in a country where caution is thrown to the wind. Paris schools are still open, despite the rapid spread of the virus in France and Macron’s announcement that it is now an epidemic here. (In the video, I explain why the schools aren’t closing here…yet).

Plenty of Cheese, No Hand Sanitizer

The good news is, Paris stores are still well-stocked (although there is no hand sanitizer to be found anywhere) and no one seems to be in panic mode. Except yours truly, because that is how I cope. My husband and son don’t call me The Safety Commissioner for nothing.

Empty Champs Elysess Gardens during Coronavirus

The Champs Elysees Garden at lunchtime in February 2020

I freaked out last week and placed an order for delivery from Monoprix. The two grocery bags that arrived –3 cans of tuna, 5 cans of beans, three bottles of wine, six packages of pasta, six tiny jars of pasta sauce, more salami than anyone needs, ever, CHEESE (obviously), four boxes of soup, six liters of that sad-tasting yet sturdy Euro-milk that has a shelf-life of months instead of weeks–would hardly qualify as End-of-the-World-Ready by American terms, but it was enough that the delivery guy wished me a happy party. What the French call “hoarding” is what Americans call “a regular trip to Target.” As an American family of three whose pantry could feed a French family of six for months, we’re fine. Although: those beans! Mr. Reluctant P. hasn’t eaten a bean in the 25 years I’ve known him, and, as he pointed out, he’s not about to start now. He wanted to know why I hadn’t ordered any les petites ecoliers cookies or Mallomars…as if one can find Mallomars at the Monoprix (we wish).

selles sur cher

Fortunately, there’s still plenty of cheese.

Video (wonky) & Audio (less wonky) – What It’s Like in Paris Right Now

I apologize in advance for the audiodrift in the video. I’m going to blame it on my inept internet connection, which drops in and out multiple times in a half-hour web-surfing session. If mismatched lips and words drive you bonkers, you can listen instead of watch. The audio version of this broadcast is available on The Reluctant Parisian Podcast, or you can just scroll down to listen to the audio file.

I’d love to know how things are shaping up in your town or city, whether you’re in Europe or back home in America. Stay safe, everybody. And, you know, avec du savon, lavez-vous bien les mains. (So says The Safety Commissioner).

Update, March 9, afternoon

By the way, I went to Picard this morning to buy some basic frozen items like fish and blueberries, wrote this post, and then looked at the news, only to see that the stock market took such a beating this morning, trading has actually been halted. The headline on France24 is now “Panic triggers stockpiling frenzy.” So, even though life goes on mostly as usual in Paris and elsewhere for the moment, the pace of change is accelerated and unpredictable, and this does feel entirely different from anything I’ve experienced in my lifetime. It’s strange and discombobulating and seriously alarming. Fortunately, we still have Netflix. And books.

Update, March 10

1,412 confirmed cases, 25 deaths.

French news media is reporting that Franck Riester, the French Culture Minister, has coronavirus. To understand what a big deal this is, you have to understand what a big deal the idea of culture is in France. Culture and everything it entails, in terms of art, music, literature, film, and theatre, is at the very heart of French identity. The French are proud of their culture, and rightly so. Riester’s diagnosis is a major symbolic signpost of the magnitude of the coronavirus crisis. Imagine, for example,  if, in America, the Secretary of the Treasury (let’s forget individual secretaries of the treasury and concentrate on the position and office itself) were to be diagnosed with coronavirus.

Reiser likely contracted the virus in the lower house of the National Assembly; five other members of parliament have been confirmed to have coronavirus. He appears to be feeling, fine, however. If he and other parliament members emerge unscathed from their illnesses, it will likely make France breathe a sigh of relief.

More updates soon…

A bientôt!

Michelle Richmond

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