Day 180: Urbain...Suburbain

Paris, Day 9. After my cuh-razy night in Belleville, I spent this afternoon on more familiar ground: chatting with a couple of hard-working parents from the suburbs. (Granted, I had to run the gauntlet of Pigalle strip joints to get there...)

I had lunch at Rouge Passion, a wine bar owned by a university friend of Drea's husband, Sebastien and his wife Anne. I sat at the bar and told Sebastien to bring me anything he thought I should try. "Ah," he said. "I like it."

I tucked into my charcuterie as another of their friends sat down beside me. Fathi (pronounced Fati, short for Fathima) and I started with small talk, but quickly got into more important matters. Like why everyone frowns on the Metro. And the fact that her father is Algerian.

I learned about the great influx of the early 60s after Algeria won their independence from colonial France. Fathi's dad felt more French than Algerian, having been raised entirely in French language and culture. But when he arrived in Paris he, along with most other immigrants, was shuttled into a poor suburb and treated like a second-class citizen. Suddenly, he was more Algerian than French. "He was judged by the colour of his skin, not what was in his heart."

Fathima and her brother, though, feel Parisian despite their olive skin and dark eyes. "My father, he protected us," she says. And she feels none of the struggle to belong that her father felt. Now she's the mother of two boys and a girl, living in the suburbs with her husband.

Sebastien and Anne live near her and they all deal with problems that sound all-too familiar. "If you have children, you can't live in Paris. It's too expensive. So you live out in the suburbs and take the Metro. It's very stressful. Everyone is tired."

Sebastien and Anne's restaurant is open six days a week and I can see the toll it's taking on them. It's the same stress I hear about every day with Drea and Gilles: How do we make enough money? How do we get enough time? How can we be good parents...let alone sane people?

They have dreams of traveling, opening a restaurant in Hawaii, maybe. Meanwhile, they struggle with the trials of any couple working and living together: "You have problems at home, you take them to work. You have problems at work, you take them home," Sebastien says.

I sip a red from Cotes du Ventoux and think about how I have one foot in both worlds. Sure, I live in the suburbs, but I am enviably free. I'm able to take off to Paris on a moment's notice. I don't have to lose sleep over whether my kid will resent me working so much or so hard. I may be broke, but there's only one mouth to feed.

I come here feeling like my life is small in Calgary and that Parisians are living the dream. Today, it feels like the opposite is true. But as I keep learning every day that I'm here: it's not one thing or another, it's both. We all have dreams, we all have struggles, and all of us are just...living.