Chapter 4 - Northern Europe - a rose is a rose

We didn’t get much sleep our first night in the ‘City of Lights‘ despite being tired. The mattress is really hard and lumpy and there’s only one cover that we have to share. It’s very noisy outside too, but there’s a really nice little café on the corner where we can get coffee and croissants for breakfast. I’ve decided that I like European coffee. It tastes nothing like the instant stuff Mom and Dad drink. I didn't think I would like it the first time I tried it, which was in Amsterdam. I got so dizzy I had to have a lie down for an hour until the caffeine wore off a bit. I wonder if I’m genetically sensitive to it. Sidney hates coffee because it makes her queasy and Sam tried it once and got sick all over the table. But she’ll eat coffee ice cream. Any ice cream really. Sam likes her food. Sidney is always on a diet and barely eats anything. I hope I'm not genetically indisposed to caffeine, but if I am, the coffee here is worth it.

Our goal today was the Mona Lisa at the Louvre museum. It’s actually quite a small painting, and surrounded by red velvet ropes that we were not allowed to step in front of, so our view was limited. There room was large and filled will all sorts of wonderful paintings, yet for some reason this was the one everyone wanted to see. I wonder who decided that.

I really wanted to see the original copy of Marco Polo’s book at the Paris National Library, but Niki rolled her eyes and told me Ye Gods, no way, not another museum and especially not one full of boring old maps and books and she’d meet me at a café instead. Marco Polo’s book is so intriguing to me. Niki didn’t know about it, but she doesn’t like reading much of anything except Cosmopolitan magazine and that’s only because of the quizzes. Marco Polo’s book was so famous right from the beginning that for centuries everyone believed exactly what he wrote about and totally ignored his mistakes. Christopher Columbus even took a copy on his travels, which is probably why he thought America was India. The book’s biggest mistake was describing this huge southern continent that nobody else could ever find. Even Abel Tasman, a guy who was so picky he wouldn’t even trust his own eyes, thought New Zealand was part of this southern continent just because Marco Polo wrote about it. And here I am in the same city as this old, old book that changed the way the world was seen for so, so long! I closed my eyes and breathed in the dusky scent of old paper, hoping some of its molecules would enter my system and make me part of the book in some way.

Niki was waiting at the cafe and motioned me with her usual mad two armed waving technique which embarrasses me to death. I quickly slid onto a rickety wire chair and we talked as if we hadn't seen each other in days. Well, to be honest Niki did most of the talking, but that's ok by me. She's entertaining. She's also curious about my family for some reason and asks about them a lot.

“Where is your Babby from? She has a weird accent.”

“Well, she was born in Denmark, but her father was Russian. Her family moved to the Prairies when she was small.”

“She’s a riot. And pretty cool, for an old lady. Is she your Dad’s Mom or your Mom’s Mom?”
“Dad’s Mom.”

“Oh my God, really? Your Dad is so quiet. He’s always reading the newspaper or out in the garden when I come around to your house. I don’t think I even know what he sounds like. And yet your Babby is so lively. Your Mom’s lively too, but in a different way. I feel a deep connection with your Mom. She seems to dislike children.”

I laughed at that. “No, not really. Just her own.”

“What’s she really like? As a person?”

“Chairman Mao’s widow.”

Niki rolled her eyes at my attempt at humour and mused. “She’s pretty. Your Mom. Pretty, but kind of hard. You know, forceful. Not really happy. She is so, I don’t know, quirky, but in a conventional way. Sort of. But she can’t be totally conventional because you all have such unconventional names. Why is that?

“Well, I’m not sure but I have a bit of a theory. You know her real name is Phyllis. She just calls herself Phil.”

“Yeah? So?”

“Well, Phil stands for Phillip too.”

“Ok, so Phil stands for Phillip too. Is that supposed to mean something to me? Omigod, did she have a sex change? Is your Mom really a man?”

I looked at her with amazement. “Of course she’s not really a man! Where on earth do you get such things? My theory is that she started calling herself Phil when she was a girl. Maybe… about 14. She had a brother.”

“Is this for real or another part of your theory stuff?”

“No, no, for real. She really did have a brother, who apparently was the one every one in the family adored most of all, even her. Especially her. He was quiet but very intelligent, ambitious, sensitive. At least that's what she said the only time I overheard her talk about him. But he died. Some illness, when he was 17. In India. She never talks about him, but my theory is she wanted to have a son to remember him by and to give him her brother’s name. Of course she only had girls. So we all got boys names.”

“Ye Gods! What an amazing story! So I guess her brother’s name was Sidney cause she’s the eldest, huh?”

“No.”

“So which one of you has her brothers’ name?”

“Um, none of us.”

“None of you? Well, what was his name anyway?”

“Leslie.”

“Wait a minute. You mean her brother had a girl’s name?”

“Well, yes,” I said, suddenly seeing the incongruity for the first time in my entire life. Why had I not seen it before? “Ok, it might not be the real reason. I only said it was a bit of a theory.”