Posted: 05 Aug 2013
I had no idea my mother was French
because wherever she sat in a restaurant or – well, anywhere – no mater what
the season, there was invariably a courant
d’air, or a draft. For all the years I lived in San
Francisco, I never really though about winds, drafts, or too much air movement
nowadays. Especially since, as anyone who’s lived in a San Francisco Victorian
house knows, if you don’t want to sit in a drafty house, you’ll have to move to
another city. One that isn’t essentially an ongoing, ever-present, courant d’air.
It’s quite a contrast to the city
where I now live, Paris, where doors and windows are closed most of the year
due to the weather. But come summer, when the temperatures rise to sometimes hazardous
conditions, the outdoors is an enemy and windows are kept closed
to protect ourselves from – well, I haven’t quite figured out what. But in a
curious paradox, people flock to the outdoors, especially to the café terraces
– and not just because they can smoke there – but to soak up any precious bit
of sunshine that we’ve been missing for the past 10 months. And probably
because their apartments are so hot because all the windows are closed.
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