This weekend the Lyon suburb of Bron inaugurated a winter vintage market. My fellow "vintager" friend Elsa and I checked it out. She and I had spent a bit of time the evening before in Lyon proper checking out the vintage shops. That's where she purchased the little white purse she is carrying around the vintage market.
She also happens to be wearing old Daniel Hechter leather boots she found at her mother's before traveling to Lyon from Paris.
I found a small purple coin purse at the market today, that actually has a baby coin purse hiding inside. We celebrated at one of the few brasseries open on Sunday in the city.
On our way back to the apartment, we stopped at the book stalls along the Rhône where the booksellers were freezing in sub-zero temperatures. Used books and used clothes: same people.
During these last months in Lyon, I've been learning to wear the clothes I brought in my suitcase. It's been very cold for the last few weeks, and I am very grateful to have a coat that keeps me warm and a pair of boots that are both comfortable and reliably warm, even when I bike. But I am slowly beginning to grow tired of the few clothes I brought with me to Lyon that are true winter clothes, and longing for some other clothes sitting in my closet back home. I don't want to buy any more clothes here, partly because I already have, and partly because I know that this weather won't last, and it's just a matter of getting used to wearing the same clothes day after day.
Which makes me think of people who do that all the time. And people who struggle in other ways. This cold weather has made me long for Asian spicy food, which brings me into Vietnamese restaurants run by young couples or extended families. And more often than not, they have young children. These children must behave a certain way in order for the restaurant to run smoothly. They must stay in their strollers, or if old enough, sit at a table and keep busy, or, as in the case of the first restaurant we went to, be put to bed in a back room from which we could hear the little boy cry during the entire meal.
It is heartbreaking for a western mother to witness such expectations of discipline, but I also understand that this is how the Vietnamese survive in the restaurant business. I am grateful that they are there to serve me spicy food for which my body is very grateful. And I smile at the little boy in his stroller, and wave and say "bonjour" and ask his mom his name ("Andy"), and how old he is. And I go home in my same old coat and my same old boots, satisfied with what life has offered me.
