Eating Oysters in Virginia Beach (Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Eating Oysters in Virginia Beach (Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent came in and sat down in one of the chairs in our hotel, so Florence could sit in his lap and hug him.  The Navy had taken the edge off skinny dink Laurent’s impatience as well as his waistline.

I was a mommy now and just ate some sundaes and did not care too much, if I gained weight.

“I’m starved” Laurent said.

“What about you, Florence?” Laurent asked as he stood up and threw a squealing Florence up in the air.

“Me, too.  Me, too!” she yelled.

Laurent went to change clothes in the bedroom.  He exchanged his blue dungarees work outfit with his name stenciled on the pocket for a Lacoste shirt and khaki pants.  (Lacoste sponsors the French Open Clay tennis tournament.  Tennis as a sport was created in France.)

When he came out, he folded the dungarees in the way that he learned how to in boot camp, so that it looked like they were ready to go into a package for sale.  (We play acted Free France all the time.)

No one would suspect from our clothes how tight our budget really was.

We set out in our six-year-old, blue Chevy Nova and drove down Shore Avenue through Norfolk and into Virginia Beach.

The fine grain, white sand that blankets Virginia Beach draws tourists from the Northeastern seaboard, who cannot make it down to Miami (Florida).  It is also close to Washington, D.C.

We could not see the sand at night.  We were the only tourists in off-season April prowling the streets.  We opened our windows and let the salty air blow through the car.  The restaurants stayed open in the off-season, which gave us hope to find a seafood place for dinner.

After awhile an oyster bar glimmered through the rain. I felt I was seeing a mirage, because the weather was so bad.  We had not eaten oysters, since our return to the United States.

“Do you think the oysters are fresh,” Laurent asked, meaning “raw” when he said “fresh.”

“They usually are at a bar,” I said.  Laurent turned abruptly into the restaurant’s parking lot.  I hoped they would have a decent children’s menu for Florence.

Wooden benches and tables inside invited us to relax our weary bones.  Laurent and I ordered a dozen raw oysters each.  We ordered glasses of the house Chardonnay from California and awaited our dainty yet pricey supper.  Florence ordered fish sticks.

Our oysters appeared on gnarled, wide shells.  These were not the uniform-sized oysters that are raised in Brittany and Arcachon (Bordeaux), France.  I tried Tabasco sauce on some of the oysters I ordered and liked the way that tasted.

We enjoyed our meal, but both of us said we would seek out crab for our American food epiphanies in the future in the South and maybe lobster in the North.  (I love the Southern chain called Joe’s Crab Shack with its steam pots of crab and sausage.  They make red snapper with chile pepper and cream sauce, too.)

The food and wine made us sleep peacefully.  We woke up at 5 a.m. the next day to take our showers and eat breakfast.  Laurent had to be at work by 7 a.m.

We took I-64 and drove back down I-264 to the tunnel. 6:30 a.m. is rush hour in Norfolk as everyone tries to make the 7 a.m. roll calls.

Lots of cars cut us off as people jockeyed for position.  I wondered how I was ever going to manage freeways when I was still afraid to merge with Suffolk Confederate “bastards.”  (I think I am still the only woman, who has driven on these freeways in Norfolk still.)

This time I located landmarks (the Wu-Tang Klan Rap Star posters in the shipyard.)  The streets around the shipyard had garbage strewn in them and lots of worn out cars with what my family’s Japanese exchange student called “accidentry” when viewing jalopies in Detroit.

By Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Going to Portsmouth (Virginia) - the Shipyards by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Going to Portsmouth (Virginia) – the Shipyards by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The sixty-five degree, humid air outside made the sweat on my hands feel even more cooler as I clenched my car’s steering wheel and entered the tunnel that connected Portsmouth with Norfolk (Virginia) – my first week as a Navy wife.

“Why aren’t we picking daddy up?” cried Florence as she brushed a wisp of straight, brown hair aside that had stuck to her forehead in the day’s heat.

Her round, kiddo cheeks flushed as she cried in sobs that increased with intensity each time that she asked about her father.

We had just spent an hour looking for my husband Laurent through the sprawling United States Naval Shipyard, which seemed to be one bumpy, pot filled parking lot.

My husband’s ship, the U.S.S. Austin (lead battle ship) was resting in dry dock for repairs.  When I had come to the ship with Laurent earlier in the day, we had to go to several gates to find the right ship.

I had forgotten what the right gate looked like.  That was easy to do, since all the gates resembled one another with puddles filling potholes, electric fencing, a lone gatehouse, and a pay phone.  Wu-Tang Klan rap group posters covered the warehouse walls around the dry dock areas.

My inquiries as to where the U.S.S. Austin was were greeted with shrugs and “I don’t knows.”  No one put forth the effort to find Airman Paget for me.  (Laurent did his French military service in the air force and served in Chad (Africa), a French-speaking “Black” African country.”)

Florence fretted more and more with each “the Austin isn’t here” answer.

Dusk was approaching.  I decided to drive back to the Navy Lodge where we were staying until we could find an apartment as our new home.

I could still make out the streets and took advantage of that to find my way back to the hotel.

This was my first day driving solo in the Norfolk – Virginia Beach conurbation of 1.5 million people.  Freeway driving still made me nervous.  (I grew up walking and taking public transportation in Detroit and Chicago.) 

Testosterone drivers in Norfolk zigzag in and out of traffic all the time, especially since I still had Wisconsin license plates on the car. 

Taking I-264 made me do a big loop around Norfolk that I could have avoided by taking Tidewater Drive, but I was unsure of bearings in my new city.  Florence continued crying, “Don’t worry.  Dad will take a taxi to the hotel.”

I hoped he had some spare change to make a call from the pay phone as well as access to the yellow pages, so he could call a cab company.  I worried that he might catch cold in the damp air at night.

“I want my daddy,” Florence continued.  Laurent had been away for three months at boot camp before our arrival in Virginia and was afraid he would disappear again.

Florence reacted to this boot camp situation by throwing temper tantrums with me.  I was worried about how she was going to hold up when Laurent would have to go on his six-month deployment in the Mediterranean.  Some deployments were even extended to one year and sometimes two in war situations.

I was not so sure how I was going to hold up myself as a single parent for such a long period of time.  I was absolutely learning how to drive on freeways with speedy, single guys and peanut farmer Southerners from Suffolk (Virginia) to make sure I could take care of the two of us.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Notes by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Notes by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Getting to Virginia from Wisconsin required a lot of cross-country driving.  Laurent and I took turns at the wheel.

I drove in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio while Laurent drove through Chicago, part of Ohio, and Breezewood (Pennsylvania).  The drive into Breezewood in the dark, up and down the mountains resembled a roller coaster ride.  Pennsylvania was a very beautiful state that I was discovering for the first time.

The landscape around the freeway began to become mountainous east of Cleveland.  The grass was so green, it reminded me of Ireland.

The homes in Pennsylvania have very high, rectangular roofs with brick chimneys on them at either end of the roof.  Rectangular porches made the homes seem even more symmetrical.  They all had planters full of geraniums.

We woke up to the fresh morning air in the mountains.  We read in our hotel literature that Gettysburg was just sixty miles away from Breezewood.  We set out for the famous battlefield on the U.S. Highway 30 for a jaunt through the mountains on a country road.

The first thing we noticed on our way to Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) was the Runaway Truck Ramps on the downside of the mountain grades.  Those runaway truck ramps made us very careful about control of our own car.

Along the way, we admired how people in Pennsylvania tended to their gardens with tulips and daffodils popping up everywhere.  Gardening is very much an East Coast and European pastime.  I yearned to have my own garden one day, too.

When we arrived at Gettysburg, we did the auto tour.  Most of the commemorative plaques that we read around the Gettysburg Battlefield were conciliatory towards the South, saying that the Southern soldiers were courageous.

There is a huge monument with General E. Lee on top of it that commemorates Virginia.  In typical European fashion, Laurent knew more about Gettysburg than I did.

Laurent remarked that Gettysburg was important, because it broke the morale of the South.  Pickett’s Charge and the Cupp’s Hill Engagements were key engagements in the Battle of Gettysburg.

By Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Napoleon and Josephine Sites in Paris and its Environs - A List Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Napoleon and Josephine Sites in Paris and its Environs  - A List Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

There are many places that you can visit in Paris and outside it to learn about Napoleon and his wife Josephine Beauharnais:

Ecole Militaire

Napoleon was from a family of minor nobility on the island of Corsica.  He attended Ecole Militaire due to his minor nobility status (aristocracy with no money).  The elite military officers attended school at St. Cyr outside Paris.

Rueil Malmaison

This small château was the home of Empress Josephine Beauharnais – daughter of a rich French planter from the Caribbean.

She loved fashion and sometimes bought the same gown twice from unscrupulous salesman, who told her how good she looked in it.

Napoleon had a room at Rueil that looks like an army field tent.  He ate his meals standing up, so he could read while eating or examine maps or charts.

Josephine’s bedroom is wall-papered with lava red, textured fabric.  A large, round mirror is above the bed.

Her rose garden is open to the public.  There are fox hunts with French horn players in costume in the park next to the château sometimes.

Fontainebleau Château

(South of Paris)

Napoleon lived here and took over a suite of rooms that Louis XVI used (next to the Gallery of François 1er).

He could go through a hidden doorway behind a curtain from his bedroom to his private library.

Thomas Jefferson had a similar set up at his home in Monticello outside Charlottesville, Virginia.  Many castles do have secret doors, so Thomas Jefferson may have been familiar with them from his diplomatic work in France.

The winged staircase in back of the château is called  the “Escalier des Adieux” where he said farewell to his troops during one of his banishments.

Les Invalides

Many people take pictures of this spectacular gold-domed building from the Alexander III Bridge with rearing golden horses without really knowing what it is.

Les Invalides is a military hospital that is still in use.  Napoleons’s poryphory coffin stands on a high pedestal in a round room with the names of his most important battles engraved on the circular walls around it.

The Louvre

Jacques-Louis David’s historical paintings of Napoleon’s Coronation and Empress Josephine’s in the Louvre commemorate his contributions to French Civil Administration that are still in place today.

He crowned himself, because he was self-made.  He loved Egypt and commissioned furniture glorifying its virtues.  It was a stratified society with slaves, but everyone ate. 

Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire all had slaves as well.  Not everyone ate well in these civilizations, though.  Soldiers often had to pillage for food. 

The French do not suffer in silence, but if you mess up food, especially for young children – Redrum as the twins said in the movie The Shining will happen.

He also knew that Cleopatra was a Ptolemy (Greek), daughter of General Ptolemy.  She did not want to be mistreated by being dragged through the streets of Rome by Caesar Augustus as a way to end the 3,000 year old empire of ancient Egypt.  She committed suicide by letting herself be bit by an asp.  (Greeks still hate Italy to this day for treating a Greek this way.)

His archaeological team led by the archeologist Champillon brought back many treasures from Egypt and placed them in the Louvre, which you can still see today.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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