Lame Leading the Blind
/"The Blind Man and the Lame" is a fable that recounts how two individuals collaborate in an effort to overcome their respective disabilities. The theme is first attested in Greece about the first century BCE. Stories with this feature occur in Asia, Europe and North America. While visual representations were common in Europe from the 16th century, literary fables incorporating the theme only began to emerge during the 18th century and the story was eventually claimed, without evidence, to be one of Aesop’s Fables.
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Christmas 2008, Rond-Point des Champs-Elysees, Paris, France
The year is 1959, when, at age 19, I met my best French friend, Janyne, age 20, in college in Paris. Laughing was what we did best together, and we always sat next to each other in our common classes. Our favorite pastime, during those we both found boring -- such as economics --, was to surreptitiously write silly girlie things on each other’s arm, to express our affection for, and understanding of each other. In the typical style of the picturesque pet names – most often representing baby animals -- that the French are fond of calling people they love: “To my little chicken (or rabbit, or cabbage etc.) for life!”, “With love for ever”, etc. Not very sophisticated, to be sure, but certainly creative -- and especially long-lasting when using permanent markers!
We had both gone through difficult adolescences, and found in each other the support and trust that we needed to heal the damages those previous years had caused each of us. We shared both the same vulnerability and indomitable resilience, coupled with the same life-sustaining ability to always see a glass as half-full rather than half-empty.
When we graduated together, she got her first job at the government-owned, only radio and TV station, with offices on Avenue des Champs-Elysées. I, on the other hand, went to work in the literary section of Le Figaro newspaper, whose offices presided over the Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées (Rond-Point meaning “round-about”). The proximity of our work places allowed us to eat lunch together every day, in the same self-service cafeteria, where we ate the same thing (saucisse/ frites, or hot dog and French fries) every day.
We remained close friends until 1961, when I emigrated to the U.S., where I settled definitively and permanently in 1963. As was bound to happen, the vast difference in our lifestyles, made worse by the 4,200 miles stretching between us, created an unfortunate gap over the next three decades. We both married, raised children and worked outside the home, all of those activities which engulf a woman’s time and energy, at the expense of whoever and whatever is no longer right here and right now. Despite this estrangement, we managed to remain close enough, even with relatively few contacts.
During the next three decades, we used the telephone and wrote letters to keep each other abreast of the many changes and upheavals that continued to challenge each of us. But the former was very expensive in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and the latter took more time than we could often spare. So each one was a luxury we could ill-afford. When the fax machine was born, it all changed for the better. We were able to communicate more often and spontaneously, enabling us to form new bonds as adult women. With the advent of e-mail becoming part of our daily lives, we, once again, became an integral part of each other’s life, now sharing each other’s divorces, surgeries, children problems, job changes, many moves, and all our losses, joys, tears and successes.
When the 21st century rolled in, I retired in 2002, and my husband in 2003. We started traveling extensively, including to France, to, among other things, visit my sister and her family. And Janyne, of course. Each time we were together, we wound up laughing as we used to at 20, raucously, noisily, boisterously, and guiltlessly, seeing no reason why we should tone it down. We had always that effect on each other, and we could always boost each other’s morale with our intrepid upbeat attitude, positive outlook on life, and sense of humor. We could make a superlative lemonade of our many sour lemons.
The previous 20 years had inflicted on both our lives serious changes in our respective health. The eye problems she’d had for many years got worse, making driving and traveling each year more problematic. As for me, the osteoarthritis I had started struggling with in my 40’s, grew more and more invasive and limiting.
The year is now 2008. My husband and I went to Paris to spend the Christmas holidays with my sister and her family. My sister kindly invited Janyne (who lived on the Riviera) to stay a few days with us in her apartment. This is when the expression “The Lame Leading the Blind” became our joint nickname, causing much hilarity. Janyne had undergone several eye operations, and could no longer drive. More of my joints had succumbed to the tyranny of arthritis, and I walked with a cane to alter a gait similar to that of a drunken penguin. Because of our respective limitations and restrictions, we ventured together where we wouldn’t have attempted to go alone. I could use her arm for better balance and support, and she needed my eyes to guide her into buses and manage pedestrian as well as car traffic. Because of our ages of 68 and 69, plus the fact both of us were no longer used to the crowds and noise of a metropolis (she’d moved from Paris, and then the suburbs, to the Riviera 20 years ago), we each dreaded venturing into what now felt to us like an auditory and visual jungle-like battlefield.
The purpose of our adventure was to go see the Christmas market along the Champs-Elysées, stretching from the Rond-Point down to the Place de la Concorde. This outing also took us to our young-adult territory, where we had our first jobs, our first loves, and our first heartbreaks.
The holiday traffic of both pedestrians and cars was overwhelming. It was also freezing cold – as evidenced by the frozen fountains located at each quarter of the circle formed by the Rond-Point. But the sight of the Champs-Elysées lined all the way from the Arc de Triomphe with trees lighted with thousands of holiday strings of bulbs made it all worth it. The whole thing was magical, and we were giddy with excitement at being part of it all.
I was eager to indulge my passion for photography, and determined to take as many photos as possible of that winter evening fairyland. I intended to walk to the very center of the extra-wide Champs-Elysées, to take a front shot of the approach to the Arc the Triomphe. To do so, waving cane and camera, I ventured out to position myself “just right.” This necessitated my weaving through insane Parisian traffic, despite feeling dizzy with the typical Parisian car horns. All the while with Janyne, who had stayed by the sidewalk, yelling at me: “Monique! Where are you? Be careful! Come back! You’re gonna get killed!” It was only after getting several shots from different angles (unsatisfactory as they turned out to be) that I finally worked my way back through the line of cars now at a standstill because the light had turned red. She was so relieved when I finally rejoined her safe and sound that she couldn’t stop insulting me with her usual understated and endearing injunctions: “You jerk, you could have gotten killed! What do you think you were doing?! You crazy idiot! Were you out of your mind?” This was followed by a boisterous replay of how she felt and what she feared while standing helpless and alone.
After strolling, arm in arm, down the Champs-Elysées through the Christmas market stalls, we wound up at the pedestrian shelter of the bus stop to catch the one to take us back home. That’s when we started reminiscing about when we met, and the comparison between the “us” of then – agile and bouncing with youthful energy up and down the Champs-Elysées -- , and the “us” of now – much slower, and assisted by one cane each. This made us explode into such uncontrollable laughter that we could barely speak. While the other people waiting for their bus were staring at these two old ladies, one lame, one blind, folded in half in near hysterics, hiccupping to try to catch their breaths; and wondering whether to ignore them – which would have been difficult --, or to inquire whether help was needed, or simply join in the contagious but unidentified mirth. The majority were still wondering which path to follow when our bus came.
Once home, and over a cup of tea, we, the lame and the blind, offered my sister a skilled replay of their hysterics at the bus stop. Even if she hadn’t quite followed the sequence of events, my sister soon joined in. And the three of us wound up, once again, convinced that our ability to find humor in situations that could be described by some as sad or even pathetic, was, in fact, what made us true winners. Our delight in our ability to laugh at ourselves while managing our limitations was precisely what regenerated our spirit, reinforced our resiliency, and recharged our inner batteries, giving laughter the winning power to have the last word.