Le Quignon

For my father, the worst possible thing that could happen to any of his daughers would be if we were to end up “playing house.”

My mother is a stay-at-home mom, but even though he married her and loves her more than anything in this world, I get the feeling that he never wanted that for us. For him, his four kids–three of them daughers–had all the potential in the world: we were bright, we got the best educations money could buy (I will not stray here and discuss politics. For that, you’ll have to go here.) We were going to be doctors and lawyers and astronauts and investment bankers (scratch that… he doesn’t want us to be investment bankers anymore).

For him, “playing house” was doing anything domestic before it was absolutely necessary. When I picked a dorm that was apartment-style with a kitchen and made all my own meals and learned how to cook, that was “playing house.” When I waited tables all summer and lived in the house on Long Island and, again, made all my meals but also did laundry and changed my own sheets and vaccuumed, that was playing house. When my sister wanted to move off of the NYU campus to an apartment with her friend, that was “playing house.” And it was unacceptable.

I’ve never been one for being told what to do. If cooking is “playing house,” then I don’t mind it one bit: I’ve been happily playing for years. I never wanted to be a housewife either, but living with someone else and being the one who’s home all day means that, between translating and writing articles and working on my screenplay and heading to the post office to spend exorbitant amounts of money to send manuscripts back to the States, I’m the one who’s loading and unloading the washing machine, vacuuming and replacing the toilet paper when it runs out.

OK. I’m playing house. I’m 22… it was going to happen eventually.

Besides, being the one who does all of the housewifely duties of our living situation means that I buy the food. Which also means that le quignon, that crusty and warm and perfect “heel” or “nose” or simply “end” of the baguette–the piece that you have to rip off and stuff into your mouth immediately upon receiving your bread, lest the world implode and day become night and the bank stay opened during lunch hours and all sorts of other apocalyptic things–that little piece of happiness and Frenchness and everything that is perfect about Paris, le quignon, belongs to me.