ManicDDaily

Hameau Not of the Reine (Petit Trianon)

You worry as a single mom about your kids
missing out. Sure, there’s the relative calm, the extra
legroom–when you are the sole monarch
of the home, there’s a whole lot less of that hushed huff-puff,
the mangled tussling hiss that can crowd almost
any sour coupled space–
Okay, so you’re rushed. Things sometimes fall through
unseen cracks. And even that
calm can be worrisome, especially to those
who do not feel very
absolutist.

And what about, you wonder,
that steadying funk of male sock-dom? The sweetness
of shaving cream? The bristled warmth
of a daily dad kiss, the accompanying, just don’t
worry about it–words
that somehow don’t sound the same
from single-mothering
mouths, a burdened-female shoulder
not often geared
for Gallic shrugs.

So, in a Cartesian proof that I could too
do it, I took my brood to France, Paris, and
from there, to Versailles – palace of past kings, where
on the way,
I thrilled silently at my map skills, my innate
sense of direction, my confidence even
on the curiously abandoned subterranean platform,
where amid the  scattered
mounds of debris (Municipal strike), my two kids
and I blandly read
the guidebook’s warning about which days the Versailles’
crowds were annoying large, until we arrived at last
at the dark frilled gates–fermé
(on Mondays.)

Well, at least, there weren’t
any crowds.

And the gardens were open — and really were
the best part – I declared, my fretfulness
in full bloom, and…well,
at least, it won’t be
crowded.

So, beneath a sky that felt fiercely uncontinental,
we sought out little rounds of shade
around the pom-pommed shrubs, cheeked and fingered wisps of
spray from fish-throated fountains, until I noticed, in
the vast crowdless expanse, a conspicuous absence
of guards, and scrambling
among certain barely-roped graveled paths lifted
each child to a shiny palace window where, if they
scanned way way way to one side, cocking their
heads against reflections, they might just
catch a glimmer of mirror, and my children,
dutiful, kind, and slightly breathless
from the way I squeezed them aloft, said, that
yes, yes, they could see them, and as I set their
feet back on the gravel, that that
was enough to see anyway.

Then my little flock toured the thatched, stone hamlet (open) where
Marie Antoinette had played house, as shepherdess, me congratulating
us on how these picturesque little
outbuildings were far
more interesting than some palace, pointing out that
we might even have missed them had
we come on a day when Versailles was, you know,
crowded, and my children, dutiful, kind, and
aware of my slight breathlessness,
quickly agreed.

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The  Hameau de la Reine is the “hamlet of the Queen,” where Marie Antoinette, courtiers, and many many servants, played peasant; it is situated right by the Petit Trianon at Versailles.  The Hall of Mirrors, one of the great attractions of the palace is where all those treaties were signed.  The above is posted for the Poetics prompt at dVerse Poets Pub hosted by yours truly to write something with a French Twist, for today Quatorze Juillet. Check out the great poems!

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