Recently I picked a little French
restaurant in the NoHo section of New York City for us to go to on my
birthday called Le Philosophe.
It turned out to be quite an ironic choice, albeit an accidental one.
Earlier in the same week, I had attended my daughter's middle school
soccer game in Haledon, New Jersey. I arrived in the second half to
find our team well ahead and to find the other team with two players
on the other wearing Islamic headscarves, including the goalkeeper.
(I am uncertain if there is any connection to the headscarves and our
soccer victory.) I do not recall thinking to myself, "Well, if
we were in France, I don't think they would be doing that!"
although earlier in the year I had read the first chapter of a book
called Why
the French Don't Like Headscarves,
which is about the ban on Islamic women from wearing the hijab,
or headscarves, in France. I guess it turns out that having a secular
society doesn't necessarily correspond to having more freedom,
although it would be fun to see what would happen in France to a
cleric walking around with a big mitre on his head. (I think I recall
a man saying to me once that he had considered the priesthood, and
he thought he could have lived with celibacy but not having to wear
that big funny looking thing on his head.) Anyway, I doubt if there
is a ban on that in France.
I
really hadn't given much thought to the French at all that week
despite the soccer game. However, a residual, subliminal thought must
have slipped in because when I went to pick a restaurant for Sunday
afternoon on my birthday, I chose a French restaurant for a late
brunch. It may also be that I know that Sunday brunch is cheaper than
Sunday not brunch, but again I think it was a subliminal thing rather
than a full blown, conscious decision.
By the
time we finished at our church and arrived home by about 1:15 p.m., I
had one of my world-class Sunday migraine headaches. For some reason,
I get them on Sundays more than any other day of the week. While
I have sometimes wondered with all of the headaches whether or not
Christianity agrees with my constitution, or that Pentecostal church
music is just a little too loud for me, in the end I keep
plugging away at my faith, inconveniences and all. But that day, I
needed to lie down for about half an hour to let the Excedrin
Migraine do its magic
after I got home. (I also lie down for a half hour on Sundays I don't
have the headaches for other
reasons.) But the half hour
rest made us late for the reservation, and as a result we had to pay
to park instead of driving around the block several times looking for free parking on the street like I usually do. This is the kind
of thing that can nearly ruin a night out for me. I drive old cars so
I can park on the street and not have to pay or worry about the car
getting hit, bumped, or
dinged. But on this
afternoon, there was my 2002 Sable being dropped off at a parking lot
with an attendant that would later ask for $28
for us to get it back.
Bummer.
The
most striking thing about the restaurant when we walked in was a
large mural with black and white photographs of people that I did not
recognize. Not one. We figured the pictures must be of French people,
given this was a French restaurant (although the owner was Japanese).
At that point I started lamenting my educational gaps, which
apparently included nothing on the French.
(I also have a big Shakespeare gap as well and know next to nothing
about his plays.) The only
Frenchman I could remember was Yannick
Noah, the tennis player (not on the wall) and Alexis
de Tocqueville (also not on the wall I don't think) who turns up
frequently because of Democracy
in America, which I like to
quote from although I have never read it because it is a really big
book.
After
I prayed to thank God for the
meal—I usually pray when we are out in public places although I try
to do it discreetly, unlike my mother's second husband who would
stand and lift his hands in the air in a restaurant while I crawled
under the table—we ate a
nice brunch with good food and great
service.
We then asked about the pictures on the wall. A
server brought us the laminated print of the mural with the names of
the people. I did not recognize most of them even with the names. I
had only heard
of Joan of Arc, and then I found two
names that I did recognize: Jean-Paul
Sartre and Michel
Foucault, two of the preeminent philosophers of the twentieth
century. Both of them were
atheists. And it was a little later, while waiting for
the Blue Man Group show
to start, that I realized another ironic moment had occurred with the
French: We prayed together in a French restaurant on my birthday
while Sartre and Foucault looked on, certain that they would not have
approved of such a thing.