Eviangate

In 2006, my mom and cousin visited me while I was living and working in Paris, France.

While my cousin had been abroad before, it was my mom’s first time out of the United States, well, not counting Victoria in BC, Canada. But that doesn’t really count when you’re from western Washington, two hours from the border, and didn’t need a passport to cross.

It wasn’t hard to find my mom and cousin at the Paris airport. They stood out like big American beacons. Both had the bushy, naturally curly hair passed down for generations, my mom’s reddish-gray. I walked up and saw they had come prepared, with ginormous American duffle bags, sans wheels, and huge suitcases filled to the brim.

For a one-week trip.

In my tiny, Paris studio apartment.

Sigh.

I got a cart, loaded their bags, and listened to my mom prattle on about the flight and how she desperately needed a cigarette pronto before she went ballistic on someone. As soon as we were outside, she lit up and began to rant about how airport security had the gall to take her enormous can of hairspray.

You see, my Mom was a child of the ’60s.

That meant she still wore a large bouffant on top of her head and needed half a can of hairspray to keep it in place. Growing up, my brother and I needed full-on WWII gas masks to be anywhere near the bathroom when she decided to set her hair for the day.

She was the poster child for helmet hair and needed her daily dose of hairspray as much as she needed her Diet Pepsi and a cigarette every morning. It was therefore a national travesty to have her hairspray taken away.

Think Princess Vespa in Spaceballs: “And I can’t live without it!”

So, of course, we had to find her some hairspray. But I told her we’d do it after we got to our destination.

The plan was to drive from Paris to Normandy right away, to go see the iconic Mont St. Michel, the abbey resting upon a lone island in the French-English Channel.

I squeezed my mom and cousin into the tiny, gray Peugeot, along with their ginormous American-sized baggage, and we set off for Normandy. A four-hour drive quickly turned into six as we missed roads and signs and spent at least thirty minutes circling every French village roundabout, trying desperately to figure out what route to take.

But we finally arrived at our hotel near Mont St. Michel and checked in. My mom and cousin had jet lag, so we immediately crashed.

The next morning, my mom hopped out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, excited to be in France and ready to start her day. While dressing, she said, “I’m gonna hit that li’l grocery store across the street for Diet Pepsi and hairspray.”

I said, “I think they only have Coke Zero in France.”

Her blue eyes narrowed. “What?”

I shrugged. “Welcome to international travel, Mom. You take what they have.”

She grumbled and headed off to the store.

I went down to grab the yummy, free chocolate croissants the hotel offered as part of the included breakfast. After eating, I went back to our room to see if they were ready to visit the abbey.

But as I turned the door handle and opened the hotel door, the first thing I saw was my cousin on her bed looking very worried and grave. Her eyes snapped to mine, and she gave me a sharp shake of her head, running a finger across her neck.

My eyes widened.

I pushed the door open a little further to see inside.

My mom had opened the French window and was smoking a cigarette, with spring trees and chirping birds behind her. It was a tranquil scene, except for one thing: my angry, smoking mom.

And I don’t mean normal smoking, those leisurely puffs while enjoying the French countryside.

Oh no.

I mean fury smoking.

Rage smoking.

My mom was sucking in quick, fast pulls and exhaling hard. She cleared one cigarette in a few drags and lit another. And another. And…

She was sopping wet.

Water dripped down her face, hair, and neck.

It was clear she had tried to style her hair into that huge ’60s bouffant, and then it had somehow gotten drenched.

She looked like a drowned rat, that was chain-smoking, angry.

I slowly asked, “Uh, okay, what happened here?”

My mom pointed with an angry stab toward a can on the hotel room desk. She snapped, “I don’t know what that is. I found it in the shampoo aisle. But it’s NOT hairspray.”

I walked over and picked up the can, to read the label.

And laughed.

I mean, really laughed. It was one of those bend-over, holding-your-stomach, gut-killing cackles of mirth. The kind of laugh the angry person doesn’t appreciate one little bit.

My mom glowered. “Well!? What is it?”

To be fair, my mom had chosen a can that did look like hairspray, at least at first glance. The French love their summer vacations on the beaches in the south of France, where they bake for hours in the sun and then need ways to cool off. So, only the French would keep something like this in the shampoo aisle.

I pointed to the big red letters on the can, snickering. “Seriously, Mom. You’ve never heard of this brand before?”

She looked from it to me and back. Her blue eyes crinkled in confusion, and she shook her head.

My eyebrows raised. “Really? Never?” 

It was true that we were from the rural countryside in the USA, so maybe she hadn’t ever seen it.

Now that the imminent danger of death had died down, my cousin came cautiously forward to read the can. She put a hand over her mouth and giggled.

The can had big red letters that said: EVIAN. 

Precisely, it said Brumisateur Evian. Roughly translated: Evian Mist; a mineral spray meant to be lightly misted over the body to cool off in the summer. 

It’s most certainly not meant to set a bouffant. And my mom had just doused herself with it.

This family event is now known as Eviangate.