21 Steps To Happiness

Success will bring more success.

Step #21:

Bonus Material!: Always remember, only love can bring happiness.

Step #1:

Never be ashamed of who you are.

“You’re on the next flight, leaving at 5:40, Miss Blanchett.”

Listen to her French accent! It’s so…

“I can check in your luggage straight away.”

“That would be just fine,” I say with a suddenly posh voice.

I make a mental note: easy on the posh voice.

I pass her my bag. She frowns. Okay, it’s not one of those fancy Frenchy-looking kind she expected from someone like me. It’s more like a little Adidas job I used to take to yoga. And yes, it looks horrible, like an old sheep stomach stuffed with clothes and underwear. But darling, you should take a look at the rest of my life.

I have no time for futilities such as traveling wear anymore. I’m so desperately busy right now!

I am a businesswoman.

Going to Paris!

“You may wait in the Premiere Lounge and I’ll place a call for your boarding,” she says extra gently as she points at some sort of classy hotel-reception area behind her. “And…Miss Blanchett?”

“Yes.”

“I love your mother’s work.”

“Sure, thanks,” I say, stepping cautiously into the lounge with the feeling that I’m entering a sacred place.

Hello? I mean, Bonjour?

L’Espace Première is a magnificent lobby full of aging golden boys playing with their cell phones and computers, reading French newspapers while drinking scotch on the rocks under appropriately dimmed lights.

I make another mental note: Lynn, you must get used to these swanky places. Because, right now, I feel as comfortable as a monkey sitting on a rocket.

Oh!

A waitress brushes past me and places a basket of pastries on the buffet table. I move closer. I’m guessing they were baked in Paris this morning and flown to JFK.

“Are they from Paris?” I ask.

Silence.

“The croissants?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “They deliver them by truck. We heat them up in the microwave. I’m new here, anyway.”

“Thank you.” I grab one of those ridiculously tiny plates and fight a natural instinct to beat the cake-eating record, which is actually held by a Japanese woman, or so I’ve seen on the Discovery Channel.

Since Jodie asked me to behave like a young lady of the world, I put the tiniest of all the croissants on my plate, ignore the tray of éclairs, and find a seat next to an elegant woman.

She is all I would like to be. Startlingly beautiful. Confident. At home in such surroundings.

She is much older than me, about Jodie’s age, somewhere in her comfortable forties. She’s sipping tea while browsing through a magazine. She looks so calm, so perfect, so…erudite. She drops her reading, looks up and smiles at me. I smile back with my mouth full, shrug and struggle to eat as elegantly as a bird.

“They’re lovely croissants, aren’t they?” she says suddenly.

“Oh, yes, lovely!” Some crumbs come flying out of my mouth and land on George W. Bush’s face on the cover of her magazine.

She brushes them off gracefully. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I think we can board our flight. You’re going to Paris, aren’t you?”

I swallow a mouthful and say, “Well, yes, I’m flying to Paris!” As if it was the most obvious thing to do.

“I thought so.” She stands and gives me her hand. “Roxanne Green. Nice to meet you.”

Roxanne? What a cool name.

“Lynn,” I say briefly, controlling a survival impulse to say, That’s Lynn Blanchett, yeah, that’s right, the daughter of super-famous Jodie Blanchett, so who’s the most glamorous one now?

“Lynn? Mmm! Nice to meet you, then.” She gives me a condescending smile. “Our gate is this way,” she says and darts away immediately.

Oh! Should I…

She stops. “Are you coming?”

Yes, yes! I abandon my croissant to catch up with her.

“First visit to Paris?”

Apparently it’s tattooed on my forehead.

“Oh, no! I go often,” I lie. “What about you?”

“Not as often as I’d like to,” she says, but every single Air France attendant is, like, hello, Miss Green, how are you, Miss Green, how nice to see you again, seat 1A as usual, the Chablis is already in the chiller, ha ha ha, have a nice flight.

“What brings you to Paris so often, Lynn? Studying at the Sorbonne?”

Studying!

“Oh, no, no, work mostly.”

“Really? Working? What is it that you do, then?”