Getting your baby a carte d’identité the hard way
May 14th, 2009 | Published in Comment, Features, Info & Advice
Cours Berriat in the good ol' days, when it was very easy to get your baby's picture taken
For now my daughter is uniquely a French citizen. British citizenship – and hand-cramp inducing paperwork that involves – will have to come later, preferably with me excused from block capital inscribing duties, since it seems I have long forgotten how to use a pen. As my wife and I were planning to take our daughter to the UK for a holiday this summer (OK, it’s not so much a summer, but the notionally warmer period that sometimes takes place, probably for around two weeks, between July and August). we have set ourselves up for the administrative rigmarole of applying for her carte d’identité in a relative hurry. Easier than getting a passport, the bureaucratic requirements didn’t seem so exigent on paper, but necessitated the usual documentative suspects that have become a regular feature of my administrative life in France: both the mother’s and baby’s copie integrale de l’acte de naissance *; photos taken by officially designated photographer; and a recent bill as proof of address.
It all seemed so suspiciously easy, but alarm bells started to ring when our casual enquiry about where such photographs should be taken was met by a bureaucratic stonewalling: would the town hall give us some tips where the official photo should be taken? No, of course they wouldn’t. Fools us for having the gall to ask. Apparently photomaton booths no longer exist, and in the digital era only photos numériques suffice these days for such purposes, despite the ease with which they can be manipulated. No matter: a five week old baby girl could hardly operate a photo booth anyway, considering how much trouble they can give certain 31 year old men (ahem).
Without enormous difficulty we located an appropriate place of business, at the somewhat dingy and conspicuously non-air-conditioned K’Store on Cours Bérriat. When we arrived we were surprised to find only a small photo developing counter in the middle of the mall where a young woman both serves customers and develops the photos herself (I am developing a totally unscientific theory that the much-fabled French productivity may be the result of sacrificing service, or at least combining service into a job which would perhaps be done in another country by a separate person – not unlike those bossy owner-waiters in restaurants who seem so displeased to see you). To be fair, the woman was making the best of a difficult juggling act: it was surprising how much business this little photo lab was doing at half past three on a Tuesday afternoon.
However, there was one major spanner in the works. For a carte d’identité, the baby’s eyes must be open, which seems ridiculous given that her eye colour is bound to change in the coming months, not to mention the fact that her entire appearance is transforming with every passing moment. Furthermore, my daughter has a curious defence mechanism when in the company of strangers, and that is to retreat completely into herself like a hedgehog, either feigning or genuinely falling into a deep and unshakeable sleep. Normally this is a blessing – we have even managed to take her to a restaurant and she has slept peacefully and angelically without interruption, attracting appreciative glances from other diners (yes, that’s right! It’s only been five weeks and we’ve already nailed this parenthood business!). On this prematurely sticky May day, however, the blessing became a curse. We tried to wake our daughter up but she wasn’t having any of it, despite us employing our full arsenal of tickles and noisy toys.
All this was taking place with increasing desperation as I had to periodically run out to the street to top up the parking metre and the photo shop lady, camera tripod at the ready, had to attend to customers. During a small window of open-eyed opportunity, she managed to take a couple of shots, but these proved too blurry given that we were doing our utmost to jolt some life into our daughter at the time. Stubbornly, she fell back to sleep with a swiftness that might lead you to suspect that she was toying with us. Another sweaty dash to the parking metre later and we intensified our efforts to rouse her in full view of bemused onlookers, starting to feel oddly abusive to this ostensibly peaceful little baby, knowing full well that she would choose to ‘release the tension of the day’ as soon as we set foot in our apartment.
Finally we were reduced to undressing her to just her body suit, and after a generous amount of begging and bouncing she awoke with a startle and promptly vomited over herself. As any parent knows, a baby being sick is no exceptional occurrence, but the next few moments were tense as we tried to position my daughter decently in the camera’s line of sight, her mouth working languidly as if ready to be sick again. (Once, in her first couple of weeks, she vomited so spectacularly it was like the detonation of a milk-filled grenade. One moment my wife was cradling her, the next moment both mother and baby were covered in regurgitated milk. It was a like a scene from Ghostbusters: She slimed me!).
The photo, taken seconds later, managed to transform my once beautiful baby into a slavering Shrek-like creature; or more precisely Phil Mitchell from Eastenders. Not a big deal until you realise that this will be her identity card photo for the next ten years. On the other hand, the application is yet to be approved – which is touch and go considering the fact that she appears nearly diagonally in the photo, and is meant to be completely upright – we could have to do it all over again!
*Copie integrale de l’acte de naissance is a copy of the official birth registry that can be obtained from the Hôtel de Ville or Mairie of your home town. This is only required for the carte d’indentité application when one parent is a foreign national.
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