It’s July, and I still haven’t written about Paris. The time just isn’t there. So many things to write and say each day, instead every night I fall down exhausted. But you still talk about it, ask about it – Mama, can we go back to Paris again? When?
We are wasting our lives not living in Paris. It’s a simple fact. Every window display is like a work of art – each one thoughtfully laid out and gorgeous. The bread shop, the cheese shop, the cake shop, the butcher. One after another, on each little street. The oysters lie in buckets on a bed of kelp. The fish are arranged in action poses, surrounded by palm fronds and blue glass. We happened on a farmers market, one stall sold nothing but mustards. Another, only honeys and beeswax candles.
And the streets intersect in radials, so there is a cafe on each corner all facing one another in a hexagon, with small tables and neon and colorful awnings, all full of people drinking and smoking and talking, in French. The din is like music.
And that’s just walking down the street, before you’ve actually gone anywhere. It’s completely intoxicating.
Even the restaurants where you will eat (pizza, pancakes) have impressive espresso machines. The people strike up conversations with you on the street. They want to tell you things. Mais, je ne parle pas francais. Un peut, un peut. Je suis désolé. Completely. Desolated.
The cloudy cold rain can’t make it less appealing. You are eating your way through it, but only pizza (so many pizzas) and cookies and cakes. The strawberry madaleines are a favorite, and the vanilla ice cream served with crumbled cookie. I’m doing alright myself, baguettes and cheese and rose.
We watch French tv in the hotel, open the little window and look out at the empty fancy restaurant below, gaze up at the world map painted on the hotel ceiling in black and gold. The neighborhood is the 14th, and we can walk to Luxembourg Gardens, which we do a few times so that you can play on the playground with other kids. Nine days alone with a middle-aged lady trying to navigate cities and buses and museums is a lot, I get it. At the playground, you run around for hours. The children talk to you and you just say, “I’m from Austin.” It seemed to solve everything. We watched the kids sail little wooden boats in the pond, each with a flag for a different country. There are so many other parents in the neighborhood, and toy stores and little Parisian baby clothes shops. On the first Day, we went into a candy store, and the owner took your picture drinking Harry Potter butter beer in your duck raincoat. We were headed to the catacombs to see all the human skeletons stacked in beautiful, surreal walls. The lines are long, she said. True. Even in the cold rain.
The Eiffel Tower day, you amazed me with your fearlessness, you made fun of me for not wanting to go too close to the edge. We played in the park after, and stared down at the houseboats on the Seine. You brought your Eiffel tower model that we bought at a market, and you set it up in the park in front of the real one.
I’ll admit one thing, the trip was a test. Not just can we travel, but can we leave. Could we? The American cars and traffic and belligerence. I think so. If they’d have us.
Little Bug 