April 2019: Perspective
Last month Emily and I went to Paris. It had been twenty years since Emily had left the country, and neither of us had ever been. The steady drumbeat of adulthood always told us there’s no time, there’s not enough money - travel was something for vision boards, not for us. Our vacations could be road trips, family visits. Modest, enough. How much we convinced ourselves that enough is enough! Last November I started looking at tickets - where do we want to go? What can we afford? Which is how I found cheap tickets for a week in Paris, and a sweet little AirBnB apartment filled with books and art. We can do this, I said. Let’s say yes.
So it was that two weeks ago, after the airports and the connecting flights and the dashing through terminals with our suitcases bumping behind us, after wrestling with the French train ticket system, one commuter train, the Metro, we came up one of the escalators to Rue Saint-Antoine on Saturday morning. As we ascended, I craned my neck to see the sky, then the crowns of the old buildings, the bustle of people, the locals sitting at outdoor cafes with their dirty espresso cups and their cigarettes, the song of a foreign language, and I laughed. We exited the Metro and we paused on the side of the street and looked at one another and laughed.
We had done it. We were in Paris.
Travel is something that humbles me, something I do not want to take for granted - mobility, access, change, privilege, arrival, departure. A destination and a home to return to. Since coming home, I have softened towards tourists, the ones who clump by the subway stairs at Bryant Park when I am racing to work. I have come to look at the city with some tenderness. Yesterday we drove over the Manhattan Bridge and it was as if I’d just noticed the grand arch that greeted travelers arriving in Manhattan. We talk a lot about leaving New York, which then blinds me to the truth of the city where we have made our home. Last weekend our friends came over and filled our home with chatter and fresh fruit, children playing with toys on the floor, big belly laughter. We had a box of chocolates from Paris on the kitchen table and tried to figure out which one was which filling, but all we could taste was rich ganache. Our trip to Paris has given the things I usually take for granted a little more shimmer. Time to read on the subway. Our own book filled apartment. The neighborhood coffeeshop that always has an empty table to sit at if you go early enough.
When we were there, a writer friend wrote to me on Instagram to say that she and her partner were also in Paris. So it was that we met at a pastry shop tucked onto Rue du Rosiers and had coffee and cookies and talked about Paris, and the places we call home, and eventually, writing. How’s your book, she asked kindly, because it is a question people ask kindly, with curiosity, with warmth. I want to tell them that it exists, that I’m writing slowly, that I’m writing with the faith that all of this will form a book, that I can see its outline, that sometimes the idea of what I’m writing matches up to the idea of what’s saved in drafts and documents and outlines and notebooks. It’s going, I say, I always say, a present tense verb. The index card above my desk: do the work, keep the faith. I’ve carried the warmth and perspective of our trip back home, to my desk, to the work, to the faith.
xoxo,
c