Paris et moi

Last night I was working as a phone volunteer for the KCRW pledge drive - support your local public radio station, people! Given that it was a Friday night, the calls were somewhat less than abundant, and the other volunteers and I were chatting between calls. Since part of the pledge drive includes enrollment in a sweepstakes for a European vacation, some of us got to talking about our own vacations, past and hoped-for, and since then I've been thinking of the rather bittersweet relationship I have with Paris.

My first trip to Paris was almost 10 years ago, January 1998. It was my honeymoon. This was an unusual extravagance at the time; I was working and finishing grad school, the husband-to-be earned a modest salary, and we had kept the wedding plans pretty much to the bare minimum. We had talked about doing a very simple honeymoon, a long weekend in a B+B, but one week the Sunday Times travel section had an ad for some cheap airfares to Paris, and an idea was born.

I learned a valuable lesson on that trip that I pass on to every bride-to-be I encounter. If people at your wedding are sneezing, coughing, or appear unwell in any way, save yourselves and send them away. Or, at the very least, banish them to a table far, far away from you. My new stepmother-in-law and sister-in-law had what I can only describe as Martian death flu at my wedding, and on our second day in Paris, the husband developed a raging fever and chills. The bulk of my honeymoon can be summed up in one scene: a much younger me, stumbling into a Parisian pharmacy, knowing no French whatsoever, where a kindly Parisian pharmacist deciphered my frantic miming and provided me with le Tylenol, le Advil, and le Vicks Vapo Rub. The husband didn't fully recover for a few weeks, so our first time in Paris was largely a wash.

Over 7 years later, in the fall of 2005, we had our next big vacation - London and Paris for 10 days. It was what I hoped would be the end of a particularly rough time for us, one that included over a year of trying to get pregnant, a failed in vitro fertilization cycle, and a number of sessions with a couples therapist. We both worked long hours and (I thought) looked forward to this chance to reconnect, away from work and cell phones and my doctor reminding me that my eggs weren't getting any younger. I thought that we had a reasonably good time on the trip - granted, he spent a fair amount of time in London criticizing my sightseeing choices, and he did tell our therapist the week prior to our departure that he hoped I would drink more on the trip so that I would loosen up a little (an excellent thing to tell the daughter of an alcoholic, don't you think?), but there was Paris, still insanely beautiful and romantic. It was moving, going back to the site of our disastrous honeymoon almost 8 years after the fact. I left Paris feeling that whatever problems we were having, we loved one another and therefore would work things out. 6 months later, after he had moved out, I discovered (don't ask how) that during that trip, he had all but decided that the marriage was over, that I was too needy, too helpless, not adventurous enough, whatever.

For several weeks after he moved out, I was an absolute train wreck. It took everything I had to go to work, do my job, pay the bills and feed the cats. But about 2 months into it, shortly after making the aforementioned humiliating discovery, I read an article about 'volunteer vacations'; specifically, a group that performed architectural restoration work in St. Victor la Coste, a small village outside of Provence. It took approximately 30 seconds for me to put my deposit check in the mail, and to start planning what would be my first solo vacation. To prove to myself that I wasn't the helpless creature my ex made me out to be, I bookended my time with the restoration group with solo outings; first, a long weekend in Barcelona, and to finish the trip, a day in Paris.

By the time I went on vacation, over 5 months had elapsed since the breakup, and our paperwork was already in the hands of lawyers. I had an amazing time on that vacation, with the group and on my solo outings. Thanks to my time there, I now know how to mix mortar and build a stone wall, and that I love pastis. But what I'm focused on now is that last day.

I had taken the train up from Avignon, and then a taxi to the hotel to drop my bags off and change. Then I found my way to the Metro and crammed in as much as I possibly could - some new things ( the D'Orsay), and some repeats from my prior trips (the Picasso Museum and a hot chocolate at Angeline's, down the street from the Louvre).

What I remember most from that night, however, is this:

After my hot chocolate, I made my way down the rue de Rivoli, intending to walk past the place de la Concorde and down the Champs Elysees. I hadn't gone very far when it grew colder and started to rain. In my hurry to get on with my day, I had left my umbrella and extra jacket at the hotel, so I bought a shawl from one of the vendors along the street, wrapped myself up, and headed to the nearest English language bookstore. A few doors down, I settled myself in a small cafe at a table next to the sidewalk, just inside the front doors that were open but shielded from the downpour by a large awning. I had purchased Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking at the bookstore, and I read it there while drinking an overpriced beer and watching the rain, and the people scurrying by, struggling with their umbrellas in the wind.

I've since loaned my copy of that book (wonderful, by the way) to my mother, so I can't quote Ms. Didion's words appropriately. But I came to a passage where she talks about feeling invisible after her husband's death, as though in losing him, she lost herself as well. I've been lonely plenty of times before and since, but I have never felt as alone as I did at that moment, and yet, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. I was in a place that I had associated with love, and dreams of a future that wasn't mine anymore. No one in my life knew where I was at that moment, and when I got on the plane the next day and flew back to LAX, no one would be at the airport waiting to welcome me home. I sat there thinking about this, trying not to cry and make a complete ass of myself. I don't know why it would be easier for me to see the truth that my marriage was over thousands of miles from home, but it was. And somehow it was okay. I had traveled through two countries perfectly well on my own, unable to speak more than a few words of the native tongue in either place. But I had found my hotels, made my train connections, ate and drank very well, and stayed out of harm's way while enjoying some of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen, places where I refuse to believe that people actually buy groceries and toilet paper and pick up their dry cleaning, because how could you possibly do that when you have distractions like the Seine, the Jardin des Tuileries, the Arc de Triomphe, and even the simplest of their apartment buildings and shops make everyday life look magical?

The rain eventually stopped, and I left that cafe, walked some more, got dinner and made my way back to the hotel. And the next day I flew home.

It's hard to say everything I feel about that trip without wallowing in cliches (those of you thinking 'too late' can just keep that thought to yourselves, thank you). But I guess what I felt the most was relief. In the year leading up to that trip, I had lost nearly everything I'd wanted for my future - my career was driving me insane, I couldn't have a baby, and now I had no husband, either. But sitting there, watching the rain and the tourists and the chain-smoking cafe patrons, I could still see the beauty of the city , feel curiosity about the inhabitants and the sites I had not yet seen, and love it all enough that I didn't need or want to be anywhere that moment except where I actually was.

I haven't yet planned my next vacation. If I move back to Boston, I plan to make a road trip of it - me, the cat and my ipod in my Honda, cutting across the South in search of good barbecue and appropriately tacky tschotkes from Graceland. I'd love to get back to Barcelona (where that last vacation started) and maybe on to Madrid, although I wouldn't mind having someone to share my tapas with the next time around (I do have someone in mind, but like everything else, there's a story there). But if time and finances allow me, I'd like to see Paris again, at all the stages of my life. I think about going back to my favorite museums, sharing a bottle of wine in a cafe on the Latin Quarter with someone, taking my kids to Angeline's for some more hot chocolate. This may sound dreamy and overly romanticized. Between trips number two and three, however, there was a time when all I wanted was to feel numb so that I'd wouldn't care so much the next time I lost something or someone. The relief that I felt that night in the cafe came about when I realized that I finally wanted to feel something again, happy, sad, or otherwise.

And that's what Paris means to me.