So in May of 1999, I set out to spend the month with a somewhat distant relative I had not laid eyes on since his last trip the U.S. a decade ago. He was just as you’d picture an elderly Frenchman—plaid khaki cap with a sport coat over his red sweater vest—a near doppelganger for Maurice Chevalier from Gigi (and any other film from that era that called for a Frenchman). His bright white hair, jolly grin, and round, rosy cheeks reminded me of what Santa Claus might look like after a good shave. He’d retired several years before from a long career in international sales for Moet et Chandon, and continued to live just a block or two up the cobbled street from his former place of employment.
Along with my great-uncle's advanced age came all the delicious gastronomic traditions of France—before globalization ever interfered with what or how they ate. Each day was long, but leisurely, and followed a distinct schedule that revolved around food. Long—in the sense that he had me up in the morning no later than 8 and sent me to bed at night no earlier than 11—but leisurely, in the sense that the only justification for so many waking hours was to make time for all the eating. Breakfast was always fresh bread, real butter, and coffee, while lunch was a 2-hour affair, beginning at 1:30 and incorporating a rotating menu of courses served atop a river of red table wine and conversation: the vinegar- or mayonnaise-based salad fed into a meat course, then meandered into a cheese plate, and then trickled into tiny shot of espresso and a square of dark chocolate. The mid-day feast was followed by a nap (which he referred to as “une petite sieste”), from which one would wake just in time to pre-game for dinner with a glass of port wine and a handful of cashews. Dinner was always simple—sliced ham and green salad seemed to be a go-to at his house—but add in more wine, conversation, and “dessert” cheese--and I was face-first into my pillow at bedtime.
For a 20-year-old semi-vegetarian who’d given up bread and starch of all kinds to balance out all the Coors Light I was drinking—the constant flow of fantastic food alone was a life-changing event. And the cheese? It was reason to contemplate the meaning of my existence. My great-uncle also introduced me to a string of relatives—his kids, their kids, their significant others—all odd aesthetic combinations of my American aunts and uncles, like walking proof that every U.S. native’s DNA is strolling about in the alternate universe of wherever their family was originally from. I spoke more French in a month than I ever would again and was overwhelmed by the hospitality of these relatives who hardly knew me. Add to that an incredible road trip in a south-westerly diagonal across the country to see a series of castles built along the Loire River, anywhere from 300 to 1000 years ago—and I was sold on coming back for a semester. If people in their 70s were having this much fun, I couldn’t wait to figure out what all the 20-somethings were up to. I flew home and worked 2 jobs my junior year (begging additional money from federal loans and my own younger sister) to save up for my return.
The small southern U.S. town I’d grown up in had a huge university right in the middle of it—which had a way of tricking me and its other residents into feeling much more worldly than our circumstances allowed. Some had deluded themselves to the point of referring to it as “Paris of the Piedmont”. While both are places are lovely in their own way—Paris could take a crap the size of my hometown and if it ever did, they’d find a way to make it the most gorgeous pile of excrement the world has ever seen.
When I chose to study abroad in Paris, it was an effort to embrace the fact that I’d never lived in a true “city” before and I felt like it was necessary to the cause of removing me completely from any semblance of a comfort zone. Until my older sister went to college my sophomore year in high school, I’d really never tried to do anything without following her trail of bread crumbs. After making that realization, my late teens and 20s became all about taking my own route. I was tentative, indecisive, and lacking in both confidence and direction—but I’d be damned if that would always be the case. Paris was not among the cities offered by the study abroad programs at my own university—so I temporarily enrolled in another college with an established program there. I left all of my friends and family behind for a place I knew next to nothing about, with a group of Americans I’d never met.
What ensued upon my arrival was no technicolor musical with pirouettes from the light posts or Broadway-style numbers about crepes and the Champs Elysees. I’m sure September in Paris is gorgeous—but I don’t know if I even saw it in the blur of disorientation. By the time I looked up, it was October and the sky began leaking continuously with a near-constant rain, alternating between mist and deluge—all day, almost every day. By the time the flood gates opened, my American counterparts and I had learned to descend into the bowels of the city with the rest of the population and cover every inch we could underground. Coming from a part of the U.S. where public transportation systems ranged from non-existent to unimpressive, I had never had access to anything like the Paris Metro. And I loved it. Sure, it was so crowded at times you felt like the pressure from human beings on all sides was enough to suspend your whole body in mid-air (mental imagery courtesy of my classmate, Seraphim). But in non-rush hour times? It was glorious to me. Look at your map, find your end point and the train will take you right to whatever you want to see. There’s no “getting lost” when you have unlimited monthly trips on your Carte Orange and can just get back on the train if you miss your stop. Not to mention that the family I was staying with was the very last stop on the Line 3. In the morning, you’re the first one on and at the end of the day, you can just mentally check out until they boot you off the train car. I may be 80 years old before they ever put in the light rail system they’ve been fighting for back home—but I promise. I will ride that thing everywhere, cane in hand, in my orthopedic shoes, like I’m 20 all over again.
I’ve heard people describe Paris as a “rude” city. But it’s not. It’s just a city. A huge, ancient, international city. You may be awestruck by its splendor—but it has seen your kind before. You can hardly blame it for not being overly impressed with you. They will, however, speak English to you. All day. In a manner much more polished and conversant than your French will ever be. In fact, they seemed, in my experience, to prefer speaking English in certain situations—so long as you attempted to break the ice with the total sh&* show your attempts at French were. Once they acknowledged your willingness to make the effort, they’d switch over—as if to say, “Thanks for playing, now let me help us speed this transaction along”. I’d built up my spoken French skills to include an arsenal of phrases and expressions that could get me through any basic conversation with practiced responses and questions for those common exchanges. But you never realize how inadequate your foreign language skills are until you try to function under pressure in situations you never imagined speaking French in. How do I tell you in grams how much celery salad I want from your deli counter? Once you know, you know. But in those panicked moments when there’s a line snaking out the door behind you, you thank God for the mercy of the counter clerk who was willing to break it down for you in English. And I encountered more than a handful of those people. The simple segue-way “Excusez-moi de vous derangez, mais…” (I’m sorry to bother you, but…) that our program instructors taught us to use during orientation opened as many conversational doors on a Paris street corner as the same words in English could be expected to in any small BFE American town.
A small U.S. town has its typical rainbow of diversity, of course. But Paris—like NYC, Boston, Chicago, or any big western city—is a true kaleidoscope of colors, creeds, and nationalities. Brits, Algerians, Mexicans, Swedes, Tunisians, Tahitians, Vietnamese--from rotating gyro meat in what seemed like every other restaurant window to the first pho I’d ever tasted, to the North African market, and the vaguely middle eastern man selling chestnuts from the roaster he’d constructed from a shopping cart in Luxembourg Gardens—you got the feeling there was no kinda person this city hadn’t seen. Oddly enough, I found Paris to be a strangely nurturing place in a tough-love sort of way. It wasn’t going to hold your hand about it—but if you had a mini-metro map and a paid-up Orange Card, a microcosm of the world was literally at your feet. Paris almost smothers you with sight and sound and smell and experience. It’s difficult not to grow as a person in that environment. If Paris seems aloof, it’s just because it wants you to do the seeking and searching for yourself.
And whoever said Paris was “dirty” was either visiting during the Bubonic Plague Era or had the misfortune to arrive during a sanitation strike of some sort (because LORD, do the French like to strike). I could not get through a day without being showered by ancillary spray from the mammoth street-cleaning trucks that patrolled each and every avenue. Paris was practically OCD in its efforts to make things pretty—from the carefully manicured public gardens to impressively immaculate squares. Even The Catacombs—basically, a sewer-level dumping ground for corpses dug up from city cemeteries to make room for more—is an intricately arranged collection of bones, sorted into types with surgical precision—femurs here, skulls there—and displayed in the most aesthetically-pleasing configurations they could devise. Sure, there were…smells…in the city at times. For instance, I could almost count the steps until the hot blast of stale urine and feces overtook me in one particular metro station I frequented on my daily commute. But come on. Underground mass transit without the smell of human waste is like water without “wet”, anywhere in the world. The general disregard for the management of dog poop by their respective owners was a giant oxymoron for a place that seemed to trim its hedges with fingernail clippers. But otherwise—Paris was almost too tidy in its perfection. I remember longing at one point during my semester abroad for the haphazard, untamed, North Carolina country-side, with its crab-grass, ticks, and beggars’ lice—but looking back, I’m sure that was just the home-sickness talking.
Paris may be a fashion hub for anyone that cares about that--but anyone who knew me in college would tell you that 90% of that was lost on me. Nonetheless, I did find myself swayed by the no-fuss-more-function aspects of the fall Paris uniform that I wound up adopting. The dark colors—because no one can tell if you’re soaked to the knee when you’re wearing black pants. The knee-high boots with a sensible heel—because no one needs to break an ankle trying to be cute and--although your feet will still be wet by the end of the day, boots can run a decent defense against full-on trench foot. And the scarf. Oh God, the scarf. Heaven forbid the temperature drops below 70 and you’re caught without one--because I believe it’s written into local lore that you will immediately deflate like the Wicked Witch of the East upon contact with tepid air. There were times I had to nearly choke on my own laughter at the enormity of the billowing configurations these girls—and guys, to be fair—would wrap around their necks to ward against the slightest breeze. But, for someone cold-natured like myself, it turns out that a little extra something on the neck and chest goes a long way—especially when it’s not quite chilly enough to want to deal with toting more extensive outerwear through the city. To this day, you may see me with a scarf and no jacket when it’s 60 degrees. But don’t knock it til you try it. That habit is one to die hard.
By the end of the semester, a few of us had made friends with actual locals who then took us to the more interesting places that would not have automatically occurred to us in an era before smart phones. One night in early December with just a few weeks left in the city, we followed one of these new friends to a Metro stop I’d never used: Oberkampf. It was already night, so there was a lot I couldn’t see—but the vibe of the area was electric, eclectic, and young. Fun bars and cafes spilled out on to the street and a series of lights were strung overhead between the buildings to usher in the holiday season—but also as if to say, “This is our neighborhood and this is our Main Street”. It was cozier and less fancy than the places the tourists visit—and I knew immediately that this was a place I wanted to come back to.
When I finally did, I was almost 10 years older and a wife of 3 years. Ray and I were on the tail-end of a trip to Europe that covered 4 major cities in 2 weeks, in celebration of paying off my college debt—and in preparation for the fact that kids (who don’t travel well) were the next step in the 5-year plan. We stayed in a small hotel a few stops over from Oberkampf. After taking Ray on a speed-dating-style tour of all the big touristy things (Eiffel Tour, Arc de Triomphe, etc), I was eager to return to the Oberkampf area—and it did not disappoint. We had a kick-ass steak and a carafe of red wine in the middle of the day at a basic brasserie on the corner—the kind of place that sells coffee, cigarettes, magazines, stamps, and phone cards—but somehow still serves amazing food with a real cloth napkin beside it. We then ventured across the street to UFO, a dive-y bar and music venue serving pints of beer for Happy Hour—which was a happy accident indeed for my thoroughly American husband, since I’d never known any bar in Paris to serve a beer in anything larger than a mini-beer chalice. We were the sole speakers of English in the place all night, but still felt right at home. Everything--from the vibe inside to the posters on the wall--was so much like places we went to see bands play all the time in the U.S. We had so much fun, that Ray actually worked up the nerve to order a round in French, using carefully rehearsed phrasing—but by that point, all Ray had to do was approach the bar for the bartenders to automatically produce the “deux pintes” we’d been drinking since before the sun went down. We stayed so late that we tried to take the wrong train and almost missed the last Metro back to our hotel. It was only a few streets over, but might as well have been 20 miles away for 2 out-of-towners who’d been drinking since lunch.
I’d suspected all along that Ray hadn’t been particularly looking forward to the Paris leg of the trip. Before this, he’d thought of Paris as many other people probably have—like a prissy little pain-in-the-ass with a yappy tea-cup poodle in her Louis Vuiton bag, who doesn’t drink beer and whose daddy calls her princess. But as long as I’d known him, we’d always liked the same things about cities—the grit and substance, the creative energy, the music and movement, the autonomous togetherness. I knew he’d like Paris when he saw it. And it was truly gratifying when he did. I couldn’t care less about the monuments or the tourist traps. It's the life and breath and beating heart of it that makes you love it in spite of yourself—even when it rains every day, and even when it’s ugly.
The bar we loved was not far from Bataclan, where extremists recently unleashed a type of ugliness that no city deserves. I’m so deeply sad for the innocent people who died and for the families who lost them, but also for whatever circumstances make mass murder and suicide bombs seem like the best way to a better existence. They say Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, once saved the city by deterring the attack of Atila the Hun with the power of her prayers. If only we had known to been so vigilant.
On a particularly cold and rainy day toward the end of my semester, I was down to my last bit of cash after losing my ATM card on the Metro. My beloved boots--over-worked from 4 months of stomping around on what seemed like the hardest sidewalks in the world—had each developed deep, open gashes in the soles, right where the ball of the foot meets the arch, so that every step sucked rain water and sludge into the floor of the boot. I felt like the Titanic, with the string quartet somberly playing while they slid across the deck of a ship that was gradually becoming perpendicular to the ocean. I remember saying out loud, “Paris has broken everything I own, including my sanity,”—and it was true. It was time to go home. Its work with me was done for now. Being there had made me want to grow up—and did more in those 4 months to further that cause than any single experience in my entire life. It gave me a full semester of stories that might as well begin with my own twist on Michelle Flaherty’s recurring line from American Pie, “This one time, at France Camp…” because no one in my current life was there to see any of it go down. I am so grateful to that city and I look forward to the day I can make more memories there.
Sanity—along with hearts, families, trust, and faith--can probably be counted among the broken parts of Paris right now. But for a place that made art out of entombment with The Catacombs, making beauty out of barbarism is not so tall an order. It is after all The City of Light.
Laissez-la briller. N’importe quoi. Laissez-la briller.
Let it shine. No matter what. Let it shine.
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