Day 220
A few years back, sometime after Tim died, I decided that I was going to live in Paris for a few months.
I prepared by taking a French class … where, sadly, the only thing I truly remember is the professor calling me Marie Claire. Since that is NOT my name, I never responded to her talking to me. Instead I sat like a complete dolt until she rapped on my desk with her extremely long pointer-thingy – making me feel like a complete and utter fool. The class lasted six weeks … about as long as my patience … and in the end I had an amazing grasp of almost nothing of the French language … except for my mastery (complete with proper lilting) of … bon jour.
I figured I could get by with that. All I ever had to do was smile, say hello to everyone, and eat and drink and walk my way through Paris. Life would be better. And I’d write a book … Breathing Different Air … kind of a how to keep breathing when your world turns upside-down book.
Well, my world did turn upside-down because the market crashed and the investments I was counting on to carry me through long days of sitting outside Notre Dame and walking the Champs-Élysées and having coffee and a croissant at some small outdoor cafe while studying the extraordinary facade of the opera house were gone.
So, no Paris for me. Au revior.
Pity. I had already purchased enough books and maps to open my own Parisian bookstore.
The last few days the movie Julie and Julia has been on television. I’ve watched bits and pieces of it on and off over the course of its air time. I love the rhythm of the French scenes. The music that wafts from the open windows during parties make me sad I was not invited. The food scenes almost make me delirious … I want to sop up whatever they are eating with the magnificent hunks of crusty bread they are heartily chewing. And everything is carefully wrapped or braised or laced or slathered with butter. I want to be with them.
Over the weekend I’d be doing other things and I’d find myself standing, mail or dog bowl in hand, poised mid-air, transfixed by the movie scene before me … the foods, the cadence of speech, the scenery. It is all so lyrical and it is not just the language that flows – it is life. And unlike other languages it is not harsh or ugly … it is just so beautiful. I’m probably lucky I do not have a French person as a friend because they’d be talking and I’d be crying at the sheer beauty of their words. (And it wouldn’t matter what they were saying because I wouldn’t understand them anyway!)
In any case … I’m homesick. I’m homesick for a place I’ve never lived. I’m homesick for a life I’ve never lived. And as odd as that seems to me … it also makes perfect sense.
I spent two days in a city that somehow seeped into my soul and made me fall in love with it – like no other place on earth.
Someday I will return “home” … but in the meantime I’ll keep studying my books and master the art of (eating) French cuisine. Pass me the butter.