Paris, mon cherie

I always knew my grandmother, Grammy, was a lady, but I had not realized the depth of her elegance until I spent two days in Paris.

My mother always talked about how her parents regularly visited Paris several times a year and over several years.  Grammy and Grandpa had their regular spots to visit, and their go-to hotel, the George V, which is just south of the Arc de Triomphe, and their ongoing practice of the French language.  She recalls the number of sympathy cards that arrived from Paris when Grammy died in 1989, a detail that illuminated an “ex-pat life” her parents cultivated after their parenting years with her and her three siblings.  Evidence of a pursuit for happiness and home that extended beyond my mother’s days growing up in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

I kept Grammy top of mind while I wandered these streets and enjoyed the ferry activity of a busy Seine River.  I wondered about her time here in the 1960s – 1970s, who her friends were, if they met through the French style of discussion, or salons, or some other way.  My grandparents were champions of the art of conversation and discourse in current events, so Gertrude Stein’s birthing of the salon in Paris was right up Grammy’s alley (and my mother’s as well).  In my 39 years of living, several of them also colored by various travel and living experiences abroad, I felt as if I “got” Grammy more when I arrived here.  While Paris was new to me, I could point to a handful of destinations in my travel repertoire where it feels like a second skin, a second home.  Antigua, Guatemala.  Quito, Ecuador.  Anywhere in Costa Rica.  The San Juan mountains in Colorado.  For women like us, giving yourself fully to adventure tends to result in a special connection to a new place and its people, offering a fresh approach to relating to the world that home may not promise.  Travel is my tool for refreshing my home lens and appreciating my present.  Perspective shifts keep the cage rattled and the pulse up.  My mother always said Grammy and I shared an interest in global citizenry as an ethos for moving through the world.  Now I understood.

My hotel was the classic European style place designed for single and double travelers with its small rooms, small beds and small bathrooms.  It’s as if these rooms were emitting the message: “get out and explore the city, we are for sleeping only.”  The staff were kind and they confirmed for me that I retained almost none of my high school French, though I was delighted by the number of times I spoke and requested things in Spanish and received either a response in Spanish or the thing itself.  Cheers for romance languages and their shared lineage and cognates.

I arrived late one evening and left early two mornings later, but managed to get lost in the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay, le Jardin de Tuileries, the Trocadero and the base of the Eiffel Tower.  I ate crêpes, walked for hours, read in a café, and toasted Grammy with champagne in a local wine bar with Parisiennes’ fluttering French and cigarette smoke surrounding me.  Two days offered a fabulous sensory overload and real space to reflect and relax.  My workplace felt like someone else’s life, and learning about Cezanne’s use of oil paints or Van Gogh’s early years as a genius seemed to be the only critically important things to achieve in this snapshot of time.

The hype is real.  Paris is divine.  Grammy always did have beautiful taste.