I arrived in Vermont in the summer of ’93. I was twenty-nine years old. Though I began journaling at 18, I became a public writer in Vermont, publishing my first pieces about the state and the people who live here. Now that I’m in my sixties, I’m equally as passionate about leaving Vermont, recapturing a part of me that I gave up when I relocated to the Green Mountain State as a new wife and mother.

This April, I returned to a city that I have always loved, a city I’d visited in every season in my twenties.

From the backroads of southern VT to the city of lights, here’s hoping I can find a way to be both wordly and at home in my timber frame on a canopied back road in VT:

April in Paris

DAY 0, RED EYE
Air France gate, Boston

Did I just see a mouse run across the floor? Did I just see it again? Only the third time is in question.

~

I swear a man just sneezed in French.
Also, he is so well dressed.

~

“Mushroom” is apparently the theme for this trip. The cover of my small travel journal AND the mushroom jerky that I bought for the plane and have almost eaten in its entirety.

~

They’re almost finished loading, and there is no one in the seat beside me!

~

I swear I hear a dog barking beneath me in the cargo hold. A small dog. A high-pitched bark. I feel him.

.

DAY 1
APPROACHING CHARLES de GAULLE
AVRIL 3rd

I swear they just fed me dinner and then were waking me for breakfast minutes later.

My watch says I slept a total of an hour and 7 broken minutes.

We are landing, and it is still dark, 6 am.

There is a very long message in French from the Captain followed by a much shorter one in English. What did he leave out?

~

It is a 15-minute walk from the arrival gate to the train that goes into the city. Three sets of travelers, myself included, board the train at the same time.

I sit in the corner beside the man who in conversation I learn is from Canada, originally from Nigeria, traveling through Paris on his way to the African continent for his sixth medical mission. He is traveling with an instrument, a guitar. The other travelers, couple, sit further away from us, clearly American, as evidenced by their volume and their bling and the fact that they are already fighting. The sun isn’t even up yet. Who wants to come all the way to Paris to fight with your husband? This is why I travel alone. But she’s right, he shouldn’t have rushed her at the ticket machine and maybe she wouldn’t have left her ticket behind. Also, who books a tour on the morning of your arrival? Way to add extra stress. They were rushing to make the tour.

An announcement of some importance comes over the loud speaker on the train. None of us understand it. The lights on the map change. Suddenly our stop is next. The couple and I hop off the train, only to realize that it is not our stop after all. The couple hops back on the train just in time. I remain on the platform blinking in the rising sun, bewildered.

A woman in a leopard jacket pushing a scooter steps up beside me on the platform. I smile and ask if she speaks English.

“That’s impressive,” I say, of her pencil heels.

“These?” she says, looking down. “They’re so low.”

I bump into someone with my carry on as we board the next train.

“What do you say in French if you bump into someone?” I ask the woman. “I’ve forgotten.”

“In Paris?” she says, her dark eyebrows lifting. “You say nothing if you bump into someone in Paris. You just keep walking.”

.

DAY 2
AVRIL 4th
CAFE

Is today Friday?

Yes, today is Friday.

I’m at the café again. My second day in a row. It already feels like home.

~

Last night, my first night in Paris, the buck appeared in my dream.

“Lila,” I said aloud, speaking of my grandmother. The buck on the wall of her kitchen before the renovation has never appeared in a dream that I can recall, but it inexplicably arrives whenever I’m on the mat in open prayer pose.

~

My walk to the coffee shop:

Turn the corner at the boulangerie, walk past the butcher, cross the street at the flower shop, walk diagonally across the gated park with its birdsong & greenery & early bursts of spring color. Enter the small plaza to the roastery that looks like it could be in Brooklyn.

“Latte s’il vous plaît pour ici.”

I take my cup and find a small table outside to sip while the rising sun warms my face.

~

(Day 2, Part II.)
Place des Vosges

I can hear English coming toward me, not in the grating way I hear my English words next to French words when I forget the word for “receipt,” at my café, but simply in recognition. I can even recognize American laughter from a distance, like I heard French in the sneeze at the aeroport in Boston.

~

(Day 2, Part III.)
Mariage Frères

As I make my way to the famous tea shop, a pulsing pain begins in my right eye. I can’t remember the last time I had a stye. Is that’s what this is? It started on the sleepless flight despite the empty seat beside me, but the pulsing pain is new and sudden. What if it’s something more serious? A tumor? I am alone in a foreign country.

As I turn the corner for the tea shop, the sidewalk narrows forcing me to turn sideways as a woman approaches. She turns sideways too, and I see across her right eye, a bloody bandage.

.

DAY 3
AVRIL 5th
MATCHA CAFE

I’m cranky and dysregulated. The tempo of Paris feels too much. Or maybe it is only my anxiety about my eye. My scratchy throat. My tight chest. The air quality is poor. I need a good night sleep.

I will have to skip coffee today, but how will I bear not beginning my day sipping my Brooklyn latte in the small plaza beside the park with the bird song and the sun on my face?

~

Le Metro

In the absence of coffee, I MUST FIND MATCHA, but first a steep learning curve. The station next to my apartment does not sell metro tickets. I learn this the hard way. I see a phone in the metro. A man answers in French. The connection is poor. I attempt a conversation. He attempts to understand my French. I attempt to understand his. I ask him to repeat what he has said. We both hang up frustrated. I find a notice outside the metro of where to buy tickets. I walk through a crowded street market toward the address, but I don’t find it. I turn back to retrace my steps through the crowded market only to discover that the location does not exist. I decide to walk all the way to the matcha shop, but the street market never ends and I am in no mood for it. Is this jet lag? I turn off for a second metro stop instead. Inside this one, I find ticket machines, but I can’t figure out how to use them. I ask the attendant behind the glass. He is clearly annoyed with my attempts at French, but does not speak English. He suggests I simply use the RAPT app, which I have tried. It freezes every time I try to download a purchase. He sells me a single fare, but then I can’t figure out how to use the card to go through the automated doors. He hollers through the glass, but I don’t understand. He hollers again. I miss the train. He hollers a third time, and instead of trying to understand his pointing and hollering, I watch as someone else proceeds only to discover that the doors to access the station don’t actually open with the ticket (like they do in NYC.) Instead, I have to walk toward them for them to open.

Humiliated, I walk down the stairs to the platform, but my day with the Metro has yet to reach bottom, and it will before the day is through.

~

The Matcha café is Japanese but run by French. I was hoping for Japanese. For the stillness and quiet they bring. I don’t want sugar. Or patiserie. Or fromage. I want vegetables.

I want soup.

Blah, blah, blah.

I came to the Matcha café to write of Lila. This trip. Dreaming in French. The buck that woke me in my dream on my first night. The station des Lilas. Le Petit Prince opening at L’Atelier de Lumiere this week. A sign. My grandmother was fluent in French, helped me with my translations of Le Petit Prince in the winter before she died. I was 14. Lila was 55. She spoke of the travels we would share together. Is she here with me in Paris?

The matcha is good, better than any I found in any of last year’s travels. I ordered the deluxe which is probably a mistake given the time it took me to get here. It is already afternoon. But there is still the “Hands Off” rally at Place de la Republique with the democrats abroad organization, Paris Against Trump. I need caffeine.

It’s ok, Kelly, You’re okay.

~

After the rally, I enter the metro again. At this station, there is a friendly, patient agent behind the glass. He explains that I can load tickets onto my card and use them all week. I ask if he can load the card for me, but he says it can only be done on the RAPT app. (The fucking RAPT app!) I turn back to try the machines again. I accidentally buy multiple tickets instead of loading my card. The agent is just as friendly as he does the exchange for me. I miss the train. I wait for the next one, but when it arrives, I forget I have to press a button to open the car doors. When I do remember, it is a bit too late. The doors open for me to enter, but then immediately close on me, crushing me on both sides, my shoulders and my hips and one hand.

There is a collective intake of breath inside the train car, an audible gasp, I am meet with wide eyes of alarm in every direction.

I am embarrassed. I am in pain.

No one laughs.

I limp toward the bar and hold on with my uninjured hand.

I accidentally get off at the next stop, a stop too early. I have to wait for another train, but I am relieved to leave behind the car of compassionate Parisians.

When I exit at the correct destination, I encounter 3 RAPT officials on the platform with clipboards. I head up the stairs, but then turn back toward the uniformed women and a single man in their Paris blue pants and jackets. I explain that the app doesn’t work. One takes my phone, tries it herself. The man beside her suggests an update. I show all three that the app is new. “I just downloaded it,” I say. They look at my phone. “It’s new, too” I say. They shake their heads, suggest a different app, the one the locals use (which is only in French.)

As I exit the metro, I notice that I feel lighter, almost happy. I have complained. Someone has listened. Sometimes witness is all that is necessary to create an internal shift.

~

DAY 4
AVRIL 6
MUSEE D’ORSAY

My first time in Orsay since 1990. Feels like a family reunion. So many familiar faces, some enough to pass with a warm smile of recognition, like first cousins—pastel landscapes, dappled light on women’s breasts, tutus and cherub faces—while one or two still me in presence, deliver me to tears of devotion.

Van Gogh.

His self-portrait.

His bedroom.

Internal and external landscapes.

~

If Monet can paint Chartres multiple times, can’t I tell the story of my love for Lila from multiple perspectives in the same book?

~

It is something to once again find myself in the elusive company of the greats as I was in my twenties.

And yet, at 61, I want to ask, to shout, WHERE ARE THE WOMEN ARTISTS?!

I stop to ask a female guard. She doesn’t understand. I tell her of the exhibit in the States of Women Impressionists in Paris at the same time as the men. She shakes her head. It doesn’t exist.

If not for the language barrier, I would tell her how weary I am of men’s arts and viewpoints and histories and monuments and battles.

~
AFTER D’ORSAY
A WALK ALONG THE SEINE

I’m so disappointed in Paris, there’s a whole bunch of people working out along the Seine, and not just running, but also boxing and jumping rope and going up and downstairs. I thought this was a city of chill, of wine, of baguettes and fromage and eclairs i.e. a place of no guilt

–

Crossing the Seine on Pont de Change, a metaphor for hope.

~
I pass another church. It smells Catholic. Another institution of men.

~

There are so many tribes among us. The tribe of people with whom I cross multiple intersections, entering the auto pilot of the herd, forgetting to look myself to see if it’s safe.

There is a tribe of people in line at the coffee shop at Shakespeare & Company as we inch forward toward the caffeine we so desperately need.

There is the walking tribe and the subway tribe–those gasped for me–and the bicycle tour tribe outside the Louvre.

There is the tribe of motorcycle riders, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds at attention filling a closed avenue, cheering for a man on a distant stage, pastor/guru/cult leader.

There is the LGBTQ+ tribe meeting this weekend at the conference center with their colorful banner.

There is the tribe of café sitters that I pass, all facing the same street in the same sun and sipping the same drinks from the same bar and eating the same plates from the same chef.

There is the gluten-free tribe at the bistro across the street. Another tribe eating fried rice and fish. There is the organic tribe, shopping at the bio market.

Each of these tribes have members that intersect others.

In how many intersecting circles do each of us stand?

.

DAY 5
AVRIL 7
NEIGHBORHOOD DAY

The potato chips and especially the nuts are so much better here. But I am behind on French food. I make a list of what I need to eat on the printed page of my flight plane as I enter the second half of my stay.

~
Coffee éclair, check.

~

I like when an American expression pops into a French sentence, not because it’s recognizable, but because it amuses me for the insight it offers on our culture, for example, in the middle of a string of French words at my local cafe, I overhear:

“Workday.”

~
I keep arriving in Paris. That first morning, sitting down for coffee in the rising sun. That second morning after a night of sleep following a night of none. That 3rd day when the jet lag began to dissipate. The 4th day when it was clearly gone and I felt myself again.

~
I look at this apartment, especially the corner where the fireplace meets the balcony and the French doors, and I think, “I am inside my imagination.”

I say to myself, “I saw photos of this apartment, and I dreamed of myself here, and here I am like! As if I’ve jumped into one of Bert’s sidewalk paintings in Mary Poppins.

~
I found a papier shop before the rally. Was that yesterday? I bought a light, thin, large, deep red notebook.

Now that I have begun to write toward Lila again, I make a surprising discovery:

In each of my previous trips to Paris—one in each season in my early twenties—I was running from pain, pain that is awakened upon this return, ready to be tended.

~

DAY 6
AVRIL 8
SACRE COUER

Some things I make more difficult. The gate in the park on that first morning with my pack and my rolling carry-on. Dragging the large, heavy gate through the dirt instead of the small easy swinging one that I now identify in each park. So simple.

I had assumed I wasn’t supposed to go in the park, and that it was going to be difficult, and I let it be difficult.

I can also let it be easy.

I am practicing this.

~

Being miserable fits in Paris and makes me look less like a tourist and makes all the street harassers avoid me, especially the one selling portraits, beneath Sacre Couer, playing recorded music:

“You’re just too good to be true. Can’t take my eyes off of you.”

He doesn’t even look my way.

~
I feel like the people who say a whole bunch of sentences to the server or the barista in French are purposely showing off.

Even if they are French.

~

The matcha at the coffee shop beneath Sacre Couer is not good.

~

Interior courtyards slay me.

Metaphor.

.

DAY 7
AVRIL 9
LUXEMBOURG JARDIN

The French know how to be still.

Know how to make of service an art like so many Vermonters do with food and drink and crafts.

I pass two bookstores within blocks of each other within blocks of Luxenberg Gardens, the church bells in the distance ring a song and I find myself humming along.

I might be happy.

~

People are reading all around me at the book store cafe, but I just wanna go go go.

The chocolate chaud, however, is sublime, not only its single origin flavor, but the preparation which is a work of art, along with the glass of water served alongside it on the small tray with a miniature spoon and tiny napkin. Sigh.

When I exit the bookstore, the young, joyful barista runs after me because I’ve left my Cedric Grolet bag of pastries behind, the one I for which I waited in a half-hour early morning (freezing) line.

I smile, explaining to her that I am forgetting my things because I am happy. I had already forgotten my half-mittens.

~

LUXEMBOURG JARDIN

It would help if people weren’t running or speed walking as I sit with my feet up in the garden eating a pastry.

~

Croissant, check.

~

Although I am re-reading a book about writing in Paris, I did not come to Paris to write. I think it’s important to assert this defense. I came to Paris to discover something of myself, to know myself better and to steep myself in the pleasure of my life. To see where that leads.

~
On my way home, I stop at the boulangerie at the foot of my apartment building. I ask if they sell un petite baguette. The owner pulls out a long one, slices it in half, tucks it into a bag that every Parisian carries home at this time of day, and says in French, 50 cents.

50 cents?!

Now that I understand how careless the French are with bread, how easily accessible and ridiculously affordable it is, I see how absurd it was that I asked to take my leftover bread from lunch the other day.

.

DAY 8
AVRIL 10
LEFT BANK

I feel hungover from too much joy.

Was it yesterday when I overheard myself imagining a call, “Kelly Ann, there’s been an accident.”

These are the string of words that were delivered to me at the age of 14, an accident that shattered my life and my future and my past.

But why am I imagining a call with news of tragedy as I wander through this beautiful city?

Buttercream.

That is the color I see in this early spring light against the plaster face of ancient buildings.

My mother loved buttercream.

She would like it here, I think, immersed in the color of butter cream.

She never traveled abroad, just two years older than Lila was when she was killed. I am older than either of them ever was.

I find ghosts of myself when I pass a café in the Left Bank. I am 20, sipping wine with friends or upstairs in the worn upholstered chair at Shakespeare & Company reading A Moveable Feast, a paperback that I still have on my shelf at home, forty years later.

~

You must ask yourself, the author of Writing in Paris says, “Am I afraid of beauty?”

This must be why I imagine a life-shattering call as I walk through so much beauty, feel so much beauty, remember myself at an age when everything was being ripped away.

Does joy, like a fuse, always trip fear inside me?

Better to remain dissatisfied, ready for what is to come.

~

AVRIL 11
LAST DAY

I brought only one scarf to Paris, a rosy floral one, thinking I might find another scarf to bring home. I bought my first scarf here in the winter of 1984 in a street market near the apartment I rented with classmates on the Left Bank. And also, an almost matching handsewn dusty rose journal with thick dusty rose pages. I still have the journal. The scarf and matching half mittens are long gone. I detested pink as a girl, as too girly, preferring blue. 1984 was my first opening to a hue of pink. My second opening to rosy hues was after the election of 2016. Menopause.

~

There are many different postage stamp parks all over Paris, like the one in my neighborhood, multiple in each arrondissement, some quite a bit larger than others, like the one I found today which is almost a botanical garden.

No matter the size of the park, there always seems to be a playground, and if it is a larger than a postage stamp, it always has some kind of pond.

Yesterday, a Parisian friend directed me to a park in which I found a waterfall, in the city!

~

My Airbnb host says of the weather during my stay, “Miraculous,” while back home Casey has day after day of April snow while the forecast of his week of spring vacation in Portugal is day after day of rain.

.

AVRIL 12
DAY 10
DEPARTURE DAY

A team of RAPT officials, dressed in their Paris blue uniforms, double the size of the team to whom I lodged a complaint, enter the train that is heading for Orly airport.

One by one the officials pass me even as they check others tickets all around me. (The invisibility of silver hair elder is a bonus, I tell you.)

The woman across from me, the one with the carry on and the oversized luggage, is escorted off the train at the next stop by two officials. She didn’t have the right ticket.

~
I keep rediscovering that I really like the traveling part. Not the packing and thinking about everything and timing it right part which leaves me incredibly anxious, but the “going” part, the heading out the door and into the world with a back pack.

So. Much. Joy.

Last April was my first trip abroad in more than a dozen years. After I returned home, I would drive downtown and park my car at the top of the hill and then walk with my small pack into the world, feeling some of that same satisfaction.

~

The plane is about to take off and no one else is in my row of seats.

~

Once at cruising altitude, a small child runs up and down the aisle, and this is apparently OK.

Hello Portugal.