One of the beautiful things about a long trip is that your days are not rushed. There’s no list of must-do’s that run behind you with a lashing whip. Each day gets to pick its own pace, and a little tiredness here or a change of plans there doesn’t matter at all.

I’ve been grateful for this as I’ve picked my way through my last few days. I tend toward the indecisive—not in big decisions, but in the small details. Duck or risotto? Red or white? Musée d’Orsay or Louvre? I can get ridiculously hung up. It’s because there’s so much deliciousness in the world, so much to choose from. Making a choice feels like jettisoning one-hundred other delights.

To structure my days I’ve been starting by looking at the yoga menu from the wonderful studio east of here by St. Michel. I bought a ten-class pass to give myself some wellness anchors during my stay. The space is beautiful. It’s tucked in a little courtyard, and it’s full of light and kind women and warmed ginger water. Both of my instructors so far have been excellent. And there is something classically French in these classes as well. Both of my teachers have been poet-philosophers, taking time to talk about the physical and metaphysical journey of our practice, encouraging us not just to use our bodies, but to use the practice as a gateway to discovery and yes, as one of them said, perhaps even a doorway into the “spirituelle.” This is no fitness club Power Yoga, oh non. Nothing so quotidien as that for the French.

Yesterday, after much indecision, I settled on the Père Lachaise Cemetery as my walking destination. Actually, it was my walking origination. I took the Metro there and then walked through the cemetery for an hour, then back home. Père Lachaise is very famous, first for its beauty, and second for the dozens upon dozens of famous people who are buried there. They include Chopin, Ingres, Max Ernst and Jim Morrison, among others. You can get cemetery maps and spend your time hunting for famous people, but that has never been my style. Instead I just wandered through the aisles and pathways, absorbing what I saw, shivering a little bit in the afternoon chill, and having a solid contemplation of mortality, death, and decay. Acknowledgment of these three things has been jettisoned from our culture, and I find it to be much to our loss. They are powerful, transcendent concepts, and are universal to us all. We ignore them at our own peril. An old cemetery, with its various stages of recency and disintegration, bring these all to mind.

The other thing that brings this kind of impermanence to mind for me is great old cathedrals. When I was 18 and came to Europe for the first time I stopped in Paris for a day with my aunt before continuing on to Scotland. We did a very quick tour of some of the highlights of the city, which included a visit to Notre-Dame de Paris. I remember stepping into the cathedral and looking down at the stones that were grooved deeply with the millions of feet that had passed over them in 800 years. I was hit as if by a bolt of lighting—a coup de foudre—realizing that no matter what hardships or losses or celebrations my life might bring, nothing would be new. I would experience nothing that hadn’t been lived by thousands upon hundreds of thousands upon millions of people who had walked the Earth before me. My experiences might be exquisite in their pain or their joy, but they would be nothing, insignificant, against the weight of humanity. Countless, eternally forgotten people whose own footsteps had worn grooves in those age-old stones.

On the way home the evening light was low but Notre Dame was still exquisite.

Today I woke determined to purchase and begin the clock on a 6-day museum pass. I was fortunate to take many art history courses during the year I lived in Paris, and to be able to go regularly to the museums that held the very pieces we were studying. While I don’t feel compelled to see a gob of museums while I’m here, there are several that I enjoy tremendously. Obvious among these are the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, but also the Musée Rodin and the Jacquemart André. The museum pass lets me go for a few hours or half a day without feeling that I have to see it all. Likewise, it makes it easy to choose to go even when I have just a little time.

I left my house at 9:30 to head to the Orsay, but it’s market day in my neighborhood and I didn’t make it. Even though I have cheeses and vegetables galore, I wanted to walk through the market just to see what there was. An hour later I left with olives, veal, codfish, eggplant purée, green beans (haricots verts—I just love that name), and a little bag of lychees.

I’m so glad I stopped. First, because it gave me a chance to interact with fishmongers and butchers and olive-sellers and practice my French and marvel at their goods. And second, because it was so surprising to discover the prices. I bought a piece of veal big enough for my dinner for less than 3€, the fillet of cod for the same, and all my other vegetables and olives and goodies for less than 10€ additional. I loved queueing with the French grandmothers stocking up on meat and carrots for their big weekend meal with family. And I loved being in a culture that values food so highly, but also keeps it so affordable—even in a market in an expensive neighborhood in the capital city. The marché is such a common, normal thing in so many places. But for an American accustomed to shopping in the sterility and impersonality of a Safeway or Stop ‘N’ Shop, it’s a beautiful construction of a thousand small delights.

Here’s what my total tow looked like, once I was home again. All of this for less than $20.

I did finally make it to the Orsay. And while it’s all magical, I won’t bother to attempt to wax poetic about art. I will only say that it will never stop to amaze me that sculptors can peel away stone to find such softness within.

And that museums hold the memory of a time when we talked more about, and lived more intimately with, Death.

 

I had an interesting conversation with Chris this morning. I was telling him that I spend much of my day attempting to appear French. He was sort of aghast and said that it sounded exhausting. But no, I insisted. It’s like a cultural game. Can I observe acutely enough and adapt well enough to “pass?” I’ve been playing this game so long—shoot, I have a college major in this game—that it never occurred to me to do it any other way. But it’s a constantly baffling puzzle. Because, though I give myself credit for being 15 years out of practice, they always know. No matter what you wear, how cold a scowl you set on your face, whether you adjust your pace to be faster, or slower, wrap your scarf more and more eccentrically, or sit silently in a café and drink a tea, you are frequently (or at least I am frequently) pegged as an American. Tonight when I stopped quickly in the Monoprix downstairs to grab some mustard and olive oil the handsome young man behind the register had me in deux secondes. Yes, I had to ask him to repeat himself when he asked me if I needed a bag. But what couldn’t he just assume I’m a deaf Frenchwoman? What is it about me that screams American?

When I was in college, studying French, it was our actual coursework to try to figure out how to be French. We had one teacher who helped us deconstruct the placement of consonant sounds, to help us put them in the right place to sound more French. We Americans put our consonants at the end of syllables. So mon ami spoken with an American accent would sound pretty close to the way it’s written: “mon am-i.” The French, on the other hand, pull the consonant sound to the start of the following syllable. So correctly pronounced, mon ami sounds like “mo-na-mi.” Back in college, the kids that paid attention on that one specific day in class went on to blend better, to get that much closer to the intonation and lyricism of the French language. To get closer to the holy grail of “passing.” The ones who missed that day or who were busy doodling kept on sounding like Americans for the whole year. Those kinds of little nuances are that important.

I never had much money in college, so adopting French dress was never really in the cards for me. I had enough dough to shop at Kookaï, and buy crappy things that blew apart in a month. I had two pair of school shoes, brown and black, both brought over from TJ Maxx in the States. I had one pair of running shoes. I would work so hard during the week to understand the nuances of the language, of the culture, of the dress. I’d make every effort to fit my brown shoes into some Kookaï outfit and pull off something that was modestly sophisticated and sort of French. On the weekends, though, when I would pull out my Europass and go traveling, I would intentionally go to the other end of the spectrum. I had a pair of corduroys and a striped sweater and would don the running shoes, pull out a shabby fleece hat, and run with the American look. I did it because I had found that, as an American, the Europeans assumed you were stupid, which meant you could bend all sorts of rules. Cheating on your Europass by faking the date? Just speak loudly and pretend you only know English and they’d throw up their hands and let you off. Need to find your way to the hostel in Italy? Look like an American and they sigh wearily and point. It was a strategy—a costume I adopted to serve the purpose of the day.

So, back to Chris’s question… why am I bothering to try to blend? Well, honestly, it’s a good question! And I don’t know! He’s right, it’s probably more exhausting than it is beneficial. I’m not a college student studying French culture in intimate detail anymore. I’m a 39-year-old woman on vacation in Paris, having somehow made the jump from “mademoiselle” to “madame” in the years since last I was here. I’m one of hordes of foreigners walking the same streets and ogling the architecture and the incredible shop windows. Why try to pretend I’m anything else? Point taken. Old habits die hard, but I’m going to attempt to ease up a little on the compulsive self-analysis in coming days.

In other news, it’s the biannual soldes here—the massive sales event where every single store attempts to liquidate the goods of the previous season to make room for what comes next. It is adopted by every Parisian vendor as if it were a law. And luckily for me, it means that beautiful French things are available at 40% or 50% off across the board. It’s especially lucky because I’m having to reboot my wardrobe every 3 or so weeks right now. So that means, a) I’m not going to splurge on anything luscious and outrageous, because I’m not a normal shape or size, and b) this is a really inexpensive time to throw down some cash on some clothes that work for a preggo lady. It’s also a dangerous time to walk into a baby store.

My strategy for getting my solid walks each day has been to choose a destination, preferably far away, then use my feet to get there. Today’s goal was the Petit Bateau store on Rue Tronchet in the 8ème, right down the street from where I used to live. Petit Bateau is the über-French purveyor of extremely adorable baby clothes and oh-so-soft t-shirts for ladies. I used to live in their tops. They are luscious.

There are a dozen Petit Bateaus in Paris, but I wanted to go to the one on Rue Tronchet because it’s the one where I used to go when I lived here. It’s also where I bought little PB onesies for my cousin Thomas when he was born and my cousin Nick when he was just a little tike. It’s also just down the street from Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, and I wanted to swing in and see what the soldes were like in the grand magasins.

To get there requires that I walk up to the Seine through the 6ème, where I’m staying, and then cross over the river to the rive droite. I made the crossing at the Pont des Arts, and skipped into the courtyard of the Louvre rather than walking alongside the river on this cold and windy day. I continued on through the Tuileries, Arc de Triomphe in sight in the far distance at the end of the Champs Elysées, and then turned right a the Place de la Concorde, toward the Madeleine church. The Madeleine, a massive, impressive structure in the neo-classical style, was also my Metro stop when I lived here. Rue Tronchet runs straight out of its back.

I had only bought one thing for the baby so far—a cute little otter onesie that Chris and I got at the Christmas market. But Petit Bateau was like crack cocaine. Up until today I’d been fretting that little boy things aren’t nearly as cute as little girl things. Within 2 minutes I had baby clothes dripping from my arms. I then exercised extremely good self control, putting everything back except for a little pack of so-soft onesies for 3-month olds, a cute pair of striped leggings for 6 months, and an itty-bitty newborn onesie that I’d like to put the baby in on Day 1. I am very proud of myself. And, thanks to the soldes, the whole thing cost a pittance. So much gratification for so few dollars.

I carried on up the street to Printemps which, along with Galeries Lafayette and the Bon Marché, is one of the three grands magasins of Paris—the original department stores upon which the fantasies and luxuries of women were built 150 years ago.

Printemps is completely inaccessible if you’re not filthy rich. Or, apparently, Korean. I don’t spend much time in cities any more, so I don’t know what’s going on with Korea and its economy. Or maybe they just love high fashion. But the whole store was full of Koreans, maps and signs were in Korean, and there was a “Korean welcoming service” on the bottom floor. Clearly something is working out for them.

I always feel incredibly lucky and wealthy in my life, and rarely pine for money. The exception to that is when you put me in a building full of designer clothes. I love designer clothes. I seem to have an uncanny ability to gravitate toward 1,600€ skirts printed with orchids, or hand-beaded gowns that fall to the floor and are made by 20 half-blind children somewhere very poor that sell for 4,000€. When I’m in a place like Printemps all I can think about is winning the lottery, or writing a really fabulously successful book, or seven. That get made into blockbusters. I would like, one day, to walk into the flagship Ralph Lauren store and just buy it all.

In the meantime, it’s a pleasure to look. There are some truly, truly beautiful clothes out there. And lots of Korean women here in Paris to buy them.

Speaking of beautiful, I had a great outing to the marché in the wee freezing hours of the morning. The lovely fromagière helped me find cheeses that are safe in pregnancy, and my refrigerator now has that lovely reek when I open it. Ah, France.

And finally, in the closing hours of my outing I hopped the Metro to get home. (This was after 7 miles of walking, mind you.) Two things I’ve delighted in noticing on the Metro are these: 1) The proportion of people staring at their phones is far lower than in the United States. 2) Instead of staring at their phones, people are reading. Reading REAL BOOKS. This includes, in particular, young people. (I’m sure they’re studying, but still.) Anyway, a man in his 30’s got on the Metro and stood next to me. And he was reading Albert Camus. L’Etranger. For real. It was fabulous. J’adore.

Goodnight from beautiful Paris. Everything here is just as perfect as it ever was.