Paris: A Cautionary Tale

Ever since I understood the word “lipstick” I’ve wanted to go to Paris. It wasn’t a just a fantasy, it was more like an obsession, like something I needed to complete me in some way.  But even though my less deserving husband had been there, even though we had taken the children to Provence, I had not gone. I had even chosen not to go when I had the opportunity. Maybe I was saving it for the right moment; for the time when, after thirty years of marriage, I would need to decide if romance was still there.

I thought I was prepared.  I had a new wardrobe, a few months of French lessons, and stylish shoes that would allow me to walk for miles without calluses. I had researched “beautiful walks,” secret gardens, the top ten of everything, found the perfect apartment for our two-week stay, and a knockout restaurant to celebrate our anniversary.

Shortly after arriving and getting my bearings, a nagging, unsettling feeling came over me.  I’d recovered quickly from jet lag, but still felt disoriented. Despite my traveler’s French and well-selected clothes, I was not as chic, prepared, or fluent as I had fantasized.  Something about the city of my dreams was deeply upsetting.

It would be too easy dismiss this as the clash of a lifetime of expectations against the reality of, well, reality. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Paris hadn’t disappointed me in the least. All the sites, the food, the sunsets on the Seine; they were perfect.  As a native of our nation’s capital, I knew how annoying tourists could be, but that wasn’t it either. My discomfort was entirely internal, the kind of back-of-your mind nagging that makes you think you’ve left the oven on even when you know you have an automatic shut-off and haven’t baked anything in years. I either needed to get over myself or ruin the vacation I had spent so long anticipating.

As so often happens to people who’ve been married for a very long time, I transferred these feelings into a bad mood and cranky attitude, and waited for the inevitable blowup with my husband to sort it all out. This helped a little, but it was exhausting, and I was wasting precious time. I splashed on some Shalimar and red lipstick and resolved to enjoy myself.

Paris began to work on me—every street, sunset, croissant, sip of wine and bite of fois gras were as perfect as I had imagined.  Ancient streets and buildings had the texture of history, something I missed in Washington, where we like to think of ourselves as steeped in history. You can visit Paris without being disturbed by the mysteries that it holds, but for me, I couldn’t avoid being assaulted by big questions that came out of nowhere.  Why did Monet paint at least 5 huge oils of the cathedral at Rheims—what was he getting at, what was bugging him so much that he did this one painting over and over? Are the run-down streets of Montmartre decaying or hiding an artistic renaissance or another revolution? Speaking of streets—why do they need to have so many different names at the same time? And why was there a goat tethered in one of the ditches in the Tuileries Garden?

And: why do Parisians speak so quietly?

This, I discovered, was the thing that was itching the place that couldn’t be scratched, making me feel obvious and disoriented. I noticed it by accident: at a restaurant one night there was a table of 8, talking and laughing loudly. Before then, I hadn’t really paid attention, but after, I noticed: in the metro, the restaurants, the shops—everyone spoke this beautiful language in an equally beautiful, perfectly manicured voice. Whispered almost, begging to be heard. And actually looking at each other when they talk.

I felt like the proverbial bull in a china shop, an ugly American in spite of my stylish clothes. When I talk, it is different.  I talk at people. I say what I need to say and don’t always wait for a response. If my face is animated, it is not because I’m attentive, but because something angers me, or at least incites negativity. I can’t even imagine sitting in a café (in the afternoon!) and engaging in small talk with a friend for hours. Small talk bores me: I have never appreciated it, and never really cared.

This is my nature. But also, somehow, it seems like an American thing. We are not great conversationalists. The chairs in our cafés face each other, not the street, so we cannot whisper secrets into each other’s ear. In fact, our restaurants are usually so loud that we can’t even have a conversation. And taking time for long, intimate, private time with friends is to us like drinking wine with lunch—frivolous, a little forbidden.  It is our nature to be busy, to move on to more productive things.

There were other things, too, that made me feel as if I was from another planet. Like drinking wine in public. On a perfect late summer evening, tout le monde was sitting on the cobblestone paths lining the Seine. There were pairs of lovers, of course, but mostly groups—large groups, spread out on blankets with containers of food and many, many empty bottles of wine neatly stacked together, as if forming their own little party.

As we watched from the opposite shore, my husband and I were amazed at the quiet camaraderie, waiting in vain for the boisterous and obnoxious behavior that, at home, always seems to accompany public alcohol consumption. I told him about a friend who had been taken to police headquarters (a middle-aged mom whose husband worked at the White House years ago) for holding a glass of wine on the sidewalk outside a restaurant while making a phone call.

But in Paris, a picnic is an occasion, and it deserves wine. This communal meal, not organized around a football game or a holiday or for any reason other than celebrating a beautiful night, had the respectful trappings of a ritual eaten with appreciation, with respect.  I was angry at first about this difference—how many plates of chicken tarragon salad would have been so much more delicious served with the perfect wine (shiraz, perhaps?).  How many sunsets watched from the banks of the Potomac begged for a champagne toast? Wine is more than just wine, just as conversation is more than just words. Both change things: food is nibbled, hours stretch out.

Paris made me realize how American I truly am. How I have to force myself  to enjoy the things that I routinely take for granted, to taste my food and savor wine and not deny myself the blessing of a summer evening outdoors. I am not romanticizing the French when I say they do these things better: it is their trademark, their gross national product.

When I was preparing for my trip, my French teacher offered some pointers about traveling in Paris. “You do not go up to a shopkeeper and immediately say, ‘Deux croissants, s’il vous plait.’ That is rude. You walk into a shop, say ‘Bonjour, Madame’ and wait for them to respond. You have a little pleasantry, a recognition of each other first.”

We think the French are snobby; they think we are self-centered and rude. Such a simple thing like speaking with shopkeepers underlines the difference. Even if I had a relationship with the people who make my bread, which I usually don’t, it would be my practice to make my purchase and let them move on to the next customer. It’s good manners, American-style.

A boulangerie in Paris is not only about buying bread—it is a place to linger, to smell what’s fresh and agonize over the choices with the shopkeeper. You absorb the texture of the paintings on the wall and the tiles on the floor and all the things that have little to do with bread. And what you taste has an ancient chemistry that is magical because of the way the flour is grown and the attention paid to the ingredients.  A bakery doesn’t have to be all these things if it all you require is to buy bread.

Vacations, like disasters, reset your focus. That so many people come to Paris to fall in love is not a coincidence; it happens because slowing down to enjoy life—wine and food and conversation and what happens on the street before you opens your heart to new possibilities.

In this time in our history when we are asking big questions about our relationship to the economy, the government, and even to each other, it’s reasonable to also ask what it means to really live well. If it means buying more things, being so busy that we don’t even taste our food, running all the time instead of walking, we might remain an economic powerhouse, but I don’t think we can call ourselves a great people to be around.

I hope to carry the lessons of Paris with me for a long time. Eventually, Paris will become like sillage, the French expression for the scent of perfume a woman leaves behind after she has walked past. You catch a whiff of sillage while walking in a crowd, waiting for a train, at a patisserie. Each time I stop and am moved for a small second into a beautiful place.

The scent, and Paris itself, dissipates; over time, all that is left is a memory.

It is enough.