If I Had My Way...

I’d just walk through those doors

And wander down the Champs-Elysees

Going café to cabaret thinkin’ how I’ll feel

When I find that very good friend of mine.

                   Joni Mitchell, Free Man in Paris

 

Yesterday a friend returned my Paris guidebook. I have not seen it for a long time.

I sat with it a while. And in doing so, I sat with Paris for a while.

My past is in Rhode Island. My present is in Charleston. But my dreams are in Paris.

 

I have dreamed of Paris since I was a very small child.

On a bleak and rainy New England Saturday when I was about eight years old and confined to the house, I turned on the television and was mesmerized by a movie entitled, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (no, not the Disney version; the Charles Laughton, black and white one). Quasimodo won my tender sympathy and had I been Maureen O’Hara I would have danced for him too. Victor Hugo is a hero of France and when I watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame and years later read Les Miserables he became one of mine as well. Perhaps no movie has ever had the same impact on me, for somewhere within my child self I recognized the place, the century, the spirit of France. I had connections here. My parents and grandparents spoke French in the house. My maternal grandfather’s genealogy, which has been charted back to 1613 lists ancestral  birthplaces that include Normandy, Lyonnais (Bishopric of Saint Iranaeus of Lyons), Saint Onge, Orleanais (site of the successful siege of Orleans by Joan of Arc), Troyes (of Chretien de Troyes, 12th century author of the Arthurian legend, Perceval, The Story of the Grail), and the Diocese de Paris, Ile-de-France.

 

My religious imagination posits past lives spent in the company of Thomas Aquinas, Master of Theology at the University of Paris. I envision myself (or is it a memory?) mounted on a percheron in the battalion of Joan of Arc, and as a freedom fighter in the French Revolution. “Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!”   

I have had dreams of them all. I had dreams in which I was a member of the French Resistance during WWII (to which a friend once remarked upon my recounting such a dream, “Of course you were.”). The dreams of France are vivid.

And Notre Dame. Ah! Notre Dame. Most magnificent edifice ever constructed for God by men. I longed to see it.

 

Allow me a little digression… Three years ago I received my first tattoo. Once the decision had been made to actually get one, there was no hesitation or doubt of what it would be. Tattooed on my lower back is the fleur-de-lis, symbol of the right to rule France (she said humbly). But that is not all. The fleur-de-lis is the symbol of French royalty, the symbol of France itself. The three pointed stylized lily (some maintain it is an iris) is an ancient symbol of Neolithic and Classical goddesses. It is a symbol for purity and so has been associated with the Virgin Mary. Its three points rendered it a symbol for the Trinity. It was embroidered on the banners of Joan of Arc as she marched into battle and is associated especially with the Kings Louis of France (Saint Louis, Louis IX of course, is my patron namesake). And it is depicted on the flag of Quebec, the birthplace of my beloved grandfather, Samuel. My only lament is that it also serves as the insignia for the Boy Scouts of America. And yet, don’t you just find it deliciously ironic that the symbol for the Boy Scouts of America has pagan roots in the ancient goddess? (But then, what doesn’t?)

 

So, six years ago when my daughter spent a semester in Paris, it was time to go to the city of my dreams.  My Friend and I went together. There is nothing like being in Paris with one’s best friend and one’s daughter. We like to do the same things (mostly) and even when our favorite things are not the same, we indulge the other because we know they will make time for ours. When I had not had enough of the churches, we saw more churches. When she had not had enough of the museums we went to another museum. And when we got each other lost, the annoyance was short-lived because of the love. And we could laugh out loud and we could cry without restraint, because we always have.

 

For ten days we had a Paris apartment, in the Fifth Arrondissement, the Latin Quarter, on the Rue Descartes (once a street of brothels). Within blocks of our building was Rue Mouffetard, which once offered housing to the poet Paul Verlaine and American Ernest Hemingway. A few hundred yards away was a section of a fortified wall built by Louis Philippe and another hundred yards in the opposite direction, The Pantheon, the mausoleum that protects the remains of the heroes of France, including the dead Victor Hugo.  

 

Magnificence is everywhere. Paris does not disappoint. We even had our own French waiter. His name was Herve and every morning we would walk down la Rue Descartes and breakfast at his brasserie; croissants or baguettes with butter and jam and cappuccinos that tasted like dessert. On the last day of our stay, Herve turned on the restaurant’s sound system and sang to us publicly and delightfully. The warmest of goodbyes. Rumors of the rude French are lies, all lies. We encountered nothing but warmth and welcome. They were helpful and charming when we most needed them to be.

 

The small pleasures were sinful enough; le café and ice cream called Berthillon, the best of which was served in a café situated just blocks from Notre Dame (let me say that again, just blocks from Notre Dame). Thick rich ice creamscooped out like little balls and served in threes, the chocolate so rich it is like eating cold fudge. Every afternoon at 3:00 we’d stop walking to have a petit dessert. My Friend experimented with the pastries, every day a different one, and one day a plate was set before her that was so beautiful, she took a photo of it. For me, it was always the same, the ice cream, “Trois boules, s’il vous plait.” While in Paris all of our senses feasted. Taste; croissants and pastry with cream, ice cream and cappuccinos sprinkled with chocolate. Sight; Monets, Van Goghs, Bottacelli frescoes, Rembrandts and Da Vincis, stained glass and my favorites; the gargoyles and Degas’ ballerinas. And just in case we didn’t think Paris welcomed us, a double rainbow just outside our window on our second night. Beauty everywhere, which made our eyes hurt. Sound; the French language spoken so prettily and with such lilting welcome, “Bonjour!” Touch; sculpture, fabric, stone and soft leathers. And having waited a lifetime for one, I bought a leather jacket that was hand-made in a little shop by the man who fitted me. Scent; flowers everywhere, candles lit in faith in the cathedrals, cheeses so sharp one turns her head away from the pungency; wines, and perfumes given as little tokens when making a purchase. After days of so much feasting, indulgence and beauty, My Friend and I thought surely we were destined for hell, because we had so much of heaven there.