Measuring a Life in Trips: Adventures Around Paris by Ann Banks
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Not every parent would send a daughter to Paris by herself as an 18th birthday present. But mine didn't hesitate. Like many U.S. Army couples who'd married during World War II, they'd taken a second honeymoon in Paris after the fighting ended. The way they talked about the place when I was growing up made me want to be in on the secret. I felt thrillingly certain that my birthday trip to Paris would mark the beginning of the independent life I intended to lead. The one starring me.
A Life Measured in Trips
Since then, without planning to, I've measured my life in trips to Paris. I've come back to celebrate a graduation, a publication, a 10th wedding anniversary and a 40th birthday, among other occasions. With each stage of life, I return to a different place, as Paris changes shape to accommodate the latest new me.
Of all my Paris incarnations, I have especially warm feelings toward that 18-year-old ingénue; the girl who spent her birthday money on an oil painting in the Place du Tertre. Inexperienced though I was, I could see that Montmartre's main square was a tourist trap, and I disdained the souvenir watercolours peddled by central casting artists perched picturesquely at their easels. But in the sea of marshmallow Sacre Coeurs, one painting caught my attention: a Picasso-esque (I know now) portrait of a woman, with fiercely red hair and an angular blue face. I agreed to buy it from the artist.
Paris for a Year
Lars was a pale young Dane who'd come to Paris for a year to paint. The portrait was “part of a series he was doing of his mistress,” he explained in perfect English. The rest were stored in his studio nearby. “Would I like to see them? I would,” I said. The faint voice in my head that urged caution was trumped by youthful certainty that I could handle anything that came my way. Besides, he had a mistress with long wavy red hair. I guessed that I'd be safe from unwanted advances and I was.
Lars led me down twisty streets and up rickety stairs to a sunlit garret. I remember crooked wood floors, pots of geraniums on the window sill, window shutters thrown open to a pleasing cityscape of Paris chimneypots. We drank cheap red wine from juice glasses while Lars talked about his philosophy of art. He illustrated his points by propping on his easel one painting after another of his (absent) mistress. My splendid new life was off to a fine start, I thought.
Not every visit lived up to that one – I especially recall a trip in my late 20s with Mr-Not-Quite-Right, a Francophile artist who'd spent a couple of years studying at a Parisian atelier. He insisted on showing off his flawless accent at every turn – which so intimidated me that I fell silent altogether.
Monet's Garden
Years later on my personal Paris timeline, and leagues happier, I explored the city with my nine year-old daughter. Our guide was an old Paris dab hand named Linnea, who also looked to be around nine. She was the title character in a picture book I'd brought along – Linnea in Monet's Garden by Christine Bjork. Now, something of a classic, Linnea is the story of a charming, Eliose-ish Swedish girl who travels to Paris to see the flower paintings of Claude Monet.
We started our homage to the book by checking into the eccentric but appealing Esmeralda, “the loveliest hotel in the whole city of Paris,” in Linnea's opinion. Our room looked exactly like the one on page six, with beamed ceilings and a window overlooking Notre Dame. Then we went where Linnea went: all around town to see the Monet’s. At the Orangerie Museum, Cait sat on the floor and copied the Water Lillies paintings using every coloured pencil in the box.
But our favourite stop on Linnea's itinerary was the sailboat pond in the Luxembourg Gardens. There, one afternoon, we rented toy sailboats and mastered the subtle art of sailing them. By watching how the French children did it, we learned to push our boats off with a stick and then wait patiently, trusting that the fountain's currents would send them gliding back to the edge so we could push them off again with a stick. This was good for many hours of entertainment. I knew for sure that the trip had been a success, when, on our last day of our stay, my daughter wrote in her journal, “I love this city so much!”
Bon Voyage
Now, a dozen years later, she's moved to Paris to study. It's her turn to be young and in Paris. At her bon voyage party, we made her a present of her own personalised guide de Paris, made up of Pensees, souvenirs et suggestions’ pulled together from family friends, godparents, etc. Everyone has something to say about Paris.
In Cait's guidebook, she's encouraged to visit offbeat museums for cult artists and comic books, (Musee Gustave Moreau; Les Musees Imaginaires de la Bande Dessinee) and to stroll through Cimetiere de Montmartre (though Pere Lachaise will be your top cemetery priority; this is worth going to as well.) A godmother recommends her favourite African restaurant, Le Petit Farafina (“Get the ginger drink, it's amazing.”)
The mother of Cait's best friend advocates a tour of the locks instead of the standard Bateaux Mouches “when taking a boat ride around Paris with your first set of guests.” A friend's big brother, recently graduated from college, urges Cait to “eat a croissant in the morning before class at a cafe and read Le Monde – try to understand it, but that's not really the point.”
Keeping Paris Wonderful
Cait's dad, who did graduate work in Paris, expands on the way the city differs from her hometown. “Whereas New York pays far more in taxes to the federal government than it receives in funding, Paris is just the opposite with part of every French man & French woman’s taxes go to keeping Paris wonderful.” He also imparts “a painless trick for mastering French: get an ami.”
My contribution is to describe my favourite site for anthropological field research: the Hammam attached to the Mosque de Paris. “On ladies' day the scene at the Turkish bath is pure seraglio: women of various nationalities and in various states of undress reclined on cushioned marble banquettes gossiping, grooming one another and drinking sweet mint tea out of tiny glasses.”
Exploring the Neighbourhood
Cait has settled in now in a room in the 9th, “complete with a balcony, two enormous windows and a fireplace,” she reports. Recently, she and a friend explored the neighbourhood. “We found the Moulin Rouge and all the sex shops. Just like Greenwich Village!”
At some point, my husband and I will board a night flight to Paris, probably with a planeload of parents on a similar mission. This time, we will visit Cait's Paris, the one she is in the process of inventing for herself, the one she'll tell her own kids about.
Now and again, when the stars line up just right, the gifts we hope to pass to our children are the very ones they desire. A taxi driver in Florence recently waxed philosophical to Cait's best friend Mira, “Now is your hour,” he said. And so it is.
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