Ruth, I find this post so great especially since we are on a family vacation in Paris right now. I am writing from a cafe while Misha is at a park across the street on a work call and both kids are next to me on their devices. I agree vacations are a way to get you out of your comfort zone and allow you to see new things with fresh eyes. Family trips are always a challenge for us - we all like to relax in different ways and energize in equally different ways. I’m trying to remember that I only have my teenagers for a few more short years (if that) before they’re off experiencing the world without us, like you at 16. We were at Sacre Coeur yesterday and were able to cheer on the woman’s Olympic bike race as they passed us by three times. What an experience! Being here I have also learned much about myself. How guilty I feel to sit in a cafe and watch the world pass by, how there is no ice or a/c anywhere here and how rude it is to assume everyone can help me in English. My favorite thing to observe is the overall beauty in the simplest of things - the huge doors in a variety of colors and the smallest of coffees - just a sip, really. Oy vey … viva Paris!
My now-wife and I climbed to Sacre Coeur in the summer of We Are the World, and were met by a spontaneous choir of tourists and locals singing that anthem. That was before the world went mad with the realities and fears of terrorism and pandemic. When a street vendor’s sandwich of Brie on a baguette was ambrosia and nobody counted their steps on the walk from Montmartre to St. Germain. Before take off your shoes at TSA and Charlie Hebdo, when all we had to worry about was mutually assured destruction barbecuing the planet. Paris was simpler, then, and it was possible to imagine Hemingway, Hugo, and the grandeur of Napoleon without the context of their wars and the millions gloriously slaughtered.
Love this post, Ruth—especially your comments on how travel changed once you became a mom. And your recall during the week-long trip with your husband how stimulating travel to new places can be. Glad you found some fodder for your inspiration. Plus, you pushed me to look up 92NY. ❤️ Thank you!
What I remember about Sacre-Coeur, which I also discovered as a teenager: I thought that it offered the most beautiful *views* (in this case, of Paris below) that I had ever seen.
This is lovely! I also spent several summers in Paris as a teenager in the early 90s, with my parents at the archives or the BNP and no one to tell me how to fill my days. Mostly I read, walked all over and went to the movies. I was there with my family again last summer, but I couldn’t capture that feeling of luxurious aimlessness, which I guess is a defining feature of Paris for me.
On one of those trips we visited old friends of my mother’s, a couple that owned a little hotel that my mother had stayed in as a graduate student. The husband was a Yiddish poet and gave my mother an inscribed copy of his collected poems. At the time my reaction was light-hearted: “Cool! A book! Some day I’ll read it!” In hindsight, that gift seems almost unbearably poignant. My mother grew up hearing Yiddish, but she doesn’t read it. But whom was he going to give his book to?? Last year, having finally started to learn Yiddish, I asked my mother for that book. I was bitterly disappointed to hear that she had given it to the college she retired from, which, granted, does have a Yiddish program, but still, it was an inscribed copy!
Ruth, I find this post so great especially since we are on a family vacation in Paris right now. I am writing from a cafe while Misha is at a park across the street on a work call and both kids are next to me on their devices. I agree vacations are a way to get you out of your comfort zone and allow you to see new things with fresh eyes. Family trips are always a challenge for us - we all like to relax in different ways and energize in equally different ways. I’m trying to remember that I only have my teenagers for a few more short years (if that) before they’re off experiencing the world without us, like you at 16. We were at Sacre Coeur yesterday and were able to cheer on the woman’s Olympic bike race as they passed us by three times. What an experience! Being here I have also learned much about myself. How guilty I feel to sit in a cafe and watch the world pass by, how there is no ice or a/c anywhere here and how rude it is to assume everyone can help me in English. My favorite thing to observe is the overall beauty in the simplest of things - the huge doors in a variety of colors and the smallest of coffees - just a sip, really. Oy vey … viva Paris!
Thank you Amy! I hope you all are having a wonderful trip! Ariel is following the Olympics with great enthusiasm.
My now-wife and I climbed to Sacre Coeur in the summer of We Are the World, and were met by a spontaneous choir of tourists and locals singing that anthem. That was before the world went mad with the realities and fears of terrorism and pandemic. When a street vendor’s sandwich of Brie on a baguette was ambrosia and nobody counted their steps on the walk from Montmartre to St. Germain. Before take off your shoes at TSA and Charlie Hebdo, when all we had to worry about was mutually assured destruction barbecuing the planet. Paris was simpler, then, and it was possible to imagine Hemingway, Hugo, and the grandeur of Napoleon without the context of their wars and the millions gloriously slaughtered.
Lovely. I appreciate this way of looking at travel.
I looked up 92Y…
Love this post, Ruth—especially your comments on how travel changed once you became a mom. And your recall during the week-long trip with your husband how stimulating travel to new places can be. Glad you found some fodder for your inspiration. Plus, you pushed me to look up 92NY. ❤️ Thank you!
What I remember about Sacre-Coeur, which I also discovered as a teenager: I thought that it offered the most beautiful *views* (in this case, of Paris below) that I had ever seen.
This is lovely! I also spent several summers in Paris as a teenager in the early 90s, with my parents at the archives or the BNP and no one to tell me how to fill my days. Mostly I read, walked all over and went to the movies. I was there with my family again last summer, but I couldn’t capture that feeling of luxurious aimlessness, which I guess is a defining feature of Paris for me.
On one of those trips we visited old friends of my mother’s, a couple that owned a little hotel that my mother had stayed in as a graduate student. The husband was a Yiddish poet and gave my mother an inscribed copy of his collected poems. At the time my reaction was light-hearted: “Cool! A book! Some day I’ll read it!” In hindsight, that gift seems almost unbearably poignant. My mother grew up hearing Yiddish, but she doesn’t read it. But whom was he going to give his book to?? Last year, having finally started to learn Yiddish, I asked my mother for that book. I was bitterly disappointed to hear that she had given it to the college she retired from, which, granted, does have a Yiddish program, but still, it was an inscribed copy!
I love travel so much. More than once it actually gives me ideas to new work, and if there's some down time, I'm some times more inspired to write.