time, rain and the trip home

If ever there was a day to stay in bed late -- this is it. In Europe, the clocks are pushed back this weekend (the vocabulary I hear for this is that we're going into "winter time"). And so I get one more morning hour in my hotel room. In bed. After all, there are no cats to feed. No breakfast to fix, no room to clean. My flight home is insanely late for a European return (leaving CDG 3:40). If I leave my hotel at noon on a Sunday (low commuter train traffic day), I'll still have plenty of time at the airport.

Oh, you're shocked. I can tell. Paris! Go out, walk! It's the place that's so hard to get to. The place you spend days and weeks agonizing about: should I travel there again? Should I dig into my retirement savings for one more trip? The carbon footprint of travel weighs on me. Leaving my family, leaving Ed weighs on me. And now I am here, no two ways about it. Here. In that best room in my favorite little corner of the city. Stay in bed? Are you kidding me??

But it's raining. And suddenly chilly.  Large bed, many pillows, mmmm! I have such a tough month before me at home (more on that later). Why not just stay under the quilt and think easy thoughts about the luxury of not having to get up?

*   *   *

Eventually, I shower (oh, the water here is so good for the hair! Our water at the farm is hard and so full of minerals that you come out with half the earth's deposits on your scalp). Everyone has their own definition of luxury. For me, it has to be this morning of idle. Of a slow paced movement from bed, to shower, to breakfast room at Le Baume Hotel by the Odeon Theater.





[It feels odd not to have Bee across from me at the table. I feel the pang of her absence. But, I have lived all these decades with friends scattered across the globe. They've made my life rich even if they cannot be part of my everyday. A successful life is one when you are comfortable with adjustments to your expectations. And hey, sometimes a sweet surprise will come your way. When you least expect it. Like when Bee decided to meet me here.]

*   *   *

Alright, I brave a walk. With an umbrella, wetting my boots, wetting my camera, but I feel I must. I have this nagging image: it's of me, grocery shopping in Madison after a return from Europe. I always have the same feeling then: here I am selecting breakfast fruits and veggies for the week as if I never went anywhere at all! The trip belongs to the past, along with every memory of stuff long gone. But I'm not there now. No grocery list in my hand yet. Today, I am still in Paris.

Where to? Let's try the Luxembourg Gardens, in the rain. 











I have never seen the park so empty, especially on a Sunday!






Truly, what a difference a day makes!






There is, of course, great beauty in a late autumn day here, wet or otherwise. Puddles, fallen leaves, the occasional person walking fast, adjusting the umbrella against the steady rain...






Lovely in its emptiness, in the offered colors, in its aura of peace and quiet.











Out on the streets again. They aren't necessarily flat, or straight, or smooth.






I feel I must turn back or I'll be traveling with wet clothes. One more look up this wide, glistening sidewalk...






Yes, the rain can be beautiful. Wet, cold, beautiful.






What, you're missing the Eiffel Tower? Okay, I'll finish with it!





*   *   *

The trip from hotel room to airport gate should always be so smooth. No lines, no waits, no train strikes. No hurry, no worry.

And it continues thus. Plane on time, weather calm. Arrival improvements in Detroit (at least for those who are not flagged) -- no more forms, no more check-in kiosks at immigration, no more lap top removal at TSA (the new machines look more like MRI equipment -- serious stuff!). I do what one does when one travels -- eat constant meals. Breakfast, first lunch, second lunch, afternoon lunch, supper... on and on. Food for the weary traveler. But honestly, it has been an easy trip.

In a few minutes, I'll be boarding the last flight -- to Madison. Home, lovely farmhouse home with all its animal dramas and ever changing gardens. And when I work away outside in gardens that cannot  imitate the Luxembourg cacophony of blooms, or set the table with a new tablecloth spread out on top, or a grandchild flashes by wearing something from one of those little Left Bank shops, I will remember -- in October, there was Paris.