First (to get it out of the way) the losses so far:
* One brown size 5 girl's maryjane, lost to the Seine river when Virginia decided she no longer cared to wear shoes as we crossed the Pont Neuf. The shoe fell through a crack in the bridge steps and we watched it float away on the green waters of the Seine.
* One wooden snake, known fondly as "Tom", lost to a urine-filled Metro gutter when Finn stumbled while waiting for our subway train. Au revoir, good friend.
* Our love for the evening meal, lost to the cafeteria dining here at chez Kellerman, our hostel. We're in Paris, so it's hard to complain, but this place would score in the negatives on the Zagat scale. (Tonight's supper, for instance: unidentifiable meatballs in a slop of red sauce, boiled French cut green beans, potatoes from flakes... At least there was wine.)
* My desire to hear the once-lovely tones and fine alliterations of my native language spoken aloud. Too many tourists. Too many tourists speaking crummy American English with a twangy drawl. Too many floral-shirt clad, camera slinging, fanny-pack wearing Americans speaking loudly as they shoot cell phone photos of the Mona Lisa. (Enough said?)
Now, the wins (and there are oh so many):
* Sailing boats with Finn on the pond at the Luxembourg Gardens. Watching the wind whip the miniature sail and turning to see Finn's total delight. The clack of other children clapping their bamboo sailing sticks against the pond's cement lip while they wait for their boats. The other park-goers stopping casually to watch the boats meandering across the pond. The kids with their candy-colored ice cream cones and skinned knees. The orange trees and perfect rows of Marie de Medici's shade trees. Ah. Ah. Ah.
* The young guy playing his violin outside Notre Dame, the faded burgundy velvet lining of his violin case turned nearly inside out on the sidewalk, awaiting donations.
* Chasing Finn through the oscillating sprinklers at the Jardins des Plantes in the heat of mid-day, post-carousel ride (he picked the turtle and sat in its hollow shell of a seat waving and beaming with each turn of the carousel).
* Coffee and chocolate ice cream served in tin cups on the sidewalk of a brasserie in the Latin Quarter. A little scotty dog dodging about our feet beneath the table as we ate, and, from down the street, the deep sweet-fleshy smell of ripe peaches from a street market.
* Those green water fountains all over the city! Cold water! People stopping to fill their water bottles, urging the bottles' lips between the iron bodies of the ladies of the fountain!
* Eating baguette and drinking lemonade at a park beneath the Pont Neuf as river barges pushed lazily down the Seine and bumble bees hummed over the allium.
* The Tuileries Gardens at 8:30 a.m., before Paris was really awake. Coffee in the garden from a snack shop. Green metal chairs set up for conversation in the middle of the promenade concourse. Domes of dewy shade beneath the box hedges, and Finn dashing merrily off toward the fountains of the Louvre ahead.
* Watching our students see this now, at 19 and 20 and 21, when the world is just beginning to crack open for them and the shine on the world is still impossibly bright.
* Virginia, eating chocolate mousse, smacking her lips and saying quietly, with reverence and revelry, "Yum, yum, yum again!"
* Catching Nathan's eye on the subway at the first sighting of the Eiffel Tower. Knowing he knows what it means to me to be here with him.
* This plan, already in the works: Paris, 2025, in the autumn, when the leaves of the Luxembourg Gardens are orange and yellow, the streets are quiet, the Seine's jade-colored water is set against a marble-gray sky. Coffee at a cafe every morning. The Louvre again when the crowds have gone home. A date for wine on a barge on the Seine. Reading a novel by the boat pond at the Luxembourg, a sweater on against the November chill. Something to look forward to.
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