Mais, oui! Paris is always a good idea

Whoops. A little trigger happy! I guess I needed to go to Paris sooner than planned :-)!

Even now, the City of Light beckons. The fruit grocer still mans his post, providing fresh produce to shoppers who leave their flats for essentials. Walks/outside time is limited to 30 minutes per day. Police fine those who flout these restrictions.

But the resolve, vivid color, and poetry of French life continues even in this adjusted, more limited world.

Here is an information sign from Paris: “I stay home, you stay home, he stays home, she stays home, and life will become beautiful again!”

In the evenings, neighbors across Paris open their windows and wave to each other. Everyone is craving connection and a reprieve from this feeling isolation (new phraseology to temper that sense of overwhelm from isolation is “physical distancing” instead of “social distancing,” but let’s be honest, call it what you will I’ve barely left my house in 3 weeks and I know it). Still, it helps to try to focus on the notion of remaining social while distant.

The other night my family sat around the dinner table and shared our rose (positive), thorn (negative), and bud (what we are looking forward to) for the day. We all said we were looking forward to when this quarantine period ends and the tsunami passes over. But I want to rephrase that so it’s more in the moment when we do that exercise again and ask instead, “what about this quarantine period will you miss when it’s over?”

What are you craving when you return to “normal”? What will you miss about these slow, quiet quarantine days?

France reads: The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George is a very sweet trip down the Seine surrounded by books and a main character, Monsieur Perdu with a penchant for prescribing books for the hardships of life to mend hearts and souls. What do you think Monsieur Perdu would prescribe for today? Perdu means lost in French. Anyone else feeling a little perdu these days?

And a delicious French-ish movie is Chocolat (just the way it’s said makes my mouth water. Plus, I mean, chocolate is really one of the saving graces of these times.)