Connection to Paris is still strong

Like most people, I’ve been thinking a lot about Paris the last few days.
It’s been difficult to think of anything else.
Though Connie and I have talked of a trip to Paris off and on for years, it never seems to happen. Other destinations beckon us, or the calendar gets too crowded, or the cost seems too high.
My only visit was on my own, a lifetime ago in 1969.
I’d been hitchhiking and camping across Europe solo for about three months, and it was finally time to head back to the States. My flight home would leave from Paris.
The plan had been to hitch rides from the French-Swiss border to Paris, but that didn’t work out at all. Hitchhiking — even back then — was frowned on in France. After spending more than eight hours standing at the same spot on the roadside, I broke down and bought a train ticket with some of my dwindling cash.
I found a campground in Versailles, outside Paris proper, where I could pitch my tent and cook myself an omelet on my single-burner propane stove. Much of my camping equipment was falling apart by then; it had been cheap to begin with and the road had taken its toll.
The next day I took the Metro into Paris and quickly succumbed to its charms, as nearly everyone does.
I only had a few days before my flight back to the U.S. There wasn’t much money in my pocket. And I was mostly traveling by foot.
But I was determined to see as much of the city as possible, burning the sights into my memory: The broad thoroughfares, the traffic, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Seine, tiny shops and cafes and bistros on the Left Bank.
I literally ate it up. And at one point, I had a companion for my feast.
By an accident of fate, my future father-in-law was in Paris at the same time. An English professor at a college in Illinois, he was staying in Paris while my future mother-in-law was elsewhere in Europe doing research for her master’s degree.
The two of us managed to connect and agreed to meet at a sidewalk café not far from the apartment where he was staying.
Neither of us recognized the other at first. He had grown a Hemmingway-style beard over the summer. My hair was longer than it had ever been, and life outside on the road had bleached it almost blonde.
We laughed over coffee that we must have looked like a couple of true boulevardiers, avant-garde artists or bohemians. Any passing American tourist would have assumed we were part of the Parisian landscape.
And, in many ways, we were. It’s a cosmopolitan city, constantly embracing new people, new stories, new energy. And as we talked — with him sizing me up as a potential son-in-law and me sizing him up as a future father-in-law — we were a part of that Parisian energy, that ever-changing landscape.
That day kept coming back to me over the weekend as news poured in of innocent people slain in sidewalk cafes much like the one we had enjoyed that distant afternoon.
For a few days, so long ago, I had felt as if I were a part of Paris. Now, amid the horror and anxiety, I feel as if I am a part of Paris again, and the sadness is tough to shake.