Notre Dame, 1980

For me to use the phrase my Paris is absurd. I have not lived there, and so have not worked there, have not schooled there, have not loved there, have not faced the daily aggravations great or small that may come to be a part of living anywhere.

But.

If one measures time in a locale by sleeps, then as it turned out, I spent more of my life so far in Paris and its environs than Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, or New York. Even New Orleans. My first visit in 1980 was with a friend from LSU. 

Paris was an idea formed in my imagination in the decade before I set foot in the city. Because I was 27 that first morning rather than 17, I had expanded my expectations much further than my American-centric high school reading list prompted. Paris for me was created by Balzac, Stendahl, Rabelais, Proust, Rostand, Zola, and Hugo. By Sartre and Camus. And, not too surprisingly, so very much by Hemingway. 

My first destination in Paris early on a Saturday morning was Notre Dame. My friend was at an appointment to finalize paperwork for a teaching position in Toulouse. I was on my own for a bit.

Cool and humid, the sky gray, the morning was so very quiet. After taking a few pictures, I walked up to the cathedral’s entrance. I would be the first tourist admitted that morning, and no one would be tailing along.

For a moment, think of that possibility if you have some iconic place you long imagined—alone one morning on the Golden Gate Bridge or at the north rim of the Grand Canyon or the lookout from the Empire State Building.

Let me skip ahead to a small detail. The history of the cathedral is well documented, the church’s magnificent interior both meets and betters all expectations. For me, a living history was in worn stone steps leading up the left tower, connecting me to the parade of the hundreds of thousands of individuals who preceded me and would follow me.

Reaching the walkway connecting the towers, I stepped out as if into the sky. Below me Paris, the Paris I imagined. The muted colors of the buildings, the many chimney pots, the Paris of Balzac and Hugo.

In 1980, scaffolding was also in place. A workman perched just below me, and when we made eye contact, he and I nodded to one another. Perhaps he was too bleary-eyed to see how I saw his city or too jaundiced to care what the look on my face registered.

Yet—what I saw that early morning, from the height of Notre Dame was a personal Paris, the Paris of my dreams.

And now the fire of 2019. Some weep, some cheer, and many may be indifferent. Notre Dame still stands, for me, part of the personal lore that makes life worth living.