Remembering Paris

I wanted to go to Paris with my husband.  As it turned out, I went to Europe with 13-year-old David on a trip that began and ended in Frankfurt, Germany.  

Paris should have been the romantic climax of our trip.  You know: like Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in “Charade” or Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in “An American in Paris,.” Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman looking into each other’s eyes and whispering, “We’ll always have Paris.”

Instead, for me Paris turned out to be just one more round of sightseeing, and we left with one more week to go before returning to the U.S.

I was able to return to Paris several times after that.  Now it is only memories.  With dialysis three days a week, I can not make any more trips abroad.  I do not have the energy to drive the 40 miles to Fort Worth to see the 40th anniversary exhibit at the Kimball Museum.  

Except for a few months in 1983, I have not lived in Fort Worth for 60 years.  My four college friends who still live in Fort Worth have gone on with their lives as typical Texans.  The only one who seemed interested in reconnecting with me was Emma, and now she has moved to Austin. 

Sally and I never lost touch.  For years both of us were housebound with small children – she on Wise County farms and for a while in Oklahoma City, me in Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.  Long letters went back and forth almost weekly.  Sally’s husband Hugh took her to Fort Worth to visit my mother.  While I lived in Pennsylvania, I drove once a month through Amish country from Philadelphia to Lancaster to visit Sally’s mother.

Today I am a two-hour drive from Garland to Sally’s place.  When I first came back to Texas, I did it a couple of times, but it was exhausting.  Now I wait for David to come to Texas and take me out to the farm.  Sally is in a similar situation.  Only since Hugh died has she steeled herself to drive the few miles from the farm to Decatur.   Several times she has persuaded her daughters to bring her to Garland to see me.  Sally and I talk on the phone.

Hugh never wanted to travel.  They stayed on the farm, raising prize beef cattle.  David loved getting in the pickup truck, which they did morning and evening, bouncing across the pasture to see the cows.  Sally’s escape was in reading.  Her house is stuffed with books, on shelves in every room and down the hallway, enough to stock a good-sized branch library.

Sally never saw Paris.  Frankly, most of my times in Paris were rather dull.  The closest I came to the Bogart-Bergman experience was in 1988, when my second husband, John Durkalski, and I spent a week there.  I have a picture of the two of us drinking Coca-Cola at a sidewalk café.  Our most romantic evening was strolling down from the Invalids to the Eiffel Tower.  The night was calm and warm; the lights on the tower were beautiful.  We took the elevator up to the platform, where we could not get a table with a view.  We still sat down and ordered ice cream.

After that I can say, “We’ll always have Paris.”