At Home and in Paris

A Happy Anniversary...

May 3rd was the fifth anniversary of our arrival to our new home in Paris.Of course the apartment was a temporary abode that we’d leased for six months, but it was cozy.

The bistro downstairs became our second kitchen, and all felt like a dream come true.

Although we had been told that the month of May

in Paris was usually a cheerful one, the center of the country was experiencing record heavy rains.The Seine was at such a high level that folks began to worry about the art on the ground floors of the Musée de Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay.

Our first full day after arrival was lovely and we walked to the gardens of the Tuileries to sit and enjoy the greenery and flowers with a view of the North end of the Louvre. We used to toy with the fantasy that this might be our new home in Paris.Ha!

While we were basking in gorgeous weather, we began to receive texts and emails from anxious and caring friends from all over America; Friends who were concerned for us, and of course for the fate of the endangered art, since American newsrooms had taken the opportunity of specific reports coming out of France as fodder for high drama in Paris. Many thought the river was overflowing its banks and that the City of Light was inundated.

By chance, we happened to be sitting right next to one of the large irrigation ditches in the park. What we saw were two Billy goats, tethered to posts that supported a lean-to shelter, with just enough slack so that they could happily graze the bottom and sides of the lush and grassy ditch.

Apparently, every couple of days the city gardners would move the shelter and its occupants a dozen or so feet down the channel; It seemed to us to be a very ecological method of both garden maintenance and Bovidae husbandry.We were happy to be able to relieve the anxiety of each of our friends’ by sending photos that assured them that the only thing in the drainage canals of Paris were goats! Goats??????? Who knew?

This was to be our introduction to 'city life with a conscience’, thanks in large part to Mayor Hidalgo and her tree-hugging, Green Party ideals, hell bent on keeping pollution to a bare minimum and the health of the people of Paris at its maximum, in spite of many vociferous locals shouting for their Liberté!

Anniversary or not, in like spirit, we attended our bi-annual rendez-vous for our medical check-up with our lovely young Dr. Vanessa Rousseaux.

Driving back with the sparkling Seine on our right side, and turning into the Place de la Concorde, we we were once again captivated by the view of the newly refreshed architecture framing our way to the Madeleine. As Hemingway said, we were ‘Happy at home and in Paris’.