Paris Tapestry

We exit the Metro, climbing the steps out of the Porte Maillot station, and I orient myself with my Plan de Paris, a little blue book of maps discretely tucked into most Parisians’ pockets and purses. It has been 30 years but I am hoping that I have this right. I am trying to find a restaurant my husband and I frequented when we were young. With only the name “L’Entrecote,” and the arrondissement, 17th, I had enlisted the help of a friendly local with internet on her phone. She gave me the telephone numbers of three possibilities, and the first one I called informed me they don’t take reservations: Bingo! I remember that fact, unusual for Paris restaurants, and off we went to find it.

“If this is it,” I say, “it will be on a corner right up there,” and I point up ahead. As we turn right onto Blvd. Perreire, it appears before me, exactly as I remember it, exactly as it was 30 years ago. I stand in line, not with my husband this time, but with my daughter, a dear friend, and her daughter, and time warps back on itself. I feel a shifting, a vibration, as my past and present align: my 22 year old self and the 52 year old me, with my friend who didn’t know me back then but is beginning to see the whole of me now.

I like to think of life as a tapestry. We live our days weaving our current piece of thread back and forth through the sturdy warp threads that provide the structure of our world. The colors of the threads change and multiply with every experience and relationship, adding depth and beauty to the tapestry of our life.

As with any work of art there are focal points where all of the themes and colors come together, where threads from all different parts of the whole weave themselves into a beautiful pattern that draws the eye and speaks to the heart.

In the tapestry of my life, my recent week in Paris was such a time.

I first moved to Paris when I was 22 years old. A recent college graduate, I was offered an unpaid 6 month internship at an international organization there. I almost didn’t take it, for reasons I cannot fathom now – something to do with a more practical job choice closer to home – but in the end I decided to live adventurously, and a bright new thread was woven into my life. I loved Paris with every fiber of my being. It felt like an answer to a question I had not even realized I’d been asking. Six months became 3 years as I explored, worked, ate food that spoke seductively to my taste buds, and made friends who were as intoxicated with youth and this city as me. My college boyfriend followed me to Paris and being single and in love led to being newlyweds in love. Paris can do that to you.

Fast forward 24 years: We lived in Portland, Oregon in a big beautiful house with 2 children. Those vibrant and lively colors of my youth were still there, but in the background, and my tapestry had become richer, denser and more complex. I was still the person who had come of age in Paris but that part of me was under deep cover. My days were filled with all the highs and lows of parenting, carpooling, volunteering and the challenges of shepherding children into adulthood. Thank goodness for our next-door neighbors who shared the journey with us. For 14 years, our wonderful neighbors were my children’s second family and vice versa. Our family was a little older than theirs, so our children were like siblings, and we two moms, sisters of the heart, shared our parenting woes and joys in equal measure. We wove similar color threads into our lives despite our different backgrounds: where we lived before children just wasn’t important. But in our musings one day she brought up my Paris days, wistful that she hadn’t gone there herself.

Over those years, I watched my friend’s children when she went to the hospital in labor with her third baby. I watched the children again when she rushed her daughter to the ER with a split chin. But when she went to the doctor recently herself and was given the kind of news that makes you realize every moment we have is precious, I started planning a trip to Paris.

What is special about L’Entrecote is that when you sit down you are asked only 2 questions: “Rare, medium or well-done?” and “Red, white or rose?” And then you are served perfectly cooked sliced steak in a delectable pool of herb and mustard sauce next to a pile of crispy delicate fries. It tasted just as I had remembered in my head.

Just as I remembered, only better, because my friend could taste it too.

The next day we went to the Musee de Cluny, the National Museum of the Middle Ages, in a beautiful old building originally built in 1334. We went specifically to see the famous “Lady and the Unicorn” tapestries, but I was dismayed and disappointed to learn that the Lady and her magical unicorn were on a trip themselves, on tour in Japan.

No matter, I realize now, looking back. There is no way those tapestries could be as magical as the one we wove ourselves that week together in Paris.