Thankful Thursdays {06.08.2017}

I took the girls to see Paris Can Wait last night. Virginia, being my mini me, loved it. I’m pretty sure Isabella would’ve rather had bamboo shoved under her fingernails. The movie was a journey of many sorts, some paths I’ve walked myself.

This summer will be five years since our first trip to Paris. I could’ve never imagined where that trip would take me, emotionally, and literally. It began a romance with a city that feels like home, oddly, and with a person who forever holds a piece of my heart. NYC is where we met many years ago. Paris is where we reconnected, and started a story, neither of us knowing how it would unfold.

Some of my happiest, craziest, and most soothing memories happened with C. So did some of my most heart breaking. I grew in ways I never imagined, thinking I knew what it meant to love, and be loved. In many ways I was so naive, thinking love was enough, forgetting the lessons of my parents, and he forgetting those of his own. We were both dreamers, I suppose, and in many ways I know we still wonder what could’ve been. And yet, I feel a calm when I think of it all.

In very different ways, he and Michael taught me the true meaning of “better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.” And I haven’t really lost C. We’re connected by eight letters on each of our wrists. One of us was ready to leap, the other was not. That is how life goes some times. It’s always about timing, and we just never found the right moment, or perhaps the moment was just never right.

Watching Paris Can Wait reminded me so much of those whirlwind trips to Paris, shuttling on trains to Normandy, or to his house in the countryside. And then there was the incredibly long journey I made to Annecy, France. It took one plane, a train, and a car to get to the hotel. The streets of the town center reminded us both of Venice, winding our way through little canals.

There’s a scene in the film where Diane Lane is walking with three different cones of ice cream, and that may as well have been me—I still remember the creamy, cloud-like apricot gelato I had from a streetcart. As an aside, I’ve decided Diane Lane will play me in the story of my life. The girls agreed she’d be perfect for the role.

The food in the film left Virginia and I with a voracious appetite. I decided to satisfy her roast chicken craving with a spur of the moment dinner at Market St. in Rhinebeck. You’ve never seen a nine-year old so happy, devouring a meal that wasn’t “typical” kid-fare. It came with the most amazing roasted, or perhaps pan-seared artichoke hearts. I ate my share, and took the rest home, along with the roasted potatoes, and intend to make a frittata out of them.

The girls’ homeschool hub ends this weekend, and I suppose it’s time to really wrap my head around our summer. It’s the first year we’ve no plans to go to Cape Cod, and that leaves me feeling a bit sad (or a lot sad). Our usual rental doubled in price after 13 years of it increasing at a nominal rate, so I had to let it go. I’m hoping for some last minute rental miracle…we shall see. I can’t imagine a summer without a Cape Cod sunset (or sunrise), but wonder if perhaps the universe has something else waiting in the wings for us.