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I just got back from a week in London and Paris. It’s been 17 years since I’ve been to Europe, the last trip being when my oldest son was a bun in the oven. I’ll never forget feeling his first kick while I lay exhausted in a hotel in Beaune, France in July, 1992. His mighty foot felt like a tiny bubble popping against the inside of my five-month pregnant stomach. I laughed out loud because it tickled me – literally – and the delight on my husband’s face is with me to this day. It’s my best memory of France – ever.

This trip, I was older and joyfully sans-teenagers. (Yes! The house is still standing!) Because I could, I pushed myself through practically every room in the British Museum, the Louvre and a few other places… chasing memories of my pre-motherhood days. I didn’t find memories, though. I found a new kind of freedom. I zigged and zagged my way through culture, shopping, café-sitting, a little writing and even made it to an evensong service at Westminster Abbey to sit quietly and listen to angels singing among the ceiling vaults.

I sculpted and morphed my itinerary on the fly. It was fabulous to revel in my constantly changing mind. I flip-flopped back and forth – Dali exhibit or Hyde Park? Grass or Art? Grass won out when I determined last minute that the extra schlepping (and £30) of Dali would wear me down so I turned right instead of left on my walk to the Tube and ditched (amazing, I’m sure) abstract art for the Elfin Oak. I don’t remember ever feeling so unprogrammed.

I wrestled through my long-standing internal debate about classical vs. modern art, but getting hopelessly and happily lost in the eternal halls of the Louvre, and meandering the orderly spaces of the Musee D’Orsay finally settled it. I found myself standing transfixed before elegant bodies sculpted by the ancients but easily moseyed past religion-heavy Renaissance paintings (and I don’t count the Mona Lisa because you can’t even see it for the cell phone clicking hoards.) By contrast, I choked up the moment I entered the van Goch room but found myself trying way too hard to appreciate Degas' and Rodin’s roughened black figures. I am finally able to declare my preferences! I am an unabashed fan of Greek/Roman physical forms and an absolute fangirl for modern painting from Cezanne forward - the more abstract the better (though I do have a very soft heart for 18th Century Kyoto Japanese brushwork as well).

My husband and I had a fabulous time revisiting some old Parisian memories we shared in and around his work meetings. I snuck in texts to stay in tune with the kids and just enough email to keep from being overwhelmed on my return. I went on little hunts for my personal favorites, bypassing  European fashions (which don’t look good on me anyway) for tea, chocolate, beads and fine writing notebooks and pens. I tried to be a happy American and noticed that I got fewer French eyebrow-queries than I recall from years gone by. I don’t think America’s international standing is any greater in the world these days, so I will declare this a personal victory for overcoming my inability to speak their language with friendliness and kindness. (Even the English hotel clerk didn’t understand half of what I said and vice versa. But we did have a fascinating conversation about “underpants”, “trousers” and the Bermuda Triangle.)

The ethnic blending in London especially was amazing and encouraging with respect to the future of the human race. Skin colors blended into beautiful soft brown hues passing me on the streets and in the Tube. Most of them spoke the King’s English and when they didn’t, the happy chatter of many languages turned into a fascinating song of humanity, lilting from French to Romanian (I think) to Japanese to Spanish and on and on and on.

The whole time, I felt so happy to be alive on this earth. With all its strife and war and misunderstanding, there is so much beauty behind us and walking with us every day. And I was happy with me. I arrived home jet lagged and had only enough brain cells to do my laundry (well, get it started anyway), and make a Manga-Me (turns out that making a Manga-Me takes virtually NO brain cells. Who knew?) I tried to make a real me and then for fun made a “wacky me”. Funny, they really don’t look that different. I guess the real me is good enough these days

                    
Perhaps it shouldn’t have taken me a trip half way around the world (ok, not half, but far) to find myself happy in my own walking shoes, but “should’s” feel pretty irrelevant. I was happy to find a little piece of myself I haven’t lost walking with me in the streets of two of the greatest cities on the planet.  And I am happy to be home.