A Window Away

Dinner in Paris

I have been traveling on spring break for the past week which is why I have been unable to post on this last topic, but while traveling I did get the chance to encounter people of a different culture and compare them with the locals in Paris, and I must say, returning to the people of this city has been quite nice. For the last seven days, I have been traveling throughout the eastern coast of Spain, from Costa Brava and Lloret de Mar to Barcelona, and the one thing each region, city, town, beach or bar had in common was its Spanish men. They caution you against the aggressive nature of Parisian men, but in Spain, it was much worse. I felt so violated I almost started a few fist fights. I was very close. So one can imagine it was quite a delight returning to Paris, my comfortable neighborhood with its sweet blond boulanger and packs of roaming squealing kids and kind smiling messieurs, polite enough to step aside as you walk down the sidewalk... the warm comfort of my neighborhood and its inhabitants. Which brings me to the people I'd like to discuss in this topic. My building sits on a narrow road just across from a large white stone apartment complex, each room equipped with a black iron balcony and double wooden shutters. My two living room windows look directly into the home of a middle-aged couple who, though I have never been acquainted with them, I feel I know very well.

The man is tall, broad chested, wears sweaters, and often reads books by the open window. The woman is beautiful, with dark hair and a tan face, and hangs towels over the balcony railing when the sun is out. They have a small child, a son I believe, with wispy curls and chubby hands, who spends hours walking  back and forth across the wood floor, smiling with the oohs and aahs of his parents. Their apartment is classic, set just like mine, with a licing room against the street and a narrow attached kitchen. In the middle sits a wide wooden table where, every week, one night a week, they entertain three or four other couples for a sweet Parisian dinner party. Sitting at the open window, my feet propped up against the rail, I watch as they dine in classic French fashion. There is wine, several bottles, and baskets of fresh-looking white bread. They sit and talk, then the first course is brought out and they drink and dine in merriment over it, taking their time as the night fades into dark. They eat a second course, a meat, from a great platter, and then sit for hours as if they've nowhere better to go, as if they can think of no place they'd rather be in the world than here, across from me, a window away, in the dusk of a warm Paris evening. By the time the dinner's over and they waved their friends away, down the bustling street into the night, I've usually gone, to my own dinner, my own meeting with friends. I've left them there to go live my night, only to return to them the next day as we exist in these parallel strips of life, so close yet so far in dimension. I may not know this family, yet the familiar glow of their living room light, the smoke drifting from the cigarette near their front open window, the cackling laugh of their child dancing across the streetway to meet me, these are things I know. These are the things I will remember. These are the things that will make up my memory of Paris when I'm long long gone away and I'm telling the story of my time here, and I pause to think back on the warmth of my home and the wonderful little French family that lived merely a small white window away.