I am sitting in the main branch of the Erie County Library. I can’t remember the last time I sat in a library, in person, with a stack of notebooks and my laptop computer. It feels wonderful. The quiet is exquisite. But this room is not silent – there is the distant hum of a machine, the rustling of papers at the reference desk, the tap of my keyboard.

Earlier I chatted with friendly, elderly German at the gift shop. We started talking about a German comedy show (Last Man Laughing), then humor in general, then spoofs on 1970s variety shows. From there the conversation moved to HEMA, world politics, WWII. We discussed the lack of pens for sale in the gift shop (he loans me one). I ask about the German word for cheesy. He thinks for a moment, then answers “kitschy.” Yes, English uses kitschy too – or more accurately, absorbed it from the German.

You might say I’m on vacation, of sorts. It is the first week of May, the coldest I can remember in decades. There is rain. Temperatures are nominally above freezing. Wind and gray skies. Snow flurries.

But I want to go outside, and so I do. A short, frigid run from the lakeshore cabin where I’m staying to the main street of my hometown. Past the tiny beach, with the sign indicating that no lifeguard is on duty. Past the old cemetery with 19^th-century graves and their old-fashioned names carved into the stone. One of the markers, I remember, bears the words, “Killed at Gettysburg.” I run past the trees with new leaves, over a scattering of pink dogwood blossoms lying on the damp sidewalk. I dodge puddles on the pavement.

In times of transition, I return here. To my roots, as much as I have any. I return to incubate myself in the familiar.

On another afternoon I walk along Lake Erie, the wind blowing my hair in crazed directions, the waves roaring as if I am at the ocean. No one else is on the beach, aside from a single pedestrian with a dog, off in the distance. I turn away, walk so that I can face the breakwaters and tide, look at the water hissing out over the sand as it is drawn again into the lake. I am in solitude, I am alive, and the moment is mine alone.

I think of how rooms of books light something in me. Smells of spring light something in me: the rain, the leaves, the soil, the blossoms. Being next to water and tides lights something in me. Despite the cold, I run May-mad.

A day’s agenda might look something like this:

Coffee, early.

Back to bed.

Journal.

Go outside.

Eat. Watch a loon swim. Allow myself to be surprised. Allow myself to be unproductive.

I read an article on social media and banking risk, then another on the US Constitution and presidential pardons. I browse Pinterest. I am both exhilarated and quiet.

In the sense of linear trajectory, I’ve come to a stop. I’m in between jobs, having been let go after the end of a lengthy contract. And for Americans, being out of a job is synonymous with being without purpose. Without value.

But I cannot believe that this interval of time, these days, are wasted. I am simply paying attention to other things.

From my cabin I have an excellent view of wildlife. Herons, a pair of eagles, loons, geese, goldfinches. A muskrat that popped from the lake early one morning to chew vegetation along the water’s edge. I smile at all of them, glad to be back among wild things, glad even, in a way, for the wild weather: it makes the roof, the heat, the warm bed all the more precious.

If there is a lesson anywhere, it is this: I am learning how to live in the in-between spaces. I fall to pieces. I fall into peaces. Slowly, I let myself fall into place.

For years, Paris has lived on my bucket list. Decades, actually – ever since my first high school French class, when the very first French sentence I spoke was Paris est la capital de la France. Uttering those words felt very foreign. Very exciting. Very adventurous. And at last, two university degrees, nine job changes, a marriage, and three relocations later, I was going to go to Paris.

My husband and I touched down at Charles de Gaul airport on a sunny September morning. Despite our jetlag, with the help of Google and my high school French we navigated the local train service and then the subway, suitcases in tow, to emerge triumphantly from the Tour-Maubourg metro station in the 7th arrondisement. My first sight of Paris was a beautiful building facade, its windows shining in the midday sun. To my left was a bubbling fountain, and beyond that, a small shaded park. And in that moment, instantly and totally, I was in love.

Before we go further, to avoid disappointment if the following aren’t mentioned, let me disclose what I didn’t do:

• Tour the Louvre
• Shop the Champs-Elysees
• Visit the Moulin Rouge (or anywhere else in Montmartre)
• Wear a beret

Hardly anyone wears a beret in Paris. And of those who did, I suspect they were mainly tourists.

Having lived in Washington DC, a city that attracts its own fair share of visitors, I know that sightseeing often creates photo opportunities but not a true sense of place. I did concede to taking an open-top Big Bus tour, and happily grabbed shots of Notre Dame, the Paris Opera, and various monuments. But I also insisted that we hop off to walk in the Tuileries Gardens, and to visit the art and booksellers with their stalls along the Left Bank of the Seine. And we did join the crowds who flock to Versailles.

From its golden gates to the sprawling palace with its famed Hall of Mirrors to acres of artificial lakes, fountains, and formal gardens, Versailles is built to astound. And it does. But not even that power and splendor could prevent Louis XVI, and his Austrian-born wife Marie Antoinette, from meeting the blade of the guillotine. 

I could not see Versailles without thinking of the bloodshed of French Revolution. I could not look at Notre Dame without remembering the terrible acts of religious violence that have marked Paris. Even the Eiffel Tower is not immune – today its lights sparkle in the Paris night, but during the German occupation of Paris in World War II, daring residents cut the elevator cables so that Adolf Hitler would be unable to get to the top of the monument unless he climbed it. (So far as we know, he never did.) 

For Paris is a city that shows the magnificence of humanity, but also our cruelty. I did not want to be a careless visitor, one who saw only Paris’ beauty and forgot what suffering had occurred among its boulevards and parks.

So what did I do in Paris? I walked. I ate in bistros and cafes – lots of them. My husband and I strolled along the banks of the Seine at night and watched as the city lights reflected in its dark waters. We sought out the spot where medieval pilgrims left Paris to begin the long journey to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela. I indulged in all sorts of carbs: crepes, croissants, wine. I visited a bookstore and purchased the Paris Snob Guide, 1967 edition. 

I even spoke a little French. It was uncanny to be able to understand much more of a a language than I could express. I listened to waiters or department store staff or radio DJs, and I had a sense of the conversation. But I didn’t have the spoken fluency to be able to answer. Sometimes the Parisians defaulted to English. Sometimes there was pantomime. Sometimes we had a hybrid conversation that switched between languages. My best French moment was probably a request to the concierge for a new hairdryer. We did it entirely in French, even the bit where he explained to me that the room key needed to be inserted in the slot for the light switch. And I responded, in French, that yes, we did that, and no, the hairdryer didn’t work and hadn’t worked since we checked in. He kindly found me another one. 

And I watched Parisians. The daring motorcyclists and scooter riders zipping through traffic. A dad and his toddler son at the cafe opposite ours one evening. The man calmly smoked with the baby in his stroller beside the table. When the child grew restless, dad lifted him out and set him on a chair, and continued with his cigarette. The businessman in a park who, having finished his lunch, took off his suit jacket and laid it on the grass. He then lay back and rested for the remainder of his lunch hour. At its conclusion, he picked up his jacket, shook it off, and returned to work.

One of my favorite things about travel is the chance to see people in other parts of the world living their lives. And, perhaps, to step into an alternate version of my own.

The version where I wake to new foods, new sounds, new things to see. 

And perhaps, just perhaps, I stepped closer not only to the person I aspire to be, but to a more authentic version of myself. The self that watches. The self that writes. On the morning of our last day there, I was up early. I opened the windows so that I could sit on the bed and gaze out at the cathedral opposite. It holds the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte. Six stories below, Parisians moved toward the city center on their morning commute. I opened my journal, picked up a pen, and knew that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. 

Next Month: American Abroad, Part 2, with adventures on the French Riviera.