I had not been back to the Cité Universitaire since I lived there that summer thirty-two years ago.  (See That French Connection, April 2014.)  I hadn’t expected to return on this trip.  I thought it would hold minimal interest for my husband and daughter.  But on our first day in Paris, a Saturday during spring break, we found ourselves engulfed in crowds.  The area in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral was a roiling sea of humanity.  The line for the Sainte-Chapelle stretched for blocks.  We expected Palm Sunday at all the expected sites to be equally busy.  This factor may have persuaded H and D that we should visit the Cité, located in an unfashionable area at the bottom of the Paris map.   Tourists would certainly not be flocking there.

I had remembered the Cité as being far removed from the city center.  I was surprised to see that it was only three stops from Luxembourg on the RER.  I was also surprised to see the complex looking almost exactly as I recalled it, but spruced up and considerably less seedy.  It wasn’t exactly run-down in 1982.  Perhaps indifferently maintained is a good way to describe it.  The grounds were wild and weedy, closer to messy than pristine.  Litter was common.  This past April, the Cité was looking comparatively fresh, fit and clean.  The plantings were lush and well-tended.  The buildings were grander and more imposing than I had remembered.  And there were fewer shady characters skulking about.

My little room was perfectly adequate, and I loved my balcony that looked out onto the big evergreen tree, the then-scruffy garden, and the Mexico building.  On the top floor were much sought-after artists’ lofts, with high ceilings and skylights.

In the photo above, the open balcony door at the right suggests that the current resident was in my old room.  The same red-orange draperies adorn the windows.  The tall tree still flourishes in the courtyard.

Although the institutional décor left something to be desired, I enjoyed that humble, well-worn room. In addition to the vinyl-covered armchair, there was a decent bed, desk, and a reading lamp with a shade covered in peeling contact paper.  The open balcony doors provided all the air conditioning needed.  Not a single mosquito, gnat or fly ever flew in. Toilet cubicles and showers were down the hall, of course.  There was no adjusting the water pressure or its temperature in the shower.  You pushed a button, which triggered a quick burst of water that lasted about three minutes.  Luckily, the button could be pressed multiple times, or I never could have rinsed the shampoo from my hair.  The atmosphere was classic Paris student.

The sight of those bare shelves in that room reminds me of how lightly and simply I traveled that summer.  Some aspirin, soap, toothbrush, a little make-up, some paper, pens and pencils, a book or too.  My address book and airmail envelopes for letters to the States.  I did bring a travel iron, at my mother’s insistence, which I don’t think I ever used.  Its adapter was nearly as large as the iron.  No cell phone, iPod, iPad, no laptop.  From the looks of the trash bin at my feet, I had recently polished off two boxes of French crackers.  My friends and I snacked on packaged melba toast-like crisps and La Vache qui Rit cheese.  For further between-meal sustenance, I had brought a large supply of grape Tangy Taffy from home.

Thirty-two years later, as I stood there in the garden behind the building, my husband and daughter by my side, looking up at the open door to my old room, the memories swirled around me.  Some were vivid, others were just out of reach, like dreams upon waking.  The experience was unsettling.  I understood then why some prefer never to return to such places.  As for me, though, I’ll go back.  Those chances to glimpse the present through the eyes of the past, and vice-versa–they add a richness to life that I want to savor.  Even if there may be bitter along with the sweet.

 As I’ve mentioned, I was lucky to receive an early formative introduction to France, its language and culture, thanks to a remarkably dedicated middle school teacher.  See Vacation ’75: Part I: Paris, March 2013.  Mrs. Correll emphasized the value of college study abroad, and I took her at her word.  The summer after my junior year at UGA, I headed to Paris.  Courses were held in the hallowed halls of the Sorbonne, where Mrs. Correll had received her Master’s degree.  We had the option of living with a Parisian family, but I found the prospect of total immersion in French too daunting.  My residence that summer was a dormitory at the Cité Universitaire, a complex for visiting international students. 

                                 
My husband came to love France during his undergrad years at Union College in Schenectady, New York, a small liberal arts college that aims to turn out well-rounded students.  Scientists as well as artists are encouraged to spend time in foreign study.  H majored in mechanical and aerospace engineering, but he also studied French.  He lived with a French family during a semester in Rennes, and before the program began, he and a buddy meandered through Europe by train.  I distinctly remember telling a friend about H soon after we’d met as grad students, “He’s an engineer, but he speaks French!”  My friend agreed that this was quite unusual.  Maybe things have changed, but in the early 90s, the typical Princeton Ph.D. who toiled in the labs of the E-Quad did not speak French, unless it happened to be a native language. 

As I look back, I see that our mutual interest in French was a primary factor in bringing my husband and me together.  Now, after nearly nineteen years of marriage, we share so much:  a home, a church, fundamental values, a daughter, family, friends, a dog and a turtle.  But we began as two strangers with very little in common.  When we met at that grad college barbeque, he was just beginning his engineering courses at Princeton and his research into “the thermal decomposition of nitrous oxide.”  I was writing my dissertation on medieval illuminated manuscripts, having finished my coursework and research abroad.  My funding had run out, and I was working as a professor’s assistant in Intro to Modern Art.  Our interests, on the surface, could hardly have been more different.  And then there was the age difference.  He was a dewy twenty-two.  I was about to turn twenty-nine.  Those seven years appeared to stretch like an unbridgeable river.  No betting person would have put money on our going on a second date.  Maybe not even a first.

But there was that French connection.  We couldn’t discuss manuscript illumination or the burning of nitrous oxide for very long, that’s for sure.  But we could talk for hours about France and our experiences there.  Did that French link make him think twice about me?  Consider that I might not be a hopelessly artsy, aging pseudo-bohemian?  Was it the point that convinced me of his unexpected depth, of some wisdom beyond his years?

French was, and still is, a fertile area of common ground between my husband and me. While neither of us makes any claim of fluency or expertise, our appreciation for the country and the language is genuine and heartfelt.  We don’t sit around and speak French and think how sophisticated we are, or how cool we sound.  We know we don’t sound particularly cool.  But we find humor in what we consider the quirks and oddities of the French language.  For example, to our American-trained ears, the word pneu (tire), sounds silly.  And we find it amusing that a stick to stir coffee is called, rather formidably, “un agitateur.”  But then we reconsider and agree that the word is decisive and definitive, unlike our American terms.  (Is it coffee stir, or coffee stirrer, or stir stick?  I really don’t know.)  The French seem to have a specific word for everything, and we respect and admire them for that.

Our mishaps in speaking are a source of many laughs.  A favorite story is from H’s student days in Rennes.  He’d bought a little second-hand moped to take him from his family’s house into the center of the city.  One night after late partying he locked it up near the university and got a ride back with friends.  The next day it was gone. He reported the missing moped to the police, saying “Quelqu’un a violé ma mobilette.”  He was asked to repeat his story to officer after officer, each of whom maintained a strenuously serious expression.  H was pleased that his report was being received with impressive gravity, certain that swift action would be taken to retrieve his trusty vehicle.  Only later did he realize he’d been saying that his moped had been violated, rather than stolen (volé).

H and I first traveled to France together in the spring of 2002, with my parents.  They had funded most of my several visits but had never set foot in France themselves.  We thought about taking our daughter along.  She wasn’t yet three.  We didn’t consider it very long, since H’s parents were willing to take care of her.  We’d wait until she was old enough to appreciate the wonder of being in a foreign country.

Then, as they tend to do, the years zipped by with lightning speed.  We realized we were in danger of waiting too long for our family trip to France.  Our daughter’s idea of the perfect holiday is no longer hanging around with her parents, even if it does happen to be in an exotic locale.  And before long, she would be a young woman in college, no longer our captive child.

This past spring break, the three of us flew to Paris.