Waking Up in le Marais

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Location: Le Marais – Paris, France

Paris, October 8, 2021

Dear friends,

The alarm rings. 6 am. The pre-pandemic me, equally jetlagged and sleep deprived, would have leapt out of bed and into action. Waking up in Paris was not an opportunity to waste. For her, every second counted and needed to be filled.

The alarm goes on ringing. I am not that person anymore. Waking up in Paris fills me with joy, but it’s still pitch dark outside the window. Boulevard Beaumarchais below us is barely illuminated by streetlamp light. After hours punctuacted honking car horns, rumbling metro cars and shouting from late night revelers, it’s finally calm but I am exhausted “How would you feel about another hour of sleep?” I mumble in what vaguely seems like Ian’s direction. He mutters acknowledgement that I take as a yes. We reset the alarm for 7 am and go back to sleep.

If anything, waking up in Paris is more special now than it used to be. After all, its a privilege we’ve been denied for close to two years. It’s different now, too. Waking up in Paris used to be about seizing the day and squeezing every second of productivity from it so we had some time left for fun. Today, it’s just about the joy of being here.

And what joy. I can scarcely find the words to describe the sense of wonder I feel when I wake up to the 7 am alarm and pull back the velvet curtains in our temporary bedroom to find le Marais still dark outside the foggy window, damp with morning dew. The curiousity that comes from contemplating how many people before me have looked out this same window on a different version of the same scene and what they’ve felt as they took it in. The anticipation of fresh pain au chocolat when Ian gets back from the local bakery, the same one we’ve frequented since 2012. We are home.

I admit freely that growing up, I didn’t understand the fuss about home. Mom will attest to this – when I went away, I rarely called to check in, and felt reluctance more than anything when it came time to return. This despite the fact that I had a warm home with a comfortable bed, a neverending supply of homemade treats and all the teddy bears anyone could want. Home, for me, was just a place that I had to go back to when my adventures were over – and I never wanted them to end.

When I came to Paris in tenth grade, everything changed. I found the place I’d been waiting to find all along – somewhere worthy of a desire to return.

“Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior

And now, twenty years later, I’m here again. No matter how long I’m forced to stay away, every return feels like a homecoming. As the sun begins to rise over the cafe au lait coloured buildings outside my window, my appreciation for the concept of home is renewed. This is not where I was born, it’s where I was reborn, where I became the person I wanted to be. My heart will always be drawn back to it for that reason – and even sleeping in for an extra hour will be better here than anywhere else because of it.

I boil water for tea and Ian returns, winded from the climb up the four flights of stairs, but with pastries in hand. I tear into my pain au chocolat before it’s even out of the paper bag. The joy of Paris is just outside, waiting for me. But it’s in here too, in these small pleasures. It’s in waking up and seeing the city outside my window in place of the drab highrises at home. And in choosing to take my time to appreciate it. There was a time, not so long ago, when I was in too much of a rush to do that. At the time, I didn’t see that I was making a mistake in failing to savour the moment, because I believed there would always be another.

Now that I know differently, my mornings in Paris look different. And from where I’m sitting, looking out on the sunny streets of le Marais, the view has never been better.

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