Because I am seven, I call it the magic city.
In the airport, my mom rolls out matching Boden pajamas—orange, pink, and yellow stripes for me; blue, green, and gray stripes for my brother, Ben. I think it odd we are sleeping with a bunch of strangers, eating our breakfast and sipping our orange juice in the morning like one machine of consumption. I have never eaten a meal on a plane before—I am not yet familiar with the concept of airplane food. I have high hopes for croissants.
Our eventual destination is a small town in the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur region of Southern France, one of the oldest medieval towns on the French Riviera. I soon discover it is also home to a playground full of imagination-inspiring slides and playhouses. As we trudge through our city’s airport, I am not trusted to hold onto the plane ticket bound for Charles de Gaulle.
My parents let Ben and I use their laps as pillows. When the seatbelt sign blinks off, I curl up on the ground of the airplane—likely no longer allowed, like they did in 2005 —and my brother sprawls across my mother’s lap. She doesn’t sleep, and we almost exclusively do.
After spending a couple of days eating through Paris and visiting museums on a schedule crimped by mine and my brother’s limited patience, we are bound for the magic city. Saint-Paul-de-Vence.
Winding, narrow roads contain the vibrancy of life here, bicycles and small cars zip through the streets with as much confidence as if they are in a wide open plain. There are several cafés and small art galleries, for it is a poetic place, what with the old, stone walls reaching towards the sun, blocking out external life. A feeling of separateness and wonder follow my small feet as they explore the cobblestone streets.
We stay in an artist’s apartment, and when my brother and I explore our temporary home, we find the artist’s in-progress and completed works under filmy tarps in a room our mother later warns us is off limits. One night, my parents go out for dinner and hire a babysitter to watch us who, though French, spoke English. (Perhaps an obvious prerequisite for American parents, but then again, children make little sense.) He smokes cigarettes and has yellow nails and teeth. Shaggy hair, too. He is the most handsome man I have ever seen. I imagine him as the mysterious artist who owns the apartment with his silent sturdiness and easy attitude.
The windows in the apartment are not childproof, but romantic, large, and framed by the stony exterior. They open with a latch to views of the street below, low enough for someone to sit on the sill and admire the fashionable women passing below, with long skirts and sun hats. However, my mother doesn’t let me near the window and keeps it firmly latched.
Except one evening. She lets me sit in her lap near the window as she gets ready for dinner. The evening sky is wonderful and striped. She wears a brand-new yellow silk dress, and a warm breeze wafts over the two of us, the yellow silk rippling around her ankles. I believe that if I were to jump from the window, I would be able to fly among the gargoyles springing out of the terraces (my conviction held that they came to life at night, eating flies and small birds, before returning to stone at dawn). My mom’s lap so warm and soft, I never want to go back to America, or leave the room. Ambitions for flying are for those who don’t have a mother’s lap to sit on, I resolve.
Two nights later, we wander the streets at night, hearing an enchanting song that calls to us from a distance. We move closer and closer to the source, wondering what charming French musician this could be, remembering earlier that day when we heard a man playing guitar in the street, who looked like the babysitter, a bit … and as we grow closer, we catch English phrases: “Love, love me do” and realize it’s a Beatles cover band. Purple and yellow lights flash on the horizon as my bare feet contact the smooth cobblestones—my dad carries the shoes that I refuse to wear. We forget all notions of the charming French band and despite ourselves, find glee at the familiarity of listening to Beatles’ songs.
I scream, UGHHHHHH!!!!!, and my mom, quick to act, What? What is it? The sensation of something firm and slimy strikes my right foot, and I pull my leg into my chest, hopping away on my left foot. A giant toad bigger than both my fists hops in the other direction. My mom, realizing the danger is nonexistent says: Well, that toad probably thinks Americans are quite rude, laughing, laughing, and I keep screaming in intervals, AHH, and then, AHH, because the wet, slimy, horny, warty, toady feeling is still on the skin of my foot. We hear an indignant ribbit as it crawls away. I put my shoes back on, and we find ourselves an overlook spot for the tribute band, listening to Eight Days a Week..
There’s a photo my mom keeps in an album from that trip: me, wearing dark capris, a white tunic with a string at the back, and a pink woven hat with shells; my brother next to me in an orange t-shirt with his then white-blonde hair. We were mid-pose of some dance, in sync, right arms up in the air, left arms reaching out for the mountains beyond the walls.
Back in Paris, we stayed at the Ritz, and I splashed former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the swimming pool (on accident, of course). My mother made me apologize, and then she apologized on my behalf, profusely. I didn’t know who Condoleezza Rice was at the time. I thought the old men looked alien-ish in the required swim caps, and I didn’t understand the point of a pool in which one wasn’t allowed to splash or shove their annoying younger brothers (just a little shove, of course).
It was a trip of sorbet in delicate glasses with fresh flowers on top. Pink and orange everywhere. My brother almost getting struck down by the one large vehicle brave enough to take on the street of St.-Paul-de-Vence: the garbage truck. Trips to the playground. Meeting French children and innocently trying to teach them our language and learn French through hand gestures and yelling, as if volume equated to comprehension. The artists’ paintings hidden in a forbidden room that I kept finding myself sneaking off to, sitting in the center of the tarp-covered canvases like mysteries that could reveal themselves, like gargoyles at night. Back home in Atlanta, I dreamed of winding, wild streets, sequestered by the stone walls reaching to heaven, and took a pen to paper for the first time, trying to remember if the magic was real. ▪
