Waking up, again

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who was about to enter the final year of her twentieth decade (though her dad would correct her and say she was technically entering the first year of her thirtieth. Well, whichever way you’d like to look at it.). But before that all would happen, she decided she would go somewhere new.

So one day, she got up hours before the sun and boarded a plane and crossed the ocean. She got off the plane and onto a bus, then onto a train, then onto a metro. The metro stopped and she stepped off. She climbed up some stairs from below the ground. When she got to the top, she found herself on a bustling sidewalk lined with green trees and bright old buildings, and everything was covered in brilliant sunshine.

She was in Paris. It was a city of boulevards and boulangeries. Time moved quickly there. One moment she was savoring a lemon crepe, the next she was on a boat on the Seine, and the next she was standing across the room from a Monet painting. 

Occasionally she found herself on a train that took her to new places with other languages and different ways to count on one’s fingers. But the train always brought her back to Paris. And each time she returned, it felt more familiar. She knew that the shop keepers would always greet her with “Bonjour!” or “Bonsoir!” and that the baguettes would always show up for dinner. 

Like old friends, the wicker chairs on the café terraces seemed to call out to her in a chorus as she walked by, “Voulez-vous encore un verre de vin?” And the macarons whispered to her, reassuringly, “We contain no calories.” Even the graves in the cemeteries seemed to say, “Better enjoy it now.”

****

And then her alarm clock went off one morning. She was in her own bed. The sky was gray. It was snowing. Clearly this could only have been a dream, these last couple weeks.