April Memories

I have a feeling this is what April will be like for me for the next few years. My mind has been thousands of miles away for the last few days. In Europe, to be exact.

One year ago last night I was standing atop Montmartre drinking champage and rum and pineapple juice and watching the Eiffel Tower twinkle at the top of each hour. We saw Paris in the dark, and the dark side of a couple of Parisians.

The next morning we walked through Sacre Coeur by daylight. I stopped to read an inscription on the wall. It said that on the night of April 20th and early morning hours of April 21st, 1944, German bombs rained down on the city of Paris. The entire neighborhood around Sacre Coeur was damaged, much of it destroyed, dozens killed. But the church itself, the city's gleaming white monument to guilt and sin, was not touched.

April 20 into April 21. The same night 50 years later that we spent standing on the stone, overlooking the vistas as others injected drama into our lives. The same night I felt helpless to do nothing but watch it all unfold because I was untouched, uninvolved. That coincidence of dates struck me that day, and again last night as I looked at the calendar. Is there something more to it? Or am I just trying to connect myself to a history that just isn't there?

Regardless, a year ago today, we got our hotel with the gorgeous view of the Eiffel tower, and walked the streets of Montmartre and of Paris itself. Tomorrow, the train would take us to Rome for yet another series of adventures. It makes me happy to remember, yet sad it has passed. That was a lifelong dream finally fulfilled at the age of 28. I'm remarkably glad I did it, and it opened the door for me to start doing more things for myself, but at the same time, it's been a year, and I still feel I'm floating aimlessly.

Paris was the city I wanted it to be, but I felt there was something missing. Rome was the city I never dreamed it would be, and I felt there is so much more than the surface we scratched. I want to go back.