Travel as Self-Revelation

Initial Impressions of Paris with Kids

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I recently returned from Paris, a trip I’ve been dreaming about and scheming for for years. It was my first time in Europe and only my second time leaving the country. Several people who know me said I would love it, that it would suit me.  And I did. It did. Though I’m not sure how much of it I understood. Yet my initial impressions are, I think, worth noting, if not for posterity than for myself. 

Travel is self-revelation. As much as you learn about the place you will correspondingly learn about yourself.

I’ve lived in America for thirty-nine years. Three of them were in Chicago — in the city, which is an important distinction; people will tell you they live in the city, only to find they actually mean Naperville or Wilmette or Evanston, which are not in the city. 

And so when I traveled to New York City in the summer of 2021, the novelty was less jarring than it is to some: I had lived in a big American city and had grown up on the literature of New York, its sports teams and food (though not its parks. Grant Park and Lincoln Park are delightful places to spend a day, and of course the newer Millenium Park, but none of these are Central Park.). Consequently, while New York certainly made an impression on me, I don’t think I learned much about myself that I didn’t know before arriving: What I loved before leaving had only been confirmed. I knew I loved it even more. 

Though I also went without kids. Traveling with kids changes the entire experience. I know I’m a different person when I’m with my family. Especially when traveling. On my own I’m a carefree flaneur, wandering side streets without itinerary or concern. If I want to turn down this street, I will. Sit on this bench for a while, indeed. Stand in front of this painting, for half an hour, you bet. I slow down and enjoy what Pamela Druckerman calls a “convivial solitude.” I’m able to think, if not clearly than at least more clearly than when my kids are around. Even my wife, God love her, changes the experience. To be clear, I certainly want her there. My favorite, when traveling together, is to kick off the morning with coffee or tea, to walk a bit (though she would prefer a brisk, five-mile run), and then go our separate ways for a few hours. To be our own people again, in these special places, and then to reunite later. What a day! 

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Case in point: I’m writing this — the first, crappy draft of it — during my only alone time in Paris. And I know it’ll sound so cliché, but I wrote this sitting at a cafe. A Moveable Feast and all that. On the Île St. Louis, Notre Dame just around the corner. It is, I believe, one of the most wonderful things I’ve done in my thirty-nine years, cliché or not. People pass by, tables fill and empty, at my cafe and at the two across the street, their chairs also facing out toward the street, toward my side of the street, where they can see me, looking back at them. 

But with kids along for this trip I’m anxious. Or at least there is residual anxiety from earlier in the day, and from the day before. Traveling with family, especially to such a faraway place — and one that isn’t a beach, where the kids can happily play the day away — has resurrected the old joke about how traveling with kids allows you to understand why your own father was always so angry on vacation. But we are also anxious people. Prudent people, but anxious people. Augie gets it honestly. Yet sitting here, at this cafe, I feel possibly as happy as I’ve ever been. 

I think it’s because I am responsible for their safety, their happiness (at least in part, though Druckerman says parents are allowed to be happier than our least happy child). Their passports. And we’re busy trying to remember a thousand things, like where we might run into a bathroom (and if we have euros to use les toilettes, a tidbit I read before departing but conveniently forget until we needed to use the bathroom); and if we chose this restaurant for this meal, we are going to have to get something they’ll like for dinner; if this museum in the morning, then the afternoon at the park. Which is all lovely, and we all mostly enjoy these things, but they’re considerations I don’t have to have when by myself. At this cafe, in Paris. 

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Two days in and I’ve already had a few dozen exchanges all teaching me such a valuable lesson: the amount of time and work it takes to learn something like a language. I didn’t take French in school, but once we booked our trip I worked steadily on it for a year. Duolingo, so there’s that, but I also worked my way through a few French phrase books, and a colleague was kind enough to pass along extra copies of French One assignments. I completed those. But then came the moment when someone responded in French to one of my mangled sentences, I hadn’t a clue what they had said. One whole year. For someone who knows a language well enough to teach it, it seemed like I’d pick it up more quickly. But learning a language is really difficult work. There was a moment each morning, as we set out for the new day, when I would realize all of the thought and effort I would have to put into asking for just a few items, and my shoulders would feel heavy. But only for a moment. 

Cassie said she was proud of me, dusting myself off and getting back up to the plate. I ordered our meals, asked for a few books, and talked with the concierge as we came and went each day, all in as much French as I could muster. I said pardon and s’il vous plaît and merci more times than I could count. I even kept saying it at the airport, in London, though that was partly fatigue. And at the conclusion of our favorite meal of the week, I told the server it was our favorite meal of the week. He laughed, kindly, appreciatively, and said he was glad. I hope I’ll remember that exchange for a while. Maybe forever. 

Which reminds me of another lesson: the French were lovely. If you’ve lived in a big city then you know people keep to themselves, less eye contact, fewer civil formalities; that’s just life in a big city; they’re busy paying the rent, getting to and from work, trying to find love, art, grace, all the while hoping to have something left over for dining out. Our concierge was so very kind in letting me practice speaking with him. He, of course, immediately knew when I didn’t understand what he had said. He would translate it for me and then patiently listen when I tried to respond in his native tongue. You may say it’s his job, but he went beyond that. He even waited outside our little hotel as our car drove away, waving at us and refusing to go back in before we had turned the corner. He may still be out there, waiving, telling us à tout à l'heure. 

Or the boy about my son’s age, who was part of a group playing soccer in the park. Augie wanted to play, of course, but was too shy to ask, even when I told him he could just point and they would understand. And so we went over together and I asked the boy, as best as I could, if Augie could play too. 

“I speak English,” he said, his voice full of sympathy, or maybe it was empathy. He was an expatriate. They let Augie play with them. On two separate occasions. 

Or our inaugural drive from the airport into the city. The driver didn’t speak much English (though like many people we encountered, he knew more English than I knew French) and we had seemingly made it as far into the conversation as we could go, but then I asked him about Mbappe and told him my son played football (or soccer, to the uncultured). He immediately perked up. He started naming his favorite athletes, his heroes. Muhammed Ali and Michael Jordan. We went back and forth. I told him I had lived in Chicago. He beamed. And when we had arrived and he was helping us with our luggage, just across from the Odeon Theatre, in the still dark Paris morning, he ripped open his jean jacket to reveal a Chicago Bulls T-shirt. 

These — my anxiety and a lack of sleep and patience, butchering a language, learning too late into our week that we should have more street food and meals in the parks (where wine and cheese and fruits and baguettes are readily permitted) and less sitting at tables, and the sweet beauty of sidewalk cafes — these are my early impressions of being with my wife and kids, and once by myself, in Paris.