A Day on a Bench in Paris
One of the best days of my life
One of the best days of my life was spent in Paris. Not sightseeing, not hanging out in cafés, not visiting museums, but rather sitting, all alone, on a bench in the Parc Montsouris.
That morning, the day stretched out before me with nothing to do and no one’s expectations to meet, not even my own.
This was my second summer in Paris, and I had exhausted my hunger for its sights. I had slept in and missed the hotel breakfast, so I walked across the park to the corner store. Pigeons pecked about in the walkway’s gravel. Other birds chattered in the trees. The sun hadn’t warmed up yet to its full mid-July blast, so the shade under the trees was cool. Weeping willows steeped their curtain of branches into the bottle-green of the water basin.
The Parc Montsouris is an English-style garden with wide open lawns and a languid lagoon. It is built above ancient caverns that used to be stuffed with skulls and bones when they served as catacombs. Its name comes from “moque-souris,” which means mockery of the mice, supposedly referring to the windmills that used to stand here and attract rodents. It might, however, refer to the mice that roamed the catacombs.
Leaving the corner store with a bottle of water, a few croissants, a bunch of tomatoes, some Gruyère cheese and a glassine bag of almond cookies, I headed back into the park. I found a bench facing a grassy hill that rose to the higher reaches of this park in the 14th arrondissement.
I settled on the right end of the bench and plopped my purse and groceries on my left, creating a barrier to anyone who might decide to sidle up to me (This was always a danger for a woman alone in a public place, so I had learned). Throughout my Paris summer, my red canvas purse harbored supplies for interludes at cafés, in the métro, or on a bench: journal and pen, postcards, museum brochures, and Pariscope (the erstwhile weekly brochure of what to do in Paris). Since this was the 1980s, there was no Smartphone in my purse to pling with messages or entice me to tap into cyberspace.
In the midst of one of the great metropolises of this world, I was, for as long as I wanted to sit on this bench, disconnected.
I unwrapped the croissants and let their buttery flakes dissolve in my mouth. The most perfect things are the simplest: A bench in the sun and a croissant for breakfast.
The bench’s wooden rails leaned back too far to be entirely comfortable, but the wrought iron arches that supported them were so elegant, I forgave them the discomfort. I wrote in my journal, leafing through its pages and revisiting my former self. I scribbled a few postcards, checking off names on my “postcards from Paris” list.
The sun moved out from behind the trees, and the milky light that had seeped through the leaves vanished. Pearls of sweat were gathering on my chest, but I wasn’t going to move to a shady bench. This was where I was going to be.
When a young guy in a navy sweater much too warm for the day arranged himself on the hill opposite me, I grew alarmed. But then, pulling off his sweater to sunbathe in a T-shirt, he succumbed to his own world behind closed eyes. All was good. We could be companions in solitude, lost in reverie.
Once in a while a dogwalker wandered by, or someone rested on another bench, but no one disturbed my peace.
Now and then I shifted to ease the pressure of the bench’s rails on my bottom. At some point it would have been nice to go to the bathroom, but the hotel seemed so distant, and I didn’t want to surrender my spot. The tomatoes served as a late lunch; their moisture replenished my sun-soaked body as the water bottle was long empty. The Gruyère, one of the hardest cheeses on Earth, held up well in the heat, but the almond cookies grew sticky.
And yet I didn’t move. I stretched my legs, scraping shallow grooves into the gravel. I closed my eyes and breathed in the serenity of this spot, this sublime existence, this day on a bench. Unreachable to the world and untouched by its worries, I was nevertheless present, alive, dissolved into the sultry air of a summer afternoon in a park in Paris. In one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with all its offerings, I had found bliss in a day spent sitting still and doing nothing at all.
This essay was first published in Bella Grace Issue 19. Next week I’ll share its publication story.
Having just returned from Paris less than a month ago, I appreciated to opportunity to return vicariously!
Thank you doesn't seem enough to pass along for taking me to Paris and croissants. The vivid language used to describe your seating is glorious. As I sit here languishing in the heat of Portland, OR, and the nausea side effects of chemotherapy, I felt left out of vacationing this summer until I read your piece.