The fragility of happiness and chestnuts

I took a different route to the park today and found a little street with crafty atalliers, art studios, little cafés, and a few galleries. Just near our little apartment -- a treasure. I think I know what the gold rush felt like – the exhilaration of potential -- you never know when another vein will appear. It is also a beautiful sunny day. After a few days preview of what the winter might look like here – the day feels so precious, dipped in gold light.

I sit at Park Monceau near Adam’s school and I have until 4 to write, read and dream. It’s a big park with water, ducks, flowers, sculptures, and rows of trees with symmetrical piles of dry leaves. I watch the people walking their dogs, with occasional very high heels, small dog, cigarette and impressive brisk walk given the height; couples kissing on the bench, an old couple on a flowery blanket - he reads the newspaper she knits; a young girl with a very heavy book leaning on a tree trunk and several others sitting eating their leisurely lunches on the grass. The birds are trained to clean the fresh baguette crumbs and the ducks protest in low key for leftovers.

This idyllic time is broken daily by the Gendarme who blows his whistle, threatening to cite people who sit on the grass. “The grass” he says, “is for the animals not for the people.” The people get up slowly and reluctantly -- they complain, mock him and remind each other how much tax they have to pay… He then, saying that he is just doing his job, starts to complain himself and leaves for another area in the park waving his ticket book, knowing we will all be going back to our marked spots on the soft fresh grass. On different days there are different people, different gendarmes but the script - identical.

I, and all the others, return to our assigned seats, the laptop on my lap, the cool tree trunk on my back and the light playing with the leaves of the tree across. All that beauty around yet, I am feeling a strange sadness today. From the moment I locked the door behind me, packed with Hemmingway’s book: “A Movable Feast” all about his years in Paris, my laptop all charged up, enough change for a little afternoon coffee and a snack for Adam for when I pick him up – I feel sad; sad, that all this is going to be past as I think of it. That my little and big companions are not here, at this moment, to witness with me, to create a shared memory; that my friends are far away and that time does pass. This summer day fades as I try to capture it in my writing- my camera- my memory.

When life announces its movable feast all I can see is its fragile, delicate and unpredictable nature. Then I wonder, what I always wonder sitting on the cushion at Zen retreats mostly trying to meditate; whether letting go of the moment’s preciousness makes it more joyful or more empty….

Hemmingway ends his book by saying, “Paris was never to be the same again although it was always Paris and you changed as it changed.”

On days like this I can actually see how Adam is growing before my eyes, his limbs longer, his knowledge wider, his baby features more chiseled. It’s evening now and I am about to let go of this day and this piece and soon kiss Adam good night. In front of me are all the brown shiny chestnuts he picked at the park this afternoon. I tell my self how they will stay here until the next cold day – to be heated in the oven and eaten -- together.