A lot of what we capture on this blog is the counting of fitness — number of workouts in a year, kilometres ridden or run, personal best in a race, time in a heart rate zone, steps in a day. All useful in their own categories of marking accomplishments, meeting goals.
But some steps are more transcendent than others. Susan and I gave ourselves the gift of a short trip to Paris for the beginning of the holidays. It was grey and rainy and every step had a story.
Friday, 6598 steps. Arrive, fall fast asleep, wander out to find a vegan feast whose colours mock the early darkness.
Saturday, 20,275 steps. Death and ancestors. We voyage through the catacombs and then make a pilgrimage to the church next to the Salpêtrière. This building started out as a gunpowder factory and then became a place for “poor” women of Paris — meaning beggars, orphans, mentally ill, sex workers and, later, criminals. Now it’s a sprawling hospital, but I wanted to visit it because it’s also the place where many of the Filles du Roi — the single women sent to marry the colonists of New France around 1670 — were recruited. Like all people of French Canadian origin, I have several of these women in my family tree — and I wanted to acknowledge their strength and resilience. The church they would have worshipped is still standing, a shabby contrast to the miraculous restoration of Notre Dame – and I pictured the shivering young girls of the mid 17th century, hoping for a better life. I wrote my ancestors a letter of thanks. It came out in French.
Sunday, 18407 steps. A windy and rainy encounter with the excesses of empire and colonization in Versailles, which sends us into rabbit holes of the causes of revolution and during which Treaties the Europeans actually divided up the Middle East (Sevres) and Africa (Versailles). I spend a lot of time talking smack about Napoleon.
The wind whips us back to Paris instead of wandering the gardens of Versailles, which are mostly covered for the winter in any case. We cleanse our palates with a wander through the Picasso museum and the cutest shop of paper products I’ve ever seen. We find a serendipitous charming tiny, crowded italian resto where the owner unexpectedly calls for everyone’s attention and then serenades us with Con Te Partiro.
Monday, 20,116 steps. Simultaneously sublime and enraging, it’s the Louvre. Sublime because, well, the Louvre. All the art. Truly transcendent moments. More opportunities to talk smack about Napoleon. Enraging because of the rivers of humanity holding their phones above their heads with video on while not actually looking at the art. We fantasize about paying extra for a No Phones around the Art day. I ask Athena for some rageful wisdom.
We eat more pain au chocolat and bouche de Noel and take a ride on the Roue de Paris just as night falls and all of the lights come on. Dinner is at a random, teeny vaguely Mediterranean vegetarian place festooned with vines that might be the most charming wee spot I’ve ever eaten, though the kitchen and its burning oil are basically right in front of us and we both have to use our inhalers before bed. We have a cocktail in a Hungarian restaurant and then wander out to the dampened nightlife of our Le Pigalle neighbourhood, admire the spritely sleaze of the Moulin Rouge.
Tuesday, 16,795 steps. Christmas eve. We march off to the Eiffel Tower, which neither of us has ever been up, with our tickets that include a glass of champagne at the top. Just as we arrive, it shuts down because of a fire on the top floor. No one is hurt, but more than 1000 people are evacuated and we get to watch the pompiers at work. We eat more pain au chocolat while deciding what to do, head for the Musée d’Orsay. More art, more cursing of the people with phones, though they are a little less voracious here. I look at Mary Cassatt’s Jeune fille au jardin and want to photoshop a phone into her hand.
We both do some serious stretching before dinner, feet worn down by all the tromping, my plantar fasciitis held at bay by my hideous cushy Hokas. But I trade the comfy shoes for Fluevog boots for our final adventure, dinner in Montmartre and then midnight mass at Sacré-Coeur.
Mass is another pilgrimage for me, one of the only things I can do in my weird 21st century life that my ancestors would recognize. I connect with my mother, with all of my grandmothers, whose fortitude and shortness twirl through my DNA. Susan is patient. I’m grateful for everything.
Christmas Day: We fly home lying flat, blessedly upgraded, astronauts compared to my ancestors and their 17th century ships. I’m filled with gratitude and thoughts of revolution.
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Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede-Desmarais, who is descended from four Filles du Roi — Jeanne Petit, Catherine Paulo, Anne Rivet, Marguerite Girard — and from Marie Margarie, Jeanne de St. Pere and Gillette Banne, three “Filles à Marier” who arrived between 1634-1662, decades earlier than the Filles du Roi. Gillette has the distinction of being the first woman executed for murder in New France — she killed her daughter’s abusive husband.(Those links are little video bios of each woman made by genealogist Lisa Elvin-Staltari).
Cate is pretty sure that her grit and penchant for riding her bike alone across new countries is written in her DNA from these women.
