I don't have any pictures to share, it was so long ago. I have them, of course, but they're tucked away in a box somewhere at my parents' house, with all the things I need to finally go through with adult eyes. It was the year 2000, a jubilee year, and I was just seventeen. My only serious high school boyfriend and I had just gone our separate ways; he had gone off to join the Navy, and even though he thought we were marriage-track I had known all along that I liked his affection and attention way more than I actually liked him. And there I was, in Europe. With friends and a teacher who became my friend. The train had carried us through to dawn and France. I was hungover from a love affair with Italy and was mourning my loss of the sight of medieval embattlements and Roman columns and Renaissance magic around every corner.
To say the word dawn implies light. What I've since learned is quintessential French spring weather welcomed me, damp and chill, and I sighed at the loss of my real love, my first true love, warm Italian sun and art and men with espresso cups clasped between tanned fingers reaching from the arms of suits. Still, I swoon.
I was naïve of France. Of Paris. As Americans, we sometimes seem bent on denigrating France. Look at our response in the early aughts. Pouring champagne down drainage gullies and rebranding fries and toast. That baggage was packed into my ramshackle, overpacked rolling suitcase as I bounced off the train in flipflops and a rain jacket. I shivered, and we boarded a bus destined for Our Lady. I don't remember standing in front of the façade of the cathedral, but I recall skipping puddles as our tour guide discussed flying buttresses and the rose window and surely the forest in the ceiling of this magnificent specimen of high gothic architecture. Two years later, I would find myself seated in an art history class during my year as an art history major, hearing these same words and rehashing that rainy walk.
Inside, out of the rain, the light was dim. I'm grateful for the rain that day, the clouds, the failing quality of the light outside, for Notre Dame was all candles flaming and flickering and stained glass saints with their rose window, captured in bright white stone. I don't have a cute photo in front of the façade. Or maybe I do and I don't recall. But what I do remember is the beauty of the secret inner being of that place built of devotional beauty. I realize as I carried my phone tearfully to my husband yesterday, he who I did know in an instant that I could settle down and spend a lifetime with, that I wasn't mourning the loss of something tangible. Tears fell at the loss of beauty that we as a people share. What I learned yesterday is that we can't always wait and rely on the reliable. If you have something to create, do it. We need more beauty in this world. If there's something inside you that must be said, say it. If there's something you must see, see it. To be held, hold it. To be done, do it. The act of doing is beautiful. Make doing your devotion.
