The World In Between

Paris: Dawn—8:45 AM January is here, and the busyness of the holidays is thankfully over. Don’t misunderstand me; I love Christmas more than the average human. But I’m also happy when it’s time to revert to my normal life and its normal rhythms. But for those of us who set goals for the new year, normal is relative. There’s a brief respite between Christmas and the January. Then the starter’s…

I’m taking a brief break from my blogging break. After all, it’s Thanksgiving, and posting on Thanksgiving is a bit of a tradition. This Thanksgiving, I’m giving a shoutout to friendship—and specifically one very special friend. In September, she turned 80. I had hoped to have dinner with her in November, but that didn’t work out. Then, she was supposed to have dinner with my husband as my…

Me back then My first blog post was written nearly 12 years ago in Bratislava, Slovakia. Shortly after Pat and I moved there, our son bought a URL and created this site. I haven’t reread that first post in the intervening years—until this week. It’s hard to believe it was 12 years ago—almost to the day—when we rolled our suitcases down the cobbled streets of old town to our apartment on…

Luxembourg In January of 1955, Edward Steichen—a photographer and then Photography Director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)—opened a photo exhibit entitled The Family of Man. In those years following World War II, the impetus was to portray the universality of the human condition—to make the point that we are all, in fact, of one family. Millions of photographs were submitted for…

Strasbourg Cathedral It was May of last year when I wrote that I was setting off to hike the Alsace region of France. In that post, I speculated when the wheels might fall off my metaphorical bus. It turns out, it was imminent. Day three, in fact. Pat needed an unexpected minor surgery, and I needed to be there. I left the trail in Barr and caught a train back to Paris. Last week, finally, I…

The simple life: Paris It’s been awhile since I’ve written. Although here in Charlottesville we haven’t had the scorching weather of other places, it’s still too hot to do much outdoors. Then today, I found a note on my phone—a journal entry if you will. Pull up a chair. It’s time to catch up. I’ve been back and forth to Paris this year. It’s neither optimal nor our intention to bounce between…

The Rijks I saw my first Vermeer when I was around ten years-old. It came together over the course of months as I watched my grandmother needlepoint a piece that she had christened My Little Milk Girl. At some point, when my grandmother died, the picture came to live with me. For years, it hung in our den in Colorado. For years it was unattributed. In those days before Google, we knew what we…

What else do you bring to Paris? It’s Saturday, April 1st and my grandson, Jack, is about to board a plane. Pat and I flew ahead last weekend. We are waiting for him on the other side. In Paris. Our apartment is set up. Our jet lag is diminishing. The neighborhood is ready. We stay in an area called Oberkampf. When we first started coming here, it was referred to as near the marais. Today, the…

We had just crossed the border from Spain into France last month when Pat sighed and said, “It’s nice to be back home.” It was, to my mind, an odd thing for him to say. I think of Pat as firmly rooted in his more traditional homes. Charlottesville, Virginia perhaps—or in any of a number of other places where he’s lived: Evergreen, Colorado; Raleigh, North Carolina; Bay City, Michigan. Where home…

After four weeks, we’re headed north. On the train from Seville to Madrid, I have 2 1/2 hours to write this post before we arrive for a 48-hour whirlwind stop. It’s been four weeks of blissful sunshine. Four weeks of getting to know our favorite baristas and waiters and to establish a rhythm that resembles everyday life. Simultaneously, I feel as though we’ve done everything, and nothing. As I…

Seville We’ve been in Seville for nearly 3 weeks. It’s a trip we had planned before we took back our apartment in Paris. An example of a trip, Pat pointed out during our pre-lease-signing negotiations, that won’t happen once we have two homes. And I agreed. Yet Spain was already in the books. Fly to Paris for a night. Fly onto Seville for a month. Spend three weeks making our way back to Paris…

9:15 AM January 19, 2023 Bar Alfalfa, Sevilla, Spain: The lone photo I walk into a staccato of Spanish. Loud. Animated. Relentless. It sounds like a fight is about to break out, yet it ends with a slap on the back, a hug. The music is similarly loud—Spanish pop? Show tunes? Easy listening opera? A woman behind the bar wears a t-shirt that says, “Yes we caña.” The Bar Alfalfa is small,…

A small crowd gathers. It’s 10 minutes past the posted opening time, yet no one seems fussed. In Paris, things happen when they happen, which is to say a beat or two late. C’est la vie. Once inside we order, collect our coffees, sit, and open our books. The Shakespeare and Company café is a reading place—paper books. Not phones. Not Kindles. I come here almost daily for a second…

Beaty and the Beast

To sit in a moment I came of age in the 70s—went to a travel agency to buy my plane ticket home from college, stopped at the bank to deposit my pay check and get a bit of cash, browsed the university library card catalogue while researching a report. My dad stockpiled National Geographic magazines in our basement. Occasionally, I’d scan the topics listed on the spines. Pull one out. And…

Thanksgiving and the Rest of the Story

The Callahans are convening in Charlottesville this year. A local French chef is preparing our Thanksgiving dinner. A baker in town is making the pies. My sweating and swearing days in the kitchen are—thankfully—over. Charlie As a family, we will gather around a table and give our collective thanks: For our sweet granddaughter, Charlie, who will soon turn one. She’s the happiest human I know,…

Grief and the Illusion of Infinity

The Chandelier of Grief Yayoi Kusama is a 95-year-old Japanese artist who creates installations known as infinity mirrors. Stefan Zweig was one of the most prolific writers of his day, an Austrian Jew who committed suicide in 1942 at the height of World War 2. Lavel Davis was one of the members of the University of Virginia football team killed Sunday night in yet another senseless mass…

A Trip to Winchester

The path along the river, Winchester, England Once upon a time, I travelled for business—flitted into far-flung cities where a greeter with my name on a sign awaited. He’d take my wheelie, pull it to his German-made car, and whisk me off in silence—an effortless arrival into almost any city in the world. It’s been years since I’ve travelled like that. Now, I arrive most frequently with a…