Tonight it was a breeze that passed over the dining room table pushing some loose papers onto the floor. Maybe the dampness of the evening air triggered it, but suddenly I was transported to Paris a few years ago. I had traveled to Paris alone in 2007 to continue working on my novel. The breeze in this one moment in Sequim, WA somehow made a connection to a moment on an evening in Paris. How these moments connect are still a mystery to me. Could it be a combination of temperature, humidity, and the smell of lavender? Maybe, but the nostalgic feeling for Paris took hold of me and sent me into a brief depressive moment. I will not be seeing Paris any time soon.

Maybe it is because school starts in a week. It could be that I was burning the potatoes I was cooking at the moment when the breeze interrupted, but either way, the breeze came in through the window, blew some papers off the table and in the time it took them to drift to the floor, I was in Paris sitting on a green bench on the southeast side of the Champs de Mars looking up at the Eiffel tower. It had been a long day in Paris. I walked from Montmartre to my hotel on the Rue Cler. I stopped near the opera house for lunch and then strolled along the Seine. The sun had not come out much during my stay, it was late August, and the overcast skies did not break for my long walk.

Then after I had a relaxing dinner at Cafe du Marche, I walked over to my favorite Patisserie and picked up two tarts, a strawberry one that made my tongue happy and a chocolate one that made my stomach unhappy because it was already full.

I tried sitting on the grass of the Champs de Mars but it was damp, so I went to a nearby bench and sat there until the sparkling lights came on the tower. The breeze blew in off the Seine, tingling the leaves above me and I sat there perfectly contented, all of my responsibilities were thousands of miles away and I had a few days left in Paris before I had to return to the real world.