To Love and Leave Paris
What I'll miss and won't. Plus, Green Day in the subway and more!
The bowl is clear glass. The contents are white and yellow. The texture is mushy; the temperature cold. I sit at my kitchen table, which looks out at the Haussmanian buildings, and stare down at this breakfast, this odd mixture of ingredients—crème fraîche and quarter-sized sliced bananas—and I smile.
Remember when you didn’t know what sour cream was in France? (Indeed, the closest thing is crème fraîche.) Remember when you ate a banana on the way to yoga one day, folding the peel down as you walked, only to get funny looks and realize that’s not a thing you do here? Remember when you and Amy were so boggled by all the yogurt options—the goat, the sheep, the cow, the 2% matières grasses, the 5% matières grasses, the lait entier—that you attempted to buy out Monoprix and do a taste test? That was forever ago. You’ve lived a life in Paris. You’ve lived a time in Paris.
In French, there are many ways to express the act of leaving.
There’s sortir, which means “to go out.”
La sortie est par là. The exit is over there.
There’s partir, which is often used when you have a destination in mind:
Je pars tôt au travail. I leave early for work.
Laisser is used if, say, you “left” something behind:
J'ai laissé mon sac dans le metro. I left my bag on the metro.
And, finally, there’s quitter, my least favorite, because it reminds me of the English verb, which has a negative connotation: to quit or to give up. In French, this word emphasizes the starting point but doesn’t necessarily require an ending point.
Il m'a quitté. He left me.
Yet whenever I put “I’m leaving Paris for the U.S.” into DeepL, which is a thing I still do—use translation apps—it brings up Je quitte… as opposed to Je pars...
But I am no quitter! And I do know where I’m going! At least for now.
Perhaps, like my last remaining plant—my beautiful, big-leafed Monstera who over the last few months has begun to both droop and dry up—DeepL is aware that I’m slightly apprehensive. Not about leaving Paris, as bittersweet as it is. I am ready to partir or quitter, as it were. It’s the ambiguity of the near future and what it holds that has me doubling down on Prilosec. Like, “Ooooo, Uncertainty! An Unknown Address and An Unknown Job. Exciting!”
Sarcasm aside, I continually remind myself (and appreciate it when others do too, merci beaucoup!) that this was more or less the case when I came this way all those years ago. And look how wonderful that turned out. While I’m returning to the familiar, which may not be as sexy as the foreign, the narrative is reframed merely by the fact that I am no longer the same. So the sum of the albeit unknown parts will be positive by default, right? (Right?!?) I do ultimately know everything will work out. It usually does, despite all the overthinking. And how fortunate am I to have the freedom to pick up and change course? I get to approach this crossroads without a fire behind me, per se, but a slow, simmer of a flame—enough to inspire, push, and redirect me when lost. My friend Charlene, a coach and soul guide based in Paris, recently wrote an Instagram post about being in this “blank space that makes our stomach tremble.” She said:
The longer you play in this place where the juicy stuff lives—the unknown—the more you expand to it. There’s no measure of how big and wide and deep you can become in it. It’s imaginative. And malleable.
You get to make the rules.
It’s scary, but I know myself and I find tremendous gratification in figuring stuff out. In swimming through the “juicy stuff.” I may not be the best swimmer, per se. It’s my least favorite sport, in fact. But I am capable of it. I will hold onto that, and the potentiality it stands for, during these next few months of transition.
If you haven’t deduced by now, this will be my last letter from Paris. Not about Paris—I’m sure I’ll still have many thoughts and will be publishing more neighborhood guides for paid subscribers—but rather written and published from my sixth-floor apartment in the 11th arrondissement, at the same table where I ate the bananas and crème fraîche the other morning. Overthinking It was born here and, like me, it evolved here. It will leave with me, of course, but it will also stay.
In which case, it feels strange to talk about leaving without also talking about what it’s meant to remain for all these years. To “rester” so long in a place you bear witness to the befores and the afters. How fulfilling it feels to know certain facets of a city so deeply, and without effort, that you recognize small and subtle changes. Like when they added stops to metro line 4 whose final station in the south went from Montrouge to Banneaux. Or what Place de la Bastille looked like during construction because somehow it’s still a “completed” mess. And when my pharmacy took over the space next door, doubling in size, painting the facade, and changing the entrance and exit. Or seeing my friends so often I can recognize when they got their hair trimmed or are wearing a new piece of clothing or trying a different perfume.
Staying meant observing. Staying meant adapting. Staying meant remembering.
What will I remember when I return? What will remain the same and what will change when I leave?
What will I *not* miss…
Tuesday mornings, between 7:50 and 8:20a.m., when the recycling truck comes down the rue and smashes dozens of glass bottles into thousands of shards that rattle my eardrums most horrifically. Undressing in front of the doctor and getting a pap smear that you have to bring to the post office yourself. Language quandaries like how to say “square with round edges” anytime I get a pedicure (carrée arrondie) or the French word for “bladder” when shopping for the water bag you put in a hiking pack at Decathlon. (Don’t ask. I forgot.) Always having to decide between a shoe size 37 and 38 when I’m really in between the two. Never knowing what my mattress measurements are when shopping for new sheets. (Why are there so many? Why must they use numbers instead of just calling it something like, “King,” “Queen,” “Full,” and “Twin”?) Having to ask Siri to help me convert the oven temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Pas possible. Non. Getting scolded for forgetting to say “bonjour,” and launching right into, “excusez-moi…” (Still polite, though!) Tiny fridges. Tiny elevators. The always broken, always full, or always empty Velib bike-share system. Smokers on terraces.
…and what *will* I miss?
How the change of seasons is reflected in the market: seeing the figs make way for the chanterelles and the chanterelles for the clementines and the clementines for the Coquilles St. Jacques. The “Fruits and Fibres” cereal with hazelnuts, coco flakes, raisins, and banana chips from Super U. 'And the mini pot de creme, too. The Jardin de Folie Titon around the corner, and that one bench that’s surrounded by lavender bushes swarming with pollinating bees and butterflies that linger on summer days. Turning a corner to see some hidden passage I’d never seen before and going down it to discover a quiet courtyard with trees full of birdhouses, or secret restaurants, and an Invader I’d never flashed. Paying €7.95 out of pocket for a last-minute doctor visit or €3 for three months of birth control. Getting fresh herbs for .50c from the market and going to herculean efforts to keep the ginormous bunch alive for as long as possible. Going to Miznon to get my favorite sandwich, it being sold out, trying something else only for it to become my new favorite (that always requires a dozen napkins to eat), which they’ll inevitably be sold out of next time. The French and their commitment to drinking wine and recycling the bottles. SOLDES! Chic scaffolding. Monoprix, especially for cute kids’ clothes. Neighbors who eat on their balcony for lunch in the summer, and inside with candles winter. The rooftops. The light. My dear friends.
Messieurs-Dames, we have now reached the denouement of today’s letter. With it, I present one final French lesson about expressing “to miss,” or manquer. Perhaps unexpectedly, it’s complicated. In English, the pronoun comes first: You (or I, he/she, they) express what is being missed. But in French, it’s flipped. The object—what you MISS (say, Paris for example)—comes first. So, “I miss Paris” becomes “Paris me manques.”
Is it confusing because it’s not what I, a native English speaker, know? Or because it’s less intuitive? Somehow that feels like a profound paradox for life itself. Regardless, as much as it makes my brain hurt to reorder the words when declaring this phrase in French, I do like the idea of “me missing Paris” also sounding like Paris is missing me.
Bon week-end, merci, and see you back in the U.S. of A. xx — Sara
Clickable
Still thinking about Jeremy Allen White’s belly button. | McSweeney’s
The OBGYN that did not take care of his patients. | Atavist
This is not OK. Bring them home. | The Free Press
Battle of the Banks! Which side of the Seine reigns supreme? | (Me and a dear friend) for WSJ
New Yorkers know how to live large…and small. | Curbed
Coming of age in a plugged-in world. | The New Yorker
How are you handling your “adrenaline shot of optimization” courtesy of the new year? | The Atlantic
A long, fascinating look at the birth of tourism. | Noema
Unsure about emojis, but these flirtation tactics seem smart. | The Cut
Watchable
Seeing something like this makes returning to NYC feel extra exciting. Got chills. Billy Joe FTW—especially singing with mustache tape over his lip!
It’s award season so I’d be remiss if I didn’t include at least one clip from the many ceremonies that took place over the past few weeks. There was a lot of cringe—on the red carpet, in acceptance speeches, and during Joy Koy’s opening monologue at the Globes—but Chelsea Handler knows how to work a crowd and get them giggling. The woman pulls no punches and is killer on delivery, as evidenced by her bit at the Critics’ Choice Awards.
Currently Overthinking…
…response etiquette to an editor regarding story revisions…whether the random person on Geev who offered to come get my couch will actually come…if I’ll fit everything that’s left/I want to keep into the four suitcases that remain…
Souvenir: Phone Books
With my impending move, I’ve got “staying in touch” on the brain, which got me thinkin’ about the colossal yellow and white pages that we used to look up someone’s address and phone number back in the day. Surely most of you reading this letter remember them (and quite possibly used them yourselves), but I doubt today’s teens have a clue. Along similar lines, remember Desperately Seeking Susan? The plot practically revolved around the usage of another relic, the Ad Wanted pages!
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Beautiful as usual and 😭😭😭
I love this. I left Paris with my family in November of 2020, right before the second lockdown began. It was bittersweet. I knew I would not miss the family from the uncarpeted apartment above, who all put on their shoes (and the mother her wooden-heeled boots!) at 6:30 am and clomped around on the hardwood floors for an hour until the mom left with three of the children for school. And I knew I wouldn't miss the refrigerator truck idling beneath our window every morning, the the layer of old cigarette smoke pervading everything, all the time, or walking through cigarette smokers at the doctor's office and at the doorway into the gym(!), or the noise and the crowds, or the way the riot police all lined up every Saturday on Haussmann for a year, or the tear gas, or the way SVR shut down whenever it felt like it, for days at a time, leaving you without internet, even when school was online for Covid.
But I knew I would miss the walking, and the bread, and the color of the buildings in the evening, and the Monop with its odd smell, and the earnest politeness of Parisians. And walking to Batignolles BioMarche every Sunday. And the museums. And the metro (not the metro itself, which was often sardine-like, but the fact of the metro, the ease of getting to A to B if you were willing to deal with the crowds). And the rain. Moving home to Northern California in the midst of a horrific drought and wildfires, I really missed the rain. Mostly, I knew I would miss being able to travel so easily, to so many countries. I knew I would miss it, and I do!
So I hear you. Most people think, "But it's Paris!" But anyone who lives in Paris learns to love it...while also understanding that it is not an easy city.