Ganache

The car was warm and the cake was heavy. Really, really heavy. Well, maybe it wasn’t the cake itself, the unmatched layers covered with beginning-to-drip ganache, maybe it was the two and a half inch butcher block we had somehow decided to carry it on. In any case, it was heavy, and my duty was to balance our creation (well, mostly Kate’s creation, but she was busy at the wheel) all the way to Monterey. And I was killing it.

We were going to Dre’s wedding, at the Naval Post Graduate School where she worked and had met her sweetie. The drive was two hours long, down the freeway and the coast past Santa Cruz, our university stomping grounds. It was a winding road, and I balanced the cake on the plane of my lap, working the centrifugal force by stacking left and right, keeping my side of the conversation going and the wedding cake intact.

the gown.

Probably, the cake would have survived regardless of my MarioCart-inspired acrobatics, but I wanted to feel that I had contributed just that much more. The week preceding, Kate and I had traveled down to see Dre and Peter, for his going-away party (in a UHaul full of DJ equipment, positioned open, facing the dolphins and seals and sunset of the bay). We had ended up in a pink champagne and Ben & Jerry’s fueled girls’ night arranging of Dre’s bridal costume, a gorgeously appropriate layering of classic lace and bright orange embroidery. Kate had volunteered our presence for the Big Little Day, and then her cake concocting for this last-minute affair.

Like other weddings of my international friends, this one had been pushed forward by the requirements of Green Cards and cross-continental travel. Peter is Swiss-Austrian, and the two of them would be Europe bound soon enough. The ceremony itself would be aptly silly. Complementing the bride’s orange gown, the groom would wear a lipstick kiss in all his wedding photos and, after the outdoor naval-base ceremony involving dancing and bubbles and singing along to Home Is Where You Are, we would all have to stop and freeze for the playing of TAPS.

It had been unexpected, this wedding. For me anyway. I had found out about the engagement some months before by phone outside in San Francisco’s financial district.

“I have something to tell you,” Dre had said, on speaker in her car during commute hours.

“What?”

“I’m getting married.”

“WHAT?”

“I’m GETTING MARRIED.”

“Hold on, I can’t hear you…”

“Ok, is that better?”

“Um, yeah. Yeah I think so.”

“I’m getting married.”

“WHAT?”

And so on.

marzipan  and construction paper.

But really, it’s that time. Kate had gotten married a year or two earlier, in a wedding filled with tiered cakes and mason jars, with forage-inspired floral displays and a mountain lodge retreat on the side of Mt Tamalpais, where the fog and wind whipped at all of us but my friend the bride looked so serene. There had been quite a few others. Mostly out-of-the-ordinary, non-religious, and with unmatched bridesmaids. The most traditional looking was secretly an open marriage, and the least- involving second and third takes, sheep, two bands and a jam session, a campfire, and a double teepee- has proven one of the strongest and longest so far.

So I suppose I am starting to evaluate things I had never considered. Maybe that’s why I would act a little weird once we arrived in Monterey. Maybe because of the couplings all around. Maybe because of her impending escape to the very place I had just left. Maybe because I was tired from drinking too much wine the night before while the Kitchenaid threatened to fling batter all over Kate’s linoleum, maybe because of uncertainty in the face of the surprising inevitability of Time Marching On.

Meanwhile though, I was working so hard to hold this now-intact velvety chocolate cake aloft, to prove my support for one of my closest friends’ great big decision, for everything that had happened before and would happen after. To prove my capacity for tackling a task at hand. So, every turn, I paid attention. I looked ahead. I anticipated motion and kept it all level. So that this cake would arrive and be beautiful and delicious and worthy of all the things I and we wanted for her. Worthy of her. And through the hilly expanse of agricultural Northern Califonia, flanked by cows and sheep and what would be artichokes, with my other best girl at my side and my stomach aching from laughter and travel, with a mind full of silly memories and the pushed-back feeling that things were changing regardless of me, with an extra towel just in case the ganache slipped, and a cup of coffee wedged in the door of the City Car Share rental: I had to feel like I was killing it. 

Le grand bleu

Well, here I am. In a tin can hurtling at 575 miles per hour 35,000 feet in the air. My cat is at my feet, enclosed in a tiny carrying case and swaddled in comforting-smell clothes (though I have a hard time believing that my unwashed T-shirt could be that much of a calming aid). She is doing surprisingly well. When we were delayed in Frankfort I tried to coax her out to share a pretzel and beer with me, but she was uninterested. Perhaps she just doesn't like Germany. Or pilsner.

8.5 years, 3.5 bags.

All my bags were overweight. I managed to look sad enough to get some of the fees ignored, but it still cost me 230 euros to get my two monolith suitcases, the cat, and the computer on the plane. No big surprise. 

les dernières

The night before I left Paris I flipped out. My good friends, coming by to wish me well, found me in a whirlwind of Unprepared. Boxes everywhere. Poorly packed. Hysterical. After preparing me a bowl of pasta and opening bottles of champagne, they proceeded to repack my bags, like my own personal transcontinental elves, whilst I wandered around collecting hugs and jokes and being invited outside for cigarettes. They then kissed me on the cheek and floated off one by one into the night and early morning, laden down with gifts and bags to store, in order almost exactly opposite to my meeting them. How's that for Poetry and Meaning?

When I unpack in California, it's going to be a treasure hunt. I have no idea what made it  in there. Don't tell customs. 

I was able to delay my trip back a week, but it wasn't enough. So many things to do, so many things left undone. Museums and long walks, contracts to break and medical care to take advantage of (why didn't I find time to get new glasses? WHY?). I suppose you are never ready to leave behind a decade of your life. But still, I think I may have truly excelled at underestimating the task at hand. I shudder to think of the boxes I have left behind.

lapinou

small-time treachery

What I was able to do, though, was probably the most important. A great big 12-hour goodbye picnic at La Villette with cheese and wine and badminton and hugs and photos and barefoot grass-walking. Beers with my music kids from the American Cathedral, ending in rounds of bunny-eared singing in the Irish pub down the canal from my apartment. A last board meeting or the Paris Choral Society, where I, the dome of the Invalides clearly visible through the 6th floor window, fell under the influence of fabulous wine, good food, and great company to accept responsibility for a swath of things I probably won't get around to for months. A lunch at Chez Paul entirely composed of escargot and escarole. Another at the Patache, bookended by oysters and tarte tatin. A last-minute recording session with the boys. A tagine dinner and reckless dance party out in the banlieue, pushing furniture around and wiggling into the night. Evenings and picnics with my dear dear friends, on the banks of the Seine, listening to jazz at the Parc Floral, at the Jardin de Reuilly by the sparkling-water fountain, on the edge of the canal trying to out-hipster the hipsters... Oh my Parisiens, I will miss you so.

It's difficult to believe now, now that there's no turning back. Now that I am sandwiched between the curved wall of the 747 and a Buddhist monk who I feel compelled to share my vegetarian meals with, trying to crane my neck to watch John Carter on the screen in the middle of the aircraft, while my feet twist around the cat carrier at my feet. Now that I have no more control even through lack of control (some part of me hoped that I would fail to leave, that the incapacity to let go would make it impossible to do anything but stay in Paris, in Europe, at least a little longer). I guess sometimes you've just got to let go. Especially when the airplane map shows us inching further across the Atlantic, and I left my inflatable raft in a box somewhere in Ile de France. California here I come...

I love you, Paris, I'll see you soon.