From "Licking The Windows" to Licking My Wounds

(This blog expands on my Talia Tells Tales November 2025 newsletter. ) 

I am expanding on my incredible life in Paris in a blog, but will start here by explaining that since Esther, the protagonist of JERUSALEM MAIDEN, ran off to Paris and I had to chase her around the cobblestoned alleys, the Francophile in me reawakened.

You see, I attended a French high school in Tel-Aviv, and even passed the dreaded matriculation exam ("Le Bac"). In recent years, I've traveled to Paris twice a year, treating myself to French culinary, artistic, and architectural delights.

I am squeezed on a banquet bench at a Parisian café. Among the two dozen people scattered around bistro tables, conversations are flying in both French and English. The aroma of brewing coffee is in the air inside, while in the street outside the large windows, autumn’s leaves float, undecided whether to land on the sidewalk, or to glide a bit further into the Seine.

The man on my left, visiting from a remote island off Australia, tells how his father had arrived in that uninhabited place in the 1950s. On my right, a French journalist details her 1968 harrowing escape from Czechoslovakia on the last train as the Russians were invading. Across from me, a Frenchman explains why even at the end of World War II the German economy was set out to become the strongest in Europe today.

           This “conversation meeting” is one of five weekly exchanges I attend, where Francophones mingle with Anglophones, each seeking to improve their language skills of the other’s language. What comes out of these international encounters, is a kaleidoscope of fascinating stories.

           This evening, when the meeting ends, my friend Sue organizes a small group to move to a nearby Irish pub. We eat, drink, and laugh. I met Sue a few years ago at a recital on one of my frequent trips to Paris. This past Yom Kippur, I attended services at her synagogue, conducted in French by an American rabbi, with an Israeli cantor. Each of the two evenings was beautiful. The rabbi’s talk about the Jews’ commitment to Israel irrespective of politics but rather to the idea of Zion and the existential threat to Israel was critical at this time. Most significant for me was that, unlike in many streams of Judaism, I was permitted to say Kaddish for Ron.

           It’s been a long day. I have had three planned activities before this late dinner. Sue and I take the Metro together since we live near the same station. Yet at the exit, when she turns into the side street, I head the other way, toward the bridge over the Seine. Within a few steps I am treated to the majestical sight of the Eiffel Tower, my current neighbor. It sparkles against the night sky, the reflections of its illuminations break into a million smaller pinprick lights in the inky water.

           Back in my apartment, I kick off my walking shoes, one of three pairs I only wear in Paris, rotating them daily. I would never dare show up anywhere in the US with such functional footwear. Unlike the US, there is no mail to sort out, or packages to open. Earlier this morning, I cleaned my rental apartment and took the bed linens to the laundry service because the dryer, which is supposed to be built into the washing machine, doesn’t work. Still, at this moment, when the world outside falls away, calm sets on me. This is my queendom, where I will soon click open my phone photo app and scroll through Ron’s photos and videos. It’s my time alone with him. The acute pain of the loss has somewhat dulled these past two months in Paris, but my emotions are still too raw for TV news. I only watch documentaries in French to help improve my language skills.

I check my WhatsApp group messages. In my Museum Explorers’ group there’s a thread about a trip ten of us will take to a new exhibition. I comment that I’d bought a ticket, and then post about the exclusive interior design show on Saturday to which I have an extra ticket. I respond to a woman who asks who would like to join her on a visit to the Cléopatra exhibit on Friday, then I inform another member that I’ll meet her at the open-air art fair on Sunday. I’ve only seen these two women at some get-togethers and know that once I spend some time with each, I’ll make yet two new friends.

These art excursions are added to my visit last Friday to Petit Palais (Jean-Baptiste Greuse) with a French acquaintance, and this past Tuesday to Musée  D’Orsay (John Singer Sergent) with another, who turned out to be an art historian.  Last week I participated in an exclusive visit with the French Heritage Society at M19, a large modern center that houses 700 craft artisans who embroider for all haute-couture, such as Yves Saint Laurent, Chanel, and Dior as well as for major home décor outfits that create the embellished curtains and hand-woven upholstery seen in chateaux.

           In between, I’ve taken walks with Barbara and Gloria, exploring markets near the Canal St. Martin; with Yael who is an expert on the ancient history of the Fifth arrondissement starting with the Middle Ages; with Anne (a Frenchwoman), who guided me through hidden spots in Le Marais. There are days I clock between 12,000 to 18,000 steps a day. Even in days I take public transportation, I clock over 7,000 steps.

           In the very few open windows in my calendar these past two weeks I’ve played Mah-Jongg, joined a dozen women to cook a lunch at one’s home, and dropped in on three separate regular 10 AM socializing taking place at specific cafés around the city.

           In slightly more than this two-week period, in the evenings I’ve been to the Opera Bastille to see La Bohème, was invited to two local friends’ homes for dinner, and had girls’ dinners, and outings with American visitors and a theater critique. I’ve been to a Toastmasters meeting and to an organ concert at the St. Sulpice church (a place I particularly cherish since it’s the location of some important action in my novel JERUSALEM MAIDEN). Twice I joined a young friend for late bar outings (too noisy), where I had interesting conversations with Italians, Portuguese, and Croatians, and I advised a French diplomat in which of their US consulates he should be stationed (Miami).

           In two social early evening receptions that I attended (what the French call “Apéro”), I engaged in a conversation with a retired Egyptian cardiologist and listened to a botanist couple who’ve accepted a winter assignment in New Zealand to count the koala population. (Hint: by sniffing the fresh poop; it smells like eucalyptus.) I agree that sniffing koala poop is preferable to the brutally cold Parisian winter.

           Back in 2013 I wrote a blog about the quirks of the French language, in which window shopping was called “Licking the windows” to indicate the hunger that the sight of a Parisian window shopping evoked. As I am licking my wounds over Ron’s stupendous loss, I am finding the path of joy in being overly active in Paris.

           It’s now the top of the hour, and the Eiffel Tower erupts into a burst of sparkles, like the largest birthday candle, telling me it’s time to turn off my lights and get ready for a busy day tomorrow of packing to go home.  

 

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Every Sunday 10 AM, at La Coupole, organized by Terrance
(Link below) 

 

Links to organizations and sources:

AmericanWomen in Paris

WICE

FrenchHeritage Society

TerranceGelenter

AdrianLeeds, Pares-Midi

MeetUp French-English Conversationalists 50+

InterNations

Toastmasters of Paris

The American Library in Paris

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Allure Of A First Love

       

            What had attracted me, at age fourteen, to choose a long daily commute to a high school far from my home, when I could have attended a similarly high academic school merely two blocks away?
            French. Having mastered basic conversational English, I was ready for the challenge of taking a second foreign language. I also loved the new, spacious building of the new school in the outskirts of the city, so unlike the crammed classrooms in the center city of Tel-Aviv where I lived.
            We, the student body of Alliance Française, soon became Francophiles. We loved the language and the music of it. We staged plays in French, sang songs in French, and cursed each other in French. As a romantic teenager with three languages at my disposal, I wrote poetry in French.
            Fast forward, in my twenties, I moved to the United States and found myself immersed in the language and culture of my adoptive land. I soon entered the corporate world, where I never encountered Israelis or French, for that matter. In the early 1980s, it was a world of white American men, and I was a woman breaking the glass ceiling while raising a family in secrecy, because my boss told me, “We don’t hire women with children.”
            Many years later, in 2005, I was deep into a second career as a novelist, in English, when my protagonist took off from Jaffa to Paris. I had not planned that move as I was writing Jerusalem Maiden. What was she doing there? I had to follow her.
            In the two weeks between Esther’s fleeing to Paris and my arrival to discover her whereabouts, I bought a French dictionary. For the first time in decades, I knew, I had to use the language. I reflected on all my visits over thirty years to France with my American husband, where I acted like an American tourist, never using the language in which I had once been fluent. I never even asked a waiter, in French, for a glass of water….
            Now I followed Esther in Paris of 1924, and realized it had been the avant-garde era. What was Jewish life here between World War I and II? I found myself at libraries poring over tomes of material, in French. For the first time in decades, I actually spoke French with art mavens and historians. I was surprised at how much of the language I had retained, and disappointed at how much of it I had forgotten.
            This is when, seeing the city through the eyes of my protagonist, living there, that I made Paris my own.
            But there was no time to reflect on any of it. I had a novel to finish and a life to live in New York.
            In 2009, I reconnected via Facebook with a woman who had attended my French high school. Our lives had intersected many times, starting even before our births, when our respective grandfathers had been business partners. She still lived in Israel, but in recent years had purchased a magnificent apartment in Paris. I was delighted when she invited me to stop there on my way from Tel-Aviv to New York.
            The weekend I visited, I accompanied her to a day-long party at close friends’ castle. The family welcomed me warmly, and for the first time in so many years I actually had long, social conversations in my no-longer-good French.
            The following summer, while waiting for Jerusalem Maiden to be published, I decided to trace the history of a painting that had been in my family since the mid 1930s. It had belonged to the grandparents of a pair of cousins, a brother and a younger sister, each of whom I had met only once, in our youth. I found them both living in two areas in France, married to French-only speaking spouses.
            The bond was instantaneous, starting with the one hour and forty-five minute phone conversation with the sister, and followed by an hour-long conversation a week later with the brother, who then put his Swiss-French wife on the phone. Turned out that while they had not been on my radar screen all those years, they were up-to-date on my life.
            Since my husband had to be in Europe for a meeting in November 2010, we all decided to meet in Paris. The three couples spent four glorious days together, and although my husband speaks only English, he got along extremely well with the French-only speaking spouses. And I had to chat with them from morning to night, filling all the blanks of our lives. I managed well enough to speak, but was fully aware of how poor was my language level.
            In 2012, in the midst of an extensive two-year book tour for Jerusalem Maiden, I had a conversation with a young man in New York who was on remission from cancer.
            He asked me, “If you had one year to live, what would you do?”
            “I’d eat chocolate,” I said.
            He looked at me with astonishment. “That’s it? You’ve done everything, you’ve been everywhere?”
I gave a humble nod, “Yes.”
            Back home, I thought that my response had been pathetic. I no longer had dreams. Had there been something I ever wanted and simply suppressed?
            Yes.
            Back in high school, I had dreamed to one day take a semester at the Sorbonne in Civilization Française. But after a two-year service in the Israel Defense Force, I had to rush my university studies along.
Suddenly, this old dream began to bloom. Studying in Paris had been the only thing I had once desired strongly, yet never fulfilled.
            There were two issues with reviving this dream: First, I did not wish to uproot my life for a whole semester. The other was that the student body, which had so appealed to me when I was fifteen and sixteen, was still made of twenty-year-olds….
            I broached the subject with my husband and asked it as a birthday present—not the funding as the time off to do something he had no interest in sharing. I coached my request for only one month, and, thanks to the internet, was able to stitch together a full day program of language and culture immersion.
            April 2013 was my debut month, the first time ever to be on my own, (an experience that I chronicled in a series of blogs.) When Ron visited for a few days, a visit that cut on my language immersion, I asked him “to try to incorporate Paris into our life.”
            “I am not saying ‘No’” he replied.
            And so, today, a year later, we arrived in Paris for four weeks, this time with the idea of feeling the pulse of life here. My French is improved, and although I had not reached the level of my post high-school years, I will take only a few classes. I’ve been learning some slang; even though I will not use it, I must understand it.
            At dinner at a sidewalk café, we chatted with a couple from Bordeaux. The wife commented on my excellent vocabulary, and when I expressed astonishment, she said that all I needed was the proficiency of speed. Luckily, she hasn’t seen my writing samples.
            As Ron and I are settling in the apartment we’ve rented in the heart of the historic Saint Germaine area, I am feeling the return of that first blush, of first love, and I feel happy about somehow living a version of my youthful dream.
            Stay tuned.

 (To read previous Paris posts, please click  )

Paris, here I come!

             In my four years at Alliance Française, a French-language high school in Tel-Aviv, we all became Francophiles. We belted out French songs, staged school plays in French—and cursed in French. A romantic teenager with three language at my disposal and a flare for writing, I penned poetry in French.

            The summer after our junior year, a selected group of students was sent to France on a month-long mission, which included almost three weeks in Paris. That memorable first trip turned up decades later as the seed of inspiration for my novel JERUSALEM MAIDEN.

            Somewhere along the journey into French language and culture, a dream sprouted: one day I would spend a semester at the famous Sorbonne university in Paris, where I would study Civilisation Française.

            Life, though, had its own agenda, and the dream never materialized. And while in the decades that followed I visited Paris numerous times, I put behind not only that youthful fantasy, but also the language I had once loved. In my twenties, I moved to New York, made English my daily language—and soon the language of my career, first in business, and then in the literary world. When my American husband and I traveled through France, I acted in restaurants and stores as an American tourist that did not even speak French. The Francophile part of my life was erased.

            And then, in 2005, while penning a novel set in Jerusalem, my protagonist surprised me and took off to Paris. Only after I packed my bags and chased her there did I realize that unbeknown to me, the author, her move had been motivated by my very first school trip in the 1960s. It was then that I had imagined my grandmother—the inspiration for JERUSALEM MAIDEN—as an artist there during the avant-garde era.

            What did I know about Paris at that historical time? In the two weeks prior to leaving home to follow my protagonist, I trained my oral muscles and grey cells with verb conjugations and nuanced pronunciation. My husband was amused when I walked around the house mouthing forgotten words and phrases. 

            In Paris, for the first time in decades, I spoke the language as I became a flaneuse, a wanderer, now exploring the city though the eyes of my protagonist in 1924, at a time when most houses had no running water, few had electricity or gas lines, and sanitation services were provided by the slop wagon into which residents emptied their chamber pots. I sat at dusty libraries and leafed through tomes of history—in French.

            In 2010, when JERUSALEM MAIDEN was preparing for publication by HarperCollins, I set out on another project, investigating the history of a painting that had been in my family. I grew up with this museum-size canvas and was so attached to it that after my sister inherited it I commissioned an artist to copy it. Now I contacted long lost cousins, a brother and a sister whom I had met only once forty years earlier, and whose grandparents had originally purchased this painting. Raised in Germany, the brother and sister—now with their respective spouses—lived in different parts of France. The first phone conversation with the sister turned into an almost two-hours long chat. A week later I spoke with her brother, and after forty delightful minutes, he put his French-speaking wife on the phone. Like the others, she was warm and delighted at the renewed contact.

            Three months later, my husband and I piggy-backed a trip to Europe with a get-together in Paris with these cousins. The three couples spent fabulous four days, where we bonded beautifully. Since both my cousins’ spouses spoke no English, I chatted in French from morning to night. My husband, who spoke only English showed the best of his bonhomie self. Although my grammar was far from perfect, it was clear that it was intuitively ingrained, as only someone who had once been fluent in the language could have mastered.

            A year ago, in the spring of 2012, Ron and I visited each of the cousins in their respective hometown, where again I spoke only French. Soon, I was flooded with memories of my high school years when the language and its cultural nuances had meant so much to me.

            This past Fall, at a conversation with a young man who was on remission from cancer, he brought up the question of a bucket list. “What would you do if you had only one year to live?” he asked.

            After some thought, I replied, “I’ll eat chocolate.”

            He burst out laughing. “That’s it? You’ve done and seen everything? I haven’t even been to California!”

            Later, I reflected on my pathetically short wish list. Had I really accomplished everything I could ever dream of? Or did I not dare dream outside the obvious, beyond what was available to me?

            My old desire to spend a semester in the Sorbonne popped in my head. At this time in my life, nothing held me back from making it happen: I had the financial means, my children were emancipated adults, my husband a busy independent man. Besides being French-challenged, he had always enjoyed Paris for just a few days at a time. On the other hand, he always supported my interests. With his unending encouragement, I had blossomed.

The first problem I encountered was that the student body at the Sorbonne that had once been so appealing, hadn't changed: they were still twenty year olds. And a semester was too long to tear myself from my life.  

I approached my husband with the request of a birthday gift of only one month in which I would tailor my own language and culture program. Sure enough, a quick Google search brought up language immersion classes for business executives, presumably in their 40s rather than in their 20s. I discovered groups of expat writers that conducted French conversations, and I signed up for lectures about art and theater along with architectural walks. I would take my exercise and dance classes in French and would even play Mah-Jongg in French.

There was a moment—turned into hours--in which I panicked.

In today’s world of Internet, I could view photographs of each furnished apartment from every possible angel. It would be my home for the month, a place to cocoon alone. But that’s when reality hit me. I had never been alone! Even in the solitude of writing, Ron had always been in the background. After thirty-five years together, I was accustomed to his ever-present care and friendship. Since he struggled with the same separation anxiety, I had to keep my bravado. I forged on with my plan--or my bucket list would once again be reduced to only one thing: chocolate….

I will be leaving for Paris in 8 days. Stay tuned.

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Novelist Talia Carner lives in New York. Her latest novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN (HarperCollins, 2011) deals with the struggle between freedom and faith. (www.TaliaCarner.com)