4/28/2005. April in Paris

Suddenly it's here. The temperature is balmy, and the trees are decked out in impossibly tender shades of green. Flowers are blooming everywhere. Sidewalks confettied with showers of shattered petals make me feel like I'm walking through the aftermath of a party. A puddle leftover from the last rain shower reflects clouds scudding across a scrubbed blue sky and, suddenly, a couple leaning in for a kiss. I look up, and they're already walking away, their bodies curving into each other's arms, under the sheltering tunnel of the plane trees along the boulevard. Spring has come to Paris.


I know it's spring when birdsong starts waking me up at dawns that are suddenly arriving earlier. And twilights are slow and long, as if the daylight doesn't want to relinquish its hold on the city. Just walking out the door at this time of the year makes my heart swell. Standing at the bouche of the Monceau métro, I smell lilacs! Walking to do errands, my heart skitters like a colt, my thoughts run every which way, and I have to remind myself where it is I'm supposed to be going.

Of course, spring is a beautiful season everywhere, but what is it about April in Paris that makes me want to weep with the joy of being alive? Why is spring here so emotional? Why do the graceful facades of the buildings--grand and elegant at other times of the year--acquire an expression of tenderness when viewed through the screening tracery of new spring leaves? Why do even the statues now seem to smile with the secret knowledge that spring was bound to return?

Well, one thing is certain: Paris is most herself in the spring. Paris is beautiful--and she knows it. She's got a perfect body--and she's flaunting it. She's provocative, seductive, and flirtatious. All dressed up in the latest mode, she's working it for all she's worth. She's got on her highest heels, and she's catching your eye. What she's got in mind is beyond your wildest fantasies; perhaps that's why your thoughts are wandering.

For another, Paris is the City of Light. So it's only natural that as the spinning planet brings Paris closer to the sun, the inhabitants begin to celebrate. At the first hint of pale spring sun, out come the sidewalk tables at all the cafés, and instantly they are filled with dreamy Parisians sipping wine or coffee, blinking dazedly in the watery light, and facing, if possible, the sun. A French person is profoundly a sun worshiper--dangerous UV rays be damned. A healthy tan is considered a sign that life is being good to you, and cultivating the correct color begins on your spring lunchbreak.

Parisians, so prim and proper all winter long, allow themselves to sprawl in spring, baring all possible skin to the sun's probing rays. For in spring, Paris starts to relax. She lets down her hair, shakes her head, and with a shudder of delight, opens her arms to the long, hedonistic days to come.

In Parc Monceau at the end of my street, down come the fences that protected the grass all through the winter, with signs admonishing every twenty feet Pelouse en repos (lawn at rest). And in come the lunch-time throngs, clutching bags of carry-out, spreading jackets on the grass, and flopping down in convivial clusters for déjeuners sur l'herbe.



In fact, come spring, Parisians lose all sense of discrimination between good and bad restaurants. In spring and summer, the only good restaurants are the ones where you can sit outside, and the best ones are those with terraces. Impossibly long Paris summer days (it gets dark after ten o'clock) are perfect for leisurely dinners sluiced down with lots of chilled wine. Desultory conversations and the clink of cutlery echoing softly off old stone walls who have seen it all before--that's a warm spring evening in Paris.



But finally, Paris is most herself in spring because she is the city of love. And spring is of course the most romantic of seasons. Combine Paris and spring and you have a 2+2=5 situation--it's simply off the charts. In spring, the fountain of youth is alive and well in Paris. In fact, it must be running right through the city's plumbing, flowing out of its very taps. Everyone must be drinking it, and that's why couples in their seventies are holding hands. Denis kisses me on the corner. Couples are intertwined on every park bench; they're necking on the métro. On the sidewalk in front of me, a guy's hand is cupping the jean-clad curve of his girlfriend's bottom, and hers is slipped beneath his belt. It's enough to make a curmudgeon smile.

The latest City of Paris public service billboards are dedicated to AIDS awareness. Clever as always, they show a graceful girl's hand proffering a rolled up condom against a backdrop of a Paris street. The condom is green, and it forms the green lamp in a traffic light. The slogan? "Paris protège l'amour."

Paris protects love! That's it! I think. That's why the buildings look down on us so tenderly in spring.

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