We'll Always Have Paris: A Mother-Daughter Memoir

252 Pages·2014·1.75 MB·English

by  Coburn Jennifer

Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Coburn Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
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This book is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of her experiences over a period of
years. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some
dialogue has been re-created.
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Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Map
Introduction
Trip One: Paris and London, 2005
1: Paris
2: Paris
3: London
Trip Two: Italy, 2008
4: Rome
5: Salerno
6: Florence
7: Venice
Trip Three: Spain, 2011
8: Madrid
9: Seville
10: Granada
11: Barcelona
12: The Dalí Triangle
Trip Four: Amsterdam and Paris, 2013
13: Amsterdam
14: Paris
Reading Group Guide
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For Katie
Who makes every day a wonderful adventure

“Jail?!” my husband William shouted through the telephone.
“We were never actually in a jail cell,” I explained, now safely back in our
hotel room. “It was just a warning.”
“A warning?” His incredulity was clear despite the crackling reception of our
overseas connection. “From a police officer?”
“Yes.”
“After you and Katie were arrested?”
“Detained,” I replied.
He sighed audibly.
I probably should have known that climbing over a playground fence was
illegal, but other families had jumped first, I explained. “I was trying to be one
with the culture, do as the French were doing.”
“Was there a lock on the gate?” William asked.
“Kind of.”
“Listen, in any culture around the world, a locked gate means don’t enter,” he
said. “It’s universal, got it? Locked gate equals go away. It never means hop
over. How is Katie?”
“She’s relieved they didn’t get her name,” I said. “She was concerned about
having a record at eight years old.”
William laughed at how similar he and his daughter were. “Did they book
you? How did you get out?”
“One of the other…prisoners started yelling at the officer, and I think I kind
of annoyed him by making a stupid reference to Jerry Lewis. I think he just got
tired of dealing with us and decided to let the whole group of us go.”
“Jen, I’ve got to tell you, this is not inspiring a lot of confidence.”
This sentiment was one we had in common.
***
A trip to Paris had sounded so adventurous when I was first talking about it a
year earlier. People spoke about the city with dreamy longing, as though Paris
possessed a magic that could not be found elsewhere. I’d never heard anyone
talk about Paris without sighing. The city was a Promised Land that held appeal
for most everyone: artists, lovers, even people who just liked cheese.
Sitting across the table from the French police officer, though, I wondered
what made me think I could handle an overseas trip with a child. I didn’t speak
French. I had practically zero travel experience. And clearly I did not understand
the local customs.
It wasn’t as though we had money to blow either. When I told William I
wanted to take this trip, he gently reminded me of a few things. Both of our
bathrooms were in serious need of repair. In one, we couldn’t use the shower
because the water leak would further damage the sinking floor, which was
covered with a board. Our forty-year-old kitchen looked like it had parachuted in
from the set of a sitcom like The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family,
complete with a mysterious metal appliance attached to the aqua blue formica
splash wall. No one has ever figured out what this thing is or does, but some
have guessed that it was once used to cook meat. Our oven had two
temperatures: hot and off. The dilapidated louvered windows let in more air than
they kept out.
And yet overseas travel was, somehow, my economic priority.
I know why, of course. My father died when I was nineteen years old. He was
forty-nine, and after years of getting high with fellow musicians, lung cancer
finally did him in. Marijuana was his drug of choice, but as he often said, he
never met a buzz he didn’t like. He also managed a two-pack-a-day cigarette
habit.
Since my father’s death in 1986, I’ve been checking my rear-view mirror to
see if the Grim Reaper is tailgating.
When William and I started dating, I warned him I was kind of psychic and
knew I was going to be killed in a car accident two years later. He said he’d take
his chances. Whenever my doctor tells me I’m perfectly healthy, I lament the
state of the American health care system. I shake my head, saddened that doctors
are so inept that they haven’t yet diagnosed my serious illness. Early detection is
the key to survival, and these guys are clearly missing something in all the
perfect blood work, the spotless MRIs, the immaculate lung X-rays I regularly
request.
William says my only illness is neurosis, nothing a few monthly gab sessions
with a therapist can’t fix. My mother, on the other hand, becomes frenzied when
I articulate my fear of dying young. “You cannot say things like that aloud!” she
shrieks. “You can’t even think them. The universe hears everything and
manifests our thoughts.” Then she demands I say, “Cancel, cancel,” and affirm,
“I am healthy and vibrant. My body is prepared to live a long life of abundant
health.”
As much as I love my mother, her New Age style of health insurance grates
on me because at its core is the notion that people who are seriously ill caused
their condition with negative thoughts. If only they would adopt a can-do
attitude and chant the right fortune cookie wisdom, their cancer would run
scared, like Satan from a cross. My mother argues that the power of positive
thinking has helped millions of people, but it’s a bit hard to swallow when
you’ve watched someone you love be ravaged by disease and know that no
positive thoughts would have saved him. When I challenge my mother’s beliefs,
I keep it light, telling her that I think about winning the lottery all the time. “I
affirm that aloud,” I tell her. “I creatively visualize all kinds of cool things I’ll
buy, and it hasn’t happened yet.” After these exchanges, my mother shakes her
head pityingly. “That’s not how it works, Jennifer.”
But what if by genetic predisposition, or past habits, or just bad luck, I meet
the same fate as my father and never live to see fifty? Which would Katie
remember more: a trip to Europe with me or beautiful tile work in our bathroom?
My friend Evelyn was given the choice between a trip to Paris and a Rolex
for her birthday. She took the watch. I thought she was out of her mind until she
reminded me of her history. She was one of nine children in a working-class
Puerto Rican family in Michigan. Having that watch was a reminder that she was