return

To return after a long absence is always a bit strange.  Because I didn’t really know what I thought about the whole idea of coming back to Paris I decided I didn’t want to go back.

In town I dragged my bags up the stairs, into the street, across the street and to the black metal front door. I took a deep breath and started climbing the six, narrow flights of stairs to my tiny apartment.

I knocked on the door and was let in by the girl I had rented my flat to, while I was away. We chatted for few minutes and then I was left alone. What to do? Where to begin?

I spent the night scrubbing and cleaning and organising my things back into the order I wanted them to be in. I took a break to do some shopping. I had no food or any of the everyday life essentials like shampoo. The lady I buy my fruits and vegetables was still complaining about how the cold made this and that part of her body hurt and in the shop things were in the usual order so that I didn’t really even have to thing when filling up my basket. And I got to witness the funny scene of someone going to the wrong way on a one-way street and complaining to the others because they were being idiots and not understanding traffic – only in France.

The following morning I got up, turned on my computer, then the coffee maker and then started making porridge – same order, same routine as before. And by the afternoon I had collected my dirty laundry into the same spot it has always been in, my coffee mug had established itself onto the right side of my laptop and my keys were in that same spot on the table next to the door – I could find them my eyes closed.

Today I went to work. Well I didn’t work but I went to say hi and to give them my new phone number. When sat at the bar, drying glasses I could hardly tell I had ever been away.

It is good to be back. It is good to be home.