{"id":1489,"date":"2007-05-01T00:08:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-01T00:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2007\/05\/01\/so-longed-for-so-sighed-over"},"modified":"2007-05-01T00:08:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-01T00:08:00","slug":"so-longed-for-so-sighed-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2007\/05\/so-longed-for-so-sighed-over\/","title":{"rendered":"So longed-for, so sighed-over"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi, guys.<\/p>\n

Thanks for keeping the place so warm and tidy while I was gone. It\u2019s good to come home to you.<\/p>\n

Three weeks, gone in a blur. It\u2019s hard to know where to start.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
I remember saying to people sometimes, during the year or so that I lived in Paris<\/a>, that the city felt like my second home. In retrospect, it seems funny that I should say that, since I hardly even know where my first home is. I guess it should<\/span> be Oklahoma<\/a>, technically, since that\u2019s where I was born and raised. But it doesn\u2019t really seem right. Let\u2019s be honest: when you grow up in a place known pretty much exclusively for being shaped like a frying pan in silhouette<\/a> \u2013 a frying pan that, I might add, somebody chucked squarely and carelessly into the middle of Tornado Alley<\/a>, where it gets held to the fire each spring \u2013 it\u2019s not terribly hard to leave. My parents were from the East Coast, so Oklahoma never really had a shot. My parents raised me to know that I would leave, and that, in fact, I was supposed<\/span> to. It never even occurred to me to stay. I was too busy making plans. I think that\u2019s why I\u2019m such a sucker for Born to Run<\/span><\/a>. Swap out Bruce Springsteen\u2019s motorcycle and the back streets of mid-seventies New Jersey for an airplane and mid-nineties Oklahoma, and you\u2019ve got me. Not quite so sexy a story, of course, with no chrome wheels or wind in my hair, but you get the idea. Six days after my nineteenth birthday, I was gone. I spent the next four years in California. Then I went to Paris, and now, Seattle. I\u2019m still not sure where home is. I have a hunch that I\u2019ve hit on it, but I can\u2019t be sure. My second home, though, is still the same. I\u2019m predictable. Paris.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
There\u2019s been so much said and written about Paris that it\u2019s daunting to hazard a statement of my own. That city just has<\/span> something. I can\u2019t think of any other place so idealized, so longed-for, so sighed-over. My Paris isn\u2019t always such a sweet one, brimming with kisses \u00e0 la Doisneau<\/a>, but I like it better that way. It\u2019s the place where I\u2019ve been loneliest, and where I\u2019ve been happiest. Sometimes I\u2019ve been both at the same time. It\u2019s where, at twenty-one, I met my first love in the belly of a lighthouse-boat-cum-club on the Seine, and where, six weeks later, when he stopped calling, I sat on a bench at the Champ de Mars<\/a> and filled an entire Kleenex mini-pack with my snot and tears. It\u2019s a place where even crying feels romantic somehow, where heartbreak makes you feel like a part of history. It\u2019s unrequited love. It\u2019s who and where, for a long time, I wanted to be.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Paris is an incubator, and a catalyst. It\u2019s where I feel most awake. It\u2019s where, at twenty-five, and in the span of a few summer weeks, I decided to leave graduate school, broke up with a boyfriend of three years, drank my first gin and tonic, scattered a Ziploc baggie of my father<\/a>\u2019s ashes into the Seine, ate scandalous amounts of Comt\u00e9 and p\u00e2t\u00e9, and, at the suggestion of a very wise friend, decided to start this blog. That city means business. For a place that clings vehemently to its history, it has certainly helped speed along mine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
So it seemed intuitive to go back there this spring. I\u2019ve never been particularly cuddly with the idea of change, and this year is nothing but. It\u2019s all the good kind, of course \u2013 a wedding<\/span>! a book<\/span>! \u2013 but sometimes a girl needs a little incubating, so to speak \u2013 not to mention ten days with her mother, a solid supply of baguette sandwiches, some stinky cheese, whites from Cheverny, reds from the C\u00f4tes du Rhone, and a jaunt down to Lyon for some old-fashioned, fat-rippled cuisine de bonne femme<\/span><\/a>, which, for future reference, is immensely fortifying. Mom and I even shared our first blood sausage<\/a>, served in a quaintly dented silver dish with a bed of caramelized apples as brown and translucent as a tarte Tatin. I quite nearly set up camp right there, atop the checked tablecloth. Second home, you know.<\/p>\n

So it was good to go back. But I have to tell you, it\u2019s also good to be back.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi, guys. Thanks for keeping the place so warm and tidy while I was gone. It\u2019s good to come home to you. Three weeks, gone in a blur. It\u2019s hard to know where to start. I remember saying to people sometimes, during the year or so that I lived in Paris, that the city felt like my second home. In retrospect, it seems funny that I should say that, since I hardly even know where my first home is. I guess it should be Oklahoma, technically, since that\u2019s where I was born and raised. But it doesn\u2019t really seem right. Let\u2019s be honest: when you grow up in a place known pretty much exclusively for being shaped like a frying…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSo longed-for, so sighed-over | Orangette<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/2007\/05\/so-longed-for-so-sighed-over\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"So longed-for, so sighed-over | Orangette\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hi, guys. Thanks for keeping the place so warm and tidy while I was gone. It\u2019s good to come home to you. Three weeks, gone in a blur. It\u2019s hard to know where to start. I remember saying to people sometimes, during the year or so that I lived in Paris, that the city felt like my second home. In retrospect, it seems funny that I should say that, since I hardly even know where my first home is. I guess it should be Oklahoma, technically, since that\u2019s where I was born and raised. But it doesn\u2019t really seem right. 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