Each One's Paris

       A co-worker announced on a busy August day that she had just given notice she was leaving the lab, she and her husband were getting on a plane in two weeks and moving to Paris! They were going to live there for one year and after that decide if they wanted to stay, move somewhere otherwise exotic, or come back to Georgia and family. That was four years ago, and they are still living in Paris – traveling throughout Europe, sending back the most gorgeous pictures, eating well, and once a year coming home for a couple of weeks to visit family.

       Oh my gosh, the lab was astounded as each of us received the news! We had known that they liked to travel, having gone to Italy a couple of times in the years that we had known them – but to actually up and move to Paris? That was beyond a lab rat's sense of reality.

       But it did get each of us to thinking.

       If it was possible, and clearly this couple was proving it was possible, where would each of us go in the whole world if we could move there?

       What is our Paris?

       Of course it would be different for everyone.

       For Mike, the answer is easy – if you know Mike at all, you know that if he could pick anywhere in the world to live, it would be Brantley, Alabama – the place where he grew up. And it is very much his Paris.

       But what is mine? I thought and thought and thought, and could not come up with a place. Foreign cities would be lovely and exciting, but I have no desire to live in any of them even in my wildest fantasies. My own home town would be all right to live in, but I do not feel the lure, not like Mike feels for Brantley. So did that mean I wanted to stay right where I was, be right where I was, working and saving the money for the someday Paris that I did not presently know the whereabouts of?

       And then I realized that my Paris is something that I have often talked about for years, probably forever. It is just that it is not a single place, but more of a journey. What I would like to do, what I fantasize about, is to take to the back roads of this country, of which I have seen so little and know to be so beautiful, and chat with the people, collect their stories and tell them mine.

       With Kay and Scott's wonderful example, I have come to crystallize my own Paris and to realize that it is do-able, perhaps even soon, maybe even with its foothold in Brantley, Alabama.

       One question I would ask of folks is, “what is your Paris?” Because I know the answers will be surprising and their stories will be wonderful!

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