tai-chi-one.com

By August we still hadn’t completed the ADR for the tai-chi video. Sky diving had kept me grounded but I was still on the verge of cracking like an egg. One of my bottled water accounts was a travel agent in Ocean Pines. While delivering I saw a flyer on the wall: New York to Paris, France/Charles de Gaulle–ninety-five dollars; Paris, France to New York/JFK–ninety-five dollars. I spoke with the secretary and booked the flights to where I would arrive in Paris at 0700 a.m. on Wednesday and leave Paris at 1100 a.m. on Thursday. It made perfect sense since I really couldn’t afford to leave the business for very long in the thick of the busy summer season. I had a week before the trip. Fortunately, on the advice of Root Lady, I had an up to date passport.
It had been six years since I had spent a few weeks with Stephanie and Sebastien the French teenagers imported by Rhoda Apple to help her brush up on her French. I called Rhoda over the weekend and retrieved the phone number of the sister and brother who were no longer teenagers. On Sunday morning I placed the call to Paris not knowing what to expect. A woman answered. “Bon jour.”
“Hello. I’m Sullivan Duda from Ocean City Maryland. I’m calling for Sebastien or Stephanie.”
“Sullivan from Ocean City!” she cheerfully replied from the other end.
“Yes,” I said, “Sullivan—Ocean City!”
And then she began speaking in French and I was dead. She understood that I didn’t understand but I figured out that Sebastien was in the navy and Stephanie would be home later and I was speaking to Josien, the mother.
I called later in the day and Stephanie answered the phone. Stephanie spoke as much American as her mother. When we were all together we had very few problems communicating with body language and all of the other methods combined that work on the physical plain but are absent when the voice is the only tool. We did set up another call for the next day. I had a friend from Nice who could translate in a conference call. My intention was to meet the family for lunch while I was in the neighborhood.
On the third try, with the help of French Fry, a Baltimore maitre de I told them when I would be arriving and I was there for only 28 hours. Sebastien was in the navy and wouldn’t be around.
Wednesday morning the plane arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport. After customs, I walked through the gate to the public area—holding up a sign that said “OC DUDA DAY” was Stephanie and her Mom and Dad, Josien and Etienne who were both my age. At he time I still had a lot of hair with a braid down the middle of my back. I squeezed into the front of the tiny white Puegot next to Etienne the driver with Josien and Stephanie in the back seat and was whisked away to the streets of Paris. Our first stop was Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris before they took me to their compact apartment for bowls of coffee and pastries. They took me to the Eiffel Tower and we climbed the stairs as far as we could before walking back to the bottom and then drove by the Bastille before returning to the flat for late lunch of red wine and salmon and bread. And back to the streets to Sacre-Coeur Basillica where I bought something sold by Africans that looked good in the wind, was overpriced and never worked later. We waltzed through Monmarte–an artist scissor cut profiles of me and Stephanie and we ended up on the Champs Elysees where I purchased francs for 7 for a dollar. A Marching Band played Le Marseilles as we watched at the Arc de Triumphe. We returned to the apartment for dinner and a nap and a promise that Etienne would drop me on the Left Bank later in the evening.