One of the happiest American Thanksgivings I ever spent was in 1981. The exquisite American Church in Paris has an annual Thanksgiving dinner—I was 19, and it was my first year out of high school. I was thrilled to be in Paris, participating in that magical era, but also homesick. The church, with its glorious Louis Comfort Tiffany stained-glass windows became a regular haunt of mine. It served as a bridge connecting various nexuses of my childhood and my future, and the expats there were kind and welcoming. When I left Paris and returned to Ottawa, I arranged for a hymnal to be placed in the nave in memory of a classmate who'd drowned in the Red River at the end of our senior year. My profound love for, and identification with, Americans has deep, deep roots, starting with my American-born mother and our American family on her side; the years I spent going to school side-by-side with American kids; and, of course, later years writing for American political publications as a journalist. But even with all of that, 40 years later, what I can still remember, aside from the familiarity of it all, is the warmth of the welcome I received that Thanksgiving day in Paris, in such sharp contrast to the cold November rain outside on the Quai d'Orsay.
No comments:
Post a Comment