Mi ciudad ya no es mi ciudad?

- My city is no longer my city? -

So Hubby and I went back to Paris last weekend to meet up with potential tenants for our apartment. Because Hubby had to be in Paris before me for work, I traveled alone.

The minute I stepped off the train at Gare du Nord station, I felt like all this time I'd been running an errand and I was now on my way back home. The feeling of familiarity was so powerful and overwhelming I had to look for things that had changed in the station since we've been gone to remind myself that we left over 9 months ago. And came up with nothing. It was still the stinky, dirty, crowded, buzzing-with-energy, grandiose train station it had been all those months ago when I got on the Eurostar with the last of our stuff on my way to permanently settling down with Hubby in London.

As it's only a short walk away and the weather was nice, I decided to walk to our apartment from Gare du Nord as I would in the old days instead of taking the metro. I was back in our old neighborhood in no time and the feeling of belonging there only got stronger and stronger. I passed the street I used to walk every night to visit Hubby at his apartment when we first started dating, I passed the old boulangerie we went to when we'd wake up on Sunday mornings and go buy freshly baked butter croissants, I passed the police station we went to when our credit card was illegally used online for gambling, I passed my old hairdresser with his obnoxious attitude and magic hands, I passed our old apartment building and the Canal St Martin on which I used to jog every morning. Every single building and place had a story, a memory - the road I had walked on hundreds, thousands of times, had not changed one bit.

I was feeling so at home that when I came upon it I had to stop and double check that I was still on the right street.

But I was and there it was: an empty ground slot that had not been there before. It was sitting right in between an old apartment building I'd always wondered what it looked like inside and the gas station we used to fill our car's tank at. Wedged between the two had once stood something that had since been torn down and all that remained of it was an empty sorry looking grass field.

And as much as I tried I couldn't remember what had been there before.

I stood there racking my brain trying to remember and as the minutes ticked away a nasty thought crept into the back of my head: this is how it begins. The first time you're back, it's only one empty slot, everything else is the same and welcomes you with open arms and wonderful memories to be relived. But next time more will have changed and the memories will have started to fade or be forgotten.... a beloved store will have closed down while you were away, and you wont be able to remember if it was at this Monoprix where you got that blouse you love or at the one over at Jaures.

From now on, the city will transform, change and forget you while we are away and from now on every time I'll step off that train I will feel less and less that familiar feeling of belonging here.

Photo: "Paris" by Hubby

Fned.