Cassis and paris

3/9/2025

Katharine and I in Cassis

Not long after the woolly mammoth roamed the earth, I had a job that had me doing a lot of interview screening. In the summer when most of my colleagues were at Tanglewood, I tended to relax my already low standards. For this particular interview, I turned my empty office trash can upside down and put my flip flopped feet up on it before beginning a chat with a tall blonde who had applied for an Executive Assistant opening. She had good experience, was clearly smart, way more professional than I, and ended up getting the job. Not long after, she admired my new black suede shoes, advising me to buy waterproofing spray, which I never did. Now, she'd know not to waste her breath on that kind of advice, knowing me as she does. But in my mind, that conversation was the beginning of a friendship we've nurtured over years and years, our friendship continuing to deepen with every important life event we share. Somehow we morphed from single girls looking for trouble to those people who need help putting their carry-ons in the overhead compartment. She has always been thoughtful, funny, creative, sure of who she is, and spontaneously generous, more than anyone I know. And she is so very dear to me.

But she's not the first person I expected to come and visit, as she tends to be pulled in different directions at home. So when she walked through the doors at Marignane, two worlds collided in a confusing and most delightful way. For the week we had together, we could have done nothing but sit at cafés, which we certainly did for a few days. But I got a bee in my bonnet about her seeing the Mediterranean, so we hurtled off to Cassis, where my family had spent some years when I was young. It was a sunny, warm day that allowed us to sit at one of the harbor cafes for hours, jacketless, enjoying the most killer fish-related meals. I'm not sure if I was 4, 5 or 6 when my family left there, but I usually have a good memory for places based on the way the land lies. I spent a bit of time looking up in the hills, trying to envision the view I know we had from our house, and certainly narrowed down where we lived. But I'll have to go back alone for another session to get clearer. It's little changed, still cafés the whole way around, perhaps some of the same Tabac denizens even. Little painted boats still in the harbor, the much used petanque park, the carousel, oleander bushes.

Cassis harbor

Sadly closed, it might have been New Years Day

And then we were off to Paris for a few nights. On the advice of my wonderful Maltese friend, we stayed in Saint Germain at the Hotel St. Germain. As our very nice Uber driver brought us in via all the big landmarks, I began to worry we'd be close to the Louis Vuitton store that is designed as a suitcase, along with all their uninteresting global brand competition on Avenue Champs-Elysees. But he dropped us on Rue du Bac across from a shop selling only socks and near a hardware store more beautiful than any I've before seen. There was also a colorful grocery store that had polar bears dancing in the windows, quite a few chocolate shops that are always crowded, a dear little place that sells flowers, and then further afield, stores selling Louis XVI furniture, chandeliers, art deco pieces, fossils, mounted dead bugs, things made from airplane parts, remade sneakers, and oddly, many stores that had stuffed deer or moose ior sale or as decorations. Every store was more beautifully arranged than the next. Lotta photographs, did my best to winnow them down.

My friend sadly took ill, but it didn't stop her much, she was out and about with me for a much of the time. We stood outside Notre Dame, along with a few kajillion others, but didn't go closer because the military were standing there with their scary looking automatic weapons alarmingly close, pointing into the crowd, with safeties off.