Kathleen, Queen of the Desert

A chilly morning near a Parisian monument in the Latin Quarter, and I’m talking with my ghost. 

It was 36 years ago on the steps of the Pantheon that I took a life turn. Arriving on one-way tickets in Paris, my California boyfriend was escaping the Vietnam draft and I was looking for adventure, I guess. At first we’d stayed with a friend outside Paris, eaten simple foods, and picked cherries. We then moved into the city and rented a cold-water fourth-floor walk-up with a Turkish toilet down the hall. I was going to be a maid–a maid with an English degree–and live in Europe forever. That was my sort-of plan. Hanging out on the Pantheon steps on that hot July day, perhaps I was looking for something to break me out of that plan.

A young teacher from Chicago approached us on the monument steps. We talked and laughed and ate some Algerian sandwiches we bought at a street stand. In a matter of days, I left the old boyfriend and took off for Spain with this new boyfriend. And for six more years tried to make it all work. 

And now here I sit with a cafe creme at Cafe de Pantheon on a brisk fall morning 36 years later. I’m wondering who that ghost of me was, and why she’d dropped her then-life so easily, why she left Paris, hitchhiking and taking trains to Basque country, hardly knowing the teacher’s name.

There were some excellent times on that trip. Singing “Hey, Jude” with a bunch of Spanish students on a train, signing autographs for kids who thought we were film stars, watching a crowd of admirers mob a matador, drinking sangria looking out to the sea. We traveled through Spain, southern France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, up to Amsterdam, and then into England. The arguing and the hitting came later.

I try to remember what it felt like at that age. I was 23 years old on the Pantheon steps with no plan beyond the cleaning-people’s-hotel-rooms thing. I have to give myself a little credit, though. I was up for the adventure, uncomplaining about the Turkish toilet, young, hopeful, too dumb to be scared of hitchhiking, and seeking a life of love and movement. It just didn’t turn out to be with either of those two young men.

So, if I could talk to myself on those steps today, I’d say, “Hang in there. Go with your instincts, but be assertive. In a few years, you’ll be bringing your husband and sons to Paris, and you’ll be back again one day by yourself. So, go over to that cafe and have a coffee without even thinking about it. You’re going to do great. I believe in you.”