My husband Michael is leaving today. Last night I was crying on his shoulder saying,
"Don't leave me alone with these mean people!"
Now, that was after I was almost arrested in the Paris Metro, because I couldn't produce my used ticket. Or rather, I gave the ticket in my back pocket to the Metro Policeman, he said something I didn’t understand and pulled me aside, asking me to pay 35 Euros for not having a ticket.
Within just a few hours of being in Paris, everything changed – and I don't mean just the language and the landscape. Once off the train, a surprisingly relaxing six and a half hour TGV to Gare de Lyon, we all went from being peaceful to on edge almost instantly.
In the taxi, where the unfriendly driver didn't warm to me despite my grammatically correct statements about the weather and the traffic, the boys were making up jokes and laughing. They suddenly sounded very loud. When I told them to keep it down, I noticed that it was the first time I had hushed them in days.