My 78-year-old dad has had a 15-year love affair with Paris. Every summer like clockwork, he and my stepmom escape their New England home and make their annual pilgrimage to the French capital.
Even though my older sister and I have done our fair share of our own adventures, we had still never been to Paris. That was my dad’s thing, not ours.
However, that all changed in 2023, when my sister and I flew into Charles de Gaulle to see what all the fuss was about.
The morning we arrived, we planned to meet our dad in the lobby of our hotel. It had been a few weeks since I saw him, and I almost didn’t recognize him when he walked through the door.
He had a breezy linen shirt, leather sandals, and a scruffy 5 o’clock shadow.
For a man who wouldn’t dare leave his New England house without a clean shave, my immediate thought was that something had gone wrong. He probably lost power, misplaced his razor, or found his way into a Montmartre absinthe bar.
My sister and I joked, “Is customs confiscating Gillettes nowadays?”
“It’s the Paris effect,” he replied, as if it were obvious.
He’d transformed into a Parisian local right in front of my eyes
In New England, I know my dad to be a few things: a down-to-earth parent, a woodworker by trade, and a meticulous professor. In his classes, he instills a love of hand-carved pieces and abstract chairs in a generation that grew up with Ikea furniture.
That particular version of himself is all I’d known — most of the time we’ve spent together has been where we’ve lived in the northeast.
However, as my dad has continued to visit Paris over the years, he’s established new roots and, apparently, another identity — one that was completely unknown to my sister and me.
In Paris, my dad’s L.L. Bean flannels were on sabbatical. Instead, he stuck with a mostly linen wardrobe, and shirts rarely ever buttoned to the neck.
As we walked around the city, he showed us his favorite spots, grumbled about the crowds, and scoffed at the suggestion of going to the Eiffel Tower.
I was thoroughly shocked when we went to a local café, and he ordered for us in remarkably good French.
Throughout the trip, I continued to gather new information about my dad, like his love of drinking thick red wines and wearing a denim chore coat from his preferred atelier. I also discovered that he pairs a stinky cheese with a long walk along the Seine and likes to take his lunch in the Luxembourg Gardens.
He seemed like a true local, and I was blown away by the person in front of me.
By meeting a different version of my dad, I remembered my own potential to become someone new
While we were in Paris, I felt like I had been reintroduced to my dad. I learned about more of his interests and frequented his stomping grounds, but I also met a version of him who exists only in that city.
I realized I had previously seen my parents as just singular characters in life, an isolated definition of who someone can be. However, seeing my dad in Paris confirmed for me that who we are is relative not only to our relationships but also to geography.
It felt special to connect with a new side of him as an adult, and this experience also left me reflecting on the year and a half I spent living in South Korea back in 2021.
After returning to the United States, I felt that something essential had changed in who I was, but I also felt that I had left someone behind. Maybe it was about time to reawaken that part of myself on a return visit.
I’m hoping to schedule another trip to Paris with my dad sometime this year. But regardless of where we are in the world, I can’t wait to discover more of his interests and alternate personas — and maybe find other versions of myself along the way, too.
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