Whatever you're facing...
Heaven Can Begin Now
The Bridge
When John and I returned to Europe in 1949, we carried letters from half a dozen editors
expressing interest in articles on the post-war recovery there. We found a one-room apartment
on Paris's Left Bank. And it was in that city that I had another of these intimations of
heaven, the significance of which I would only understand later.
On January 1, 1950, the rent on our room had doubled. We'd just mailed the last of a series
of pieces on the black market in various countries. Perhaps it was time to go home? On the
tenth, payment for the series arrived, enough for two off-season boat fares back to the
States. Bundling up against the cold, we set out on foot for the Cunard-White Star ticket
office on the Right Bank.
It was on the bridge crossing the Seine that the experience occurred. In the middle of the
Pont Neuf, I suddenly knew that "home" wasn't Scarsdale, New York, or Louisville, Kentucky.
We were home.
This was a very different phenomenon from that vivid sense of
"homecoming" on the deck of the Queen Elizabeth three years earlier. That had been an inward
experience -- today I'd call it a spiritual one -- a mysterious "belonging" that I couldn't
account for.
Belonging
But in Paris we did belong. We loved it here! Living was cheap, we knew lots of people, to
John's delight, and I had lots of museums to go to. I was studying Egyptian art at the School
of the Louvre, and as long as John was enrolled at the Sorbonne, the G.I. Bill covered most
living expenses. Europe provided endless story material. We'd meet after classes in the
little park at the foot of the Tour St. Jacques and, over a lunch of salami and crusty bread,
plan the next material-gathering trip from this rail hub of the continent. Paris was the
obvious place to settle for good.
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