Whenever my daughter goes to bed, she usually says, “I think I know what I’m going to dream about tonight.” For those who don’t have daughters, I’ll have you know that this is a

common occurrence amongst the 8-year-olds and it probably lasts until the day they give up on love and romance. I remember spending hours and hours on the phone with my best friend of old, Mona, talking about what we “dreamt” about last night. And I’m sure my little girl is “dreaming” about pretty much the same thing.

While I’m doing my best to get myself into writing mode for my papers, I am also looking forward to a little treat that I don’t quite deserve this weekend, but it’s something that needs to be done in order to be able to travel around the rest of Europe when Christmas comes: because I obtained my Schengen visa from the French Embassy, I need to visit
France first. This weekend marks my third visit to Paris.

Forgive the needlessness of saying so but . . . never in my life did I dream that I would be able to visit the “cite” of cities, and when I did so once, I didn’t think it would be possible to do it again. And yet, now, Paris is two hours away by train. While people who love the sun say that Paris is best during the summer in time for Bastille Day and all the fireworks, I say the city looks best when coated by rain and cloaked by clouds.

I say any city that doesn’t aspire to look good in the rain, the way any self-respecting woman (on this side of the planet) should be prepared with a coat, boots and a hat—if not an umbrella, isn’t doing its job.

In the few cities I’ve been to, I say London, Paris, Luneta and the whole of the ‘old’ Diliman (which includes the South Triangle, Sacred Heart, Laging Handa, etc.) glisten in the rain. It’s all right to walk and stomp in a few puddles, because you’re going to look good anyway, if one were to take a picture; the city will be one’s backdrop for this kind of mischief. Hong Kong doesn’t glisten in the rain as it glares when the lights are on, and at dawn, after a long evening, Hong Kong looks quite drab and gray.

But not Paris. The cobblestone roads capture a bit of sun, and its non-descript shops, creperies, cafes and brasseries become more enchanting when those twinkly lights come alive at 6 p.m. And your resident arrondissement lights up with those firefly lights. It would be a waste to hail a cab or disappear down into the Metro when Paris comes alive this way; people are out and about, smoking, dining, watching life pass them by and just getting on with the Epicurean pleasure of ‘knowing when to quit’.

Of course in one’s teenage years, one would have dreamt of more scandalous encounters, but that kind of rendezvous is more Amsterdam than Paris. As I’m going to be 40 in a few years and spending a good deal of my life walking with my daughter around the streets I love, I dream of mellower afternoons: it’s the vision of me in the perfect coat, a perfectly fitting beret, cloche or kettle hat and a sturdy pair of boots walking with someone I love under an umbrella big enough for two in the rain. Perhaps there might be a bit of sun; perhaps all this takes place at dusk; perhaps there may be a few gusts of wind, but certainly a drizzle is expected.

Only in Paris have I seen several couples of different age groups walk this way, with one smiling and gazing at the other as though the rain were a welcome inconvenience, if only to have an excuse to huddle up and keep close. In London, people would walk together in raincoats and allow their hats to get wet, because they’re ‘resilient’. In Manila, the girl would feign annoyance about how her hair was messed up. In Hong Kong, the couple would hail a cab. In New York, at least in the movies, the couple would probably quarrel and place newspapers upon their heads to take shelter.

But only in Paris would the rain be greeted with a cherished sigh, and as a prelude to more expected events when evening falls.

Perhaps in the morning, when the mist clears, a man would be stepping out of his partner’s apartment building as quietly as he could, and before he starts walking home to his own flat, he would be gazing up at his lover’s window. She would throw him a white handkerchief; he would stretch out his hand to catch it, but as he catches it, his hand would linger there, still reaching out and up at her. Then he blows her a kiss and says goodbye. After that, he walks home without looking back.*

*This happened on a Sunday morning, July 12, 2008. I wandered into one of the tiny streets of the 17th arrondissement to buy bread. I followed the smell of freshly baked bread (so akin to Sct Ybardolaza and 11th Jamboree in the 1980s when there were lots of neighborhood pan de sal bakeries), and when I turned a corner around Rue Rennequin I caught sight of this. I didn’t bother to look up to see what the woman looked like, because the handkerchief caught my attention more than finding out who they were. Everything happened so quickly and silently. It was one of those moments when I thought, ‘If this isn’t love, then I don’t know what is.’