Crepe Sucre

It was my first night in Paris. Candles flickered and the dark air of the café was filled with smoke and jazz. Everyone was older than me. The lone freshman amongst juniors and seniors, I felt one step behind. During our first class on Expatriate Literature, I got lost somewhere between the French Feminists and Deconstruction.

The introductory tour of Paris was a blur - Sacre Coure, the Champs-Elysees, Jardin du Luxembourg, Eiffel tower, Notre Dame, the Seine, The Louvre – they were all muddled together in my mind, shades of black and gray. I had no idea how I would navigate such a huge city for the next three weeks.

I focused intently on the jazz, my glass of red wine, the French being spoken around me and its unfamiliar sounds - alluring and harsh. I couldn’t help feeling that my eighteen-year-old attempt to take charge of my life by doing something bold and adventurous was a big mistake.

As the days passed, I eased into the study abroad experience. I stayed with the group while exploring the city, carefully read the assignments and started to speak both literary theory and French. I learned the differences between the French and American Feminists and the relationship between Deconstruction in literature and the larger arts community. I read Gertrude Stein, Hemmingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, developing a kinship with those famous Americans living in Paris. As I walked the same narrow streets that had been their muse, their protection, and their raison d’être, I soaked in the promise of Paris. And even though I’d never studied French, it looks a lot like Spanish, which I had studied. I found I could read a menu even if I couldn’t pronounce the words.

Needless to say, I became a Francophile within days. And it wasn’t just Paris, it was crêpes.

Despite my initial feelings of naïveté, I felt a growing sense of my independent self in Paris. It began in earnest the day I decided to venture out alone into our neighborhood. I pulled on my gray wool coat, tied my scarf smartly around my neck in the French style and walked confidently out the front doors of the Hotel Trianon Rive Gauche into the Latin Quarter.

Turning onto Boulevard St. Michel, I walked past a patisserie. Scrumptious desserts lined the window and the smell of croissants wafted out the door. I passed a lingerie boutique with delectable desserts of a different kind displayed suggestively on the mannequins. Further up the street was a small market with large baskets of fresh fruit and flowers positioned near the entrance. The Café Le Luxembourg was filled with Parisians leisurely sipping coffee and reading books in the atrium facing the Jardin du Luxembourg.

As I turned the corner, I was engulfed in a smell so warm and sweet that I had to stop. A small stand was tucked under the awning of a confectionery shop just a few feet away. It was a crêpe stand. During our student orientation, we had been warned about eating food from street vendors, but as I looked from the menu to the batter bubbling on the griddle, I was ready for the risk.

Bonjour Mademoiselle, man behind the griddle greeted me. Crêpe Sucre, I immediately responded, surprising myself with the clarity in which the words flew out of my mouth. I sounded, well, French.

The man nodded without any recognition of the significance of this moment we were sharing. He poured enough batter to thinly coat the large, round griddle. It sizzled as it started to steam and bubble in the crisp, January air. With the skill of a master, he quickly flipped the crêpe, slathered it with butter and sprinkled it with sugar. And with three swift movements of his spatula, the crêpe was no longer a thin pancake on the griddle, but a smooth triangular pastry in a paper liner. I exchanged a handful of francs for my crêpe. We both smiled as I turned to walk away.
Across the street was one of the many entrances to the Jardin Le Luxembourg and I could see an empty bench just on the edge of the garden. I dodged Renaults and Volkswagens as I crossed the street and claimed my place on the bench. I breathed in the scent of my crêpe, the foliage and the smell of diesel thinking that it was the perfect trifecta.

I watched people hustle by, hunched against the brisk wind and listened to the smooth, rhythmic cadence of the French language around me. I bit into my crêpe, letting the butter and sugar melt on my tongue, and I found that the language that was so foreign a few weeks earlier was now soothing and familiar. I couldn’t help feeling that this was what being independent was all about. Letting the sweet taste of a new experience overwhelm your senses and surround you. Simultaneously losing and finding yourself in a moment, in a crêpe, in a garden, while enjoying each luscious bite.

To appear in the anthology Let Them Eat Crepes (eatingcrepes.com)