And so it was my state of mind when the music began. A familiar chorus, instead of wafting through the air and plucking me lightly upside the head, this time it hit me like a semi with its lights on. You know the tune of which I speak. It’s a private symphony, one we each composed as kids. Some people like to call them dreams. I call them songs. Doesn’t matter if they are heavy metal, classical, country or rap, as kids we all wrote at least one ballad for ourselves. But as we grow we are taught that it’s the rare among us who gets to make a show of it. Most of us believe the hype, and we wind up spending our lives postponing our debut. We do this by constantly changing lyrics, arranging and rearranging our notes, and refusing to go on until we’ve got it just right. We put it off and put it off until one day we look up and find that life has moved in on us, and we’ve lost our sheet music amongst a heap of unpacked baggage.

Me, I’ve never truly lost my song, but I have misplaced it a few times. When things are going well, I admit I can be extremely careless, but when things are tanking, I’ll go searching for it with a vengeance. Usually I’ll find it tucked behind some familiar parcel: a rejection letter from an agent or publisher, a fight with a friend, a bad day at the office. Each time I’ll roll it out, hum a few bars, scribble an update or two, but inevitably I’ll skip rehearsal, preferring instead to duck out the back door.

Last time I cancelled the concert was in 1999, when after having my tonsils removed, I learned I had Lupus, a chronic disease of the nervous system. That same year I also saw the end of an intense romance and a change of jobs. Needless to say I was exhausted, and as my strength waned, so did my reserve. I buried my song, thus burying my heart until, thank God, that fateful moment sitting across from my boss. No offense to him, but as the vapors of a whopping fifteen cents more an hour to do twice the workload swirled above my head, I realized I had reached the crossroads. My song began to play and my future crystallized before my eyes. Finally, I knew what I needed to do. 
Paris. I have to go to Paris.

“Paris?” my Dad laughed and winked at me through the rear view mirror, “what does a girl your age know about Paris?” Plenty, I thought, as I sat freezing in the backseat of his 1969 Blue Chevy Impala. It was 1977 and I was nine and we were trembling through yet another New Jersey winter and I was pouting because I’d just flunked a spelling bee. It was a crushing defeat, played out live to an audience of thousands. Okay, an audience of hundreds. Okay, so the entire assembly was made up of the twenty-four other kids whose teachers had forced them to participate. It was still a riveting drama, my first roller ride from the peek of greatness to the depths of humiliation. 

Already considering myself a wordsmith, (after all who else in my class could grasp the true nuances of words like “bionic” and “bewitched”?), I stood smugly on the stage, awaiting my coronation. It was a sure thing, for one-by-one I had ticked them off, until there stood only seven of us. I took a survey of my trembling competition and smiled. Eight more questions and the copper trophy would be mine. I was busy eyeing my booty when the moderator gave me my next cannon. “Orphan”, she said. I rolled my eyes as if to say ‘puh-leeze, what is this child’s play?’ I wasn’t worried, for I had an advantage, see? While my peers spent their weekends riding bikes and buying Tigerbeat, I was at home watching PBS and growing more powerful by the hour. Why just the weekend prior there had been this show, Great Expecting Somebody’s Mother Or Other, and there was this orphan kid, see…?

“Orphan”, I began, feigning boredom the way Diana Ross always did just before she accepted her much-deserved adulation, “O-R-F-A-N. Orfan.”  It still haunts me.

“Paris is a long way off,” my Dad added with a smile, “how do you plan on getting there?” Come on Dad, I wanted to sigh, we’re both adults here. How else does an inner city kid from Jersey get to Paris? You join the Army. Duh. But I didn’t reveal my plan that day. The old man, he was always going on about college. Best not to dash his hopes just yet. So I just shrugged, “Dunno,” and dropped it.

Well, not quite.

“Oh, not again,” my Mother sighs wearily. She is not happy. I admit, it’s rare that I call home, so when I do, she’s always hoping I’ll talk about my fabulous film career, or the fabulous new man I’m dating, or the fabulous new novel I’ve just sold for millions. Most of all, she hopes for an update on those fabulous grandchildren I’d yet to give her. But instead, once again, I tell her I am moving to Paris. “I don’t understand you,” she groans, “you just got back into the studio system, you’re making good money, you can afford a good Lupus specialist now. You know, you can’t keep jumping around like this. Sooner or later you have to settle down, do what’s right. President Bush is going to be making a lot of changes in the economy, you can’t be so careless anymore.” 

“Hell-o, I’m talking Paris”, I bleat at her, “as in France? As in, leaving the country? Baby Bush is President of the United States, Mom, not the world.”

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