So over an amazing dinner with Erika and Debbie in January, I finally put into words how I was feeling about getting married/honeymooning in Paris and/or France in general, which went a little something like this.

Erika took me to Paris for my thirtieth birthday-- for this long, languid weekend of dreams and images and ideas. Erika left Paris the day before I did, wondering if I would ever come back, and alone I visited the Musée Picasso and the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, had dinner at Le Bistro de Gala in Montmartre, rode atop the Ferris Wheel at Place de la Concorde, drank Cognac with two Englishmen, viewed an exhibition of Robert Doisneau's photographs at Galerie Claude Bernard on the Rue des Beaux Arts, and wandered aimlessly through Jardin du Luxembourg. I had so much time to think that day-- about where my life had been and where it was going. I wrote back then of the Doisneau exhibition, "I spend most of my time staring wistfully at La Cheminée de Madame Lucienne. The foreground of the photograph captures picture frames and collectable gestures that sit on the mantle of a fireplace. And through them you see the distant passions and deliberate lives of the elderly couple in the background. Though I fight the urge with every bit of my fierce independence, I make a simple wish for those kinds of tokens to remember my love and life when the years have passed."

Thirty. It felt like quite a turning point.

And upon my return from Paris, B's very first email waited for me in my Inbox. A turning point indeed.

Since then, I always felt that something changed in Paris. Something clicked in my life at that very time that made me ready for the adventure of next four years. And so after B proposed, I started thinking about Paris again. About book ending this most excellent chapter in my life and opening myself up to welcome the new changes about to take place. I love the symmetry and the romance of these two very different trips to Paris. I love the idea of returning to this gorgeous, vibrant city with an even richer, deeper life than I could have imagined the first time around. Once we settled on Paris and the Côte d'Azur and booked our trip, I felt that same click: new dreams and exciting expectations.

And just today, just now actually, I realized that our wedding date, June 10, 2005, is also the anniversary date of whirlygirl-- the sixth anniversary of this little breathing site that entranced B enough to send his sweet words out into the ether to connect with me. It's funny that just the other day I was telling Erika that I was leaning toward June 10 because the date just felt right, and now I think I know why.

Circles and bookends and romantic symmetry. I feel like something, or someone, is on my side.