Aix Marks the Spot

Trips abroad are only sometimes a piece of cake. Let's face it: illusion and reality are two ingredients that go into any recipe for travel and sometimes leave a sour taste. 

I had always thought of myself as an adventurous person. It was 1996, and I was nervous about my solo flight to Paris to visit my daughter, Leah, who was in the middle of her semester there. The lure of the iconic city, with its culture of museums, food, architecture, and shopping, made it easy to envision a good time. My heart shrank in mid-flight when I learned that my plane had unexpectedly been diverted to Geneva. It had been a big deal for me to travel alone, and I might have seen this early snag as a foreshadowing of things to come. Instead, I was busy sobbing at the ticket counter. A trouper by nature, I moved through my tears, fought my temptation to turn around and go home, and got myself a ticket to France. Somehow, Leah tracked me down the next day when my plane finally arrived at DeGaulle, and we began our mother-daughter adventure in Paris. 

Or so I thought. Almost the first thing Leah said to me after we hugged hello was, Mom, Let's get out of town and go to the south of France. Get out of town? We are in Paris. I am in Paris. You've got to be kidding! I won't go into a discussion of the restlessness of college-aged youth here. What's important is that I staved off her travel lust for several days. I hung out with the Impressionists, Picasso, and Van Gogh. I ate soufflés, escargot, shopped, and even found Jim Morrison's grave. I did all this and then boarded a fast train mid-week to Marseille, where we rented a car and began our drive across the Pyrenees to Nice.  

Experienced travelers expect and even choose to travel because it moves us out of our comfort zone. I can vouch for that. First off, we stopped for what we thought would be a quick lunch in the old town section of Aix-en-Provence. We shopped a little, ate at a charming cafe on one of the irregular streets of the Cours Mirabeau, and then returned to the parking lot where we'd parked our little Renault. Out of which our bags had just been stolen. 

The first tip-off that things were amiss was that the car key didn't fit properly into the lock. A quick search of the trunk confirmed our worst fears. My first thought upon realizing we'd been robbed was an intense longing for my toothbrush. Leah's response was more cerebral; she loudly, viscerally, and tearfully lamented the loss of the journal where she recorded her Paris stay every day. 

In addition to wanting my toothbrush, underwear, and clean clothes, I wanted my husband. I wanted to be home. I wanted someone, anyone, to tell me what the heck I was supposed to do. 

Travelers also constantly face experiences that challenge beliefs. A good Catholic girl, I'd always admired Anthony of Padua, the patron of lost things. The day before, during a visit to the Basilica of Sacré Coeur in Paris, I'd enjoyed an affectionate moment with him when I happened upon his statue. Oooh, You look good in alabaster, I whispered as I snapped a photo of one of my favorite saints. As I stood on the sidewalk trying to console my weeping daughter and figure out my next step, I sank into a crisis of faith. So much for sentimentality, I growled to myself. Where are you when I need you? I spat the condemnation into the void in case the phantom saint was listening.

Leah and I eventually got enough bearings to hail down a local gendarme passing by. Ah oui, he flatly stated. Thefts are usual in this town. He pointed to a shady spot beside a nearby building and explained that the culprits had no doubt been loitering there, waiting for us to trundle ourselves off to lunch so they could enact their caper. A man of few words, with a wave of his hand, he directed us off to the poste de police, where we should dutifully report the crime. 

As we got into the car and nosed to the lot's exit, I naively thought this young policeman would lead us to the station. Pas comme ça. Instead, I faced a myriad of choices. I could turn left. I could turn right. Or, I could choose any of the three little minuscule passageways that forked before us. Because cars surged behind us, I had to decide quickly. And so I did. 

As the story goes, it was the right one because no sooner had we traveled a block or so than I saw Leah's Kelly green silk pajamas waving at us in the afternoon breeze. Leah! I shouted, even though she was sitting right next to me. Our bags are on that stoop! Get. Out of the Car Quick. And. Grab. Our. Bags.

I've got to hand it to whoever riffled through our belongings. They knew what they wanted and left the rest. Leah lost her Carte Orange, her transportation pass for the Paris metro in those days, a handful of change, and that was it. Her journal was left intact, all our clothes, and (oh, happy day) they didn't want my toothbrush. 

Being robbed is an awful experience. It's wrenching. Like a sinister cloak, it spreads a pall on any party. So central to this story remains the joy we felt after being plunged beyond our hopeful expectations for the trip. We had to retrace our steps back to Marseille to exchange the rental car, but for miles, we were like a call-and-response choir; all we could do was marvel at our good fortune. The bags! We found our bags! Who would believe it? We found the bags!

Doubt, danger, uncertainty, and chaos are unavoidable aspects of the human experience. Familiar to most of us is our perennial neighbor, fear. History reveals the myriad ways we humans cope with that demon. Guardian angels, the idea that everyone has one commissioned by God to watch over them from birth to death, sure sounded good when my mother presented the idea to me when I was a little girl. When I pushed my mother for more, she made the idea all the more appealing by urging me to give my angel any name I pleased. Dogs, cats, birds, turtles, angels - who doesn't like assigning original names?

And so it happened on an ordinary morning sometime in my fifth year: I named my angel Anthony. I jived with the jingle that called on him to come around when something lost needed to be found. Intuitively, I knew I needed all the help I could get. Anthony became my Guardian Angel's handle and remained a secret source of goodness throughout my life. 

The experience of lost bags that were found bonded me tighter to my daughter. Was it a fantasy of mine that St. Anthony had somehow miraculously guided my steering wheel towards the one road out of many choices that resulted in us finding the stolen bags? The truth of that, I will never know for sure. As we drove back to Marseille, I chose to tell Leah the story of how I came to name my angel. While speaking, I looked up and, with disbelief and joy, called out to her again: Look, Leah, Look! at the highway sign that announced (at the precise moment that I was handing down my story) that we were driving past the small village called Saint-Antoine, situated about 10 minutes from Marseille. This coincidence was not an illusion but an indisputable fact. Given my lifelong relationship with the saint, it was a warm, synchronistic moment that felt like a big confirming hello from my dear old angel, Anthony. When I think of that trip and all of its ingredients it still leaves a very sweet taste. 

A shady spot in Aix