The Tumbleweed Biographies

 He said he was Walt Whitman's grandson.  How poetic, WW's grandson running a bookstore in Paris across from Notre Dame.  We were two young girls backpacking around Europe with no place to stay.  Yeah, I know, this is beginning to sound like a coming-of-age story.  But it wasn't at all.  It is, however, a cool memory I have from my two-week rush through Europe with my best friend when I was 18.  We had a very limited budget but a much bigger desire to see as much as we could in the period of time we had off while the plant we worked at back home was in its annual shutdown.
We landed in Luxembourg and made a beeline for Paris.  I remember very little about most of the details, but I remember the highlights.  Taking the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower (with other Americans that were so rude it helped me completely understand the term "ugly American.")  Rushing through the Louvre because we got there 15 minutes before closing, convincing the guard that our camera was not going to flash when we took a photo of the Mona Lisa, and then, of course, our flash going off.  Honestly, we thought it was turned off!  Then to Notre Dame.  And I'm not really sure how we heard about Shakespeare and Company, but we did.  They said you could get a free place to sleep over if you would write in the journal.  So we did. 

It was a fascinating place, with books in every nook and cranny, up both sides of the stairwell and even crammed around each wall of the bed I slept in.  We wrote our stories, and the next morning we were off for Geneva.
I've thought about that place often.  When my son John went around Europe with his cousin Jackson, I told him to look for it.  I couldn't remember at all where it was except that it was close to Notre Dame.  He couldn't find it.  I'm not sure he looked really that hard because my description was so vague.  I think I might have even said I wasn't sure if it even still existed.

The next year my daughter went to live in France, and during a weekend trip to Paris, she found it, tucked away on Rue Bûcherie, in the shadow of the great cathedral.  She sent me photos of her standing in front of it.  It was still there!  So the next year when my husband and I went to Paris together, 30 years after my first visit, we sought it out, wondering if they knew anything about the journals I had written in so many years before.  Indeed, they did!  In fact, they were in the process of ordering them chronologically and told me to come back next year, when they would most likely be finished, and I could find my own entry.
I've just returned from a 10-day trip with my two of my sisters and my sister-in-law (as dear as a sister to me), the purpose of which was to help my daughter set up her apartment for her third year of living in France during which time her husband plays professional basketball there.  We took a crazy road trip to Switzerland, then Paris (which is another story for another time), but of course we made the time to stop by Shakespeare and Company on the Left Bank of the Seine.  Once again I asked about what I now know to be "The Tumbleweed Biographies."  They are completely categorized by date and every Sunday at 4pm, George Whitman opens up his apartment above the store for afternoon tea, at which time the journals are available for perusing.  Since we had to leave Paris by 2, we didn't get to join George for tea.  I am curious to see what I wrote at 18, a little window into my youth.  Alas!  I guess we will just have to visit Paris at least once more.