Paris Blues Are Real, and So Is the Kindness of Strangers

It is a fact of my existence that I always pack for the wrong weather and, most of the time, for the wrong occasion. I have a closet full of lovely dresses and sensible blazers, none of which I wear to the right event, at the right time. (I love a blazer in theory but can’t quite pull it off—I’m going for Charlotte Gainsbourg, but it’s giving Leslie Knope.)

Case in point: Paris. I returned to Paris for a brief visit a few weeks ago, as I gear up for the publication of my new Paris novel. Days before I arrived, the city was 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and days after I left, it was even hotter. But the entire time I was there, it was cold, blustery, and rainy. In fact, it felt exactly like San Francisco in the summer.

I was lucky to arrive when I did—I’ll always take a chilly day over a sweltering day, and fog is, after all, my happy place. Unfortunately, I’d left my trench coat back home in the Bay Area and packed for the heat wave I thought I’d arrive in. As I folded sundresses and linen shirts into my carry-on, I recalled the summer day we arrived in Paris to start our lives there, back in 2018, when we took a red-eye from San Francisco, dressed in jeans and sweaters, and stepped out of CDG into the dead-still heat of a 107-degree day.