November 2012 trip to Paris: The best thing of all

In late November 2012, my son, Noah Miller Johnson, 23, and I took a 12-day trip of a lifetime to Paris. I'd been there once, years ago, with friends, but never otherwise overseas except when Dad was stationed in West Germany in the 1960s. Noah had never been overseas, and I wanted him to be able to experience the beauty, art and tangled, often bloody history of Paris as an introduction to the world outside America, an experience which perhaps paradoxically often makes us realize what it means to be American. Apologies for filling up the scrapblog with our trip photos, but we don't ever want to forget what we saw, and recording it here is one way to preserve so. (Remember, cousins, when we were kids, and the aunts and uncles who went on vacation would show long slide shows on big, sparkly screens in their basements? It's like that! Kinda...)

This introductory post tells of the coolest thing, among many cool things, that happened to us on this trip...

My mother and Noah's grandmother, Alverna Edna Sprick Miller (July 23, 1924-April 24, 2006), went to Europe a couple of times on a shoestring as a young woman, after World War II, in search of adventure and romance. (She would find it when she met my dad, William Alton Miller (April 13, 1925-March 1, 1996).) I found a bunch of old photos taken in Paris in 1949 or 1951, I think by her sister, Marian Sprick Broberg. Scribbled on the back of the photo above was, "A bridge on the Seine." But what bridge? We decided to look for it.

After much wandering across the ancient, beautiful bridges over the Seine in central Paris, Noah and I found the exact spot where the photo was taken -- on the Pont (bridge) de la Tournelle between the Latin Quarter and Ile St-Louis, the island in the Seine where we were staying. The old  photo was taken looking northwest, toward Notre Dame and Pont St-Louis. It was very exciting and emotional to find the place where Mom walked and dreamed so many years ago!

Noah held the old photo up to just the spot on the Pont de la Tournelle where it was taken.

Then we stood in that spot, and took a photo of ourselves there.

The very spot where Mom stood on Pont de la Tournelle in that old photo.

The very spot where Noah's grandma stood on Pont de la Tournelle.

Then we walked back to our rented apartment on Ile St-Louis, stopping on the Quai D'Orleans to look back at Mom's bridge. Noah smoked a cigarette and pondered it all. I pondered it all too, but didn't smoke anything.

Under the nearby Pont St-Louis, the bridge between Ile de la Cite and Ile St-Louis, swans and ducks swam in the chilly, shiny Seine.

Noah looked like a character in a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale here, I thought, even though he was in Paris, not Copenhagen.

The swans and ducks swam on the Seine, just as they did in Mom's youth, and through time immemorial.

We also had the photo above, also taken in 1949, we believed, in the Jardin des Tuileries, just west of the Louvre. Could we find Mom's statue there?

We did! We did find it! Here it is!

Noah by Grandma's statue. We were too excited to strike the despairing pose!