#69: Laisse-Moi T'Oublier. Je Te Promets Je M'en Rappeler

Starting vacation strong with a return to old haunts.

Do you remember your first love?

Was it an awkward kiss as you were wrapping up a date full of nervous handholding and shy looks?

Or was it the complete immersion in anonymity and cobbled stones?

We are immensely blessed to have friends working for hotels that can share their steep discounts. This is the view from our room, with the old city in the background, and Chateau Frontenac behind the bottle. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2023)

I remember well the sunny late spring evening that our coach rolled through Ste. Foy, pausing at the traffic lights outside the Université Laval entrance. I remember a random thought striking me - that I needed to go to school here. And I remember when our coach finally pulled up outside the Chateau Frontenac, and released us for a few hours of indescribable freedom of wandering the cobbled stone streets and 17th century architecture, the evening air mixed with wafting restaurant smells and the white noise of tourists, how 14-year-old me was most certainly in love with Quebec City.

Standing on the edge of the Citadelle, looking over the Chateau Frontenac and the Dufferin Terrace. The most photographed hotel in the world for good reason. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2023)

This young love was fueled like any love in 1995 - by hormones and CKOne. When I did return in 2000 to spend a summer semester at Laval, the thread around my finger grew stronger. I wandered neighbourhoods over tourist traps. I bought groceries with new friends to make family meals, and went to bookstores like I would in English cities. I called a refrigerator repair company and tried in halting French to explain that the mini-fridge in my dorm room was spraying red liquid everywhere.

Without imposition of others’ expectations, I could finally discover who I might be.

It was a liberating love.

The times I had been since Laval were like bringing the new, cool girlfriend home for Thanksgiving - introducing friends or family members to the same streets I trod previously. These were all enjoyable sojourns, but these came with the friction of trying to force two distinct circles to overlap.

The version of me that fit a mold, and the flashes of a carefree spirit.

So what drew me back for an eighth time this past weekend?

A roadside sign for future condominiums, as we crawled through traffic into Quebec City on Sunday. (It says “Coming Soon”.) (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2023)

Again, it started as an attempt to overlap circles - my husband had never been here. (Being an English student in New Brunswick, and not French Immersion, meant he did not get the obligatory grade nine end-of-school trip to the city.) It was also the feeling of being in another country without whipping out passports. In a post-acute pandemic era, that means a lot.

The only official tour we did was at the Morrin Centre. First a jail, then a university, it is now the only English-language library in the city. An excellent tour I would recommend, I can only dream of reaching the level of these walls. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2023)

I realized, though, that this time was different - more akin to those earlier times, and younger sentiments. We wandered neighbourhoods outside the city walls - St. Jean Baptiste and St. Roch. We picked up a few groceries for hotel snacks. We took a meandering route home through tiny villages along the St. Lawrence River.

Along the St. Lawrence River, one of many sprawling farmlands with Mont-Bleu in the background. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2023)

This is the benefit of being yourself with someone else; the circles can overlap in beautiful violet. You can more easily shed any coats of shoulds and musts that you’ve donned without thinking. You can dig into a city, scoop out as much marrow as possible, slurp it back, and wipe your chin of stray drops without being self-conscious. Now that I’m back, I’m thinking of ways to infuse those flavours of freedom and joie de vivre into my everyday life, so I don’t need to wait years and kilometres to rebalance.

It was a wonderful first-half to my week’s vacation.

It was a wonderful return to me.

Je me souviens.

Let me forget you; I promise I'll remember. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2023)

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