After a long day on Monday November 1st, I took the metro to Notre Dame de Paris. When I first came to Paris, the Cathedral of Notre Dame was the first monument we visited. When I saw it for the first time, I had to pinch myself. It did not seem real. It also made me realize that I had really arrived in Paris! And she welcomed me to her city.
News of the Fire… Are the Students ok?
It is because of this special bond with Notre Dame that when I learned that it was on fire in April 2019, I was devastated. I remember that I was at work in a meeting when a co-worker sent me an IM with the news. I agonized the entire day as the news of the intensifying fire spread over every news outlet. I saw my boss and his peers having coffee and I shared the news in a state of panic. “Notre Dame is on fire!” I told them. “Oh no,” they responded in alarm. “Are the students ok?” I had to explain that I meant the cathedral in Paris, not the university. To be fair, there are lots of Notre Dame alumns where I work 😀
After work that day, I went to church to pray for the cathedral and picked up a bottle of Chablis as a sign of solidarity with the French. And when it came time to donate to the fund for rebuilding Notre Dame, you can bet I did my part.
President Macron… What did you Feel as She Burned?
So when I saw the cathedral tonight, It broke my heart. I stood back and imagined President Macron, standing at the same spot watching the flames consume the cathedral. What was he thinking? What did he see? Did he see molten lead spill from the mouths of the stone gargoyles? Did he hear the pompiers shout orders as they scrambled to contain the fire and the voices of the people singing prayers across the Seine? Did he feel the menacing heat all around him? Did he smell the spoke as it bellowed over the towers having consumed the wooden roof?
As I stared at the Cathedral lit up against the dark sky, I took in all its little details. I tried to engrave it in my memory. Many of these monuments we take for granted. We take a pic, check, move on. But what if they disappeared forever? If you knew it would disappear from the face of the Earth, what would you do? Would you take a million high resolution pictures to try to recorded for posterity? I stared for as long as I could.
A Wounded Friend
Today, you cannot approach the cathedral like before. It is closed to the public and there is a large barrier so you cannot get close. It’s like visiting a friend in the hospital, still healing from their burns surrounded by medical apparatus. You can see large metal structures at both sides of the nave, and one crane on its southern side. As I watched the cathedral, I remembered a documentary I watched on Shark Week about when seals get attacked by great white sharks and survive. The seals that are badly (but not mortally) wounded will separate themselves from the other seals and keep to themselves while they heal. They agonize alone until they are better. That’s how the Cathedral feels like to me today. It’s healing and it needs us to keep our distance. “But don’t worry,” she says. “Let me be alone for a minute. I will be fine. I promise.”
