It occurred to me over the weekend, as I sat beside my second cousin at a long table in a boisterous dining room at the Florentine restaurant Buca Mario, that things were shifting. I was in Florence to celebrate his marriage to his longtime partner, both of whom I had only connected with for the very first time last March. He is 68, more my father’s peer, and someone navigating vastly different matters of life than I am. Attending this wedding was a step toward building bonds. If all goes well, the couple will be spending more and more time in Europe which will only help to connect us further. But at the very moment I gain family, I’m preparing to lose it in another way.
One of my very best friends is leaving Paris this week. It was time, she said, after nine years. Like New York, London, and perhaps Singapore, Paris is a transient city, full of academic and professional part-timers from all over the world. People come, they stay, they go. Sometimes they flock elsewhere in France, others return to the homeland. This is the cycle.
And yet, whether a result of denial or wilful ignorance, I didn’t fully predict my friend would reach the point of throwing in the towel; of selling her pots and pans, hauling her couch to the street, and stuffing her worldly possessions into a dozen suitcases to fly back and build anew in the U.S. She issued a warning on Thanksgiving Day, 2022, but it felt tentative. I could live with tentative.
When far removed from one’s immediate family, friendship takes on the starring role. In the last nine years, Sara Lieberman has been my confidant, my dining buddy, my colleague and, most crucially, my sister— with all the riotous laughter, brutal honesty, bickering, and senseless disagreements that attend such a singular relationship. In a city of comings and goings and a time of tenuous digitally-formed ties, deep friendships are essential to feeling rooted. I’ve been so fortunate to share that with someone.
I’ve also been lucky in other ways: In all these years in France, I’ve only experienced the departure of close friends once before. Though the circumstances were different, the ache of impending absence is all too familiar.
I wondered what, if anything, French philosophers had to say about friendship and if it might soften the sadness. Simone Weil, in a letter she penned from America to Gustave Thibon, a farmer-turned-philosopher she befriended during WWII, wrote:
“The joy of meeting and the sorrow of separation … we should welcome these gifts … with our whole soul, and experience to the full, and with the same gratitude, all the sweetness or bitterness as the case may be.
Meeting and separation are two forms of friendship that contain the same good, in the one case through pleasure and in the other through sorrow… Soon there will be distance between us. Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated.”
I’ll be leaning on these words for the foreseeable future.
And it’s this moment that finally felt right for a special conversation with Sara on my podcast. If you’d like to hear more about her journey in Paris, what changes she’s observed in the last 9 years, and the recommendations she has for new Parisians, listen above or on Apple or Google.
I also encourage you to read Sara’s touching goodbye letter on her newsletter, here.
And in honor of the woman who loves a haiku, one of my own in her honor:
Sara's farewell dance,
a gift in warm winter light
She—it—will shine on.
Hi Lindsey,
I didn't know you two were close friends. I've follow both of you for a long time. I often wonder what prompts people to leave paris and move back to the States. I've never lived outside the usa. But wish I had wanted to when it was possible for me to do so. I understand the feeling of lose when each friendship in another country helps one feel whole. And to have a friend who just "gets you" is a blessing. I wish that you both will find a way to keep the friendship active. You mean as much to her as she to you.
Yep. This is the terrible part of this wonderful life.
But.
We had lunch this weekend with someone who we have known since he was a study abroad student in Niger. (His daughters are about to go to university) We had a big exciting thing happen today & I WhatsApped with pals in Harare & Auckland & I just hung up the phone with my Rome person who lives in Toronto.
Hugs to your gang♥️