This will be one of the last travelogue posts, I promise. While I was digging around the archives in Paris, I had a constant companion: “Spring” the duck.
We picked the cute little rubber duckie up in Rome last fall. Spring found her way into my travel bag on this most recent trip to the French capitol. She visited the libraries, but she also tagged along with a friend who was traveling with me. Oh the places she went. And oh, the delight my daughter had in seeing the fun her duck had.
I snapped several pictures of Spring with other children. Being bilingual has its advantages. It was easy to ask parents to allow me to take their child’s picture with my daughter’s duck. But part of me is just wondering if they could sense that I was a parent missing her child. That can be expressed even without speaking.
What a sight I must have been standing in front of Notre Dame with a camera trying to find Spring’s most photogenic angle! But my favorite by far is the one I snapped from the terrasse of the apartment my friend and I rented in the 5th arrondissement, on a quiet street right across from the Cluny museum. See photo above, as well as the photo-shopped picture below. Courtesy of my quirky friend, a graphic designer. That duck has friends in high places!