He stumbled as he entered the park. The curb was too high or maybe he was just lost in thought and didn’t gauge the height of the stone barrier correctly. Louis had a choice to make. Take the path to the right, up the hill, or go left to the valley and the grotto. Both would end here, where he started, because the trail hugged the perimeter of the park.
He went right as he always did. As he worked his way up the hill, he spied the slopes down to the valley that in spring would bring the hordes of students laying in the sun, reading their books, and enjoying the company of others lucky enough to study on the grassy slopes. But, he was here in late winter, and the grass was brown from the icy blasts from Norway and Belgium, and the trees were barren of leaves as their gray tentacles reached up to an equally gray sky.
Louis had to take his mother out of the city. It was too dangerous now that his father was ill. He couldn’t risk losing both to the illness that had struck all of Paris and the world. But, here he could be isolated, tranquil, and, even with the cold, comfortable as he strode down the western ridge to the grotto.
The grotto at this time of year was the only place that water flowed, protected by the promontory above and the stalagtites that had formed since the inception of the park a hundred and fifty years earlier. Calcium impregnated water dripped from the spires in the grotto, into the flowing stream, into the half-frozen lake devoid of the now famous seagulls that frequented it in summer.
Louis sat on the bench. Contemplating, knowing what was ahead.
Life was great. The opportunity to participate and be here was everything. If one dies, they do. There’s nothing that can be done for that.
He stood up and strode back up the hill to the entrance of the park. He turned right onto Rue de Crimée as the sun broke through the early morning mist.
“Life is what it is, but I will enjoy every last moment”, he thought as he headed for the Place Des Fêtes to pick up his mother.