Stairs (Themes from Paris)

[I'm writing this on the evening of December 18, but back-dating it to just after our return from Paris. I hope this won't be too confusing. But I assume that in reality nobody is reading this blog anyway, so why not?]

Several times in my travelogue from Paris, I alluded to topics that I promised to cover later. So now, squeezed into the few days between our return and my trip to visit family for Thanksgiving, let me say a few words about some of those topics.

The first of these topics is stairs. 

There are a lot of stairs in Paris. [citation needed] But Marie's knees are weak. How was this going to work out?

Turns out the answer was simple: Slowly and carefully.

More exactly, what we worked out was something like this. In the first place, we never hurried. The idea was, "We're on vacation. We don't need to rush." The few times that we had true schedule pressure, we left absurd amounts of time to get where we were going. (Marie and I both tend to worry too much about that sort of thing.) So when we encountered unexpected stairs (which was pretty much everywhere we went in Paris!) we were able to take them slowly.

Going up, it was usually enough to take them slowly. Generally I stayed behind Marie on the upwards climb, to prevent me from breezing on ahead and leaving her stuck somewhere. The idea was also that I could help her if she ever needed it, but she never did.

Going down was more difficult. Marie worried seriously about slipping and falling, particularly because her knees are so weak. So when we went down I always went in front of her and held the handrail (if any), in order to provide some kind of obstacle that she could fall into if she slipped. But then to make double sure, she would adopt a peculiar procedure by which she turned around backwards, gripped the handrail with both hands, and then gingerly let one foot down to the next stair. When that foot was secure she would bring the rest of her body to stand on that step, and repeat the process for the next one. This made going-downstairs particularly slow; and when we were navigating Metro stations (for example) we might have to go down stairs multiple times in the process of getting from one line to another. No matter. We allowed ourselves plenty of time, and took it slow.

The good news is that we managed two weeks of stairs—along with uneven cobblestone streets and all the other features of Paris that make walking an adventure—without mishap. [Pause to express serious gratitude!] But in addition … well, I mentioned that this was a daily occurrence, right? Unsurprisingly, after maneuvering across multiple staircases and uneven streets every single day, Marie began to get stronger. She mentioned, after we had visited Mont Saint-Michel (or perhaps it was Versailles) that she was glad it had come so late in the trip; because in the first week we were there, she couldn't have handled all those stairs and all that walking. By the time we were done, she was visibly stronger.

And now that we are home, is she going to keep walking up and down stairs, and all around her neighborhood? I have no idea. We discussed it, but she didn't commit herself.