eating french fries in paris

on the importance of familiarity in times of change and growth.

Hi. I’m Katie. This newsletter is a place where I explore my spirituality and my humanity in an intersectional way. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week…

I often joke that, when it comes to interior design, every Midwestern girl in the ‘90s had one of two posters on her wall: a picture of a bright red, double-decker bus cruising through London, or a black-and-white photograph of the Eiffel Tower.

I was definitely the latter.

Like a lot of girls who grew up in landlocked states, I romanticized the places I read about in books and saw in movies. The unfamiliarity of these far-off cities felt almost seductively alluring, a far cry from my small life surrounded by the quiet Missouri countryside.

I dreamed of visiting Paris, eating croissants with strawberry jam, and tying scarves artfully around my neck. As an adult, I learned to speak the language, waiting for the day where I could finally, clumsily ask a Parisian passerby, “ou est le métro?”¹

I am very adept at being a tacky tourist.

In 2017, I finally got my chance.

My friend Ashley and I had applied for a grant to attend a social justice conference in Angers, France…and when we found out that we had won, I could almost feel my inner 12-year-old fist pumping the air and screaming, “oui!!!”. We landed in the capital a few days before the conference, met up with Ashley’s friend Sophie, and got our Passport to Paris² on.

On our first full day in the city, we woke up early, left our shoebox Airbnb and hit the cobblestone streets. We rode the Métro. We bought macarons at Ladurée. We took one million selfies in front of the Eiffel Tower, which looked much cooler than any poster I’d ever seen. There were so many new sights and sounds to take in. It was one dose of newness after the next.

I feel like this is a Very French Picture.

As the day wore on and evening started to close in, Paris was just as magical as it always was, but we were losing a bit of our sparkle. We had walked over 20,000 steps. I had a blister where the strap of my impractical sandals had rubbed against my big toe. And we were all hungry.

So, when we spotted a pair of golden arches in the middle of a busy shopping center near the Louvre, we all looked at each other. An unspoken agreement rippled between the three of us. After a day of one new thing after the next, ordering from McDonald’s felt easy. Familiar.

I stood in the middle of Paris, one of the culinary capitals of the world, with salt on my fingertips, eating french fries.

And for some reason, that felt right.

Five years later, I was once again at a McDonald’s.

I inched my way through the long drive-thru line until I was able to order french fries from a crackling speaker coated with peeling paint. To my right was a dusty palm tree. The sun pierced through the windows of my car, burning my exposed skin. I felt tired, like I had been here for years. It had only been a week.

I wasn’t sure why I was there. I wasn’t particularly hungry for food. But I was searching for something that had felt particularly hard to come by as of late.

Familiarity.

I paid for my french fries and accepted my grease-splotched brown bag emblazoned with the same golden arches that had beckoned me in years ago in France. I sat it in the empty passenger seat, and as I drove away, I began a familiar pattern of dipping my hand into the bag, snagging a few fries, and munching on them as I navigated the rough Crucian roads.

So much around me felt foreign: the fact that I was driving on the left. The fruit stands along the edges of the road, filled with green mangoes and plantains. The nearly-constant honking, a Swiss army knife of a sound used to say hello, go ahead or get out of the way.

But the ritual of fishing french fries out of a bag was weirdly grounding. I saw a paper doll version of myself, unfolded in front of me, each cutout joined together by the shared experience of seeking something familiar in moments when the whole world feels strange.

In coming to the island, I had rejected the world that I had always known. But I began to wonder: where else could I find familiarity in St. Croix?

A few weeks later, Hilly and I were standing in front of the ocean. He held a styrofoam container of fried chicken, rice and bean stew in his hands. I was busy slapping away the no-see-ems, the tiny, biting flies that come out near dusk.

I took in the scene around me and began to make a list in my mind.

The dirt road that led up to where we stood: familiar.

The musical sound of broken shells being brought towards shore by the ocean waves: unfamiliar.

The salty, crisp taste of fried chicken: familiar.

The brothy, spicy heat of bean stew poured over rice: unfamiliar.

The broken beer bottles scattered in front of tall fields of grass: familiar.

The long-legged white stork strutting across the road: unfamiliar.

My breathing steadied as I realized that life here in St. Croix is not as strange as I may have initially thought. Interwoven throughout all of the strangeness is a common thread of familiarity, the sort that is never too far away.

So much beauty exists in exposing myself to parts of life that exist outside of the patterns I have always known, but the more I open myself up to what feels new and exciting, the more I realize that familiarity is a necessary part of exploration.

Sometimes, I will need to eat the french fries, so to speak. I’ll need to feel grounded by something that I know intimately: the feeling of Hilly’s hand in mine. Mixing up my favorite cookie recipe. The ritual of brushing my two cats.

There will be moments when I need to experience a familiar activity the Crucian way, like going to the local bowling alley, something familiar to me, and seeing what it’s like to knock down pins under a blacklight to a soundtrack of soca music.

And there will be times when I need to immerse myself in the unknown and to let it feel strange for a bit so that I can grow: learning how to say “good night” in the evenings as a greeting or remembering that, here, eye contact isn’t such a bad thing when speaking to a stranger.

To me, the sweetness in life is found in the delicate dance between what we know and what we have yet to know.

I know that life in St. Croix will teach me how to appreciate both ends of that spectrum and will remind me of the familiar thread of humanity that runs through all of us, no matter where we live.

And if I ever need that extra dose of familiarity…well…there will always be french fries.

For those of you who have traveled or lived in many different places, what always feels familiar, no matter where you go? What, in your opinion, is the best ratio of familiarity to newness? Let’s chat in the comments.

I’m bringing back some tarot thoughts next week, but for now, I’ll leave you with a picture that perfectly embodies the major arcana card Strength…my partner, Hilly, gently leading this horse back into the field.

Could this picture be any sweeter?

This friendly fellow (the horse, not Hilly) was adamant about the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side of the road, but in his quest to access the perfect patch, he was creating a tripwire for every human and car that drove by. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of meeting Hilly in real life, he is the epitome of gentle strength. I thought the moment was too perfect not to share.

Until next time.

1. This scenario did actually happen when I returned to France in 2019, and the guy laughed at me and pointed over my shoulder. It was literally 100 feet away. Quelle horreur!

2. Where are my Mary Kate and Ashley fans at?!