25 Quotes by Elizabeth Bard

A baby is a wishing well. Everyone puts their hopes, their fears, their pasts, their two cents in.

America may have landed a man on the moon, but the French have the coolest wedding cakes on earth. It's not really a cake. It's called a croquembouche- a "crunch in the mouth"- or, more regally, a pièce montée. It's like you climb the ladder to your new life on a four-foot pyramid of individual vanilla cream puffs, held together with glossy praline- caramelized sugar that shatters in your mouth like glass and sticks in your teeth like toffee.

There was a florist at the corner, closed for the night. I stopped in my tracks. Along with the heavy branches of lilacs and tangled stems of forsythia was a fluffy mound of tiny sleeping chicks- a living, breathing Easter basket. Paris continued to surprise me; instead of the slick consumerism of a twenty-first-century world capital, it was the little things, the living things, that made me smile.

I glanced down at the menu, relieved that although I hadn't taken a French class since my sophomore year in college, I still recognized most of the words. Chartier's menu is full of classics: steaks and chops, grilled sea bass with fennel seed, sweet chestnut purée, and wine-soaked prunes. What girl could resist the charm of a restaurant that allows you to order a bowl of crème chantilly- simple whipped cream- for dessert?

In the morning, Affif used the leftover couscous to make us a kind of sweet porridge, drizzling hot milk and honey over the grains and dotting the casserole with small nuggets of butter.

Part of me still thought these things were important, and was scared not to have them. But part of me knew my life couldn’t be judged or summed up in quite that way. At some point I was going to have to stop comparing apples and oranges. If I wanted to be happy here, I was going to have to evaluate my life in Paris on its own terms.

I live three thousand miles away from my mother. But no matter how far away, I’m still hers. I’m brave in the ways she’s made me brave and scared in the ways she’s made me scared. I’ll never belong to anyone the way I belong to her.

I’ve decided to take the day off. From myself. Today, I will not feel behind. I will not worry about being a better wife, mother, daughter, housekeeper, or writer. I’m not making a fancy dinner. I’ll be having quite an ordinary day, but I’ll be thinking and thanking-instead of fretting and fixing. We all need one day a year when we meet our own expectations and allow the world to be as it is instead of exactly how we would like it to be.

If I can stand the suspense, life never gives me exactly what I want – it gives me something better.