Down by the River

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Wednesday May 13th, 2020 – 5:14pm.

Today I went walking along the Garonne River between la Place Saint Pierre and Place de la Daurade. There is a lower level, right on the river bank, and upper street level where I went walking. During the mandated isolation period of the last two months, I was only allowed to walk outside for one hour a day maximum and within a 1km radius of home. Almost every single day I walked down behind our apartment to the canal, the lock and toward the river. Seeing the sky, the rushing water, the openness was soothing, comforting. I could walk to the start of two different bridges, but I couldn’t cross them without breaching the 1km limit. I walked up and down the sidewalk overlooking the river. During a very sunny stretch with no rain the river ran crystal clear and I could see all the way to the bottom, enough to give me vertigo. After big spring storms, the river was brown, muddy, full of branches and it flooded up over the banks.

As of two days ago, we are allowed to walk freely outside without government permission slips. We are required to stay within 100km of home but there are no more restrictions on where I can walk about the city. I followed my same path behind the apartment, to the canal, the lock, the river…and kept walking. During ‘le confinement’ I couldn’t walk further than La Place Saint Pierre, but today I strolled on. It felt almost illicit. I was headed toward a father bridge, the beautiful Pont Neuf, the oldest in Toulouse dating from the 1500s. I planned to walk across it and make a long loop back walking along the other side of the river before looping back over le Pont Saint Pierre.

I’ve walked this route many times: chatting with friends, pushing a stroller, sweating in the summer sun, beneath a canopy of yellow leaves in the fall, chasing behind Elliot on his bike… I’ve always found it beautiful but today it had a taste of freedom.

That’s when I saw them: seated on a bench, bicycles cast aside, a young man holding a woman on his lap. He was tall and she looked small in his arms which were wrapped around her. Her arms were clinging tightly to his neck, her face was hidden, buried in his chest. His face was turned up to the sky, he wore a smile so fierce it was almost a grimace, his face about to break open, and tears were falling silently from his eyes. They weren’t kissing or talking, they weren’t moving at all. They were simply holding each other with all of their might, her face pressed to his heart, his face turned to the sky, still as the world turned around them.

They were so beautiful. I wanted to stop and stare at them but felt like I was witnessing something much too intimate and I forced myself to walk on.

I’m wondering about their story. I’m thinking about those who are finding each other again. Young first loves, teenagers and students who spent the quarantine at home with their parents. Lovers who’ve spent these months at home with their husbands and wives, but longing for each other. New loves not ready to be locked up together but not wanting to be kept apart. Old loves separated in efforts to protect each other’s health. Those two near the river in their silent embrace seemed to embody all of them – still so much uncertainty, life still so different from what it was, still so much loss – but now the possibility of holding each other once again.