I walked down the street, Paris coughing its winds onto my pale skin.

My eyelashes were soon clumped with the snowfall sweeping across the pin-top skyscrapers of the city. Suitcases and coats passed by down the snow covered street. I felt enchanted by the subtle snobbery of Paris. I heard the lullabies of an urban jungle pounding into my eardrums between the cars, cafes and flirtation of Paris. I looked over to see my mother’s smiling face, and like a chain reaction, one crept onto mine.

“What are we eating”, I asked as an overwhelming intoxication of hunger swept over me, the café’s smells being a large contributing factor.

“Would you like crepes?” my mother asked.

I responded with an enthusiastic yes and soon found myself in refuge of the cold by the warmth of a jelly filled crepe. Just like being in refuge from my past.

With a smile on her face she whispered in my ear, “Do you like it?” My eyes lit up giving her an answer to suffice.

A titan of architecture, now but once a feat of engineering, the Eiffel Tower stood, a symbol of the ever-changing French nation. Its large brown skeleton snoozed beneath its blanket of snow. Its limbs crisscrossing with its series of nails and bolts. A wow escaped my mouth as I looked up.

“Could I please see the camera?” I asked my father.

He reached inside his jacket and pulled it out. I quickly began taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower like a child with its toys; the legs, the different floors, and even a flash into the inside of the clausal structure. Five flashes flared from the camera’s pupil until I finally noticed a change in sound. The music was a whisper in my ear at first but as I walked closer, the lyrics began to form. And as I took another step I began to see a faint outline of where it was coming from. My parents wondering where I was going soon followed. The source of the song was a street performer. He held in his hands a guitar and in his throat a song. On him was a patched up jacket, beaten to a brown tinge from dirt and grime. His jeans were torn exposing his knees to the raw elements. I asked my mother, somewhat fluent in Canadian-French, what he was singing.

“I don’t know,” she responded inquisitively.

People passed by him, his hazel eyes darting back and forth searching for a potential customer; in front of him was a styrofoam cup, a rock in it to keep it from blowing in the wind, he was on the qui vive.

I could feel the passion blowing through the monotone hues of winter, a new beat to an ever-changing world, the chords warming me. Helping me forget why we came here, my mother’s cancer, the cloud that had been overwhelming us.

“Do you suppose he’s going to be okay? I sympathetically pondered. Though impossible for my mother to answer she gave a comforting yes, as I hugged close to her black corduroy jacket, guilt yanking at my heart strings. We smiled, sugar-coating what we both knew. I wasn’t asking about the man. We went up the elevator holding tight to the time we had left.