In , a bright-eyed year-old American woman stepped off a transatlantic ocean liner and found herself in Dijon. Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, now better known by her initials, was unaware of the culinary and literary sojourn that awaited her on rue du Petit-Potet.
Yet those fulfilling years and her imprint in this corner of France would be all but forgotten almost a century later. The literary figure often referred to herself as a ghost, so I imagine she would be somewhat pleased to have correctly predicted her future. The last time I went searching for Ms. Fisher in Dijon in , I was stunned. The independent bookshop on the corner where she lived had never heard of the author, nor had the Beaux-Arts Museum where she studied sculpture and drawing for three years.
The owner of the flat I rented a few blocks from her apartment looked perplexed when I mentioned tracing her steps. Fisher had been a quiet observer. I felt her mischievousness was deliberately hiding from me, so I decided to return to Dijon two years later in search of the phantom that had taunted me since I left. Why am I drawn to this woman?
She was born in Michigan and raised by well-to-do parents in Southern California. I was raised by a single mother who struggled to pay rent on an aluminum trailer in Louisiana. I was an expat in Belgium and Germany. But for all our differences, what draws me to the elusive author is her ability to fluidly enter and exit varying landscapes.
Our beacon is anything or anyone peculiar, we thrive and flourish in the unfamiliar. We have an insatiable curiosity that often leads us to memorable events. We luxuriate in the presence of beauty. We are wallflowers, catching moments like lightning bugs; allowing experiences to macerate in our mind, before releasing them back into the wild for someone else to grasp β or not.
