Après-Midi Recap

Roni Beth Tower, who is a psychologist, educator and author of “Miracle at Midlife: A Transatlantic Romance,” gave us her idea of “Paris from a Personal Perspective.” She was a clinical, research and academic psychologist who taught at Yale and Columbia Teachers College, who retired, then turned from writing science to writing a memoir.

Her story was about her first encounter with Paris as a teenager with her father and then many, many years later when she met her beloved husband, David Griff. Her PowerPoint presentation took us through the years to now, when she and David host their grandchildren to give them the same experience her father gave her when he took her to Europe and Paris for the first time.
I asked her and the rest of the audience if they knew of any other city in the world where people sit around like we did and discussed our love for the city and what drew us there in the first place. No one could come up with another one, not even New York was on the list and one person was adamant that London was clearly not!

The turn-out was formidable, considering the Coronavirus scare and no one seemed concerned, but I did ask people to refrain from kissing or shaking hands.

Roni Beth’s award-winning book, “Miracle at Midlife: A Transatlantic Romance,” describes the two years preceding her mid-life move to Paris in 1998. Her blog, “Life, Refracted,” can be found at psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-refracted, and her writings about Paris are at bonjourparis.com/author/roni-beth-tower/. Other articles, background, and photos are on her website. She and her husband, David, now live in Tarrytown, New York, but spend at least two months each year in their beloved Paris.