C is for CHESTNUTS AND CHOCOLATES on a Paris Walk #AtoZ

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

My daily #AtoZ posts combine two concepts in under-300-words per day:

an appealing food choice along with thoughts that spring to mind.

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The fragrance of roasting chestnuts doesn’t bring flashes of holidays-past for me. Instead, I envision a sidewalk vendor on an abandoned street corner in the heart of Paris. It is a cool spring day. I am twenty-something, hoping to someday become a writer. And fancying myself sipping coffee with expatriates during those glory days following the war.

I too feel lost.
 

I ease along a side street, glancing into a sun-glazed chocolatier shop. But my rationed money stretches only to a half-order of roasted chestnuts from an oversized caldron, deftly scooped into a paper container by a faceless man bundled against the nip of late afternoon.

 

Walking toward Tuileries Garden, I chew on the rubbery flesh of a heated chestnut, thinking of the thumbnail-sized balcony attached to my hotel room where I’ve stashed a bottle of red wine, still over half-full. Like the money, I will also ration the vino, willing it to last another two weeks.

 

This trip should have ended differently.

 

As I fold the top of the paper container and stuff the remaining chestnuts into my skirt pocket for later, thoughts surface of plans unfulfilled. The future holds no wedding; no picket fence surrounding a small cottage where endless words flow onto pages of tattered notebooks; no novels rushed to an eager publisher.

 

Instead, solitary days will consist of plodding sentences, blossoming ideas, sudden inspiration. And endless possibilities of "someday."

 

Is it true that accomplishments are dreams transformed into reality?