Fate: The Unraveling Sweater

cinnamon rolls and perceptions: thanksgiving in paris, 2023.

I understand my life in retrospect—reduced to bite-sized stories I tell myself, unfolding like scenes through a rear-view mirror.

Paris’ misted cobblestones glisten damp gray, and I’ve worn the same black mock-neck for two days straight. It’s too cold to dry my clothes on the balcony, so I hang them from the ceiling fan. Droplets of fresh laundry fall onto the brown spiral rug the last tenant left behind. My mirror reflects my fall uniform: jeans a size too big, a variation of a black long-sleeve, and badly trimmed bangs behind my ears.

I was invited to a friend of a friend’s Thanksgiving lunch. That’s the thing about living abroad: you bank on mutual friends. Everyone is eager to meet strangers or cling to vague lifelines because it’s in our gregarious nature—to seek others and tidy a space in this pale blue dot or city built for hopeless romantics.

It drizzled as I walked from the 6th to the 3rd arrondissement, listening to Reflections on old wired headphones. Pickpockets in Paris are quick, but not quick enough to rob me of the awareness that there’s no background music.

There is no real sign of “Thanksgiving” in Paris, except for expats walking out of small cafes with pumpkin pies or pastries sprinkled with cinnamon. The respective Parisian patisseries rightly profiting off our homesickness. By now, I think we all know what Thanksgiving is: colonization rebranded as a day of gratitude and overindulgence. But it’s a day we’re typically surrounded by loved ones or people we should love but often find infuriating. There’s a sense of sonder around the streets: everyone finding their own place in shared worlds, fixing up plates for cousins you haven’t seen in months, going around the table to share what they’re grateful for, chorusing the same answers—family, friends, love, this meal, friends, family, health, this meal.

The curiously empty streets and umbrellas that invade your personal space on the sidewalk led me to Fringe Coffee. I’ve spent an embarrassingly long time searching for cafes on Tiktok and mapping out the ones that sell Kanelbullars, the Swedish version of a cinnamon roll, which, in my humble opinion, is far superior. Do you ever walk into a place and feel like everyone is exponentially cooler than you? The noteworthy Je ne sais quoi of seemingly effortless style only emphasized my apparent lack of it. If that doesn’t make you at least a bit nervous, ordering an oat milk latte in Duolingo-level French certainly will. I‘m a newly reborn oat milk enthusiast but will forever be a soy milk evangelist, though apparently no one else believes in it.

“Six pain à la cannelle et un petit cappuccino au lait d'avoine. S'il vous plaît. Merci.” Just to be met with perfect English: “Six???” paired with a confused face. Because why would I buy six of these pastries, which we both knew were criminally overpriced, for people I hadn’t even met yet? Well, because I’m alone in Paris on Thanksgiving, and first impressions matter a bit too much to me. Forty-two euros. FORTY-TWO. I was just as shocked as he was. My left hand clutched the 42€ pastries as if others’ perception of me depended on cinnamon rolls. My right hand re-centered Google Maps while the cappuccino stained my jeans in just about the worst possible spot, minutes before meeting quasi-mutual friends.

I spent two minutes too long buzzing into the wrong apartment in a string of endless Haussmannian buildings before accepting defeat and calling again.

“So, I think I’m here, but the code isn’t working?”

“Yeah, no, I don’t see you. I should see you from here. It’s the building with the red door? Wait—yeah, I see you. Look to your right. No, your other right.”

A crisp white button-down under an unmistakable cashmere navy sweater waves at me, and I walk of shame my way there. The stairway creaks as we engage in small talk about the weather, and he asks me if I’ve ever cooked lamb, to which I promptly reply, “Yes!”—knowing full well I’ve never cooked lamb in my life.

The trims framing the apartment walls feel both baroque and modern, and the fireplace is used to store books. He leads me to the kitchen. “Let me take your coat. You can put your things over there. Oh— are these Kanelbullars? I love these”. Kanelbullars have justified their existence.

He nervously rambles, and a wave of relief washes over me: the host is just as nervous as the guest. “Do you want an espresso? Thoughts on potatoes—sweet or mashed? Should the lamb be cooked at 195°C or 170°C?” I was the only mother-like figure there—a lighthouse for a lost boat. He was trying to impress a boy he fancied. So I doubled downed on 170°C and hoped for the best. “Leave it for 20 more minutes, and I’ll check on it.” The same relief that graced me, now found him as the weight of the main dish shifted off his shoulders onto mine.

One of the guests opened a bottle of red wine they mentioned was “full-bodied.” I didn’t know how to respond to that. I pulled on the seam of my mock-neck, which had been unraveling for the past two days. No one knew. Of course no one could tell. But aren’t those the things we think are glaringly obvious to any spectator? The imperfections so evidently visible to us?

I swirled the glass, remembering my sommelier friend once said it helps the wine “breathe” or something. I let the undetectable aroma linger in my mouth, staining my insides and my pout, as the best things often do.

From an early age, I noticed the patterns of social hierarchy—the mental classification hoops people jump through during conversations. Imperceptible to most, but visible in their eyes and audible in their questions. Subtle social cues that come with a first impression. The way eyes flicker from your face to your wrist, to your shoes, to your shirt, to any visible tags. Where does this gaze settle, and what virtue signal are they looking for? Where do.I fall—or stand—on their subjective ladder?

Status cues often come disguised as polite questions: “So, what do you do?” Occasional name-dropping follows, and if you pass their unspoken test, there’s glimmer of delight. Did you spark interest—or are you simply a possible bridge?

Or is this really all in my head?

I’ve come to cherish my naivete. I extend the courtesy of doubt, even when the pattern feels predictable.

The room was filled with rowing and debate team captains, debut film directors, pro-bono lawyers, accomplished corporate executives by day, and off-broadway artists by night. They wielded their incisive questions like shovels, digging, in search of something to unearth and claim. “Look what I found! It’s mine now.”

The oven timer rang, and I instinctively answered, as if by nature, nurture or sheer conditioning. The lamb was ready. The guests all congratulated the host, and I let them; he appreciated the standing ovation. We passed around herb potatoes and short stories about our worlds, the details sharpening as the full-bodied red wine flowed. The conversation wasn’t as pedantic as I feared—it, in fact, quite nice. Their constant proximity to greatness made even their own extraordinary achievements feel unremarkable, reducing the remarkable to the mundane.

“What’s your preferred type of narration?” one guest asked, her chin resting on crossed fingers. She continued, explaining that she preferred third person omniscient because, “You get to play God.” I found it amusing—a small but telling glimpse into her character.

“I think nostalgia helps with gratitude,” I replied. Their confused faces prompted me to elaborate. “Writing has always been my way of understanding the world, and it’s usually through retrospect. First-person-past narration is the closest I get to living in another’s mind. Seeing a story unfold in hindsight creates a yearning that’s heightened by acknowledgment.”

It must have sounded trite to her. My answers felt revealing in the way shy confessions do—like being inside a confessional with a judgmental priest who also likes to play God.

Pleasantries, usernames, and polite promises to meet again were exchanged. We shook hands, planning to walk along the Seine or visit a Rothko exhibition.

Amidst sudden camaraderie in a foreign country, the desire for connection, and 42-euro cinnamon rolls, I found my fate: accepting that I will never meet the hundreds of versions of myself that live in the minds of others. I felt grateful—not only for my newfound ability to roast a whole lamb, but for the freedom to detach from others’ perceptions, welcoming them without changing my own.

Something particularly hard to do this time of year: sitting at the table with family and those who have watched you grow through phases and selves, shaping their own versions of who you are and who you might become—a subtle reminder of the gap between you and who others believe you to be.