Tonight my family and I take off for an inter-generational family trip to Paris. My parents, my husband, my kids, and me. It will be my kids first trip kids’ first trip to Europe. It will be our first non-resort trip with my parents, and I am so stressed that I can barely function. Which is bad, since I’m still not finished packing and the taxi arrives to pick us up in about three hours. (and yet I’m posting. Go figure) This will be a weird trip for me, because too many years ago to think about, I went to Paris as a twenty-something and spent two years as a broad abroad. When I lived in Paris, I had no husband, no kids, no pre-planned trips to the Eiffel Tower, or Notre Dame. I was young, I was unencumbered; I was -- how can I put this delicately -- kind of a slut.

While I was in Paris, I took a writing course with D. H. Thomas, I worked at a fancy art gallery on the Left Bank. On the weekends, I sang with a Bar Mitzvah Band. Seriously. In English, French, Hebrew, and Arabic. And on Thursday nights and every other Sunday, I worked as a lounge signer in a little club in the Latin Qurater -- complete with sitting on the piano where a giant Brandy Snifter was perched, waiting for tips to fill it up. It was the only time in my life when I was consistently thought of as exotic, intriguing, and - dare I say it - sexy. In New York, I'm just another frizzy haired Upper West Side mom blogger. Sexy it ain't.

This time, it will be about the kids – not about the glamour. It will be about family – not about me. Which, I guess, pretty much sums up my life in general.

Check back for posts during the trip. And pictures. I’m write about what it’s like to travel with your parents when you’re all grown up. I’ll write about what it’s like to re-visit a city you knew and loved twenty years later, and I’ll share with you what I’m sure will be the good, the bad, the humiliating, the fantastic.

I'm sure it'll be fabulous to introduce my kids to the city I loved so much. I'll show them where I lived and worked. I'll take them on the Metro and open the door. We're spending a day at a cooking class held in a native Parisian's kitchen. We're having dinner with my old roommate and her kids. And maybe, just maybe, for old time's sake, I'll pick up a microphone somewhere and belt out a few bars of La Vie en Rose.

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