It was too warm and lovely outside to take the exam on Parisian architecture inside, but there I sat in a classroom at L’Institut D’études Françaises in the coastal city of La Rochelle, France, on July 25, 1994, doing it anyway. The test wasn’t something the French language school administered; it came from Dr. Janc, language professor at Mankato State University in Minnesota, who led the group of us fourteen college students studying abroad that summer. And it wasn’t a fun addition to our day when the beach was calling. I was young at the time, see, and didn’t yet value the ways of pillars.
In June, at the beginning of our six-week tour, Janc beckoned us to follow him through the opulent sights of Paris (and nearby regions) with worksheets he had created for us. We were supposed to take notes. His knowledge of architecture was profound and his French awe-inspiring, especially one day—for a glorious fifteen minutes—when it morphed into the passé simple (a rarely spoken literary tense) while he discussed pillars and windows and archways with a tour guide at a museum. Janc knew the Romance language intimately—while we students tripped along, just trying our best to conjugate common verbs in their most basic tenses—and he spoke architecture fluently too.
With a flourish of the hand, Janc invited us to drink in the beauty of the arc-boutants (flying buttresses) and voûtes d’ogives (rib vaults) of Notre-Dame, the vitraux (stained glass) of Basilique Saint-Denis, and voûtes d’arêtes (barrel vault intersections) of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. He summoned our gazes toward the magnificence of colonnade corinthienne (the Corinthian columns) of the Panthéon, the bas-côtés (side aisles) of Saint-Pierre, and the œil-de-bœuf (“bull’s eye” or small circular or oval windows) in Versailles, Fontainebleau, and Vaux-le-Vicomte. But all his otherworldly passion shot us straight back to earth with his recurring words: “Il sera au test.” (“It’ll be on the test.”)
And on that warm and lovely day in late July, I learned it was so. I sat inside the classroom, filling blanks with château terms, listing orders of kings, labeling parts of cathedrals, and identifying styles of columns—all in French. And as I recall, I came away with a solid B.
Over the past thirty-two years, the words voûte d’ogives, voûte d’arêtes, and œil-de-bœuf have sometimes come to mind, but more often, I think of pillars. My love of them has driven me to Facebook Marketplace and rummage sales to buy small decorative versions for my home to display plants and art. And maybe the inspiration first came from those summer days of 1994 when I traipsed through ancient architecture-drenched Paris with Janc’s worksheets. Or maybe it’s because I have strong, grown-up daughters now, and theirs are the ways of pillars.
My girls have lived and traveled all over the earth. I’ve watched them for their lifetimes, and I’ve observed their forming, their quarrying, their movement, and their positions in the world. I’ve witnessed events that have carved their outlooks, chiseled their edges, and polished their ideas. And before I knew it, the Cornerstone revealed a clear layout for their lives outside of my own. They took their places as structural, aesthetic, load-bearing members of their communities: upholding, standing, gracing, uplifting, and beautifying the world around them.
Essential, inspiring, valuable, breathtaking, immovable. The ways of pillars.
Then our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace.
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*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka and their husbands (present and future), Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr.