I’m half French. Paris remains my mother’s home though she hasn't lived there in forty years. She is utterly transformed when she returns to Paris. It’s a beautiful thing to witness. I nearly feel at home there. I spent as much time as I could there—all told, several months spread over a decade plus—and if my felicity with the language matched how I feel when walking Parisian streets, then it would be home for me too. The terror attacks in Paris yesterday are incomprehensible. Really, that’s what terror is—it’s the extreme fear that sets in when reason fails and words end.