I visited Paris for the first time this past September. My daughter, Amy, lives there and we rented a flat near her.

I have what I find myself calling a “bad leg” resulting from two major injuries, and have a quite pronounced limp. Because of the state of my leg, I took my wooden cane to Europe. I call it my “Mick Jagger Cane” because I tell folks it is the cane he would use if he had my right leg.

Among the millions of residents and tourists who surrounded me in Paris, I certainly was not “rich,” with my individuality colored in by the routines and people of my daily life, but rather an anonymous septuagenarian with a white beard and cane. That sounds like it could be depressing, but I didn’t feel depressed being shown around “Gay Paree” by Amy and her husband, John, with their joie de vivre.

I came back home with a mind full of moments and images from what I call my “sightbeing.” Since this is a column and not a book-length travel memoir, I’ll tell you about one of those moments and the image that was packed into it.

Amy and I decided to take a cruise on the Seine. We could see the boat from street level, and to try to assure that we were on its next sail, we decided she should hustle ahead, and I’d make my way to join her.

I was walking down the 15-20 concrete steps from street level to river level, holding the rail with my right hand and my cane with my left. A young couple, 20- or 30-something, rode their bikes along the river walkway to the bottom of the stairs. The young man picked up his bike, held it horizontally in front of him, chest high, and walked swiftly up the stairs. The young woman picked up her bike and began her climb. Then she looked over at me, and our eyes met.

When we made eye contact, I had the absolute sense that both of us saw instantly the stark juxtaposition of youth and age that we personified, her snappily carrying her bike up the stairs, and me slowly and cautiously making my way down. It couldn’t have been more symbolic if each of us was carrying a flag displaying their time of life.

With the Seine in the background, no one else on the stairs, and the two of us looking at each other, we could have been figures in an iconic photo sold in the booths of art on the banks of the river. A photographer couldn’t have better staged the image the two of us had climbed into by chance.

I could feel that both of us did not know what to do with the irony of the moment.

Embarrassment was certainly an option for each of us, her for demonstrating such strength in the face of inability, and me for my impairment.

She could have gone to sympathy, and I to self-pity.

Separate trips to our egos were also available. In her case, leading to a feeling of superiority and her dismissal of me, and for me leading to jealousy at her unearned youth and anger at her for stealing it from me.

Outright ignoring of the obvious was open to one or both of us.

Instead of all of that, both of us grew a deep smile on our face. In that smile there was a bona fide connection, an improbable yet real bond in accepting our co-starring roles in the split-second vignette in which life had cast us.

And then both of us walked out of the frame, her hurrying up the stairs to join her partner, and me continuing my step-by-step descent to the ancient and venerable river.

Amherst resident Richard McCarthy, a longtime columnist at the Springfield Republican, writes a monthly column for the Gazette.