Under the bed

Last week, Madame Mère helped me begin sorting things for packing. I hate packing. I'm terrible at it. I find it overwhelming, unsettling, uncentering. I'm worst at packing a suitcase--how can I possibly know which sweater I'll want to wear Saturday? and if we're going to hike, I'll need to bring two completely different sets of clothing, are you sure we're going to hike?--but not a lot better at packing a house. When we organized the house to move to France, more than once I found myself standing in the living room holding a book--one book out of hundreds--and weighing whether or not to bring it. Should I bring the collection of Colette's stories that I've carried around for 30 years and never opened? (I brought it. I still haven't read Colette; maybe I'll repatriate her.)

I thought to take advantage of Madame Mère's calming presence by starting to sort the cave. It's where everything that we brought from America and didn't need in this house ended up: casserole dishes too big for our French oven, framed odds and ends that didn't fit on our mostly-window walls, the box of C's camping stuff that I packed in 1999 in California. And so I began sorting things into piles: giving away, throwing away, moving back. Madame Mère fetched and carried and stacked and nudged me along when I got stuck on the thermoses from the girls' first grade lunchboxes.

Wendy, our grey dog, watched. She followed me and sat at my feet, toes turned out, nose in the air, keeping track of my decisions. When we pack for a trip, she stares mournfully at the suitcases and has even been known to heave a sigh. It's not that she minds going to visit Madame Puppies, which is what happens when the suitcases are closed up and loaded into the car. It's just that she'd rather stay home and avoid the change. This looked like packing to her. She stayed close.

A day or two later we noticed Wendy had taken up residence under E's bed. Wendy's regular routine centers around following me upstairs, downstairs, outside, and back. Now, we noticed, she was missing for large swaths of the day and, when we called her, it was a few minutes before she came. The puzzle came clear when I was in E's room one afternoon and heard a scratching sound coming from the bed. I lifted the skirt and voilà, the grey dog. She looked at me. I looked at her. She went back to sleep.

I cope with the stress of leaving La Bastiole by making lists. I have a list of food items to bring back to America (tea; fleur de sel; olive oil; herbes de Provence) and of errands to run when we get there (Ikea for curtains for the girls' rooms; the library to renew our cards; the grocery store for pantry staples, and hasn't there been an article in the Times in the last six months about staples? Add finding that article to the list). I know why I keep the lists: it's to stave off the panic over moving, leaving, loading suitcases into the car, that can wake me early and have me forecasting disaster and misery well before breakfast. To stave off panic, and to distract myself from the weight of the damp, drippy sack of Sad that is slung over my shoulder. It's not tragic that we have to leave this beautiful life on the hillside: tragic would be if we hadn't ever had this life, or loved it. But it is sad. It's sad to leave a place where you've been happy, where life has felt beautiful and magical and right. And it's fine to feel sad, but I find that a good thorough list, maybe even alphabetized, certainly categorized, can make the weight more bearable.

Wendy seems to have come up with her own solution, and it doesn't require a note pad. If the world gets too big for you--too much sorting and organizing and packing and why doesn't she just sit down for heaven's sake?--then (her solution seems to be) make the world smaller. Under E's bed it's quiet. No one's moving anything or going anywhere. It smells like home.

She may be onto something.