Tender mercies

In the summer of 1991, I went to Paris to do research. I had just finished my second year of graduate school, and the common thing to do at that point was to go off to your country of specialization--in my case, France--and begin preliminary dissertation research. I rented a room in a foyer, a boarding house for jeunes filles, that was run by a not terribly friendly order of Lebanese nuns. My room overlooked an interior courtyard and had a bed, a desk, a hotplate, small fridge, sink, and bathroom. Tiny, spartan, adequate.

It was my first time living in a city. My first time living alone overseas. I knew no one. My advisor had given me an introduction to an American scholar who lived in Paris. When I met him for coffee one day across the street from the Bibliothèque nationale in the rue de Richelieu--it was a decade or more before the Bibliothèque de France--he told me my research topic would never work. There was not enough material, he said, unconsciously mimicking Woody Allen, and too much had already been written about it.

I was miserable. I missed C dreadfully. I hardly spoke French. The métro smelled bad. I was too shy to buy a roasted chicken from the traiteur. I didn't know what I was doing there. It was in the days of postcards and those flimsy blue air-mail letters, and calling cards in phone booths. I was, in short, alone and lonely and increasingly unsure of myself and my purpose, wondering why I had ever thought I wanted to study France.

Then a postcard came from a former student of Madame Mère, another transplanted Southern girl who was travelling through Europe. She would be passing through Paris; could she stay a couple of nights with me? She'd be with me the last few days that I was in Paris; her dates fell just at the end of my--now foreshortened--stay. I had intended to stay the entire summer but, one day in the depths of gloom about my prospects as a French historian, I had walked by a travel agency and had what I now know was a coup de foudre, a sudden insight: I could leave. I was having a lousy time and I could do something about it. I walked in and changed my ticket. Then I walked down the street to a phone booth and called C: I was coming home a month early.

A week or two after that, the former student's visit coincided with that of friends from college who had--of all things--a car. I cleared my desk at the B.N. and we went off for a day at Fontainebleau. While my friends napped in the shade of the forêt, the traveller and I sat on the edge of Henri IV's canal and talked. And talked. Later, we stopped in a village for dinner. The only commerce was an auberge that backed up to the Seine. We sat in the garden next to the river and ate coq au vin and drank red wine, and I began to remember why France had beckoned me. The next day my new friend helped me move out of my room and got me as far as Montparnasse station on my journey back to America; she added my jar of Nutella to her backpack and went off down the rue de Rennes to her next adventure.

You won't hear from me for a few days this week because I'll be meeting up with that friend in Paris. Husbands, children, doctorates, houses, and several cross-continent moves later, L is one of the great constants, and tender mercies, in my life. And so, it turns out, is Paris.

Tapestry

Sunday we observed American Mother's Day with a visit to the Villa Rothschild. I like it because it feels familiar, like another museum I know well, and because it is ridiculously beautiful, sitting on the saddle of Cap Ferrat, with views of the sea both east and west. This time, we took a guided tour, which allowed us to see the second floor of the mansion, and even more porcelain and delicate French furniture than are in the downstairs rooms. In the Louis XV room--two rococo marquetry desks, one with porcelain inlays; a suite of chairs from Louis XVI; an Aubusson rug; bits of Sèvres--he pointed out one of the 200 year old Gobelins tapestries hanging lining the walls. I'm not that much of a tapestry girl, I'm afraid, and I know that that is a mark against me in the Book of Culture. But something he said made me take notice. For a weaver at the Gobelins factory to finish one square meter of tapestry--all this is two centuries ago, mind you; it's what made by hand means--took one year.

This tapestry covered one entire wall in a large room.

We are in the middle of High Visiting Season here at La Bastiole. Two sets of (old, dear) friends have come and gone in the past six weeks; significant branches of my extended family were here last week; Madame Mère is with us now; in two weeks' time, the girls' aunt L will be here. She'll be our last visitor: when she leaves, on the last day of May, we'll have six weeks of packing and savoring and preparing and sorting before we close the gates.

We've been lucky in our visitors to La Bastiole. Our immediate families have been, almost everyone more than once, as well as many of our chosen family. And old friends, from different parts of our lives, people we've known at different times and in different places. They've all made the journey--a long journey of multiple flights and time zones for most of them--to see us, to sit at our table, walk our dogs, look at the olive trees, listen to our stories and tell theirs.

It has sometimes seemed like a lot of laundry and grocery lists. But now that I am on the tail end of all the visiting I see it differently. These connections have been a part of the warp and woof of our life for a long time. We've woven, by the Gobelins count, two square meters of tapestry since we've been at La Bastiole. Our visitors have helped us to weave it: although there are new colors in these squares, the old colors show up, too.

Now, without laboring that particular metaphor much more, let me say that, by our guide's reckoning, it must have taken the anonymous weavers of that tapestry as long as a decade of their lives to finish it. Ten years out of 60 or, if they were lucky, 70: births, deaths, marriages, wars, flu epidemics, economic crises, bad harvests, feast days and fast days. Ten years at the loom. We've been here for two, and it feels like a lifetime. It's not, thank goodness. If, as my grandmother used to say, the lord is willing and the creek don't rise, we've got a lot of square meters left to weave. What I am grateful for today is all the help we've had with these two squares, these two years: all the people who've come to see us, who've said to us, we love it here, it's beautiful, we're so glad we came to see you.

When we get back, when we start our next square, there will be new colors again. But also some of the same: colors that have been part of our story, our tapestry, for decades, part of our beginnings and part of these two years and, if we're lucky, part of many yet to come. For that, for all who have been part of these two square meters--for all the expense and jet lag and airplane food and ziploc bags of toiletries, all to come here and bear witness to our lives--thanks. And thanks.

Nothing on earth but laundry

The sun is back. We've not seen much of it recently: a long succession of magnificently cloudy skies. Rain in all its variations (averses, orages, pluie forte, rafales: as Steve Martin said, the French have a different word for everything) has fallen almost daily for the last month or so. And when we've seen the sun, it's been cold.

But this week warmth arrived. Full sun. Blue skies. Warm.

While there are plenty of poetic reasons to be pleased about the warmth, we have, in our house, a more prosaic reason.

The laundry dries faster.

We'd never hung laundry outside to dry before coming here. (If you don't count one ill-fated experiment in California when the girls were babies, and the laundry, once hung out, stayed hung out. For a week.) When we arrived at La Bastiole, there was a washing machine but no dryer; I bought a drying rack as a stopgap measure until Jules provided us with a dryer, believing then, the French ink on my U.S. passport barely dry, that the absence of a dryer was an anomaly.

Three months later, the dryer showed up. A month after that, Olivier connected it. By that time, the drying rack was a habit. It helped, too, that the dryer did not dry clothes so much as it rendered them less wet. (An hour or two hanging up usually did the trick.) Electricity is expensive in France, and practicality is cheap, so everywhere you go, you see laundry hanging to dry.

We've had our share of house guests who gallantly offered to help hang the laundry, offers which we, of course, accepted like the gracious hosts we are. Then we (and I confess that here it is the royal we) flinched while we watched them take a dish towel out of the basket and pin it on the rack along its long side instead of its short side, landscape instead of portrait. Really. And without shaking it out and smoothing the wrinkles. Then the undies would come out and be hung on the extreme end of the drying rack, in the place, the only place, where something long (one of C's tshirts; the girls' jodhpurs; a smallish bath towel or largish hand towel) could fit. Camisoles draped over two rungs instead of pinned; socks hung pell-mell all over the rack instead of in pairs, all together, in the lowest spot (where nothing else fits), so that, when they're dry, it will be quicker to take them down and ball them up. Well. You will understand that after a time we would send our guests inside to make the hollandaise sauce instead.

Like most housekeeping tasks, hanging the laundry is both an art and a science. For us, the socks and undies and small things go in the center of the drying rack; the larger the object, the further out it goes. (Our laundry rack, oh you who just toss the wet laundry in the Kenmore and wander off, is a collapsible A-frame with two long arms that extend from the top.) Items too large for the rack (pants; sheets; bath towels) get hung, in the winter time, along the plastic-coated wires that form the trellis above our terrace. (See illustration above.) Summer, or when the year has advanced enough for our back terrace to get full warm sun for much of the day, the larger things and some of the larger small things (place mats; napkins; wind pants) are hung on the (glorious!) retractable clothes line that Madame Mère imported from North Carolina last May, and that it took two American men (who shall remain nameless) and one supremely competent Frenchman (Olivier) to install.

I am cautiously optimistic that we will soon be able to put the retractable clothesline back in service. C's already tried it once or twice without much luck; the weather was not warm enough, the sun not persistent enough. (When C hangs the laundry, I have found, it is best for all concerned if I am the one who goes in the house and makes the hollandaise. The clothes will, after all, dry eventually.) But today when I came home from the stables with G, E had already changed out the clothes on the drying rack. The load we'd hung only two hours earlier was dry. Now--I've just checked--the faux-shearling lined sweatshirt (which takes so long to dry that I often check several different weather forecasts before I even put it in the washing machine) is, after an hour and a half--just an hour and a half!--nearly dry.

It is a minor miracle, this drying the clothes in the sun. Laundry, to paraphrase, calls us to the things of this world, to the seasons and the length of days and when was it we last changed the sheets. When they no longer smell like sunlight, it's time to change them again.

If

We ate lunch today at the crêperie in Biot. It's one of our favorite places, though we've only been there a few times. That village is out of our way, and the crêperie has what you could generously call limited hours. You could also say that it is closed more often than not. The result is that we never make a plan to go there--we plan either on one of the cafes with tables in the place near the fountain, or the boulangerie with its sandwiches and plastic chairs. So when the crêperie's door is open, it's always a pleasant surprise, a welcome change of plans.

There are only a few tables--maybe 10 tables for two, but most are usually pushed together for groups, so it feels like only four or five. The ceiling is held up by old beams, the walls decorated with silk flowers and small slates with notes about the menu: the kir maison is made from hard cider with a shot of myrtille liqueur; the vin chaud comes at 2 euros a verre, or 4 for a pichet. The kitchen is across the back wall--tins of herbs ranged on shelves, wooden spoons, bottles of olive oil and vinagers, and crème de menthe for drinks competing for space. What takes up the most space is the crêpe stove, the large, round cast-iron griddle on which Madame makes her crêpes. More than likely, that's what you'll notice first, because when you come through the door, Madame will sing out a welcome from where she's standing at the stove.

Madame seems to be about six feet tall, though likely she's shorter; it may be that it's just a small room. She's blond and lean and pretty, and yet manages to be more maternal than anything else, laying her hand on your arm to welcome you, rearranging the furniture and finding some extra cushions so that everyone in your party can sit comfortably, passing out menus before retreating to the stove. Today we were with our visiting friends--their last stop before their next stop--and so there was extra bustle as she got us settled and then went to find colored pencils for the kids. And, a minute later, an eraser and a pencil sharpener.

Traveling with kids is hard. The food is different, and in a village miles from most places, there's not a lot of choice. Our friends' patience was endless, even when their kids ran out of patience with the strangeness of it all. It's a helpful mirror for us: to see what feels strange and, by that reflection, to see what has come to seem normal to us. We don't notice, anymore, the smallness of the spaces, the sharpness of the flavors, the torrents of French. It's what we see, every day, what gets reflected back to us. Visitors give us the chance to turn the mirror a little and see what it's like to glance into our borrowed world. I think it can feel magical, but it can also wear a person out.

At the end of our lunch--C had a salad, I had a crêpe, and there were various omelettes and salads and crêpes besides--I availed myself of the toilette. It's the kind of restaurant that is heavy on the silk flowers, as I think I mentioned, and the charming signs. Still, though, I was unprepared for the decoration above the sink. Framed by a wreath of pink ivy was a translation of Rudyard Kipling's If, translated into French:

Si tu peux rester calme alors que, sur ta route,
Un chacun perd la tête, et met le blâme en toi...

If you can keep your head when all about you,
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...

It's an awful poem, in any language. But as I washed my hands it made me smile. I thought of Madame printing it out, framing it, and hanging it on the wall. I wonder how many visitors have come through her crêperie--how many sibling meltdowns she's seen from behind her stove, how many jet-lagged families who needed nothing more than a good meal in a comforting place. She's so nurturing and warm and welcoming, and she infuses her food with the same spirit--but I wondered if she thought that, even with her singsong French and her extra cushions, there wasn't still more to be done to buck up her guests. Like maybe a poem that they could read, in private, that could offer some encouraging words. If you can fill the unforgiving minute / with sixty seconds' worth of distance run: maybe that sentiment, she figured, could just about give all those footsore and worn out tourists the strength to make it to the next stop. And--en plus, perhaps, she thought--it sounds better in French. I stopped by the stove to thank her on my way out. But of course! she said. And then, with a smile, bonne chance.

Off to Corsica

My sixth or seventh check of the New York Times website today reveals that Obama is still ahead by a (someone less superstitious might say comfortable, but let's settle for:) slight margin. Our votes are somewhere over the Atlantic right now, on their way home to be counted. A is carrying them in her luggage. She came across last week with a suitcase full of American election bits and bobs--stickers and buttons and signs--and she's going back with our votes. I imagine the candidates wish it could always be so simple.

I know he's way ahead, but I've lived through the last two presidential elections. There's a very large part of me that expects to wake up one of the next six mornings and read about something catastrophic and horrible and election-changing. We may or may not find out in a timely fashion, though, because tomorrow we're taking the boat to Corsica. It's the Toussaint holiday and the girls have almost two weeks off. Tomorrow evening we'll drive to Toulon and put the car and ourselves on a boat, and Thursday morning we'll wake up and see Ajaccio out the porthole. At least, I hope there's a porthole in our cabin.

We'll be back next Tuesday. As the first ballots are cast in New Hampshire, we'll be driving to Bastia to board the early morning ferry. We'll dock at Savone early in the afternoon, as the candidates go to vote themselves and the masses of volunteers line up 50 feet away from the polling stations. We'll wend our way along the Mediterranean coast--C wants to stop for lunch in Ventimiglia to break up the trip--and, late in the afternoon, we'll open the gates of La Bastiole. If I manage to get to Picard tomorrow, we'll thaw supper in the oven; otherwise, it'll be pizza from Madame Marie.

Four years ago, C and I spent election day standing outside a polling station in my hometown. We started out the regulation 50 feet away from the doors, but when the temperature dropped and it started to rain, the authorities, whoever they were, took pity on the volunteers and let us stand under an open breezeway only 20 feet or so from the door. The precinct went 75% the other way, and although the voters were polite to me--the protection of Southern womanhood--C had a difficult day. And it didn't get any better when we watched the returns that night.

So we're hoping for a better day next Tuesday, both personally and globally. Between now and then we--okay, really, I, the family is just humoring me--are looking forward to seeing Napoleon's birthplace and death mask. (Who can resist a death mask? Not I.) We're hoping to hike some (although the forecast is for rain) and to walk on the beach (again, the forecast). Other than that, we're looking forward to scenery, villages, new kinds of cheeses, Corsican wine, and (we're all really hoping for) lots of troupeaux of sheep and goats wandering the roads. (A year plus in rural France, and we still can't get enough of farm animals and shepherds.) None of our hotels boasts internet access and I doubt that the International Herald Tribune gets delivered to the Corsican back country, so whatever happens is going to have to happen without us.

Which, of course, it would do anyway. But we're going to be turning it loose now. So, folks, go vote. Light a candle, wear your pajamas inside out, switch your ring to the other hand, do whatever you think will help. Stand outside in the rain and pass out stickers and smile, even if you think they won't vote for your guy. Because this time around, I think--I hope--I almost believe--that they will.

And we'll be back next week.

A little context

Madame Marron mère visited this summer and went with the girls and me up to the Loire Valley. We went to Paris first and then drove out of the city to Versailles, so that E and G could tick the Hall of Mirrors box on their list. Madame Mère has not driven in France (as one wouldn't, if one did not live here and have to take the children to school), so as we loaded up at the end of our day at the palace, I handed her the map and told her where we going. It was 54 kilometers from Versailles to Maintenon, about 45 minutes' drive.

Two hours later, I passed a road sign that let me know we were 20 kilometers from Paris.

That was not where we were going.

Here's what our Cultural Awareness Training Professional told C and me before we came to France: France is a High Context culture, and the United States is a Low Context Culture. When we were told this, we nodded politely at this particular bit of sociological gobbledygook and checked to see when it would be lunchtime. However.

In High Context cultures, according to our Cultural Awareness Handbook, people see the present through the lens of the past. History matters. People work in order to be able to take vacations and spend time with their families. The community matters more than the individual. Time is elastic; you get there when you get there, the work gets done when it gets done, and don't forget to stop for a drink. In Low Context cultures, people think more about the future and less about the past; people place more value on their work life; the individual comes first; time is money.

And, in High Context cultures, the road signs are different. The road names are different. In fact, the road may not have a real name at all, it may just be called the road that goes to Maintenon, or, the road that comes out of Maintenon and then becomes the road that goes to Chartres. In the fine print of the map you may notice that it is called the D17, but you have to be an adept at parsing French road signs to notice the very very small yellow etiquette at the top of the panneau that mentions it. And chances are that instead of noticing that teeny tiny sign, you are busy trying to find Wazem on the map in your lap, since that's what your daughter just told you to look for, and not realizing that it's spelled Oisème.

French directional signs tell you not where you are, but where you are going. American signs tell you where you are, not where you are going. French signs list the places that the road will go through on its way to the next major village or town: that's how you orient yourself. You have left Versailles, going towards Rambouillet. After Rambouillet, you'll get to Epernon, unless you go left at the rond point, in which case you'll get to Orphin instead. In America, you leave Richmond and you head south. If you want to go west, you take a different road. Charlottesville happens to be on that westerly road, but what you know, first and foremost, is that you're on the road going west. I have yet to see a French road sign that mentioned a cardinal direction.

So this was disorienting for Madame Mère, as you might imagine. She's one of the most oriented people I know. She doesn't get lost. She knows where she is and can tell you whether she's facing north, south, east or west at any given moment. Also, pronouncing words in English: aces at it. We would reach rond points and I would call out the possibilities: Epernon, Hanches, Raizeux, Droue, and she would have not the first clue. Just a minute, she would say. I'm looking at the map. Take the southwest exit.

There is no southwest exit. Hanches, Raizeux, or Droue.

How do you spell that?

Which?


At least rond points are round; you can go around them all day while you figure out which direction is southwest. It's one of the best measures of culture shock that I know, going from being able not only to read and interpret the road signs but also being able to stop at any service station for directions if you lose your way, to not being able to connect what the road signs say with the way that they are pronounced, much less being able to ask a local for directions.

The locals know the directions, of course. So did their parents, and grandparents, and back before that. The road to Maintenon has been the road to Maintenon since well before the Marquise de Maintenon used to travel it from Versailles in the days of Louis XIV. The road to Chartres from Maintenon: it's led people to the cathedral for 800 years. The mecs from Paris who thought up the system of road numbering came along only within the last century, and these roads, which have outlasted the Bourbons, the Bonapartes, and the Boches during the Occupation will, God willing, outlast the numbering system, too.

That's what High Context is: knowing that Louis XIV travelled this road to visit his (secret) wife, the Marquise. It was the route de Maintenon long before anyone who travelled it had ever heard of the cardinal points of the compass. And that's the difference between French and American roads. When the customs of American roads were being thought up, the roads were cutting through vast, mysterious, awesome wilderness. Cardinal points, north, south, east, west, mattered. They were the only way that the young Americans had of imposing order and meaning. And, too, they were comfortably devoid of context: a road north does not carry the cultural freight of a road to the castle or the church.

Order and meaning in the old world, though: they're just laying around in heaps. Meaning is there for the taking, as long as you know how to spell it and pronounce it. A doctorate in French history doesn't hurt, either.

After the first day, Madame Mère drove and I took charge of the map.

Blackberries

The wild blackberries are ripening now. It's that moment when summer is at the very peak of its peak, and in another breath, with one more breeze, it will begin to coast downhill, away from the heat and the cicadas and the long twilights. Our last guests have gone home. We don't expect anyone else until the end of October, which is--shh--a record for us here. It will be the longest time we've been alone, the four of us and the dogs, in this house.

The girls and I took down the kitchen calendar and counted up all our visitors. It's a 16-month calendar that began last September, so that's when we started our count. I had noted, as I do, the comings and goings of everyone to be sure to have supper cooked and clean sheets on the beds and a plan, or at least a vision, and we used my notations to count up. The total: 157 days of houseguests out of the last 365. We were impressed. It had felt like a lot of company, but we didn't know that it had been quite that much. Almost every other day, if you spread it out. That's a lot of laundry, a lot of meals. But also a lot of conversations and walks.

We're not used to visits like this. In our other life we had quick dinners or weekend visits which had nothing like the intensity of an extended house party. When people come to visit us here, they're not just coming to visit us: they're coming to France. This is a trip overseas, a trip generally long- and carefully-planned, costly, involving the purchase of guidebooks. We are hosting them not just in our family but in this country, showing them our lives here and showing them the place itself. And we need to do that at the same time as the girls are doing their schoolwork and Olivier is replacing roof tiles and we're running out of flour mid-recipe. It's a delicate balance to strike: the local mill for A.O.C. olive oil and the local chain supermarket for Special K.

The only model in my experience for this sort of visiting is the visiting that went on among Jane Austen's characters. Elizabeth Bennet and Elinor Dashwood went on journeys that took several days of hard travel, with bad food and missed carriages, and then stayed with friends for several weeks, seeing the local sights, yes, but also sitting around doing the mending. They did not pop in for a night. They came to stay. This kind of visiting means a slower rhythm, one in which every quarter hour is not accounted for in advance, in which an afternoon can wind away in reading or a long walk instead of in a tight series of appointments and obligations.

Elizabeth and Elinor went all that way and stayed all that long because, in a world without email or commuter flights, that was the only way to keep up with their friends and relations. If someone moved a hundred miles away, in those pre-autoroute days, they were gone for good unless you went to visit. Now we've moved an ocean away and we find ourselves in the same situation: an overnight visit is not an option. The only way to keep up, to be together, is to come to stay.

And so the wild blackberries are ripe. They are all around, like the wild asparagus was a few months ago, except there's more of them, and they're easier to spot. The first day or two I took a colander up the lane with me and picked enough to bring home. But ten minutes off the vine they don't taste as sweet. Now I've stopped taking a colander. We go and stand and graze, picking the ones that look likely in one spot and eating them, right there, until we go on a few steps and pick a few more. There are several vines in our own hedge--just next to the fosse septique, I'm afraid--and those berries are especially full and large and sweet. Our dog Wendy is perpetually eating whatever she finds on our walks, and now she and I stand and munch together, although she's not terribly interested, herself, in blackberries.

Over the weekend, guests came with their toddler. We took him up the lane, and he went up on his father's shoulders for safe-keeping. I picked berries and handed them up until his cheeks and fingers were purple and it was time for lunch. It's a slower way of being in the world, standing by the blackberries and sampling. It's not about accomplishing anything, or putting anything by for later. Just about right now, in the dappled shade, tasting summer, together.

Market day

Yesterday morning we took our current guests to the market to collect picnic supplies. Melons from the organic farmer down the road; tomatoes, salad, and peaches from the reserved but cheerful woman next to the rotisserie chicken truck; mushrooms from the shy mushroom man; eggs from the egg lady. She's missed the last two weeks at the market--her eggs have been there, sold by someone else, a younger brother maybe, or a cousin--but she was busy having a baby. Yesterday she was back, with the baby snuggled deep in a sling across her shoulders.

I wanted to buy some cheese for our picnic, and we walked down to the far end of the market to find my cheese man. He lives in the Var, an hour or two away, and does the market circuit--our village market Mondays, Valbonne Friday, I imagine others in between. He always has a few words for me--he meets almost all our guests, makes recommendations about where to take them, tells me about his favorite beaches. We compare notes on life here versus life in the States: we agree that, in general, it's awfully nice here. We both have high hopes for the election this fall. I look forward to buying my crottin de chêvre each week. He's kind about my French, eager to laugh, gracious, kind. This winter, when I brought three different guests on three successive Mondays, he shook his head and said to me: "C'est un hôtel chez vous. You're running a hotel at your house."

But Monday he was not there, so we got in line at the other cheese man's stall. I don't like the other cheese man. Occasionally when I've had to buy from him in the past, he has spoken English to me. Now, my French may not run to long wine-infused dinner parties, but I can buy cheese, and it offends my pride to get English back when I offer French. He also sells all sorts of charcuterie--sausages, hams--and varieties of bread--olive, fig, walnut. He jokes loudly with customers, and calls out to people as they pass his stall, drumming up more business.

C, along with me because it was Bastille Day, pointed out that cheese from the market, even cheese from the wrong cheese man, was still good cheese. And a lot of other people agreed: I waited at least ten minutes. At the market, there's rarely a line in the American sense of the term, everyone neatly, tidily lined up one behind the other, no breaking, please. It's more of a free for all that relies heavily on eye contact and small nods. I made the eye contact after a few minutes, and still it took a while before my turn arrived.

While I waited, a svelte and bleached blonde grandmother arrived beside me, market basket bulging on one side, granddaughter on the other. The granddaughter reached just below my waist, waiflike, with limp ponytails and hot pink plastic-rimmed eyeglasses. La petite was fascinated by the flies on the cheese and sausages, and began commenting on their numbers in her lovely high child's voice. "Mémé, regarde les mouches sur le fromage! Granny, look at the flies on the cheese!" The fromager heard her and reassured her: "C'est normale, c'est normale, les mouches, n'inquiète pas.'' The little girl was mollified for a moment, and then, when the next customer was up, she said: "Il y a des mouches sur le saucisson! Mémé, regarde! There are flies on the sausage, Granny, look!"

I could tell that my turn was about to come up--it's a sixth sense you develop--and I was figuring out which kind of tomme to buy (cow's milk, goat's milk, or sheep's milk--I always end up just choosing randomly). The fromager handed the little girl a tiny, finger-sized sausage to eat, no doubt to silence her observations. He turned to me: deux crottins de chêvre and un morceau de ce tomme-là. Turned out it was brébis and expensive; also very good. As I handed over the money and took the cheese, I felt something touch my derrière and turned, startled, to see what it was.

La petite looked up at me, saucisson in one hand while she brushed at my dress with the other. "Madame," she said, ''il y a une mouche sur votre fesse. Madame, there's a fly on your butt."

I'm fairly certain that her grandmother's turn came next.

Tea time

The quilting ladies came for the day last week.

Here is how it works: each week, the quilting ladies meet at a different house. The hostess of the week provides coffee and cookies, ahem, biscuits, when everyone arrives, usually around 10.30. The ladies settle in, take out their sewing, and work for an hour or two. Around 12.30, the French ladies decide that it is time for lunch, and take the sandwiches, salads, and leftovers that each has brought from home into the kitchen or dining room. The hostess, meanwhile, has opened bottles of red wine and laid out a cheese platter and a basket of assorted breads--as well as glasses, plates, knives for cheese, and napkins. She hovers while the French ladies eat, making sure that everyone has enough wine and showing them how to use the microwave. When the French are finished, the English ladies come next: same procedure. After lunch: coffee, again, and maybe a bit of chocolate. Then: more sewing. Sometime just past three, it will be time for tea and cake. The French ladies prefer thé ordinaire, the English, Earl Grey.

I had to borrow wine glasses and tea cups from Jules. I laid in a half dozen bottles of red and five varieties of cheese. I vacuumed and dusted and knocked the cobwebs down from the ceiling. I baked a cake. The French ladies colonized the living room and the English ladies took over the kitchen table, and I filled the sink with soapy water and washed coffee cups and then washed wine glasses and cheese plates. I forgot the after-lunch coffee service, which made the English ladies laugh. At 3.15 I put the kettle on for tea, set out tea cups on their saucers, and took the boxes of tea out of the cupboard. While I waited for the water to boil I put a teabag in each cup.

Agatha came to survey the field. She is about six feet tall and given to quelling, the residue of a lifetime spent first teaching French to English children and, latterly, English to French children. When she comes into a room she draws herself up to her full height and makes a Statement, such as, I was almost Swept down the Hill by All This Rain, and expects everyone to stand to attention. There is frequent dissension in the ranks of English ladies about this: there are insurgents who believe that conversations that, well begun, should in fact be allowed to continue and even be completed when Agatha enters, and those insurgents have been known to insist that anyone speaking carry on and disregard the commotion. But that is difficult to do. As annoying as it may be to be interupted mid-story, it is practically impossible to ignore the sense of importance and adventure that sweeps in the door along with her.

So there I was arranging my teacups and tea bags, and there was Agatha peering over my shoulder. Getting ready for tea, are we, my dear?

I mumbled something about it being tea time.

Agatha looked at the teacups and then around the kitchen, evidently missing something. But my dear, where is your teapot? You can't mean that you are going to make all these single cups of tea.

Yes, I explained, I am. I have a teapot, but it holds only three or four cups, so it would be useless...

Don't have a teapot big enough! She turned to the English ladies, who were, of course, mid-conversation. Girls, she doesn't have a teapot! My dear, Lizzie here has at least six teapots, and I know she would be glad to have you come and choose one, wouldn't you, Lizzie?

Lizzie looked up for her stitching and twinkled, divided between being irritated--she was in the middle of a particularly funny story about a vicar in a posh church who was drunk for Christmas Eve services--and amused. You have but to ask, my dear.

The water came to a boil just then, and I began to pour it over the teabags in their cups. Agatha watched. Are you using one teabag for each cup? Her voice almost cracked from shock.

Yes, I replied. Isn't that how you make tea, I thought to myself. Teabag, cup, boiling water, wait three minutes?

Oh, no no no no no, my dear. She turned to the English ladies, who had now given up on hearing about the drunken vicar and were riveted on Agatha and the tea cups. Girls, she's using one teabag per cup! This tea is quite strong, my dear, and it is really unnecessary to use one bag for every cup. One teabag will do nicely for two, even three cups, won't it, girls?

There were murmurs of acquiescence from the table. Oh, yes, one was enough for two, certainly, it did get quite strong quite fast, didn't it?

I began rearranging teabags, moving quickly before I ended up with too-strong tea. Agatha supervised happily, pointing out that, really, one would go through a whole box of tea rather quickly if one used so many bags at once!

I passed out teacups and slices of cake--American pound cake, filled with French cream and spread with English raspberry jam--serving Agatha first. She carried her plate and saucer back into the salon, where she was sewing with the French ladies. A minute or two later I followed her in, bearing more tea--ordinaire, of course--and cake. When I came in, Agatha had the French ladies in rapt attention. Elle n'a pas une théière assez grande! She doesn't have a teapot big enough! They all tittered politely and sympathetically: the French, they don't all have teapots big enough, either.

Back at the kitchen table, the ladies teased me about Agatha and my strong tea, and Lizzie finished her story about the vicar. I poured second cups and offered second slices of cake. Then it was time to wash again. Before I threw out the used teabags, I asked the English ladies if anyone would like to take them home to reuse. They laughed--and then Ginny said, gently, you know, if you reuse them later, the tea is very bitter. So out they went.

From Julia's Kitchen

I went to cooking class across the valley last week in Julia's kitchen. The keeper of the kitchen these days is an American lady of a certain age--sensible shoes, salt and pepper hair that she doesn't bother coloring anymore--who teaches cooking to vacationing Americans. We met this winter, and then we met again, and the second time--in yoga class, this was--she invited me to come for a day. There would be only one vacationing American. I would be there to offer a little local American color and to fill in the conversational cracks.

The vacationing Americans who come for cooking class spend the morning with the keeper in the kitchen, making a three or four-course lunch. At around one o'clock everything is ready, and then everyone sits down and eats and drinks until three o'clock or so. They spend a week at Julia's house--three days preparing and eating lunch, a day visiting the markets and lunching out in a proper French restaurant, a day with a visiting chef. The keeper is there throughout, shepherding, chatting, coaxing, leading, teaching. So only one visiting American can make for an intense week. Thus my invitation.

I have made the pilgrimage, several times, to Julia's kitchen, the one from the Cambridge house, now at the Smithsonian. The countertops are high and made of worn butcherblock. There is an island in the middle of the kitchen, with large storage baskets underneath. On the wall, of course, the famous pegboard, with the outlines of the pots and pans and whisk and spatulas painted so that the busy cook will know just where to put everything. I have looked in at that kitchen and read all the labels that the curators thought fit to write, and imagined what it would be like to step inside and take down a rolling pin. When I was a little girl I read a book about a sister and brother who got locked in the Metropolitan Museum of Art after hours. I'm sure that something else must have happened to them, but I don't remember what it was. What stayed with me was the thrilling idea of being behind the ropes, of being able to wander, to touch, to sit, without any shushing or shaking of heads. So all my life that notion has followed me. Locked in Versailles and sitting on the little slipper chairs in the Queen's bedchamber. Locked in Monticello and sitting at Jefferson's desk. And if I were ever locked in the Smithsonian Museum of American History, I would bypass everything else and go directly to Julia's kitchen.

On the appointed day last week I drove across the valley, down the lane, past the "Défense d'Entrer / Propriété Privé" sign, and up a rutted gravel track. Julia's house is not grand. It is the house that you would design if you were not trying to impress anyone with Your House in France, but just wanted a place to live and have your friends to stay. Park and go around to the back--there isn't really a front door, just a series of French doors opening onto the small terrace--and open the screen door. It leads directly into the kitchen. Julia's kitchen. The same. High counters, butcherblock, island with wicker baskets of equipment, and, of course, the pegboard.

The keeper handed me an apron, a dishtowel, and a clipboard with copies of the recipes we were to make. I met the visiting American--an elfin lawyer from St. Louis--and we started cooking. The keeper taught techniques and tricks: save the tops of leeks for making stock. Correct melted chocolate that has gotten too hot and separated by whisking in heavy cream. Put basil stems, shorn of their leaves, in the sauce for their flavor, and fish them out later. We both took notes, and watched, and asked questions. In between times there were stories, about other places we'd been, meals we'd eaten, people we had eaten with. But there were no stories about Julia. She hardly came up, really. A few times I thought she would--and then instead I learned that in France it is permissible to break off just the amount of celery that you need from the stalk, and buy that instead of the whole bunch, which is a helpful thing to know. As the morning wore on I found myself bending to lean my elbows on the kitchen island where we were working. I am nowhere near six feet myself, and the countertops were too high for me.

It was when we were sitting down to lunch--if the pink champagne is good, go ahead and serve it with the meal, and when you put the plate down in front of your guests, the meat always goes at six o'clock--that I suddenly understood. There was no need to talk about Julia. This was not some exercise in hagiography. No saints lived here. This was the house, the kitchen, of someone who liked to cook, who liked to teach people to cook, who liked to sit long over her meals with friends eat and drink and talk and laugh without reservation. What we were doing was not participating in some pilgrimage but simply carrying on the same work that Julia had done herself, the ordinary alchemy of turning groceries into lunch. A particularly good lunch, but nothing mysterious. Sitting at Jefferson's desk I have always imagined that I might get that much closer to Jefferson's thoughts, and maybe at Monticello things are different. But in Julia's kitchen what I learned was that cooking done with love and care is the same in every kitchen.

I tried out my theory this weekend. It was Easter, and the house was full of company, so much that we overflowed into Jules' house up the terraces. Of all our household this weekend I was the only one for whom Easter meant much, or anything, beyond egg hunts and chocolate rabbits, and although I have long ago stopped sorting out my thoughts on resurrection, I retain a sense of the holy. A sense that this holiday is about grace, about good things happening when you don't think they will, when you've given up hope that they ever will again. So we have the chocolate bunnies and the girls have grown up with egg hunts, and I struggle with teaching them--not bread into body or wine into blood, but grace and compassion and kindness.

That's what I was thinking about Sunday afternoon while I made the keeper's recipe for osso bucco. That, and worrying. Everyone, even the dogs, had gone out and left me to cook, happily, in the kitchen. I turned on music and opened the kitchen door to the breezes, and chopped and sautéed and braised. Our guests were a motley assortment--family, old friends, friends of friends--and though they knew each other there was plenty to worry about. Would everyone be on time? Would they bring what they had said they would, and if they didn't, how would I produce the backups I had ready in the downstairs refrigerator without hurting feelings? Would conversation be easy? Would there be common ground? Would there be enough, would there be too much, what had I forgotten...the litany went round and round.

But everyone came when they said they would, and brought their offerings. We opened champagne and toasted Easter and Passover and Spring and family and friendship and hope for better days. When the osso bucco came out, it was as good as the one that had come out of Julia's kitchen the other day. Everyone loved it. We told stories and laughed until we couldn't catch our breath. We sat long over the main course, longer over the cheese--with the cheese some honey from a friend's hives, and our own olive oil--and then over the American cake longer, and, then, finally, time for tea. When we got up from the table late that night we were full, contented, a good meal closer to heaven. The bread and wine and osso bucco may not have turned into the body and blood, but they did knit us together, and make us all a little more whole. Julia said one time: Good food is also love.

Guests

We have company from the States this week and yesterday I brought them along on my daily shopping excursion. I am an almost daily visitor to our local boulangerie, grocery store, nice lady who sells fruits and vegetables out of her van, and, fairly frequently, a prepared-foods shop--so much more charming than it sounds--owned by a woman and her mother. The two of them make all the lasagnes, raviolis, headcheese salad (that's a direct translation, mes amis), and artichoke gratins--different things on different days. Madame's excitement at artichoke gratins has only been matched in my experience by my husband's excitement on spotting his first wild boar.

Taking the company along to do the shopping is my contribution to the Bon Appetit portion of their visit to the south of France. We take my straw market basket, I introduce the guests to the commercants whom I am friendly with, we choose interesting cheeses, pears, tartes. I try my best to channel Alice Waters, aware that I can only fall short but secure in the knowledge that it is a noble quest. The company get to feel like they are doing the native thing and can go home and talk casually about visiting with the boulangere; I get to feel like I belong here and show off my French.

Last night was a lasagne night at our house, so we stopped in chez Madame to see what she had on offer. I introduced my guests. One of our company had French in high school a little more than 50 years ago, and so he valiantly tries it out now and then on unsuspecting natives. Madame, stretching her artichoke gratin ebullience to include me as a consumer of those gratins, pronounced herself was "enchantee" to meet my guest and said that I was "adorable."

To which my guest, caught up in the moment, responded delightedly, "Moi aussi!"

I smiled and ordered a second lasagne.