The Most Magnificant French Escapade!

From the moment we entered the big stone, two story bed and breakfast in the south of France I had this tingly, excited feeling in my chest.  Hustle and bustle from twelve women around me, I walked slowly through the entry way into the oversized dining area that was furnished with long, beautiful drapes, scattered French antiques, huge wooden tables with chairs, armoires filled with dishes and fruit and vegetables in glass jars and the smell of earth and stone and scrumptious hors d’oeuvres whiffed it’s way into my miserable red head.  Smiling from ear to ear, I peeked around the hedges to see the in ground pool and the view of the mountains and then walked back to the stone patio in the warm afternoon sun and poured myself a glass of superb French wine .  Wow.  Oh my.  I might never leave. France.

The big, burly grinning owner and chef introduced himself to our enthusiastic group and took each one of us to our rooms.  Jo and I unpacked the heavy, overstuffed suitcases that we had dragged on trains, trams, subways and a ferry all through Amsterdam, London, Texel and Paris with confidence and relief that we would be “staying put” for a full week in this charming, picturesque French room that overlooked the stone courtyard, the vineyards, the pool and the French mountains in the distance.  Total bliss filled our hearts as we descended the steps to get acquainted with our absolutely delightful tour guides and the other endearing members of this fabulous escapade in France.

I wish I had taken notes throughout this marvelous week but, alas, I was having too much fun to remember to write things down.  Like flash cards in third grade when I was studying for a test, my mind is pitching images of that week before me.  Cobblestone everything.  Streets, walls, homes, arches, towns – big round, ancient, uneven rocks in every direction.  Awww, my dad would have loved that, being the stone mason that he prided himself on.   Red earth in one town where artists thrive is a vivid, rosy memory that uncontrollably urges my fingers to rub together as if I’m feeling the earth again, as if I’m right there with the other women, standing again in awe of the extraordinary view.  Funny how I DO remember buying an ice cream cone at this little French village and standing with the other women and laughing  - oh, just laughing and being so happy to be there, to be completely safe and cared for and to have absolutely no other place to be at that moment other than having an ice cream cone in a tiny red village with women in the south of France.

There were castles, so many castles and climbing up to the castles and trying not to fall coming back down from the castles.  There were street fairs.  Linens, clothes, weird antiques, trinkets, cheese, wine and scarfs.  Everyone, every single person, had a scarf around their neck – at least that’s how I want to remember it.  My own pink scarf nestled into my neck and fussed at me when I took it off each night.  I acquired a newfound passion for scarfs and the street markets counted on that tourist passion. Our tour guides had a plethora of activities planned for us and they drove all of us to the various activities in complete comfort and safety in a large van and a very cute, totally European, car.  Looking out the windows at the French countryside, we all chatted about the simple things in life to the most complex discussions as we delved into each other’s backgrounds and unveiled the complex layers to our lives.  And then suddenly, we would arrive at an olive grove or a vineyard or a lavender museum or a vegetable farm or a ranch with bulls and cowboys on horses.  At each place, an authentic owner would greet us and hug our tour guides and give us explanations and tours.  Our guides interpreted for us but, always, the property owners tried to speak to us in English.  So respectful, intelligent and kind, these French people were to the foreign visitors in France.

A 3 day old lamb flashes before me now.  The total blessedness of holding that motherless baby lamb on the farm where we picked our vegetables from the garden and then cooked together in the large, stone kitchen to make our lunch, later served to us with, of course, bread and wine.  I tried not to worry about the little French boy lamb but his sweet face and breath permeated my thoughts for days afterward.  Once a mom, always a mom.  Awww, my mom would have loved that farm, having grown up on a farm herself and having worked as a cook for many years.  And my daughter, Hannah, the pet-obsessed, devoted cat mom, would have tried to talk me into bringing the French lamb home to Oregon, in keeping with her history of talking me into filling our home with pets when she was a child.  So I drank an extra glass of wine to help me “walk away from the lamb” and move onto the next exciting attraction on our perfectly arranged agenda of attractions in southern France.

Ending every paragraph with the word “France” is comforting to me since I had to leave that baby lamb in France.  Self-soothing.  Speaking of self-soothing, swimming in the semi-warm Mediterranean Sea with Jolynn is a flashcard memory worth framing!  True, we were the only two women on the tour to get into the water that day but we had to, we absolutely had to get into the water and continuously dive through the big, crashing waves of the Mediterranean.   I know that I keep typing the word “Mediterranean” and that’s because I am still, weeks later, SO IMPRESSED with actually swimming in the Mediterranean Sea! And of course I’m impressed.  I have endearing memories of swimming in the Pacific Ocean as a young teenager, while living in Santa Barbara and swimming at Herring Cove in the Atlantic Ocean when we lived on Cape Cod.  And Jolynn, having been an accomplished surfer girl in San Diego, shares my love for being immersed in the salty, ocean waves.  And there we were, swimming in the Mediterranean!  Ha!  Only in France!

And then there was the surprise.  None of us knew what to expect when our ingenious, passionate tour leader, Jacques, told us that she had a surprise for us.  And here’s where my dilemma rests – do I write about it and expound on the profound impact that her fabulous surprise had on us or do I keep silent in an effort not to ruin it for future tours……..hmmmmm, what to do, what to do…..?  It’s not that I enjoy teasing and keeping secrets and perpetuating the mystery (smile), I feel that my loyalty has to linger with Jacques and her remarkable tour, called French Escapade (promising a link at bottom of this post).  I will say, however, that the surprise was truly a highlight of the tour.  It was larger than life artistic and vehemently musically passionate and, well, simply exhilarating!  Four of us women (and you know who you are) found each other in the middle of this cryptic experience and hugged in a circle, silently crying and embraced in the passion, in the overwhelming emotion of it all.  One hellova surprise Jacques!  Sincere gratitude for this unexpected experience, deep in the south of France.

Stay with me now.  I have to tell you about Vincent, about Gene, about St. Remy and about haystacks.  I want to elaborate on something I wrote about in an earlier post.  My dad and his love for impressionist art – this is a subject very near to my heart and almost always in the grasp of my subconscious.  Standing in front of Van Gogh paintings makes my heart race and we gifted ourselves the ability to visit European museums where this could happen.  So lucky, I am.  I feel the gratitude of seeing these impressionist paintings up close and yet I share that gratitude with extreme guilt….guilt that I have had the indulgence to witness the art up close when my dad, Gene, who would have given his right arm or his left ear to have such an experience, never, in his short 55 years of life, did get to see his passion in person.  And so, visiting St. Remy in person was staggering for me and I had to silently sit by myself to take it in.  St. Remy is the mental asylum where Vincent van Gogh enrolled himself in May, 1889.  I held securely onto the stone handrail as I walked up the stairs to Van Gogh’s bedroom that overlooked the gardens in the asylum and I stood for a very long time in the doorway to Vincent’s room.  My dad in my heart and tears in my eyes, I thought about how my dad was living in a drab little room in Indianapolis, set up similar to this room in St. Remy.  Gene had bought some used art books and he cut out his favorite pictures and taped them to his bedroom wall.  He was living a basic life, going to work every day and coming straight home to his empty room, cheered only by his cut out pictures of artwork and his classical music on his vinyl albums that I had mailed to him.  His whiskey on the table was his only roommate and the two were happy to see each other every night as the sun went down in God-awful Indianapolis. And they were happy to see each other every morning, as well, as he drank himself into a kidney-rotting-oblivion. He could have walked into a wheat field with the haystacks and shot himself in the chest, Vincent-style, but he chose a more deliberate, slow route until it came to an abrupt end in an ICU unit of the local hospital.  His seven children sullenly sat in his room after his death and we took the taped artwork off of the rented walls, packed up his longjohns and flannel shirts and his trowel and his favorite whiskey glass and “got the hell out of Dodge”, as he used to say.  I walked down the lane at St. Remy with the asylum behind me with Gene in my heart and in my head and through the tears in my brown eyes, I could see the olive trees where Van Gogh sat and painted.  I put my dad there with him, on the ground with his paints scattered around and a bottle of whiskey next to the canvas.  For the first time since my dad died, I felt a little peace about losing him.  As our van pulled away, heading for the next activity, I closed my eyes and pictured Gene and Vincent sharing a few laughs with a bottle of whiskey in St. Remy, France.

Every day we had interesting activities to do and just about every evening we returned to the delicious aromas of five course dinners when we walked back into the inn.  Our own Chef!  After spending the day being tourists together, then we had the privilege of being new friends together at dinner.  The laughter, the total unabashed laughter at dinner was just so fun.  Going to restaurants indoors and on sunny patios outdoors and navigating the French menus….fun!  Clapping for some of our women, including Jolynn(!), who spontaneously performed for us, singing and dancing in the starry night air was really fun! Laying in the middle of the road all together on a dark night and looking for falling stars – I’m smiling now at this memory…..what fun.  I can’t forget the special memory of when the whole group celebrated our anniversary before dinner on the evening before we left with a toast, a beautiful card, a cake with the number “13” on it and the special, wrapped gift….a Van Gogh bread board from the St. Remy gift shop…evocative and so sweet.  And then, suddenly on that final morning in the noisy, hectic train station, everyone with their luggage and nervously looking for their train departure time on the train station marquis and knowing we have to say goodbye to one another and say goodbye to France, a little miracle happened.  One of our group members, Cindy, sat down at the piano in the train station and played two beautiful classical pieces while we stood around, some of us crying, and had yet one more opportunity to bond together in this beautiful, passionate land of France. 

Then, with a final note on the piano, it was all over.  I’d do it all again tomorrow if I could.  And yet, life goes on and going home is inevitable.

It took me more than a week to get over the jet lag and to get over the depression of leaving Europe and the people we met, and met up with, in Europe in our month away from home.  It was helpful to have dinner with good friends when we came home and to reconnect with family and of course, to see and kiss the animals (no we didn’t kiss each and every one of the 16 chickens nor did we kiss the llamas but Boo-Boo, Bear, Rosie and Chipper were kissed abundantly!). 

 I was in a fog and still feeling sad and tired, one foggy morning last week and as I was pruning my roses in an effort to get them ready for the Oregon winter, I started to come back home. I picked some roses and brought them in to our kitchen. As the delicate little pink roses continued to bloom in the warm room, my heart warmed up to the idea of being home and my head returned to Oregon.

I really loved Europe.  But frankly (scarlet), I know it's an old cliche, but “There’s no place like home”. 

 

As promised, here’s the website for Jacques' amazing tours – call her and tell her the Miserable Redhead sent you and ask her about the surprise…but I don’t think she’ll tell you!

http://frenchescapade.com/

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