At the moment there aren’t too many things I’d yearn to import from France if we were moving back to the states.  I imagine this list will grow, although hopefully at the same time it will expand beyond the edibles!

• Rabbit legs in a savory brown sauce with pasta.  — This dish is DIVINE.  It is NOT pretty to look at until cooked and served.  You can’t get just the rabbit legs from the butcher or the markets.  You have to buy the whole rabbit, skinned but intact, eyes and all, sealed in clear plastic.  Ew.  I’ll post a photo one of these days so that you can share the visual experience.

• The baguettes and the flutes, which are a similar to a baguette but still a different stick of bread.  The ones we get in the village are superb.

• Thyme growing wild along the roads.

• From Chez Qui Qui in the village, the pizza with jambon, cheese, olives and an egg cracked on top just after the pizza comes out of the oven.

• The pace of life.

• The way leisure is an equally if not more acceptable way of defining and expressing who you are.  As opposed to what you do for a living.  Your profession is seen as just one piece of more complex and compelling puzzle.

When we first arrived we couldn’t figure out why our mail was being delivered to the address of another property owned in this village by our proprietors.  We’d gone to the post office to make ourselves known.  We’d put our names on the mailbox and in a style that would get us high marks for penmanship.  For weeks, though, our mail was being delivered elsewhere.

The clerk in the post office couldn’t do anything about it.  We were told we’d need to talk to the post- woman to straighten things out.  It wasn’t as if we could call her, either, or leave a message for her with the clerk.  No, we’d have to happen upon her as she was making her rounds.  Fine.

So, we waited and waited and waited and waited and waited to happen upon Madame De La Poste.  Days stretched on and no sightings.  Meanwhile, our mail was dropped into someone else’s mailbox.  (Luckily, they were kind enough to walk it down to us.)

But then one day we struck gold.  On his way back from the bakery one morning Tim saw the post-woman and pounced.  She very nicely explained that she couldn’t deliver our mail into our box because she would have to walk up steps that were private property.  If she hurt herself on those steps, her insurance wouldn’t cover the medical expenses.  If we moved our box so that it was on the street and thus public property, she could deliver our mail as it ought to be delivered.

Jesus God, I thought to myself, she’s not joking.  She’s utterly serious.   And she was.  So, we moved the mailbox.  That day.

The people who own the house we’re renting do not own the steps outside the front door. Those are owned by the people next door.

At one point all three of the semi-attached houses on this block of Rue du Barry were one big house. But a family feud put an end to that. After somebody died and others inherited, the big house was split into three.

Still doesn’t quite explain how someone ended up owning a house but not owning the means to get in and out of the house beyond the front door.

That being said, by law, the owners (and renters) of our house are given the right of passage. Which means the people next door can’t be a pain and stop us from using their front steps or put anything on them that essentially blocks passage.  Not that we’re worried about that.  Most of the time they’re not around anyway, only coming down for the occasional weekend.

I’m not sure how the neighbors feel, though, about my pot of lavender next to the front door or the folding chairs we’ve leaned against the wall because we’re too lazy to put them in the cave. Technically, I’m putting my stuff on their property.  No demands for removal of the trespassing items have been made, though. 

Strange doings nonetheless.

Last Friday when we bought tickets to the Roquebrun’s Fête de la Musique we weren’t quite sure what we would be attending. Tickets were 12 Euro a piece and included dinner and a spectacle performed by students of the local music and dance teachers on the village esplanade (i.e. the playground next to the boules court). All over France similar celebrations were being held in communities big and small, rural and urban. It’s an event promoted nationwide by the French Ministry of Culture:

“Open to any participant (amateur or professional musicians) who wants to perform in it. This Music day allows the expression of all styles of music in a cheerful atmosphere. It aims at a large audience, working to popularise musical practice for young and not so young people from all social backgrounds. It gives an opportunity to communicate and share a very special moment through music.”

In Roquebrun the music students and the dance students jointly put on a recital. Kiddieless myself, I hadn’t been to a recital for eons – like, since I was twelve and had a slot in the program. Piano. A sonatina by Beethovan, I think. Or, Chopin. Those were the days when I imagined myself becoming a concert pianist and didn’t see an impediments to that plan. (Yet I was a Plan A, B, and C person even then, so I had archeology or zoology in my back pocket as career path backups.) Never mind that I couldn’t ever memorize the music, or that my hands were too small to make many of the chords, or that I didn’t have the fire in my belly.

That’s what I noticed about most of the music students, too. Not much fire. There were a couple of notable exceptions among the teenagers, but most seemed like they just want to get the damn thing over with. The younger ones had more enthusiasm and a sweeter kind of self-consciousness. Sure, the flutes were squeaky and the piano playing clanky, but at least they were having a good time. The only two instruments any of them played were flute or piano, because those are the instructor’s specialties. If they want to play the clarinet or the violin or the bassoon, the local kids have to go elsewhere.

Dinner was provided by the local chapter of the Fédération Française des Associations de sauvegarde des Moulins, otherwise known as the Amis de la Moulin. Moulins are water mills.The AM’s are kind of like the Rotary club, only their gig has a historical preservation bent.

Have to say that they did a crack job on the food and beverages. For starters, this was not your typical community BBQ buffet. This was a sit down dinner. You presented your ticket, you were given a napkin and plastic utensils which you took back to one of the tables set up dormitory style, and then food was brought to you. I’m talking entree (salad), plat (chicken and pasta with a creamy mushroom sauce) and dessert (fruit tart with ice cream). To bring the food to the people, a big, heavy farmhouse table was loaded up with plates of food and carried by two men. Two women flanking them were in charge of distribution. After dessert, they offered demitasse cups of coffee. Thumbs up to the AM’s.

A DJ had been brought in to play some music during dinner and to handle the lights when it was time for the dance students to perform. The dance teacher was young and pretty and sophisticated. It wasn’t hard to imagine her as an ingenue from the country who went to the city, learned the ways of the world and how to become more sophisticated, and who returned to her roots so she could share her learning and sophistication with her folk. Her students didn’t go on stage until around 10 PM, even though some of them were as young as 3. The dance spectacle itself was a hoot. The “moves” consisted of a lot of strange arm waving, a tripod stand or a cartwheel thrown in here or there, and some rather age-inappropriate prancing to the beat of dreadful pop music and with a bizarre light show cast on the cacti behind the stage.

Once the dance spectacle was over, the DJ resumed command of the stage, flipped the switch on his strobe light, and set about to imbue this little village with some Disco fever. We didn’t stick around for the boogie-ing or the tombola (raffle), because by the time the dance recital was over it was 11:30.

Drinking since 6:30, we were tanked. And getting sucked into following a teenage love triangle unfolding next to us. There were six teens seated to our right, four girls and two boys, all of whom made it clear they weren’t thrilled to be sitting next to some old-fart anglaises. As if we cared. One boy was clearly the boyfriend of the girl next to him, but that didn’t stop him from flirting shamelessly with another girl across the table, who appeared to be friends with the girlfriend. Although we couldn’t understand what any of them were saying in French, we knew exactly what was going on: soap operatic shenanigans. What with that to keep us entertained we didn’t want a second piece of cake or to do the hustle.

I’m in what I would call phase three of my transatlantic transition.

Phase 1 was: a theme of WTF have done?

Phase 2 was: Completely the opposite. Rose-colored glasses, everything’s new, everything’s grand.

Phase 3 is: Questions, lots of questions. Is this really what I want? How do I make this work? Why can I not remember the simplest verb conjugations? A yearning for stability but not yet ready to put down roots. There are no regrets, overall things are good and there’s still excitement, but all that’s hanging out on one level. On another level some uncertainty, a bit of frustration, and a dash of irritation have made their entrance.

Phase 3 is complex, a mixed bag. I think it will be a lengthy one.

After we got back from Dublin, I felt different about where we’re staying. Phase 2′s status quo was unseated. This, coincidentally, was around the time I experienced my first sonic boom. It’s a sound I can’t describe other than a ginormous, blanketing, riveting, house shaking BOOM. Onomatopoeia in action. Fighter jets pass through our valley with some regularity, which is dramatic enough in the way you expect a squadron of fighter jets to be, but not sonic boom dramatic. A week in an English speaking country, and BOOM, I’m missing the ease of being amongst the folk you know, the native tongue. And other little things, like knowing exactly where to look for plain sour cream in the supermarket, of being able to ask for assistance if the sour cream isn’t where it’s supposed to be.

I know I can deal with the tugs and ruts of this phase, rise to the challenge of it, recognize it as part of the process. But, I’ve had a few moments when I’ve looked over at Rufus hiding under the living couch, wigged out by every pop of the fly zapper we installed in the kitchen, and thought, “Ru, move over. I think I’ll join you.”

Everyday matters and little things are good stabilizers. I’ll do a USA Today crossword because I know I can finish it, unlike the New York Times crosswords which I have never, ever even remotely came close to completing. I sweep the kitchen floor – where once it was dust that motivated frequent sweepings, now it’s the dead flies projectiled every which way by the zapper. I make sure all the windows and shutters are closed during the day and opened at night. This is how you keep a stone house with walls 18 inches thick and no A/C cool during the summer heat of Southwest France. It’s a method tried and true. The downstairs stays fresh, the upstairs decently fresh, and the third floor habitable if a fan is going.

Of all the little tasks, this last one is the most satisfying. It reminds me of what it’s like to feel more in control. It reminds me how it feels to take charge in the face of life’s fluctuations. Tuck in when the heat is raging, untuck when it’s not.

Jean-Noel, the little fledgling who’s become a moderate obsession for me, is still alive.  I don’t know when he last had food.  He must be getting something into his system, because he’s pooped all over the sage and oregano.  Maybe he’s figuring out how to feed himself.  But we’re going to the garden center in Cazouls this morning to get a bird feeder and bird seed nonetheless.  My logic being that if fledglings learn from adult birds, and if J-N sees adult birds at the feeder, perhaps that knowledge will sink in for him and he’ll hop over to the feeder and help himself to some seeds.  Besides, if he’s hanging on, I think we should too.