Wish Tree, Vence

I’ve been waiting until today, post-Election day, to write about the Wish Tree we saw in one of the squares in Vence. Visitors from around the world who had stumbled upon this tree erected in a square in Vence’s historic quarter, wrote their wishes on a slip of paper and tied them to one of the leafless branches. A fair number of the messages were written in English, but I could also hazard a guess at some written in French. Before me they fluttered in the wind, and it was stirring to stand so close to the deeply felt and deeply held desires of so many random people.

The messages had been written on scraps of notebook paper, and post-its and strips of whatever and had likewise been tied with curly ribbon and string and rubber bands. To no surprise many of the wishes were about love – love shared and unrequited. Others reflected hopes for the world at large.

It seems fitting to call up the wish tree from my cache of beautiful surprises, now that election results are for the most part all tallied and tied up. Some, no doubt, are passionately disappointed by the results. Others, like me, are elated and proud that the US elected it’s first non-white president, that voter turnout reached record numbers. In elections past there was a noted inertia or indifference in the air, nary a wish in sight. Not so in 2008. The air crackled and smoked with the wishes of millions on both sides of the ideological line.

I didn’t add a wish to the tree in Vence; I had too many from which to choose. Yesterday, though, one of them was realized, the wish for Americans to fervently and optimistically participate in the direction of their future and to show that we’ve grown beyond at least some of the historical biases of our past. But this merely opens the window of new beginnings. There’s a whole shebang of other wishes on the heels of that first one. We’ll need a very, very, very big tree on which to hang them all. Bigger than a sequoia, I think.

Very aptly this election day we’ve decidedly cast our vote to begin closing down our country living experiment, i.e. living in a small, rural village that’s 19 kilometers from a supermarket.

We dove into this experiment blindly, not having set eyes on the village itself let alone the surrounding countryside. Some would say that’s completely crazy. Perhaps, but it was a risk I’m glad we took in exactly that way.

Now we know in our bones that we’re city people. Or at least, town people. Country life suits us as a respite, a short stint. Too long in the sticks and we start to crawl the walls, petty arguments flare and we grouse and sulk. Especially if there’s a rainy spell that keeps us cooped up in the house (like today). None of this we would have known if we had prepped ourselves with too much information beforehand, i.e. the location and size of our village. A headfirst dunking into the unknown was one of the best choices we’ve made, the best risk we’ve taken. Certainly has been for me on an individual level.

Graciousness towards the situation flows easily now that our vote is cast, now that it’s a matter of time and househunting (and contractual agreements) before we move on to the next experiment. For example, I’m not going to winge about the weather, even if the rain blows in sideways like it did on Sunday, the wind pushing it underneath every door. That was a first. There was so much dampness in the air that it was tough to light a fire. Just commenting here, not complaining.

View of Nice from the Citadel

Athough we have the unanimous results (hurrah!) from our little election, we still haven’t pinpointed our next move. Don’t know the when, where or how yet. Actually, we know one thing – we’re not going to look to relocate along the Côte d’Azur because it’s too expensive and way too overpopulated. Nice was interesting and, yes, nice to visit. Zero interest in making camp there. For some the Riviera lifestyle is a dream come true. For me it would be hell. Luckily Tim recognizes this, is at peace with it, and isn’t going to be a pain in the butt and insist that he can change my mind.

Speaking of pains-in-the-tookus. Mr. Toad has gone a-wall but left a remnant of his visit in the verbena planter – a big, nasty lump of toad poo. It is truly disgusting. It is the same color as Toad but slimy and oozy. I’ll spare everyone further description. Or, have I already gone too far?