I woke up early, in the dark, and lay in bed looking at whatever planet comes up at that hour in the left side of my bedroom window every morning. I was thinking about what makes a place feel like home, and about how, and I suppose everybody does this, we chase after bits and pieces of how things were when we were children to make ourselves feel at ease.
Our car has been in the shop since Saturday a week ago (unhappy gear box), but aside from the second installment of Harry Potter in French, there's nothing I need that I can't get by walking into the village. Yesterday was market day, and Chris and I strolled along buying vegetables from the vegetable woman and sausages from the butcher, and a few delicious-looking stinky cheeses from the cheese man. We loaded up on clementines, kiwis, apples, and pears. Then swung by the tiny épicerie for some chocolate and Badoit water. It is an immense pleasure to do this without having to get into a car.
A few blocks from where I grew up in Richmond, there was a little grocery store almost exactly the same size as the épicierie, and when I was old enough to cross streets I was often charged with walking to Mr. Johnson's to pick up something we needed for dinner. Usually the streets were empty, except for someone out walking the dog. I could give all my attention to the soft red bricks of the houses along the way, to the cobblestones of the alleys, to the drippy branches of the elms overhead. I would squeeze down the crowded aisle to Mr. Johnson himself, in a paper butcher's hat, and ask for whatever my mother had ordered.
It is the same now in Villamblard, a quiet walk to get food. The walk starts with the cemetery across the street, where almost always someone is going in to put flowers on one of the graves. I always look at the iron words at the gate that say Priez pour vos morts (pray for your dead). Once in the village, it's the textures of the buildings that get my attention -- many are of a particular kind of local limestone that gets somewhat crumbly at the edges, and the color is warm enough that it doesn't look grim even under the ever-gray November light.
Yesterday, the vegetable woman dropped a shallot and muttered, "Merde!" Then, seeing a wizened old lady waiting to be helped, apologized. I stifled a laugh, the old lady cackled, and turned to me with merry eyes, and the vegetable woman was laughing with us too. It sounds like a small thing -- it is a small thing -- but almost always, the tall Americans are not allowed into the jokes of the village. People avert their eyes, not out of coldness, but out of respect for our privacy. So a laugh with the old lady was a great step forward, socially speaking. We exist! And apparently we know what merde means.
