Well, maybe I should say mouth, or tongue, instead of heart. The place where you get all the news, the latest, the gossip: the hair salon, bien sûr. That's where I found out that there's an American couple who spends most of their time here in Villamblard, and I've never met them or even known they existed. And I found out that there's going to be a language exchange on Monday afternoons, where Anglophones and Francophones can come and practice with each other. I should be getting my hair done every week just so I can get a clue.
Patrique, the talented stylist, is from Belgium, and we were laughing about how amazing it seemed to him that my family had ended up in this village of 880 people, and how equally amazing it was to me that he and his family had too. French is his second language, although of course, he's quite fluent. Our only misunderstanding was when I was complaining about the thinning of my hair, thanks to my age, and he said he didn't understand what I was talking about. He was being chivalrous, and I thought I had the wrong vocabulary word and kept trying new ones.
You can see how much Julian was looking forward to his haircut.
It doesn't come across in pictures, but the children have been transformed thanks to Patrique. The same facial expressions take on new meaning with a different haircut -- what used to look sullen now looks elfishly wry. What used to look merely amused now looks positively overflowing with joie de vivre. Patrique talked about how the right hairstyle reveals personality, and he may be right about that. It's also true that the warm weather and daffodils have woken us all up from our winter doldrums. As I type I can hear Nellie and Julian racing their bikes around the house, yelling just to make a racket, yelling with the happiness of spring, and maybe also yelling with the pleasure of having just the right haircut.
