February 19, Saint-Ismier.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Southern escapade.
February 19, Saint-Ismier.
An escapade to the South, to Nice and my friend Isabelle, to Avignon and the grandiose austerity of the Popes' Palace, breathtaking (more so because on the day we arrived the city was in the grips of the Mistral, a wind from the North that rules over the Rhone region of France with painful force,) back to the garrigue around Pont du Gard for a hike among thyme and rosemary and the benevolent olive trees that reigned with loveliness and legend over my childhood, on to the village of Grignan with its castle and its tortuous streets.
An escapade, with the kids and my parenting demons, Dylan and I like rams, and I am not sure which needs to learn more, but we had fun, the three of us, listening to swinging French children songs, Hélène Bohy and her sailors, swear words under my breath at each missed turn on the road, but we have time, what do we care.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Monday, February 06, 2012
The kids.
February 6, Saint-Ismier.
A month of school has passed, and my fears about Nicolas not developing right have dissolved as he goes a' skipping into class each morning jumping up to the sweet fabulous Fanny, his teacher, with a resounding Bonjour! and she tells me he's learning just fine. Dylan is in demanding first grade and still catching up but he's doing it so fast his teacher says she can see smoke coming out of his ears. We work at home every day; he's endearingly eager to learn, and likes math best.
The week ends go just as fast. Yesterday we went out to the movies to see Le Tableau, a gorgeous intelligent trip through painting, had a smorgasbord of a lunch with Dylan's new fancy, sauerkraut, did school, ran out to a meadow up the road from my mother's house where we go sleighing every day it seems since I finally bought the kids a sleigh on Wednesday, then came home to a kid painting session before munching on fresh bread and cheese for dinner and the usual protracted reading time before bed.
I don't have a minute to spare with them, they're two free electrons bouncing up my walls and if it is exhausting most of the time, it is also damn lucky as can be. If I wasn't profoundly agnostic I'd say we're blessed.
Winter.
February 6, Saint-Ismier.
It snowed here in the Alps last week, before a Siberian cold descended upon the country, breaking records not seen for decades. Finally a sleigh for the kids, and we're out on a pasture above my mother's house every day it seems.
I had forgotten how much I enjoy winter, when it's white and sunny and stepping outside slaps you in the face.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Lives.
January 19, Saint-Ismier.
Fridman left yesterday to go back to Hugo and the circus.
Another life.
I am reminded of the infinity of sad situations we could be facing and I do not feel sad, just altered. My mind wanders to a son dying at the age of eleven while playing a dangerous game of daring, my friend Virginia told me one day, friends of hers left with the pieces of a life devastated, living on for the other child, burdened by the impossible; a brother dying on the road at the age of twenty-nine at the end of a life graced by gentle muses and wasted by melancholy and drugs, and my mother left with a life bearing yet more sorrows, as lives will, lives of pain the world over, and I feel joyful for all there is that is light and beauty.
Looking for dragons.
January 14, Saint-Ismier.
Another try at finding dragons, an eleventh-century fortress in Mornas, then the Grignan castle, where we arrived at night unfortunately, and under a frightfully cold wind.
Nicolas knocked at the fortress door, looking for dragons.
The Grignan castle, once home of Madame de Sévigné.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Roman holiday.
January 8, Saint-Ismier (France.)
In France since late December, and this week end, the first since school started, an excursion to the South and the sun, and a step back in time: we began at the abbey in Saint-Antoine l'Abbaye, an eleventh-century Gothic beauty, stern and chilling, and today trekked in the fragant hills of Provence to the Pont du Gard, a Roman aqueduct that is one of France's foremost tourist attraction, not a stone missing in a construction dating back to the early first century. To top off the road trip we headed to the city of Arles to see the Roman amphitheater.
Nicolas wanted to see the dragon in the castle and we had to explain that it was not a castle but a church, a bridge and an arena. No dragons, but powerful ghosts still.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Florida and the kids.
December 15, Ft Myers.
Fridman comes back from a month in Peru today and soon we will be in France and stay there until spring.
I dreaded staying in Florida for a whole month by myself with the boys. Time dreaded metamorphosed into time enchanted, like the butterflies Dylan loves to catch, precious time, daily walks in a Florida wildlife and nature preserve not far from the house, and with a net he found at a yard sale Dylan became a butterfly catcher, my son the poet, catching butterflies, the first time he tried, letting them loose, the walks a daily wonder, seeing an alligator by the marsh on the side of the trail, careful to step around a snake seemingly sleeping on our path, taking in the beauty of the native Florida scenery, the kids engrossed in a cricket, and the house cat. There were hard times too, Dylan can be difficult, and especially so when his father is not around, but these were all the more enchanted times because I thought they were going to be just that, a prolonged trial of boredom not altogether avoided morphing into discipline nightmares.
When we weren't a the nature center saying hello to the rescue bald eagles before hitting the trails the boys played with their Legos, doing and undoing them over and over again, and we read books and did school and read more books and went to the playground and went to garage sales and the days went by in a dream of soft breezes and carefree, warm afternoons.
This morning we visited Lee County Manatee Park and didn't see any manatees but discovered another beautiful peaceful place to keep in our heart for when we are deep in school and winter.
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