May 18, Villard-de-Lans.

My boys in the woods (we gathered pieces of bark, from spruce trees and elm trees, fallen, their texture like art, hollered at lucky cows, smelled the grass.)

May 17, Saint-Ismier.

Today is a holiday in France (another one of those Christianity-based holiday religiously honored as a day off in the most non-religious country in the world) and we drove to the Vercors mountains and to the town of Villard-de-Lans, where I spent most my childhood summers.  It was the last stop for my brother Patrick, who died there another summer almost twenty years ago.
We hiked a short trail, had lunch at the café we always went to, walked the streets we always walked and where I remember a perfect childhood bliss, and everything looked exactly the same, the same shops, the same atmosphere, and not even a new building around to spoil the scenery, breathtaking, the town looks as pastoral and postcard-perfect as it did thirty years ago, and it was resplendent in the spring light.

It's Hollande.

May 6, Saint-Ismier.

Joy then, in spite of all the years gone by, in spite of time, and doubts.
Memories of so long ago, 1981 and the arrival of Mitterand, a breath of fresh air, and I was improbably young then, and we moved to Paris shortly after, out of the miasma of decrepit sun-seekers to the electric youth of Paris, in time with what felt like the much-needed renewal of the country, so long in the hands of the right, so stagnant and old, a breath of fresh air with the first Socialist president, thirty years later and in spite of all the disillusions and the distance, in spite of such a different world and such a different life, joy still, and pride in this country that is not quite my own anymore now, pride for electing a new Socialist president and choosing a new hope.
And I can almost taste that vibrancy again, the youth, the electric hope, on the eve of going back to the U.S. and starting life anew on my own.