ALIVE WITH PLEASURE
June 2 2012
We’re sitting in our favorite lavender field, its 14 rows lush with spears just beginning to show the merest hint of their color. You can almost feel their yearning; a few more days of sun and they will yield to the fullness of their being.
We would love to be here to welcome them. As it is, we sit here now, by the 7 cherry trees whose fruit is also yearning to turn the last corner into their sweet juicy pop. They are in what I call their ‘fizz’ stage; not sour, not fully sweet, but alive with taste and energy.
We have just come from looking at a house that is also alive with taste and energy, which we would like to rent next winter. We have another to look at tomorrow morning, on our favorite little back street here in the village. It will have to be mighty special to win out over the one we just saw. Not only does it have my 2 must-have’s: a fireplace and a bathtub, it has two of each! It also has a garden and a winter sun terrace. What really speaks to us is the loving aesthetic with which it has be restored and furnished.
There are very few places one walks into and feels immediately at home in, and home, as I wrote about a few posts ago, is something I’m still looking for. Although, sitting here right now, on a piece of cloth that looks as though it were torn from the pale blue sky, feeling the sun on my face, listening to the intermittent breeze stir the leaves, my husband laying beside me, I know there is no finer home.
These days of roaming ‘our’ Provence, its valley filled with roses, honeysuckle and star jasmine, the cherry orchards a cascade of fruit-laden branches, the markets full of early summer produce, all of this and, if you’ll forgive me an oxymoron, the surprise of familiarity we feel in this small part of the world, well, it is a gift beyond any words I can put together.
Maggie's Photo
Ripe, and sun dried on the vine, cherries
And mixed with this is another oxymoron; gratitude accompanied by a thin strand of fear. I am immensely grateful to have travelled this far in my life, to this life rich with love and adventure, curiosity and creativity. Yet at the same time, I am aware that it can be gone in a blink. It is a life that Joel and I have created together through hard work, a commitment to honesty and the willingness to let go of society’s meaning of success in order to discover that which is of true meaning to us.
When I was a little girl my vision of success was that one day, I would live always with a bowl of fresh fruit, a vase of flowers and candles. That was my vision of the perfect home. Wherever I go, I have these three things, whether it is a hotel room, a rental, or our apartment in New York. I understand now why those things represent home to me.
Maggie's photo
When I was a child, my parents had a front garden and a back garden. The front garden was filled with flowers; lilac, roses, lilies, forget-me-nots, wallflowers et al…the back garden was rich with vegetables and fruits; raspberries, blackberries, loganberries, strawberries, red currants, black currants, gooseberries and apples. Yet in the 16 years I lived with my parents I never once saw a bowl of fruit or a posy of flowers in the house. The fruit was always for the future, put up in jars for the winter. The flowers stayed in the garden to impress the passersby.
There were also 2 candles on the sideboard in the dining room; twisted ribbons of black and orange wax in matching brass candlesticks, their wicks forever white. They had been a wedding present, yet like the marriage, were never allowed to come to life; my mother dusted them once a week.
The idea that something was only for show, but not to be used for the purpose for which it was created, was an impoverished atmosphere that made me sad as a little girl, and is perhaps why I over-indulged in so many things for so many years. It was as though my parents had everything necessary for enjoyment but were unable to allow themselves the pleasure of what they had, as if there was something wicked and wasteful in lighting a wick or cutting a rose - although it would eventually be dead-headed – and enjoying it, say, in a vase on the kitchen window sill, while doing the dishes.
I often wonder what happened to the candles. They moved with mother to 5 different houses over 60 years, but didn’t make it to the nursing home. I like to think someone found them, took them to their home and lit them, perhaps watching the light from their flames play across the face of a loved one, before all became extinguished.