FEELING OUR WAY AROUND

January 5 2013         

We left America one week ago today, (Saturday) and let me say that going away for a year, or more is a lot different than going away for 2 weeks, or even 4 months. We have successfully upended ourselves to the point where, yesterday, I said to Joel, it feels like one long day since we left New York.

Where to start? To say that we are still pinching ourselves is both cliché and inadequate. There are moments when I find myself just standing very still and in these moments I am trying to let go of thought and let all 5 senses imbibe the enormity of where we are:

Seeing the sharp winter light smack every surface with raw brilliance, the sky heartbreakingly blue. Hearing what at first seems impenetrable silence become punctuated with leaf rustle, a robin’s brief tune and then, silence again. Smelling damp earth and wood smoke. Feeling stone walls, their surfaces softened here and there by tufts of moss, feeling the lick of cold air on one cheek, the other gentled by sun. Tasting…well, here tasting is the most craven of senses, the food almost dirty with flavor. To throw a chicken breast in a skillet with a splash of oil, a sprig of thyme – from the garden – salt and pepper, sear it one side then the other, letting the center resolve itself on the way from stove to table and then, after one mouthful, wonder if the butcher sold you baby flesh…

We haven’t stopped eating since we arrived. Not only did we arrive deeply exhausted from the previous months of endeavor and preparation, we realize we also arrived starved, starved of nutrition. But let’s not compare. Let’s just accept and be grateful for the fact that there are still places on this planet where people live in direct relationship to the earth.

At least 3 times a day we both stand still and after looking around us we look at each other and say the tritest of things: “Can you believe this?”  “Look where we are.” “How did we pull this off?”  “We made it here!”  

And what is “here?” 

Here is a beautiful stone house looking out to the Luberon Valley, yet within 100 yards of the nearest baguette. Here is a kitchen that needed only the few objects from our New York table placed on this one to make it “ours.”

        Maggie's Photo

Here is a long living room with space to dance and paint and write before sinking into the couch and watching the fire. 

Here are the stone stairs leading to bed and bath, the bed also looking out to the valley which, on New Year’s morn, came to life beneath a sky of banded pink and blue while this morning, like us, it lay abed until late, blanketed by fog.

Here is nothing on the calendar. Here is the discovery of what is needed to make us comfortable and the ensuing search for candlesticks and bath oil, a potato peeler and kindling. Here is the arrival of our sent-ahead suitcases and the joy of unpacking my pop-up sponges! Here is the space to contemplate what we would like to heal in ourselves and in each other. Here is the candlelit confession to each other: 

Maggie:    To become undefended

Joel:         To become unconstrained.

And here is the moment when, having declared our inadequacies, we realize that revelation is but the tip of the iceberg; the bulk is still beneath the surface. Melting must begin in order to discover where and how and why we are defended and constrained. 

Here is the ultimate salted caramel ice-cream. Here is spending New Year’s Eve with our dear friends, Sharon and Paul, who cook us a dinner of lamb – on the fire – roasted potatoes, carrots, broccoli, salad, baguette, cheese; a meal which I devour like the best Sunday roast from childhood – better, as this is a meal prepared not out of duty but with love and kindness. 

Here is the chime of 2013…the two of us standing in the crisp night air of the garden, wishing the world well, and hello moon. Here is a rainy, late afternoon walk on the first day of this new year, winding our way to the top of the village, to the medieval church. It’s open. Two figures in the now dusky light usher us in; an invitation of sorts of which the only word we recognize is “crèche,” and there it is, to the left of the altar, one of many in this village where Christmas is not flaunted but sweetly honored. And past the crèche, a tableaux of the village in monumental detail, made by the father and son bellringers, the village as it was hundreds of years ago.

Here is a market 4 times a week, a true farmers’ market with muddy boots and hands like roots, fizzy apples, truffles, salad greens that will stay crisp for days, all the root vegetables, quails’ eggs, wine, pear juice, a whole stall of winter squash. 

We buy a bit of everything and head home…here, where we’ve come to luxuriate in each other. Here is where we begin feeling our way around.