I’m Amy. I’m a woman in my sixties, widowed, full of curiosity, and determined to see the world solo… Read More
I have a little button that reads “Wherever you go, there you are.” I pinned it to the corner of a small bulletin board on the wall above my desk at home. I smirk when I glance up and see it.
So true. So true.
Right now where I am is in Tours, France, in the eighth month of what was originally to be a one-year adventure in this country, living in different cities and going to French classes. A month ago I changed my plans: I wanted to go back home to Alameda sooner, so now I’ll be back in California at the end of June.
I think.
Traveling is always an eye-opener, both in terms of the external places, people, and cultures you experience, and in terms of introspective journeys, too. In this last month of my travel, the introspective aspect has taken the wheel to such an extent that I think about that little button’s words every day.
Take today, for example. It’s Saturday, which means I didn’t get up at 7 in order to have an unhurried morning with a petite dejeuner while perusing email and other online shiny procrastinator things before reviewing the French language information we’re tackling in class. Instead, I slept late and went out to walk around before the big rains that Accuweather had been warning us about began.
I found my way past the crowded street near my apartment where the weekend markets were happening, and with the aid of my trusty map app on my phone found the most direct path to a creperie whose reviews had convinced me to give it a try.
Unfortunately, the food and drink weren’t very good. It was just a simple buckwheat crepe—a galette—with ham and cheese, and a glass of demi sec cider. I’d had both before so I suppose I had some expectations in addition to the promise of the glowing reviews. I could hardly finish the crepe and only drank half of the cider. Strange tastes to both of them. But when the server asked me if I liked everything, I merely said with what I hoped was a convincing smile, “Oui, merci. Avoir!”
Sigh…not so good. Just strange!
On to try a different creperie and this time I was going for the sweet stuff. To hell with the protein breakfast! I’d order a scandalous crepe sucre with chocolate, banana, Chantilly cream, nuts and whatever else there was. Alas! It was crowded and even though there a was an empty table for two, the greeter told me he was sorry, but that there was no place for une personne. Hrumfph! FINE! I’ll take my unhealthy food cravings elsewhere then!
Although I had really hoped to discover a new place, it was increasingly windy and getting cloudier and colder outside, so I decided to “settle” for a cafe I had been to before that had excellent cappuccino and a pistachio scone to die for. I didn’t want to push my luck with the weather and face a twenty-minute walk home in the rain, so I went in to Kat’s Coffee.
I put my backpack on the seat, and walked straight to the counter to order my coffee AND to make sure the pistachio scone was being offered. YES! I exchanged pleasantries with the server, who had told me during my previous visit that he made the scones himself, and he asked me if I was having “the same”. I wanted to hug him for asking me that: it made me feel that I was remembered and kind of a ‘regular’ already.
As I sat there savoring my scone with apricot jam, and my not-quite-hot-enough-for-my-taste-but-still-delicious cappuccino, I jotted down some notes as I usually do in cafes and bars. A couple came in, and the woman went to the counter to order while the man sat at the table facing mine. I heard her struggling with her French, and from his seat the man prompted her with the right response to the server’s questions. The woman let out a little exasperated sigh at her attempts to converse, and I shared a smile with the man. He said something in French to me and I realized that he had assumed I was French and he was, in a sense, laughing ‘with me’ at his non-French speaking partner’s language attempts.
I cheerfully finished my coffee and scribbling. When I paid and ordered a scone to go as I had during my last visit, the server said, À Bientôt (see you soon!) Two little words that were like a cherry on top of my experience.
Outside my step was lighter and I didn’t mind the wind and cold so much. I figured I had enough time to stop at my favorite boulangerie for a baguette and made my way there through what I realized were increasingly familiar streets and squares. The woman behind the counter at the boulangerie smiled in recognition when I got there.
With my baguette sticking out of my backpack (I haven’t yet become French enough to carry it under my arm), I was almost home when I made an unplanned stop. It was a little bar that is—for better or worse—just around the corner from my place. I’ve been to “La P’Tite Maiz Le Bar” twice already as it’s a simple, welcoming place where the servers and brewers make everything themselves—both the beer and the light food offerings. I’d had a conversation with one of them before and he’d been really good about letting me tumble over my words as I tried to speak French with him.
This time, there was a different man, Christophe, behind the bar who offered to speak English if I preferred but was gracious when I told him I’d really like to try French if that would be okay. Ultimately, we were laughing and enjoying a real conversation! When I told him I was from a town near San Francisco, he told me about a beer he had in cans (not on tap, unfortunately) from a San Francisco brewery called “The Laughing Monk”. The San Francisco brewer had come to Tours to create the beer together at Christophe’s brewery about twenty miles from here to make a beer just for his bar! That led me to tell him about my daughter Carrie and her friend coming to visit me in late May and that I would definitely bring them to “. I told him about their friendly competition using an app that registers every new beer they try. He was happy to hear that since HIS beer is one of the brands that participates in that app, and he said he was looking forward to meeting them.
A couple of people came in during our conversation and were eavesdropping, but smiling at all the right places, so I didn’t mind. 😉 By the time I left the bar, I was almost skipping the rest of the way home.
I’d started out hopeful this morning, then had been disappointed with my breakfast and again at being turned down at another restaurant. The cloudy, ominous skies had seemed to be creating a suitable setting for my Grinch-like attitude and I was in danger of reciting a litany of all the things going wrong—with the day, my (in)ability to speak French, my confusing plans for the rest of my stay, the fact that I haven’t been able to watch the Warriors for almost two weeks!! because of technical issues, the….
You get the idea.
And then I’d had that lovely experience in Kat’s Cafe where I’d had a great cappuccino, lucked into having that scone again, and been assumed to be French. In the boulangerie, they recognized me, and I paid them with a bunch of change that I actually counted out correctly and fast! I’d been the one who said “Bien tot!” that time when I left.
Finally, I’d made a new friend at the local bar who’d seemed to actually enjoy talking with me and had made me feel that I was exactly where I should be at that moment.
As I walked the few steps to my AirBnb, I was feeling good and smiled as I reviewed my day. I was going to have a little time before I doing my writing group on Zoom for a few hours, and I was looking forward to actually getting some writing done then. It would be great to see familiar faces from home, and I’d be using my laptop for something other than doing taxes and working out train schedules for various heres and theres, or reading world news. I’d sip a glass of Bordeaux while writing and let the words flow!
There would be flowers and butterflies everywhere! 😉
Wherever you go, there you are. Indeed. C’est vrai.
P.S. And it still hasn’t started raining. Bientôt!
Where in the World Is Amy Going Solo Now?
First, look on the lower coast of France, the green country in this blurry map. Toulon is between Marseilles and St Tropez, and Six-Flags-les-Plages is on the coastal tip below Toulon.
Along the residential area of main road in front of the condo complex where my little studio here in Six-Fours-les-Plages, France, faces the Mediterranean Sea, a bus runs up and down between more commercial destinations where shops, cafes, supermarkets, restaurants, etc., take center stage. There is one restaurant nearby, though, called La Grange that had caught my eye from the beginning. It looked fancy, so I had decided to save it for a ‘special’ night when I’d be able to taste things again after I finally conquered a sinus infection.
Last night was that night. With sinus headache dissipated and senses of taste and smell back, I got semi-dressed up. Which means that although I still wore my, blue blouse, thin black hoodie, and black sneakers, I wore black leggings instead of jeans and I put on earrings. It was only a few minutes walk from my door and as I approached, the low lighting and general ambiance confirmed that yes…I wasn’t in a casual coffee shop anymore. I patted my wallet to make sure I’d come ready to spend and approached the hostess.
“Bon soir, je n’ai pas de reservation, mais est-il possible trouver une place for une personne?” I felt ridiculously proud that she actually seemed to understand me without the expected frown and immediate response in English.
“Oui, madame. Une moment, s’il vous plait.”
The hostess guided me to a table along the wall facing the door. “Ici, madame, s’il vous plait. Voulez-vous de l’eau gazeuse ou plate?” I responded that I’d be fine with tap water then caught the eye of a woman across the way who was watching me. I smiled as I realized that I didn’t care at all that everyone else in the place was either part of a couple or family. In my travels I’ve gotten used to dining alone and have come to realize that either nobody is really seeing me or that any discomfort is someone else’s.
In many French restaurants—even informal cafes and coffee shops—a particular day’s main menu options are on big chalkboards and easels that the servers bring to the table when it’s time to order. The menus they had to us are the constants: beverages, appetizers, etc. The hostess gave me a little laminated menu with ‘entrees’ (which in the USA are the appetizers) and a much bigger menu of cocktails, wine, and non-alcoholic drinks. Then the server brought out the easel and chalkboard with tonight’s ‘plats’ (which in the USA translates to entrees—yeah, I know).
This is a photo from the restaurant’s Facebook page, not the menu I needed to decipher, but I wanted to show you how small and squinty the writing is. It IS small and squinty, isn’t it?
The ambient lighting was beautiful, but it was dark in there. And whoever wrote the day’s offerings in a tiny scrawl seemed to know that I would be there already struggling with the French names of food items and descriptions of cooking methods, AND that I need a new prescription for my glasses. I realized the server was standing there watching me, so I looked up and confidently asked her to please tell me what a couple of the words meant. She did, then quickly said (in rapid French) that she’d let me have some time to consider and before waiting for a response, turned to leave.
“Oui. Merci beaucoup,” I said a bit loudly. (But I saw your expression, lady, and I’m not sure I like you.)
Looking at the menus again, I knew it would be a while before I could figure things out. Ah! Wine! That’s something I know. I caught my oh-so-eager-to-serve server’s attention when she passed by. “Excusez-moi, Je sais que je voudrais du poisson pour le diner. Pourriez-vous me recommender un vin blanc local?”
Now you have to understand that I was hearing myself speak French rather flawlessly and was VERY surprised. Of course the whole time I’d been looking over the jumble on the chalkboard, I was creating every word of my next question in French in my head, but still…
“Oui, madame.” She began pointing to this wine and that one on the pages, letting the French fly so fast I could barely understand every fifth word. But I nodded and made little sounds of acknowledgment anyway as I searched for names of wine regions I knew on the menu. I still hadn’t grasped much of her demonstration of wine knowledge, but when her finger landed on the name of a city I knew to be close by, I said triumphantly, “Oui! C’est parfait!”
“Oui!” she exclaimed, then took the drink menu and left once again.
With my wine choice out of the way, I went back to squinting at the chalkboard. There were two “poisson” (fish) choices and I could translate some of the accompanying sauces and things, but I didn’t know what actual kinds of seafood were listed. I looked longingly at my phone and knew that all I had to do was click on a French dictionary. But I shook my head and stopped. I had decided that I would get through this evening without a translation app, dammit, and I was going to—even if I ended up not knowing what I ordered.
Which is what happened. When the server brought me the wine, I was relieved that I actually liked it (I HAD understood her when she’d said the wine was “seche”—dry—and I prefer dry white wine.) But then she made it impossible for me to delay any longer.
“Et vous avez decide, madame?” There was that ‘look’ again—a combination of disdain, doubt, and amusement. I was liking this woman less and less. So I simply said, “OUI!” and pointed to the fish choice closest to my finger.
She smirked—-I mean, smiled. “Oui, tres bien.” And she sashayed away with her chalkboard and easel.
As I usually do while waiting at cafes, I jotted some travel notes and eavesdropped on the conversation at the table next to me. Maybe it was the wine, but I thought I was understanding a little more than I had during other eavesdropping sessions. Or maybe I was getting a bit full of my badass self and my awesome French. Hmmm, the family’s server just brought them dessert and espresso. Surely I can manage later to order that in French, right?
Voila! A man brought a plate with my chosen poisson. He said something I didn’t catch, but his smile was much more genuine, so I smiled back and said, “Oui! Merci beaucoup.”
Hmmm…I thought I ordered fish. Come out, little fishy,
come out, come out wherever you are!
Friends, to this moment I do NOT know what I ate. Whatever it was cost about $30. It took me a while to find actual fish in the puffed round crust made of something. It was hidden among some green kimchee-type strings and some little soft balls of something else. It wasn’t exactly bad, but the tastes and textures were not ones I’d go looking for again. The sauces around the puffy thing were the best part of this main dish. Eventually, I found and ate all the fish—some nondescript white fish—and picked at the rest. By the way, did you know that the French word for poison is “poison” with a ‘z’ sound while the word for fish is “poisson” with the ’s’ sound? Oh, and the French for “Oh, the irony!” is “Oh l’ironie!”
Well, the wine was good. The tap water was tasty. The bread was pretty decent. The wine was good.
The sassy server came with a dessert menu and again let out a stream of quick French, which I gathered was meant to offer dessert and coffee such as my neighbors had. I didn’t want to have a conversation, so I said, “Oui!, Merci.” Evidently, that was sufficient because she put a little chalkboard with a dessert menu on it on the table and left right away. There were five choices and I could understand enough of each to get the gist, so I played it safe and ordered the one with the word “chocolat” appearing multiple times in the description.
As I nibbled at the little slivers of chocolate cakes and the few berries, I chuckled a bit as I realized I’d mistaken the word “framboises” for strawberries (They’re raspberries.) and was amused in general about my whole dinner “a la francaise” experience. But wait! Where was the espresso?
Madame Snooty showed up with another question I didn’t understand. I was in no mood, so barely waited until she finished shooting her rat-a-tat-tat of French this time and just said “Oui!”. She replied with a knowing look, responded with “Oui!” and left.
Once again I was waiting for the unknown. Had I just agreed to get the bill or did I order something else? By that time I was resigned to having a hefty total for this evening’s experiment, so I put my credit card on the table and waited with my own secretive smile while wondering what my last “Oui!” had ordered for me.
I mean, the wine was good, right? Oooh la la! OUI! OUI! OUI!
Flash Lit #2 Then and Again
I was in one of my work fugues at a coffee shop, unsuccessfully imitating a serious writer when someone called my name. I gasped.
“Gary? Good god, it IS you! What the…how did…why are you…” I probably could’ve continued, but I just stood clumsily and threw my arms around this ghost from my past.
The embrace felt way too familiar and comfortable, or at least I knew that I should think that. Too comfortable for my own good, more like it. Still, he smelled the same—clean and woodsy—and his shoulders were still strong and straight. I saw the grey strands playing hide-and-seek through his thick black hair, and of course it was perfect.
He spoke softly through my hair and said, “I wasn’t sure you’d be here. It seemed too easy, but I hoped…” Then he pulled me even tighter and added, “God, you smell good, Kate.”
We realized at the same time how long we’d been embracing and awkwardly took our seats. Sliding back onto the booth bench and closing my laptop, I looked up to find him leaning back in his chair, one arm slung around the back of it, and two eyes boring undeniable truth into mine.
“You can’t be that surprised, Katy. You knew I’d find you…eventually.” There it was, that smile. THE smile that had seduced me the first time our eyes first met at a fraternity party so many years ago. Those eyes and that smile spoke of smoky and dangerous things then, and my body was reacting to them now forty years later the same way.
It was just so easy to give him ‘eyes’ back and say, “For a long time I hoped you would. And then life kinda happened, you know?” The slight clickety-clack of my neighbor’s typing suddenly sounded like dishes falling from a server’s tray. He leaned forward.
“Look, Kate. I know it’s been a helluva long time. More than twenty years, right? I remember seeing you and your husband at the college reunion. That’s when I knew we weren’t finished.”
“C’mon, Gary. You were happily married and so was I. Don’t….”
“I was married, Kate, but hadn’t been happy for years. And when you looked at me the way you did, I just knew. Not that you weren’t happy, but that something wasn’t over with us.”
I felt anger. Shame? Understanding? “Michael died four years ago.” I looked down at my hands resting primly on my laptop.
Then Gary’s hands were squeezing. “I know and I’m truly sorry. Carol told me last week when I called her to get help finding you. And…Hell, Katy. I’ve been divorced for almost fifteen years, wondering if you ever thought of me. If you ever still…”
It was different this time when I looked into his eyes. They were shimmering with tears and his face was blotchy with emotion. No seduction now. Just love.
I squeezed his hands then and let my tears fall, daring to love him back. Again.
DANCING FLAILING IN FRANCE
She barely made it up the damned stairs, even though she wasn’t carrying her usual bags along with a stuffed backpack. Her legs weighed a ton and were reminding her that she’d just walked over 18,000 steps during the ‘school field trip’ with mostly twenty-somethings. Most of those taken had covered cobblestone streets and crumbling ancient bridge debris on steep hills.
Amy was cursing herself that walking up three flights of stairs made her winded. Four weeks of tackling them a few times every day in her apartment in France hadn’t yet wiped out the many days at home totalling 8,000 steps daily was a feat.
Finally she made it to the uncomfortable sofa and plopped down, remembering too late that the bottom cushion was as old and worn out as she felt. Her ass hit hard and her compressed lumbar region compressed some more. “Jesus!” she cried out as her purse leapt out of her hand and across the room to slam into the one glass she hadn’t put away before she left that morning.
She didn’t even watch the shattering happen. I don’t wanna look. I just wanna not walk anymore. I just wanna…
Her phone woke her up at 4:42 am. Groaning, she reached to see who the hell was texting her at that time in the morning. But she already knew it had to be someone from home; she was now living nine hours ahead of most of the people in the world she knew, and some of them still hadn’t figured out things.
After she fixed a minor emergency at home, Amy shed her clothes in a weird dance into her bedroom and fell back onto her slab of a bed and her smaller slabs of pillows. Why the hell are pillows in France square and lumpy? “Shit! Now I’ll never get back to sleep.” She groaned in self-pity and performed her useless ritual of making her pillows sleep inducing.
It was in these times that she wondered what the hell she was doing in France. She missed her comfy bed and her snuggly cat in the morning. She missed her big sofa and her big-screen TV for watching her Warriors kick ass. She missed feeding the birds and her favorite squirrel Sassy.
She missed the easy life. The one where no thinking or inordinate planning was necessary to just do the usual daily things. She missed…..
Lying on the bed with her eyes wide open, she realized that she was doing it again. She could hear Linda Ronstadt belting out “Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me” as she stuffed a mangled square pillow imposter over her face.
Get a grip, Amy. There’s nowhere you’d rather be and you know it.
With an eye roll and a smirk, she punched the faux pillows into submission.Tomorrow she’d be in class, faux conversing in French with classmates from at eight countries NOT hers.
Stairs and square pillows be damned! How freaking lucky am I?
My original intent was a new blog post every week—Friday, to be exact. Then it became a new blog post every week with a “Saturday-or-Sunday-will-do” amendment. I think I published one post on the Tuesday before the original Friday goal. You get the picture.
When I’m traveling and jotting down notes all the time, I always have SOMEthing to share that I think might interest SOMEbody. When the most traveling I do is to a hardware or grocery store, or just for a change of scenery, that pool of ideas isn’t as deep.
So what makes a blog post interesting, anyway? Unless there’s some amazing, unique, or curious subject matter, why would anyone read a few hundred words from someone who’s not living an adventurous, new-thing-every-day life? I decided to make a note of the types of blog post titles that got ME to click and read this morning.
While drinking my cappuccino, I read about a woman’s views of her death that has been made certain by an incurable, debilitating disease. I’m pretty sure I clicked on that one because I’m in the ‘senior’ category of humans now, and see more years of life behind me than in front of me. That’s not meant to be morbid; in fact, I find others’ own consideration of death in their ‘golden years’ or their attitudes about death itself interesting and often inspiring. Maybe it’s just that more positive people write these blogs, but since death is something we all share, I find it reassuring to read how others think about it, and live their best lives anyway.
I also read an expat’s entry about how she feels now that she’s lived in another country for eight years, having made the move at sixty-four years of age. Alone. Even though she wasn’t writing about a special thing she recently did or a breakthrough in her new language learning, I wanted to know what I might be thinking about or feeling were I to move out of the country for longer than my usual journeys last. She littered her post with little things: the smell from the bakery that she passes almost every day; the colors that a particular villager always has bursting in her wildflower garden; the now familiar sounds of conversation and laughter from little groups of people she passes. I know she and I would get along because at one point, after talking about a ray of sun that hit that garden at just the right spot, she added, “Okay, now I’m getting sappy.” Yeah, but I could see that sun’s ray when you described it, so I’d still like to meet you.
As I scroll, I see the usual How I lost 50 pounds in Five Days! Or The One Thing You Should NEVER Do If You Want a Second Date! My favorite ones to scroll past, though, are the ones like I Almost Lost Everything: Read On to Learn How I Didn’t! Don’t try to reel me in with some ominous title, friend. It’s likely I’ll be disappointed when I read on and find my expectations far exceeded the “reveal”.
So I’ve been trying to come up with something MEANINGFUL to share with you—something funny maybe, or another picture with a caption about my ongoing DIY project, or yet another mention of my cat Simba’s escapades on the patio (Okay, that last one probably doesn’t fall into a “meaningful” category.)
None of those things spoke to me. So this blog post has turned out to be a pondering about blog posts. For me it’s also a way to feel a bit more connected to friends and family in this time of isolation and the unknown. I love to read things from folks far away—even if their posts are no more than a picture and a caption, or something good that happened to them one day. I can hear their voices or see their smiles in their words on my laptop screen. Emojis, as much as some people hate them, make the messages even more real: I’ll take anything that helps me get that familiar feeling of being with that person.
In the end then, I want my occasional blog posts to be ways of being with people when I can’t be with them. Luckily, I don’t share ALL the mundane things I think about. But sometimes I’ll get an itch to let you know about just a regular ole’ day’s time spent painting door trim (shudder) or experiencing the push-me-pull-me angst of cat ownership or figuring out a budget that includes a brand new kitchen as well as a really LONG travel adventure. Doing that lets me pretend that we’re sitting around having a glass of wine together and just…hangin’.
Look at it this way: if you read my blog post, you can stop reading any time when I post a blog; if we were together in person, it would be harder to shut me up. 😉