I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine...but how are you?

This post is really about French people. I love France. I do. And I don’t want to hear how the French are this and the French are that. It matters not at all. They down an espresso at cafes on the way to work and wouldn’t think of eating fish for dinner without a glass of wine. And they kiss. Everyone kisses and it is wonderful. The day I bought tights in a little store in Paris and got pecked by the shopkeeper, I knew I need look nowhere else in this world. French people are my kind of people.

Tonight I had to go out and get food. It was impossible to imagine that I would make it through the night with only a box of raisin bran and various configurations of chocolate tidbits. And treasured wine. [There is a "wine cellar" in the loft, if you can believe it. At least I call it that. Basically it is a cubby under the stairs and it contains my never-to-be-opened-because-they're-too-special bottles, acquired in years when French wine growers and I were tight. There were years like that.]

So I am about to enter Whole Foods and stock up and I run into a friend. Not just any friend. A person whom I love with all my friendship heart. A person whom I have not seen for well over a year, as she had been living elsewhere.

She has recently moved back to Madison and I had to say this t her – so…I had not heard from you. And she said: I read your blog, daily. When I need a break, I click on Ocean.

[Okay, one important addition: she is French. She is as French as can be. It is, therefore, unfortunate that every time I ever run into her I am wearing my guy’s grundy, discarded jacket and a pair of shoes with paint stains on them. She, on the other hand, is never unkempt. But that’s just an aside.]

I am so thrilled to see her. I cannot wait to sit down at a table with food (and wine) with her (and her husband) and talk about everything. Oh, and to see their sons, to spend a morning or an evening or an afternoon togehter. We have done any and all of the above. I miss it. But I admit that I cannot get together this weekend because I am soon departing for XXXXX. [I do not have a habit of disclosing destinations on Ocean until I am really up and running toward them, so if you want to know where XXXXX is, click on this week-end.]

Really? She says. So am I!

Now here’s the curious thing: I have not been to XXXXX for almost thirty years. It used to be a frequent enough destination for me in years that I lived in Poland, but recently it has faded, in much the same way that Freud has faded from evening hour conversation over very dry martinis. [Is that EVER a hint.]

And so there you have it: a recognition on my part that so many of my friends care about keeping up with me through my blog and through my blog only.

And, secondly, I have this to say: if you think that Whole Foods serves no useful purpose on this planet, you are so wrong. It is where I always run into my French friend. Without Whole Foods, we would have never realized that we are to be flying over to XXXXX together at the same time, albeit in different carriers. [n.b., I don't want to sound accusatory or anything, but why isn't she flying Air France? Don't the French believe in their own pilots, wine with fish notwithstanding?]