thin on plot

It’s morning and I am downstairs arranging in my head the order of operations. Get started on the almond polenta orange cake, then proceed to the spinach and mushroom frittata. I hear Ed come down. He picks up a book my girl and I left last night on the coffee table – Lucy and Tom’s Christmas. A child’s book. British author. It it traces the life of these two kids in England on Christmas Day.

He reads it through and says – pretty thin on plot.

I love that he was expecting better. (Even as I think there is not a book out there that evokes the holidays as well as this one does.)






The past twenty four hours are already a blur, a memory. Late last night, our usual beef fondue around my daughter’s table...






...I throw together Grand Marnier soufflés for dessert because they’re fast and light. And no one ever complains if you put before them a small soufflé.





This morning, my kids are at the farmhouse for breakfast.












And then they’re off to Chicago and I am left with Ed, the person who can’t quite figure out why we all fuss about Christmas traditions.

We take a walk, crisscrossing fields that look washed out in the bright December light.





Sometimes we cut into forests until the brush is becomes too thick and there is no good way to proceed. We spook wild turkeys – a whole bunch of them. Have you ever had a wild turkey take flight just in front of you? They’re loud.





Yes, we’re not far from the city. The break from town to field is quite abrupt here. From a hilltop, you see Madison. But from most every other vantage point, you see farmland.





A herd of deer is spooked as well by our presence. But they’re fast. By the time I reach for my camera, the last one saunters into the bush and disappears.





We take the road home. I tell Ed about my phone call to my mother in California, about fragments of last night that I’d forgotten before. The sun is low by the time we turn into our long driveway, hardened by many hours of frost.

We toss around the idea of getting take-out Chinese for supper. But in the end I cook. Chili. In a rare move, I open a good bottle of wine. We watch a movie about a school with a challenging immigrant population in France.

And so the holiday ends. I hope it ends well for you. I hope it was a good series of days. I hope you were with people you care about and who care about you as well. I hope you had a chance to feel, even if for a brief moment, merry.

Christmas Eve

At this time of the year I only have to raise my head a little and look over to the east to see if the sun is rising yet. It’s moved to that corner of the house where the upstairs window is. Oh, it’s going to be a nice sunrise!





Happy Christmas Eve Day!

In an almost Gift of the Magi moment, there is a knock on the door. Oh dear, I’m about to leave the farmhouse. I’m in a hurry. I have to go to Fed Ex headquarters to claim a gift that was delivered in my absence. It’s not for me. It’s one daughter’s to the other. They need it for Eve. I open the door almost reluctantly. A person with a package is smiling at me. Hi, I have something for you. It's Fed Ex.

But, you don’t deliver on Saturdays! 

We’re making an exception today. We figure these may be important presents people may want for Christmas.

One more minute and I would have been gone, chasing something (and therefore missing it) that in all earnestness was being delivered.


You get older, your circumstances change, traditions have to be adjusted. But here’s one that remains in place for us this year. The drive for breakfast at Hubbard Diner. Where they have great cakes and pies.





We’re not here for the pies though. Daughters and sundry others arrive. Not Ed. Ed’s better off at home on days like this. One has to adjust to what people can and cannot do.

Ah, here comes my younger girl.





The older one’s here too, with her guy.





We eat, we grocery shop for the last minute Eve details.

It’s funny how quickly evening comes on this day. One minute you’re shopping, planning, wrapping and then – no more. Now it’s time to unwrap and eat. The top, wound up, is let loose, spinning toward the splendid hours of family, of friends and lovers, of feasting and favors.





By the time I write tomorrow, your Christmas Day (if you celebrate Christmas) will be over and done with. So let me say it now: thank you all for being such kind, good Ocean friends and have a beautiful Christmas. With love.

and so

Since when have our cafés become temples of silence, rather than places to talk and banter?

We’re at Paul’s café, our almost daily hangout toward the end of the day. There’s much to toss around and bicker about. For example, Ed is convinced that the best way to prepare fresh winter spinach is to microwave it. I beg to differ. I want to make sure Paul isn’t for a minute convinced that Ed knows the best way to prepare spinach. I get a frown from a patron who is trying to concentrate on her writing. I want to tell her that there is a beautiful library right across the street where silence is golden. But I say nothing. She has won. They all have won. Up and down State Street, Monroe Street, any street in any town, you have to stay quiet. Life demands it.





Me, I have work too now, finally. The exams are starting to trickle in. I go to campus to pick them up this afternoon (students were still writing this morning) so that I can start the mammoth task of grading, even as most people are thinking jingle thoughts and flooding the malls in search of... something.

They say it will snow tonight. It would be nice to see snow before Ed and I leave next week. Remind me in March that just a few months earlier, I was hoping for snow.

the short of it

The longest day of the year leaves me a tiny bit wistful. Long and beautiful, then, imperceptibly at first, it grows less long. Bummer.

The shortest day of the year is, by contrast, quite wonderful. A turn around! A new trend!


It’s easy to get up at dawn when dawn is at 7:25 a.m. Besides, Isis had been ringing the doorbell of the farmhouse since 6:25, so it is only a question of forcing myself out of bed rather than waking. (Isis has a motion sensor telling us he’s there and waiting to be let in.)

I go outside with my camera. Shortest day of the year. Such a stellar beginning! A delicate snow covers every surface just ever so lightly. It will melt soon, I know that, but for now it’s enchanting!





There was a book I used to read to my kids called Happy Winter – it was a poem of appreciation for the quirky joys a child experiences this season. As if putting on mittens and snowshoes can be pleasurable rather than tediously bothersome. Strolling across the brittle and white dusted land of the farmette, I couldn’t help but think how cool it is to throw on flannels and a jacket and take an early morning spin.





Happy winter indeed.





And with it comes that short day. Though not a dark day: in an uncharacteristic move, Ed suggests a drive through a neighborhood where homes are likely to have lights out for the holidays. We drive slowly, appreciating the technical merits of some displays...










...and the gentle simplicity of others.





Never forget: I am in Wisconsin.






Shortest day... lovely day. Longer day tomorrow.

simply put

I heard myself say today – I have no work that needs to be done. With exams still under way, I have the occasional email and of course, I’m free to worry already about the next semester, but in all honesty, I have this week a lull that is rather remarkable.

And so I awoke very early and tossed for a while, looking for things to worry about and failing in this, I got up to cook.





A leek and mushroom frittata, a buckwheat almond cake with apple compote.


My younger daughter is in town, passing through to see her boyfriend’s family up north and I had myself that wonderful table of young people and old Ed and predictably, it was great fun.






After, once the young people left, Ed and I took a walk. Even writing this seems strange. Ed and I never “take a walk” unless we’re at some distant place that warrants that kind of movement. But it is too cold to bike and too snowless to ski and I thought we’d benefit from the movement.

It had been, on and off, a cloudy day. But in the last hours before sunset, the skies opened up in the way that I always think is so magnificent, here, in the Midwest.







We walked the hour or so to Lake Waubesa, where geese honked and hustled away at the sight of us.












Ed wanted to stay and watch some more, but staying in place without movement can get rather chilly and so we headed home.





...to the setting sun.


These are the beautifully simple days. Tomorrow though, I need to break the habit of betting up a good two hours before the sun is even near rising.

home

Flying into the Midwest. Pretty from above the cloud cover.





Below? Darn. It should have snowed. Christmas doesn’t always deliver the white stuff in Madison but last year it certainly did and it was pretty. At least what I saw of it. Living downtown (as I did then) – you see snow piled at the edge of parking lots and you lose track of what’s fresh and what’s been there for weeks.

No white stuff this December.

Ed waits at the airport, dutifully there in his beat up car. I appreciate the small gestures. Like his wet head, signaling that he thought to take a shower before picking me up.

We have a remotely controlled thermostat in the farmhouse and I had churned it up already in Paris thinking that heat needs to sink in or else the place will feel chilly after ten days of just high enough to keep the plants alive. As we enter, it’s pleasantly warm. I glance at the mouse trap. Empty. I comment on that, but Ed admits that he put it up just a day or so ago. Why? I didn’t want to keep checking for mice while you were gone.

For the first time ever, I am too tired to unpack. I take out the computer, check email, finish posting. It’s midnight by the time I haul myself up the steps of the farmhouse.

And of course, four hours later I wake up thinking it's midday. So much for rest. Return jet lag makes a morning person out of anyone.

I go outside, take stock. There is just the slightest dusting of snow. True, one must remember that winter doesn't officially present itself until Thursday.





For the next hour I confront the damage to the contents of my suitcase. A jar of pine bud syrup from Poland popped open in flight. Imagine sap, seeping into everything...

And still, I would rate the entire trip to Poland and then Paris as remarkably without hassle or shortcoming. And that’s a good thing.

Paris one more time

Well now. Trip done. Flying home. Strike is on at Charles De Gaulle airport (security workers this time), winds are strong across the Atlantic (the wrong way), but I’m heading home. Detroit, then the farmhouse.

But, but, there was this last day in Paris. Sunday. A good, sunny (initially at least) day. One for which I have no agenda. Nothing.

Maybe I should go out of town? No, not the season for it. Stay in the city and walk.

Walk, walk, gently, briskly, walk some more. Where to? I don’t know. Don’t want to go anywhere, don’t want to take the metro, walk just wherever.

So.... to the gardens first? Luxembourg Gardens. Odd how there are long shadows at this time of the year. It’s noon and still there are shadows.





Kids sail boats. Mostly boys. Something about watching the ship set sale that makes boys wistful. Or maybe it’s that they like the act of pushing a boat out and watching it drift.





In the same way that they like kicking a ball around for no good reason.





I walk this way and that. Sunday in this park is enchanting. Special. Familial. All that. But here’s a curious thing about Paris: the central arrondissements (and this would include the Luxembourg Gardens) remain awfully white. It’s not an accident that you haven’t seen a child of a different skin color in my photos. Families of color, immigrant families are enjoying the parks elsewhere, closer to their homes. Which are still on the periphery. Were I to jump onto the metro, which crisscrosses the city every which way, I’d remember that Paris, unlike Warsaw or Krakow, is not homogeneous. But on these short trips to Paris, I just walk. I rarely ride the metro. And so I am reminded that liberte egalite fraternite... is still aspirational.





Walk, walk. It's so completely satisfying. I'm not alone out there either. Here's a whole family. Including a pooch in a pouch.


 


Walking, past stuff. Parisian stuff.


 


Quite obviously Parisian stuff (this in front of the Cafe Deux Magots):





Down to the river now. Where the last of the bouquinistes still hopes for someone who'll be there to buy rather than just photograph.





Okay, I'm crossing the river. I decided. Time for the other gardens – the Tuileries. So much (in my mind) the lesser gardens. Oh, they join famous spaces – the Louvre with the Concorde and eventually the Arc de Triomphe, but they’re walk-through gardens. Not a destination. Not in a neighborhood.





Past a dizzying array of things that go round.





...and round.






I wanted to stay on the right bank for a little bit, but I change my mind. When you have no destination, you can change your mind. Good bye, L'Etoile. Too much traffic to plow through.






I don’t care about where I am anymore. Left bank, right bank, on a bridge, off a bride.



 



One minute I’m on a quiet, nameless street and the next I’m on the Boulevard St Germain and it’s empty in some stretches and crowded in others and it’s all fine, no complaints, I’m just walking.

But maybe I should stop for lunch? Kind of a late lunch, but still, food would be good. I return to Rue du Bac. Weird how I nearly always manage to eat lunch here, just here. This time I go to Le Flores – on the other side of the same block. It’s where I took a mirror shot of Ed and me maybe a year ago. What’s interesting to me is that it remains the best photo of the two of us out there.

I take a photo of myself. For the hell of it.





And I eat a salad with chevre chaud (warm goat cheese, this time on a bed of green beans, endive, lettuce, tomato...) because to me, it’s still one of the more perfect lunches.





I have no interest in shopping this Sunday, but a small little store with little do dads and nick knacks draws me. Inside, I hear American holiday music. I’m not surprised. Most every hip store here has American holiday music. Jazz, pop – we’re good at singing our way to shopping pleasure. French, Polish holiday music is more austere. More about the religious aspects to this holiday. Americans, on the other hand, do Santa Baby well and Santa Baby puts people in the shopping mode much better than Silent Night or Little Town of Bethlehem.

Okay, I buy a small gift or two. And I continue. Up the block, down another. And now the sun is setting. Where to? Where to?

The Parc du Luxembourg. The last minutes before it closes.






In the end, maybe it’s this vast park that keeps me so hell bent on staying in this neighborhood. Sure, Lazineki in Warsaw is a finer park, but this one is just a touch gentler, simpler, more congested, but in a good way. And still, you can always find a quiet spot.










And that’s it for the day, no? I mean, I have to pack up stuff that will be sent through and tossed around by baggage handlers. Ceramics from Poland, an olive oil from Italy, some delicate confection from France. So I pack and that doesn’t take too long but still, we’re set for an early dinner, my friends and I are, so by the time I finish packing and padding things, it’s time to head out. In the rain. When did the clouds come in?

Where do you go for your last meal in Paris? Of a trip?

If you can’t think, don’t want to think, if you just want reliable food and great waiters to watch all evening long – then go to Le Procope. So often I have done just that and indeed, Diane and I have dined here many moons ago, before she even met Ernest. The place has history value (to the French as well -- it brags that it's one of the oldest dining establishments in the city).





A heavy set gentleman sits down at the table next to us. He smiles, I smile back. He’s in a chatty mood. From outside Paris. Never been to Procope, but wants to try it for its historic value. His partner comes in, consults, goes out again. He has parking issues. It’s all a trivial chit chat, but somehow it seems meaningful. As if we all may have been friends – something about the chemistry felt good, even as we  know that in two minutes exactly we’ll get up and go and no one will remember this moment ever again.





How was the food? As I said, reliably good – terrine of duck, some fish I never heard of, a huge crème brulee. And the waiters are sublime and so the evening ends and the trip ends too, except I can’t quite let it go yet. I turn away from the hotel and head toward the 5th, the university arrondissement. It’s raining and I suppose I get wet even as I don’t much remember or care. I don’t have my umbrella, but it’s all good, all fine, Paris is Paris, wet or dry.









And then I’m done.

I’m alone the next morning. My friends took off for the airport early and above ground. I want to do things in my usual way – take the RER train, crowded at rush hour, walking the steep steps down, carrying too many bags, yes, that train. But first, a croissant, a look up at the Odeon Place that I pass every single time coming and going, a nod to the Gardens, and that’s it.



So long Paris. When work gets tough, I think of you.

Paris on hold

As always, on crossing the ocean days, I can only do the shortest of posts. One to mark the passage of time, with a single photo from the day, chosen almost randomly, put up as a bookmark: here is a slice of a day. The rest of the pie will follow much later, when I finally return home.

Here it is – the holding photo. From a Sunday in the park (Jardin Luxembourg).