Thursday

Well, the bugs are everywhere. The farmette is still tolerable (those garlic and peppermint mists do have an impact), but we're getting our small share too. It's just a reminder that summer has its tricky sides. Or, to put it more broadly -- every season brings with it its own challenges.

Of course, Autumnal Exquinox is this Saturday. We should be moving on to "crisp" and "brilliant" and "colorful." We're not doing that. We are a little stuck in the inbetween: the worst of summer stays on and the glory of Fall hasn't quite arrived.

In the early morning, I step outside to a hoard of hungry girls. Okay, okay, okay! Calm down! I'll get you your grub!






They're never satisfied though. When Stop Sign comes calling for his cat chow, they insist on sharing. Audacious chickens! A cat can swipe your silly noses in a flash!
But he doesn't do that. The truth is, he's a little intimidated by them.






In the garden, I find the occasional day lily. I want to tell them -- you don't have to perform now. Get some rest and come back full of blooming energy next summer!






Breakfast. We're supposed to have a bubble of very warm air, but curiously, it doesn't come until late afternoon and it leaves soon after, in the late evening. The morning is cool. We eat indoors.






Afterwards, we have some work to do at my Mom's place. She has been amazingly independent, especially the week I was away, but she is stuck on some things that we can help move along and so we do that today.






And of course, in the afternoon, there is Snowdrop.





She hasn't had a solid period of play at the farmhouse in a while and so she gets right to it. I watch, adding mostly irrelevant comments to her story. I'm impressed with her dexterity! How can a three year old's hand have the patience to arrange these tiny Lego bits and pieces?






Very quickly she ropes Ed into her games. Here, she tells him she is running a machine shop. She has "constructed" three machines that will make "so many things!"





She can keep going for a long time like this, adding props, adjusting her story.

Toward evening, her parents and Sparrow come to pick her up. Oh, it's been a while since I've seen the little guy! Snowdrop, too, is always very happy to have him near her. Can I hold him standing up? -- she asks. I don't think so, little one. Not yet.






He is a smiling, laughing child. But at 3.5 months, well, he's just working on sitting up!






(Hey, I'm no slouch!)






Then someone suggests that we just pick up a pizza and make a farmhouse supper of it.
You mean we can have a pizza party? At the farmhouse? Tonight? Snowdrop is overjoyed.





We linger (with Sparrow) on the porch. It's suddenly very very warm outside. As if summer decided it wasn't ready to hightail it out of here yet. Snowdrop follows Ed inside and we can hear her dealing with her troublesome babies. She comes back to the porch then and tells us to please talk in whispers as we're keeping her kids up.





Ed goes out to put the cheepers away. Can I come? Can I come??
Of course. 
The two of them set out toward the barn.
So why does she love this nighttime routine? What does she do when you put each of the hens in the coop? 
Oh, she just likes to watch. Sometimes she'll pet them a little. Or play with the flashlight. On the walk back, she'll take a raspberry leaf and put it over the light to make it green. Or she'll ask to pick a purple aster.





Farmette stuff. Lovely evening serenade to the end of summer.

Wednesday at home

My, but it's quiet here! Shockingly so. I think it's because we had a summer of (construction) noise and my week away was so concentrated on cities. Today -- a gray and somewhat serious looking day -- everything is very very still.

I never have much of a jet lag on the return: sure, I wake up early and get sleepy early. Sort of like getting ten years older in a handful of days!  As I walk the farmette land at dawn (somewhere there, behind the cloud cover), I take in what is still blooming.






But you can't coax many photos out of me today. The garden looks pretty grim right now. It's not for an absence of color. The golden yellow helianthus sunflowers and blackeyed susans, the persistent pink cosmos, the purple of the little asters -- they look so seasonally appropriate! Lovely, in fact.


 


Still, most of the summer flowers in the beds are over and done with. I should take a good pair of sheers to them. Maybe this weekend. Not today.

As always, Ed had slipped into his guy habits in my absence (though these days, he knows he can buy himself at least a few appreciative smiles from me by merely turning on his robotic vacuum cleaner just before I arrive). I don't mind. It's his space too after all and if he can have a vacation from my oversight and tidying tendencies every now and then, I'm sure we're both the better for it.

But it does mean that "tidying" is on the top of my list for the next day or two. (Ed, did you notice that there is a dead mouse at the bottom of the stairs to the basement? No? Oh, well then. I'm informing you now.)

Breakfast, with whatever sad looking fruits he left for me, for himself...





Grocery shopping is also a must immediately after I return!


In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. The girl had been sick while I was away and so I am especially happy to see her bouncy and chipper once again. Initially, she and I play upstairs. Ed is busy with a work issue and his unavailability throws her off a bit. But not for long. When he is finally free, she is thrilled.





Snowdrop is, as ever, full of stories. If I had to use just one word to best describe Snowdrop right now, it would have to be imaginative! She is unbelievably imaginative.

"Irrepressible" is good too. The stories are always bubbling over.

Wednesday is storybook ballet class day. She has learnt in school not to just speak out when she wants to say something. She is not shy about jutting her hand up to be heard.






(But she is also a very good listener.)






Trying out a dance for today's story.... (The book was about Raggedy Ann and Andy.)






Exploding with glee...






Afterwards, her mom joins us for a snack across the street at Pasqual's. Here, Snowdrop has to wait for my daughter and me to catch up a bit.






But not for long. She wants to contribute too.






And she does.


 



And so I'm home. That place that I always think about when I'm away. With good reason. The heart's here. It's that simple.

the end of the trip

Solo travel is terrific if you like to have conversations with yourself. Most of these are fun. Some are a little bossy: Nina, you really should not order two bread products if you can only eat one! I mean, how hoggish!

As I make my way for a Monday morning breakfast at Les Editeurs, a cafe restaurant just two minutes from my hotel, I once again face the Paris breakfast dilemma. At home, it's so simple! I eat the same thing. Ed laughs, you may laugh, but I am content. But Paris poses a problem. Should I shop around? When I do, the croissants are often not as good. Okay, assume les Editeurs then. Order their "Le Petite" (the little one), and they give you two croissant type products OR a baguette with butter and jam. Along with a grand creme (big milky coffee) and a freshly squeezed juice, it's a good deal at just under 10 Euro. Except that I don't want two croissant products. I've tried to bargain for substitutions, but they wont budge. Even ordering jam for your croissant leaves them scrambling to figure out if there should be a surcharge. The jam is for the baguette, madame. Order what you want a la carte, and you're paying way more than 10 Euro.

Do you see why Paris is such a total retreat for me? I mean, my anxiety is about how I should order breakfast at Les Editeurs!  Life should always be so simple and trouble free! At home, I can never just fret about bread product. If I can't be helping my daughters with their kids, I'll be worrying about stalled farmette projects. Or, Ed and I will be watching news analysis and fretting about where this planet is heading and what we should do about it. Or, I'll want to finish my Great Writing Project.  But in Paris, I worry about croissants.

On this particular morning, I order Le Petite and ask them to please just bring me one croissant. Yes, I know I am entitled to two. Just one please. This is such an unusual twist that it brings the proprietor to my table. Madame, you should at least get a half a slice of baguette! I insist! With jam!

How I love Les Editeurs...






So what does one do with only one full day in Paris? Me, I just walk the neighborhoods around me. That's it. I note that there is an exhibition at the Musee du Luxembourg and it sounds kind of interesting, but I see it's in place until January. I will be back in Paris in December with TWO full days in the city. I'll catch it then. Today, I walk.






Crossing the St Sulpice square, with that imposing church that looked old and grimy until they cleaned it up last year, I see that an art class in in progress. University students. I watch them draw.






Because it is a school day, I bump into a lot of young people all day long. My path takes me past an elementary school at lunchtime. Some kids go home. I watch this pick up, marveling how no one, absolutely no one is picked up by car. Favored mode of locomotion? Feet, followed closely by scooter.






And inevitably I cut into a block where there is a favorite store with kids clothes. These days I always go there. It's still lunch time. There is a high school just around the corner and so I see multitudes of students coming and going. Where to? Can you guess?






Some have packed lunches, some pick up baguette sandwiches at the bakeries in this block. Equipped with food, the young people, scores of them, head to the Luxembourg Gardens.






They disperse and spread out. On benches and chairs pulled together in groups. On the grass, where the sign says: yes, you can sit down here! Some have their smart phones out, but most do not. They just talk. Snowdrop, who loves to talk would fit right in.





I leave the park, wanting to leave my parcels at my hotel before the next leg of my grande promenade. I know I want lunch. You can't go all day on a croissant and a piece of bread. I do what I rarely do these days -- I stop at a place on an impulse. It's the cafe that spills out onto the street right by the Odeon Theater (so just outside my hotel). It's always full of French people. I suppose it's a little tucked away from a beaten path so tourists rarely find it. It's very charming in a Parisian kind of way, with small wobbly tables on a cobbled square, surrounded by parked motorcycles. There's not a menu in sight. Tables, chairs, people. Not too many waiters, so be prepared to be French and wait without complaining. Still, on this warm, beautiful day I'm thinking it could not get more perfect.







As always, someone will talk to me. When you're on your own, you look approachable. A woman at another table looks at my plate and asks me how I find the cod on this day. Another one comments on my shopping bags. They have kid store markings. She congratulates me on a morning well spent.






(If you think I'm a bit excessive with the selfies in Paris, well, there's a reason. I am drawn to people photojournalism, even as this is getting to be more difficult in France, as the rules here are much different -- stricter -- than, say, back home. True, no one pays attention to the rules (if they even read them) and cameras click at the rate of a metronome on overdrive, but still. And so, although I love watching people, I really do try to be modest in the number of people photos I take. Were it not for the laws, you'd be looking at gazillion photos of Parisians. Instead, you get more of me -- the filler person, just to give that people perspective. I apologize.)


In the evening, I go to Semilla. You, who are the loyal Ocean readers may remember that on my last night in Paris these days I always go to Semilla. There will come a day when this will change, but for now, it is my "goodbye Paris" place. And the staff is always energetic and the food is always fantastic. (Mirabelles are plums that are ever so common now in Europe. I rarely see them in the US. They appear on this tart, along with cremes and flavors I can't possibly remember now.)






Yes, the moon shines brightly over Paris on this night. (The block of my hotel...)





And now it is Tuesday morning. Here's a look out my window away from the Odeon Theater. Equally lovely, especially on another pretty day.





I get a tad mixed up with some computer stuff in the morning and when I look at the clock I decide that I should skip breakfast and get to the airport.  In Paris, it's a good idea to give yourself plenty of time. You never know. Still, as I walk to the commuter train station, I am a bit wistful: maybe I should have at least paused at a bar for a shot of espresso and a bite of croissant... Look how lovely that short pause can be!






I walk past the gardens. Next time I see this guy he may well be snow covered!






At 9:30 in the morning, the park is nearly empty. Too early, even for tourists. You'll see the joggers and, too, the people who cut through on their way to work. That's all. A quiet Jardin de Luxembourg -- that's my last glance at Paris.





The commuter train ride to the airport is not uneventful. Half way, the engineer comes onto the loudspeaker and tells us the next stop will be the train's last stop. There is only that statement, in French. There is a lot of commotion and uncertainty, especially among those with suitcases. Now what??? These trains run every ten minutes and they empty out a huge number of people at the airport. Even if you were to send a dozen buses to the train station where all has come to a grinding halt, you could never keep up.

This is why in Paris, you need to give yourself time. Time not to panic. Time to review the possibilities. Time to follow those who seem to know where to go and what to do. (Out of the dozens, possibly hundreds of times I've taken this train, it is only the third time that "an event" has caused the whole system to shut down, so the probabilities remain low of it happening to you, but not nearly as low as you'd like.)

Needless to say, it all somehow worked out. Some people learned that a special train would be leaving from another platform, I followed them there and before too long I was at Charles de Gaulle. Where I had an inferior breakfast. So what. You can't always have that perfect croissant from Les Editerus in life.





The ocean crossing is uneventful if you discount the two violent episodes of turbulence in the middle. This is no longer unusual. Rare is the crossing without at least one such episode. I actually spoke to the Delta captain about it, as we were both taking a break at the same time in the same space. He agreed. I can count on one hand the number of flights I've had in recent years without this kind of turbulence. That real dip we took? I checked and it had nothing to do with the prevailing winds but was the result of an oceanic storm below us. An impressive guy. You're not bothered by any of it, are you? -- I asked. He laughed.

I have heard that our messing with the climate will cause even more such rumbles in the air. Our penance for ruining the planet. Ed would remind me that I am a contributor by going to Europe several times each year. I retort that the average person drives so excessively as to more than make up for my packed-with-passengers flights, and that new technologies are really going to make this issue a thing of the past, and that we have to fly so that airlines will spend the money on such technologies, but he's not convinced. We go back and forth on this a lot.

And speaking of Ed, guess who is at the airport in the evening, waiting to take me home...

Tomorrow, tired from travel but refreshed from the trip I return to my routines.

Paris in sunshine

I always think of Paris as having gentle weather. Most of the time it's not too hot (though I have suffered through heat waves) and the winters aren't brutal (that monstrous snowstorm in December 2011 stands out as an exception). Rain comes and goes, rarely ruining a day. Most of the time, from a visitor's perspective, the weather stays to the side of your day. You hardly notice it.

But today surely it takes center stage: brilliant, sunny, warm. You look outside and say -- wow!





It should not surprise you then that I want to stay outdoors, even if in a city, "the outdoors" feels very different than, say, the farmette outdoors.

I'm going to push the post of this day, photos included, into tomorrow. I wont be walking the streets of Paris then, I'll be crossing the Atlantic. It's a better time and place to write a fuller Ocean post. In the meanwhile, I'll leave you with just one picture, to show you that it really was a beautiful day!

and back to Paris

In Warsaw, the intensity of my visit never subsides. I whirligig my way through the days.

The older I get, the more complicated is my relationship to my past. It's that way for everyone, I suppose. You have added layers of insight, but, too, you have more questions. Wise is the person, I think, who suddenly understands that what they believed they knew, is pock marked with half truths and missing information. We, most of us, sail through life taking shortcuts. The demands of the day forced us to not to think things through. We had to work, to take care of our loved ones. But as I return to my childhood unencumbered by those external demands now, I realize there's a lot that I know a lot less than I thought I did.

I am up early. I have to put the apartment to rest. Clean, clear, empty, wipe.

And I have to eat breakfast.





My sister comes over so that we can take the more complicated combination of metros and buses to the airport together (it's Sunday; moving around the central city is less straightforward). But looking at my watch, I see that we really do have a little extra time. Gone are the days when I want to sit at the airport for unnecessarily long periods of time prior to the first departure. The Warsaw airport is close and comparatively small. I don't have kids with me. I can push my arrival there until the last hour.

And so my sister and I hop out for a walk. I propose the river coast because I haven't walked there yet on this trip and in the summer, the beautifully improved banks of the Wisla River are a wonderful place for a stroll. By the afternoon, they will be packed with families and people enjoying a gorgeous, sunny day.












Sundays in Warsaw are uniquely special. Portions of the city empty out, communal spaces fill up. I don't know many people who don't enjoy a Sunday walk.

Most stores are closed. Like in France, Poland likes to believe that a day off from commerce and work is important. Commercial interests have flexed that once cardinal rule in France just a tiny bit. But in Poland the trend is different. The very idea of loosening this once ingrained conviction is being reconsidered. There is pressure to keep things closed. The reasons for this may seem noble and maybe they are, or maybe they're not. Depends on whom you ask.

(Here is a shop in Powisle -- the riverside district of Warsaw where I live -- that is indeed closed, but I can see through the window that it is a very modern play on several themes: the Polish-styled butcher shop is transformed into a "Chip-ster" store. A Pole would find this to be a funny play on words. Put a "c" in front of an "h" and you get the Polish "h" sound. So chipster is really hipster, but of course every Pole knows that "chips" means "chips," hence the haha moment.)






I'll end with a photo of Tamka Street. My street cuts through Powisle like a spear, linking the city center with Praga on the other side of the river (Praga hasn't yet the status of, say, a Parisian Left Bank). But it doesn't do damage to the heart of Powisle. It is a pretty street despite its arterial significance. Or, as I like to say -- we Varsovians like it!

(Mine is the yellow building with pointy balconies.)






So I am a Varsovian, eh? That's the tricky part. I come here thinking I am just looking back, I leave thinking I am thoroughly of this place.

It's a good way to end my Warsaw visit.

As always, I relish a slow transition to my life back home. Stopping in Paris allows me time to make that needed shift. I am going from everything Polish here, to nothing Polish across the ocean. I like to catch my breath before I let go of it all in order to rejoin the world of my beloveds.


(The commuter train from the airport to the city... You know you're almost there when you pass this sight for one fleeting second. I always tell myself: I should take a picture, but it really is there for just one second. This time I was ready for it.)






In Paris I go straight to the Jardin du Luxembourg. Suitcase and all. It's a warm and sunny September day in the city. Everyone is back from vacation, everyone is in the park. Everyone.


























Familiar blocks to the Hotel Baume...






In the elevator, going up to my room. A little plate of nuts and dates awaits me. They used to leave me a half bottle of red wine in appreciation for my loyalty, but I told them it's no use -- I rarely drink red wine. So now I get dried apricots and nuts.

Such familiar surroundings! In travel, I like exploring a new town or village. In Paris, I want the familiar.






An early evening walk... Pausing at Mulot's pastry shop, thinking about which cake I would buy if I lived here and needed one for a dinner party...






And all the while thinking of my grandkids back home. One of them is on a weekend trip away from home, another is sick in bed. Life moves forward whether you're there or across the ocean.






I eat a buckwheat crepe for dinner at the Breizh Cafe around the corner. Familiar, comforting. Lovely to eat outside. Lovely to have been in Warsaw. Lovely to be in Paris. Lovely to be going home on Tuesday.