Monday

And now it's Monday again! For so many kids, it's the beginning of the last week of school this year. The final week before winter break. The beginning of the coast 'til Christmas.

I, too, live by a school schedule. Snwodrop's school schedule. And Primrose's, though at a distance. And soon, Sparrow's too. In other words, my grandkids set my calendar for me.

Were I to look outside, I'd notice a day that is lovelier than what a typical December day should have to offer. Sunshine again. A pleasant winter cool air. A prettiness to savor!





But, I'm still limping along and so I can't really run with wild abandon. (These days, I rarely run with wild abandon, but knowing that I can't even if I wanted to is maddening.)

Let's focus on what I can do. I can greet Sparrow as he comes this morning for his Monday visit!






Sweet happy boy!


 



So patient as I sit down to breakfast with Ed, even though I know he himself should be eating..






It's a morning of the usuals -- play, eat, nap, more play.





His lives still by such a simple schedule! Monday before winter break? What's that? Next year, little one. Next year you too will be a school boy!


In the afternoon, Snowdrop is here. I no longer even try to suggest a game or an activity. She knows what she wants to do and I let her set the agenda.






First, there is the table of work. Designing coins.






She ropes Ed into it as well. His coins have scary faces on them. Ah well: it's tough to accumulate good looking money.






And then she creates her vision of perfection: a country of pink (visited by a blue flamingo). This is where splendid things happen, where pink fills your senses, where life proceeds without mishaps or intrusions by, say green invaders.





We spend a long time imagining what it would be like to live in this rosy world.

Children. They tread lightly, leave a small footprint, accept their own small position in a household, maintaining humility. They don't regard themselves to be better than the animals they admire, and even at their most selfish moment, they don't demand more than a tiny piece of the world's bounty. Being in their company serves as a reminder that we are not born to pollute, destroy, create havoc. Hope lies in their small but loving little frames.


I take Snowdrop home by way of Clasen's Bakery. She is so in love with chocolate covered gingerbread cookies that I need to restock now, before they fly off the shelves for another year.






Home. Her home. Sparrow is napping, the tree lights twinkle.






And outside, the stars are luminous and the air is winter crisp. 

Sunday

Another beautiful day at the farmette! Well, in the entire Midwest I should think. Blue skies, light winds, cool but not cold. A day to do outside work (and there is always outdoor work to be done)!

Ah well. Not for me. I make do with a morning stroll, to take care of Stop Sign (who had us worried by not showing up for a couple of days)...


 



... and to feed the squabbling, raucous cheepers. The nice weather has given them a burst of assertive energy. When they see me at the door, they trip over each other trying to get to me (so that they can then trip me up as we make our way to the barn).






Breakfast. Ed, hurry up, the oatmeal is getting cold.






I do take a break from putting my feet up (or, just one foot!) and Ed and I do a pretty good job of house cleaning. The holidays are next week. I have to get things in order!

And then I sit back and watch the sun move from one side of the farmhouse to the other. When its rays filter in through the west windows, I am up again, fixing dinner for the young family. Important routines and traditions are not to be neglected!

(A pause to throw some treats for the hens. Tomato, shaking herself free of dust and debris, looking like a canvas of loveliness!)






(The whole lot of them!)





Dinner!

(The ever cheerful Sparrow, with his parents.)






Time to eat! One of my Polish friends said that there always appears to be corn at the table. He's right!













After dinner hot chocolate: Snowdrop toasts mommy.





Cbeers, mommy! 
Cheers, Snowdrop
Don't forget your marshmallow -- says the new hot cocoa expert.
I wont.

Saturday

Today was to be the day when I zip ahead with life! So much to do and a beautiful, sunny day, with nothing scheduled for it! Let's move quickly with holiday preparations! With maybe a hike squeezed in there? I would love that!

Except that when I wake up, my knee is twice its regular size and I know that I better cool my jets or the damage I did to it last week will not be undone anytime soon.

I hobble downstairs and give a great big sigh at all that beautiful winter sunshine (I step out to feed the cheepers...












 -- that's all the vitamin D I'll get out of this day!)...






... and then I come back inside to fix breakfast.





Now what? Every sensible person will tell you that you need to raise that leg and keep it in a resting position. Well that's a bummer. What kind of holiday chores can you do with a raised leg?

Menu planning! I do a lot of menu planning, pestering my equally busy daughters about details, just because people who spend their day on a couch with an elevated leg often get to be great pests to anyone and everyone.

I think of ways to wrap presents. I can do that! Sort of kind of.

The day continues to be so lovely outside! Ed gets ready to go out for a hike on his own. I suppose one has to pay a price for indulging in excess, even if that excess (sauntering up and down the streets of Paris from sunrise to sunset) seemed mighty fine to me at the time.

Hey, here's an idea! Why don't I watch the Polish movie a friend in Warsaw gave me? It's called Cold War and it is by the same director who brought us the Oscar winning Ida. I'm extremely interested, as it is set during Poland's post war years -- meaning pretty much the years of my childhood. How people depict that period in Poland's history is, to me, endlessly fascinating (and it is the topic of my Great Writing Project, which is gathering cobwebs somewhere in the clouds of the internet).

Except that a movie made in Europe cannot be viewed on your American TV screen. Did you know that? Apparently my friend didn't and I hadn't remembered it either. Ed to the rescue: his computer can accommodate it. He's off hiking, I watch the movie on his little screen.

And I have to say, when it's over, I walk away (I speak figuratively here) rather dissatisfied. I cannot place it on a continuum of good or bad. It's obviously artistically very very good (as was Ida). But as I summarize it for Ed afterwards, I think -- wow, strip it of its art and it becomes a rather underdeveloped love story set in the politicized everyday life of Communist Poland. I'm not one who insists on a good story line. Beautiful films can stand on their own artistic merits. But this film does have a story and I suppose I felt it to be flat. Two lost souls who could not find a place on earth to live out their passion for each other. Perhaps you'd say that the Poland of the time led to their ruin. Or you could say that their lives were ruined from the minute they laid eyes on each other. Ah, but the beautiful visuals, and the Polish music of the time -- enough to send shivers down a Pole's spine! Oj oj oj!

Evening. I put aside my unfinished menus, the cook books, the wrapping paper. I note that the house is not cleaned yet (no way can I move around in the way that I would need to move around to get it ready for the holiday visits) and that the laundry basket is full of clothes that need a wash (no way can I navigate those steps to the basement today).

Ah well. The thing about lists of tasks and chores -- they're just an ideal. The holidays will be beautiful even if some items remain unchecked. No one will notice. Shhh, Ocean readers! Don't you tell.

Friday

Falling back into old routines is so easy! Too easy, in fact. I wish something within me would resist: I'm back from a trip, let me innovate, try a new approach. At least a new breakfast cereal! But no. Ed and I drove up to the farmhouse just before midnight, I unpacked, tidied and settled in for a wonderful night in the old farmhouse bed. But not for too long: up early, because, well, it's Friday and I must shop and of course, eat a good breakfast with a chatty Ed...






A Friday is a Friday is a Friday, after all.

The good weather traveled back with me and we have sunshine and just above freezing temps -- much like I had in Paris! But of course, the landscape here is now a subdued brown, tucked in for the season, resting, resting, until spring.

(The three youngest girls, enjoying the sunshine.)






In the afternoon, I am excited to be picking up Snowdrop again.






We play! Oh, do we play! Restaurant and the angry neighbors continue to be favorites.






In our game, the idea of "hot chocolate on a cold winter's day" comes up. Would you like to try some real hot chocolate? From Angelina's over on the other side of the ocean? In her eagerness, she climbs onto the top of the counter. And stirs. And sips ecstatically.






Evening, One more moment of farmette play over by the great willow, the I take her home.











Sparrow is just waking up from his nap...






"There, I'm awake!!"






A little more play...






... and it's time for me to go home. Home, where the moon shines and the air is sparkly crisp.

from Paris to the farmette

This trip belongs to the ones with countless lucky breaks. Apart from the delayed suitcase, nothing went awry. Connections have all been smooth, pleasant in fact. The weather? Magnificent, especially now, in these last days in France.

True, this morning was chilly for Parisians. They start looping their scarves twice around when the temperature dips to the freezing point and last night it did indeed dip. I was up early enough to feel it.

It's rare that I can get the late afternoon flight back to the U.S. -- the cheaper fares go quickly. But this time I did get it, leaving me with a whole extra morning in Paris. I wasn't going to waste it sleeping.

I want to take several little walks -- the first, to a bakery. Snowdrop has a teacher who is from Paris and when she learned that I was going for a visit to her beloved city, she told me that I should definitely pop into the Bruno Solques boulangerie (bread and pastry shop). She actually passed on many tips and I did with them what we all do when people give good advice -- we mean to follow it, but somehow the days run away with us and so we don't. At least I'm on it this morning! Even before breakfast!

The bakery is in the neighborhood of the university, so not too far from my hotel, but I take little detours, including to the park.  I've spent almost no time in the Luxembourg Gardens. This morning, I am in love with its emptiness: there is only the occasional hurrying person, cutting through to get to work, or school.






I look at this young girl and wonder about her day. Does she have a sweetie? A best friend maybe? Is she enjoying the quiet of this morning as much as I am? Does she love her city, or does she take it for granted, in the way that most of us take our home towns for granted?






(Early morning frost: it doesn't last and the flowers seem quite undisturbed by it.)






The sun is barely up, but that says nothing about the earliness of the hour. A Paris sunrise today is at 8:37. (Warsaw's sunrise is a whole hour earlier, but the sun sets there at 3:23, where as in Paris, you get to see it until 4:53.)

Oh, how pretty are the tones of a winter morning! Hi, Eiffel Tower!






Here's Bruno Solques, the bakery. The teacher had told me it's quirky. I didn't quite understand how a bakery could be quirky.





I understood once I entered the small space. First of all, Bruno presides. He stalls me for a minute as he rushes to the back, where I see him move something around in the oven, releasing big clouds of steam as he opens the huge door. The smell is so yeasty and good that it is hard to even imagine that I will soon have to leave this piece of heaven.






Bruno is a character, but the real funkiness comes through in the decor. The breads, too, are an unusual assortment of crusty loaves and yeasty buns, but what makes you look twice is the huge ceramic animal staring at you from behind the breads and sweet rolls. Giraffes, pigs, unicorns -- you'll find them at Bruno's.





I ask if the brioche buns with chocolate would stay fresh until tomorrow. But of course!! Bruno speaks with exclamation marks. I want to take some back for the teacher who rhapsodized about them back in Madison. And Snowdrop. And Ed.
How many do you want?
I ask for ten, he throws in at least 12 or 13. They come in all kinds of shapes -- some larger than others and they are loaded with the chocolate you'll typically use for your pain au chocolat.

For the rest of the day, my carry-on bag smells of fresh brioche bread.

I walk back through the park. Why not -- it's so very lovely!






I drop off the rolls at the hotel and make my way to Les Editeurs for a quick breakfast.






(Before me, a woman enters with her pooch poking out from her purse.)






The place is crowded yet again. A half a dozen women my age cluster around several tables, talking with great animation. There are, too, the usual serious looking men, the couples, the singles reading the paper, and then there is this large group of students.






Still, you can always find an empty table. I settle in for my one croissant and coffee. If I'm going to be sitting in an airplane for so many hours, I don't need to load up on French baked goods.





And after, I do something that is becoming more and more rare for me -- I walk over to the Right Bank.

(Still on the Left, I am just in love with the sunshine! Such pretty shadows it casts on  this row of houses!)






Over the bridge I go.






The Paris on the other side of the river is like a whole 'nother city to me. It feels crazy loud. Wide boulevards and large squares would be lovely if only you'd remove all the cars, trucks and buses. Commercially, there seem to be extremes: there are the souvenir shops with a million items screaming love for Paris and there are the expensive stores where you'll see no price tag on any item because the people who shop here just don't care how much it costs. The parks are fine and the area around the Louvre Museum is quite pretty...






(And relatively peaceful)






(The ferris wheel is just at the eastern corner of the Tuileries Garden...)





And to be fair, if you walk away from this central hub and meander into the Marais to the east or the tony 16th Arrondissement to the west, or the funky cool 10th to the north -- you're in for a pleasant surprise. But just across the river, the traffic swirls and honks and leaves you dizzy and I am always happy to come back to the relative quiet and calm of the neighborhoods on the Left.






(Narrow streets,  church towers, old lamps...)





And now it's almost noon and I have to hurry.

I have to say, my two bags are unpleasantly full and heavy. This is the problem with traveling before Christmas! Too, the walk to the commuter train, though not too long, is mostly uphill. And there are stairs. The sack with pastries, cakes and breads slips and slides, the duffel bag refuses to stay on my shoulder, the little suitcase has a zipper that is just barely hanging in there. Uff!

And still, we all make it to Detroit just fine.

And finally, to Madison. And, with Ed -- back to the farmette. Lovely old home, quiet and warm. It's always so very good to return to it.