The good life

 Check my parents' new house in Cap d'Agde, southern France, a block from the Mediterranean sea.  My mom has been cooking fabulous meals every day.

 We've been gorging on fresh fruit, veggies and cheeses from the local market,  taking looooong walks on the beach every day and even looooooonger naps before sitting down to eat some more.

Suddenly life has been reduced to who will pick the best seashell on the beach (me), who will win the next game of Parchese (Daniel) and who will eat the most blue cheese (tied between Stan and Emilio).

We hang the laundry to dry in the backyard.  We nap with the windows open.  We make our seashells shine with a dab of clear nail polish.  Once in a while, we get in the car to visit one of the medieval towns: Carcassone, forty miles to the west, Pezenas and Roquebrun where we bathed in the river.

We get internet connection at the local library.

Here is a glimpse of the French kitchen.

And here is to all of you, our hard-working friends and family back home!  We'll be back in due time. 

A tres bientot!

Off

 Two million things to do before leaving for France.  And what if it gets cold in Paris?  Or rainy?   Will my beloved agree to walk everywhere?  Will he adapt to bathing without a shower curtain? 

Was I supposed to have warned him about the co-ed bathrooms?  Will I get tired of translating dinner menus for him? 

Will I have time to browse through all the bookstores on the left bank?  Shop for undies at the Galeries Lafayette?  Drink espresso with impunity?

I've got the planes tickets, train tickets and hotel reservations lined up.  My parents have just moved into their new house on the Mediterranean.

- 'Your room looks fabulous,' my mom said.  'New bed, new sheets.  And I just bought a mirror and dresser.'

- 'And the weather?'

- 'It's perfect.'

So why am I grouchy?

Because I am a woman of habit and a homebody.  I like to sleep in my own bed and drink from the same cup every morning.  I need to be tossed out of the nest to fly.  Left to my own devices, I will remain within the safe triangle of home, work and the local grocery store.  Check my car for proof:  88,000 miles in 9 years.  My tires have practically grown roots.

I will be fine, not to worry.  I'll start by making a new nest on the plane with pillows and a couple of Air France blankets.  I am sure I'll find a nook to anchor myself at a Paris cafe.  I'll put my name on a lawn chair under my mom's plum trees.  From there, I'll survey the situation and gently, gently, uproot myself to the next destination.

The amazing travel agent

 I was looking through the map of France in preparation for our summer trip when I happened upong the Viaduct of Gabarit in the Cantal region.  I thought of my mother. 

She is the explorer among us, the one who drags us out of the family lair to go see the procession of the saintly blood in Bruge, the JungFrau in Switzerland, the pyramids of Egypt, the prehistoric grottos of Lascaux, the swamps of Camargues, every cathedral on the map, every chateau in the Loire Valley, and the Viaduct of Gabarit.  Twice.

It takes a blend of extraordinary curiosity and faith in human ingenuity to want to travel several hours to see a bridge.  To this day, I cannot fully understand what possessed my mom to declare we should spend the day travelling across the Cantal mountains to see it.  Or why we had to do it all over again the following year.  She was the family travel agent.  We did not argue with her.

I remember how the four of us and the family dog piled in the blue Ford Station wagon with enough snacks to sustain us through the trip.  My mother would have read to us from whatever guidebook she'd checked from the library, and must have inserted a surprise stops at a prehistoric monolith or a romanesque church.  We stopped by the side of the road and took our picture with the Viaduct as background.  There must have been a small lecture on the art of bridge suspension.

This upcoming trip will be about medieval history.

- 'Stan wants to visit the sites of the Cathars," I told my mom during our weekly phone conversation.

- 'They're not far from here, between Narbonnes and Carcassone.  That's a lovely region.'

- 'He wants to see Montsegur.'

- 'And Puylaurens, Foix, Lastours.  We can do the whole thing. He should see Carcassone too.  And we should show him Pezenas too.'

I could tell she was already working on our itinerary.  I'm just praying we won't have to stop for bridges.

The big hereafter

 Motherhood has been unraveling faster than I can hold on to. 

Suddenly I have time for Yoga classes, pedicures and all the foreign movies I can watch.  No one seems to care what's for dinner anymore.  No one comes home for dinner anyway, unless it is by appointment and in between urgent text messages. 

I should be happy with my newfound freedom.  I should be reveling in long quiet evenings of literature and bubble baths.  The tub of chocolate pudding is all mine now. I don't have to curse whoever put the empty milk carton back into the refrigerator.  There's hardly a sock doughnut to be found under the living room couch.

I should be having dinner with friends and planning a return to graduate school or a trip to India or at least Seattle.  I should hop into my Honda and spend the weekend in Austin with Annette.  I should buy a better car, build a studio, drink wine with dinner, live a little.

Instead, I find myself going home to a string of frozen dinners and aimless chores.  I used to be important in this house.  I used to be Grand Command Central, Goddess of Family Dinners and Uber Organizer of All Things. 

What happened?   

Will someone ever need me again to soothe a fever in the middle of the night?  Or will the future be all cash, tuition payments and a phone call on mother's day?  Am I too old a mother-dog to learn a new trick?  Can I truly reinvent myself as everybody expects me to, and pronto? 

I have so much less energy than I had twenty years ago.  No script. 

What am I supposed to do of this big hereafter?

La-zy

Don't ask me for any wit.  I am too lazy to write this week. 

Too lazy to post a picture.

Too lazy to wax my legs.

Too lazy to fold last week's laundry, throw the empty plastic bottles in the recycling bin, bring the chairs back under the porch, answer the phone, water the plants, empty the refrigerator.

I will live with the smells.  I'll dig for polyester shirts.  I'll wear pants.

I'll microwave dinner.

I'll eat breakfast in bed, sleep in the crumbs.

I need a break, a vacation, a breather, a cat-nap, a snow day.  Yes,a snow day, in Houston in May. 

Is it too much to ask?