Thoughts provoked by an old house in need of renovation, its garden, a marriage lived within its walls, and of a retired Thoroughbred race horse named Fibs and Flannel.
I am guilty. Okay. I stopped following the news reporting back home 18/7 when the election was won, and certainly once the new president was installed in office.
Here I am, writing about frogs and flowers, the trials of growing up and familiy, and in the United States, we're debating the pros and cons of torture as acceptable US military and intelligence practice.
No, wait. You're out of touch. This isn't a discussion over here, regardless of whether Europeans are just pansies because they prefer peace-keeping to invasion and regime changing. They've good reason. They noticed in all the wars fought because of the maps drawn at the end of World War II that it doesn't work. They lost them, and so did we, and no one particularly felt like escalating to the scale of WWII to win any of them.
Do you think the US military and its soldiers would have been revered after the end of World War II had it come out that they practiced waterboarding rather than placing enemy soldiers captured in military prisons and treating them according to the Geneva Conventions and proceeding with the Nuremburg trials?
Is this what you want your sons and daughters doing to other peoples'? Oh, it's okay. I forgot. They are the bad guys. We're the good guys. It's okay for the good guys to do really inhumane things to bad guys because they are -- the bad ones. Guess what? That's what they think of you, and who's to say they aren't right and you're wrong? Maybe they're just badly informed.
What kind of a world do you want to live in? One where we live by the principles we preach, or one in which we get to behave like those we fight, while justifying it because they don't live by our principles?
US politics resembles professional wrestling more than anything else. Don't teach history in school, and look what happens: we get to live it over and over again.
The election of Obama to the presidency in a landslide sent a reassuring signal to the world about an US out of control. The problem with the right being perfectly deaf is the time wasted and the fears whipped up among the stupidest among us, and the image we continue to broadcast to the world.
Wait, maybe it was never any different. I feel better. ....
Why do you suppose it is that toads are a lot more approachable than frogs? All I have to do is walk out the door of the house or come within 5 meters of the pool and I hear "plop, plop" and see the wake of the frogs fleeing my presence, even if I leave the net behind.
The day before yesterday, I went down and frogged two adults from the water and leaves on the pool cover and put them in the basin. I could still hear at least one more in the pool, but judging from past years, there were more. Last evening, Audouin came home and said, "So, and if we removed the pool cover?"
"It's raining."
"I know. We can put put on rain gear." He grinned like it was going to be really fun.
"It's raining really hard," I looked out the window. He had a point, and I did want to get the pool open before we have too many more warm days. It might even be fun to put on our Wellies and rain jackets and brave the elements. "Okay. Let me get my stuff."
He was already outdoors under the rain, trying to balance the big plastic container I had gotten in Brittany for the frogs on top of the already full trash can, placed under the gutters, where the workers had removed the downspout that leads to the town water system, to catch the water that flows from the roofs. He was hoping to get it to overflow toward the yard, and not the ground at the base of the house. We use a segment of garden hose to drain the water from the containers by pressure to the second terrace. I don't know why, but my second favorite look on him -- after his "blouse blanche", surgical pyjamas and purple clogs (his size happens to be purple) -- is Wellies and a rain jacket. I got my blue child's net that I bought in Portsall a couple of weeks ago and followed him down the stairs.
I netted two baby frogs.
I could still hear at least two more adults, who are experts at escaping me. I'll get them eventually, when they aren't looking.
This guy, on the other hand, I found the first time Sunday afternoon. He was hanging out in the damp grass under the pile of wood I cut from the pruning of the linden trees. It was time to move it closer to my burning pile so I could mow that spot, too. I placed him in the lavender bed, and this afternoon, returning from a failed frogging expedition at the pool by way of the gazebo terrace, I saw Baccarat get all excited while I stopped to admire the Judas tree's blooms.
"Baccarat, sh!" Something jumped at my feet and Baccarat jumped and landed right on me. "Bacs, move." I looked closer where she had turned her attention, a big front paw and her snout trying to stop -- a toad.
"Bacs, ça souffit maintenant. Vas-t-en." I managed to shoo her 10 centimeters further back and leaned down to scoop up the toad. We looked at each other. It was exactly the size of the one I had found and put in the lavender beds on Sunday, and just like both Rapide and Baccarat had climbed up into the narrow raised planting bed to try to get closer to the toad, they weren't backing off now, either. Baccarat jumped in front of me like a three-year-old who wants his toy back from your hand. The rose bush nearest where I had placed the toad didn't fare too well from Rapide's girth, as she squeezed past it to get nearer the toad, looking positively ridiculous in the lavender and roses.
I covered him protectively from Baccarat's enthusiasm with my free hand and went looking for the camera, followed by two very excited Labs. It takes so little. By the time I tried to set it down by the Potentilla and the Euphorbia, it was happy in my palm, in no rush to leave. It must have liked my warm palm.
"C'mon, petit crapeaux. Vas y." He sat in the dirt and didn't move.
Sometime later, talking with Eric Aubrun on the phone about the situation with Joaquim and Georges, I walked back down to the second terrace. The sun had come out after a rain shower, and in the middle of a patch of yellowing grass, I saw the toad, soaking up the sun.
Je sens que nous allons devinir de bons amis.
The toad and I, not Eric. He is coming Monday to show us his contract with Joaquim and Georges and leave us a letter attesting that such exists. That should help shut Joaquim up. If that is possible.
For the frog count, there are now in the basin-in-a-fountain:
The little and the medium frog who remained in the black plastic container.
Two adult frogs.
Two more baby frogs.
I think the female goldfish are minding their eggs, soon to become fry. I mostly see the motley, long-tailed, mostly black goldfish since sometime late last week. They had been spending a lot of time in the root bundles of the reeds, and now I hardly see the females. One was so round with eggs that she was waddling.
I got a photo of the tubercules on his gill covers. See? I made it big so you can't miss them, the sure sign of a male goldfish ready to fertilize a female's eggs. He is about to be a founding father to a newly populous fish nation. Audouin's all happy because they might have long, fancy tails like their father.
If, that is, their mothers don't eat them all.
And how about that Arlen Specter?
I kissed him, by the way. Just in case. The toad, of course. Not Specter. Although every Democrat in the United States probably would like to kiss him right now.
Just keep it up, Republicans, and we'll give you all the credit you deserve for turning America progressive. Once we have health care reform signed, we'll all be feeling very generous. ....
Well, I did say, before I erased it, that it reminded me of allium, with its flowers in a umbel aloft a scape, and 'lo, the oldest common name for this plant, back in medieval Europe, before it became associated with pilgrims in the 15th century and was then known as Star of Bethlehem, or Pyrenee's Star of Bethlehem, is Dog's Onion. I like that better than Sleepydick. Or Summer Snowflake, or Starflower.
Not bad for someone as new to all this as I am. A budding horticulturalist, as it were. Ahem. But, I'll confess that I had no idea in my joy of discovery of the lovely flowers in umbels in my planting bed that it is considered an escapee of ornamental gardens and even as "noxious weeds and wetlands invaders". I'm not there yet. I still like them.
Kinder points of view than those of certain states in the US that view them thusly speak of associating them with Hostas and Daylilies, or covering slopes and banks with them for a "blanket of white in April". I should try to dig up the onions to do exactly that, and plant them with my daylilies, or the Hostas I eventually want to put somewhere.
I'm just relieved to have finally identified it so that I can relax and worry about other things, like Joaquim's unsurprising failure to show up today.
Audouin finally let him have it in a message, specifically mentioning taking legal action and letting Joaquim know that he can promise him that he "won't let go of the bone". I see us going to court, although I'd rather see him cave, which is his only other option now because even Audouin sees that compromising with him is out of the question after today. He used his last "get out of jail free" card.
I did some research last night in preparation for today's anticipated meeting, which we set up with him when he called just before last weekend to tell us that he would be back in June, having left in March, and only having worked about two weeks (being very generous with my estimate) since before Christmas. Eric Aubrun, who you might remember if you have been following this since I started writing last March, was the person I thought was the head of the renovation firm (he wasn't and isn't, and is also known as "le crapuleux", or lying scum, by Joaquim), had called to tell me while we were skiing in Chamonix that he is considering suing them for reasons of his own, and -- according to something called an "Extrait Kbis", or papers of incorporation, more or less -- Joaquim is not the head of the company; George is.
Ah, what complicated webs we weave. There is just so much I could say.
You see, I started to suspect that there was a little bit of a sort of artless, sort of artful act that Joaquim and Georges have developed and employ. Being cousins, they have had a lot of time to perfect it, by nature and by design. It's a bit of a Laurel and Hardy thing, with Joaquim in the role of Oliver, the difference being that there are glances that pass between them, moments when you sense the mask slipping as they fall to the temptation to congratulate each other in their play-acting, or to comiserate in their failure to master their metier, and the light in Georges' eye suggests that he is not what he seems -- naive.
This was my read, and then there was what Joaquim said the last time he was here in March. Not specifically this part about drill bits (and if you knew what "bite" means in French, pronounced "beat"... oh la la), but I couldn't resist sharing that story again. No, I mean the part about Georges being naive, which I didn't write for some reason that escapes me.
I still wanted to believe that Georges was what he seemed, as hard as it was becoming to sustain belief in the face of the mounting evidence to the contrary. I think, now, that it must be possible for people to be both at once, and you wonder what is in their heart. I have known too many people like that. The truth is probably closer to what I wrote about Joaquim; he can't imagine that he is not what he wants to be. Tell a lie again and again, and eventually it becomes your truth.
I told Joaquim that day that Eric had been calling me. I wanted to watch his reaction, and I wasn't disappointed.
"Savez ce qu'Eric m'a dit?" I didn't wait long enough for him to reply. "Vous n'êtes pas le gérant de Batrénov. C'est Georges."
"Et tu sais pourquoi il appelle Georges et pas moi?"
"Parce que Georges est le gérant."
"Parce qu'il prend Georges pour le naif." Georges smiled where he was crouched, removing the old concrete sidewalk from the corner of the house so José could apply the chaux for the base of the wall. Ca il y est, I thought, C'est un jeu. A game. An astuce to get what they want from their clients. Good cop, bad cop. The crazy one, the sane one. The clever one, the naive one.
It was Georges who, since the beginning of the work, applied the pressure evenly, continuously to abandon restoring the old windows that weren't too far gone and didn't absolutely have to be replaced -- all but 3. He always calls me by my family name and title, Madame -- sometimes Madame Jacqueline -- and uses the "vous", unlike Joaquim, who has always insisted on calling me by my first name and using the familiar "tu", which I will not employ with him, ever. Madame X, pourquoi vous ne changez pas les fenêtres pour des toutes neuves? Ca serait tellement mieux ici, non?
"Comme je vous l'ai dit, Georges," I smiled each time he endeavored to wear me down and get me to embrace his suggestion, "des nouvelles fenêtres furènt éstimées à deux fois le prix de la restauration des fenêtres existantes, et car nous avons d'autres projets à réaliser avec les moyens limités, nous préférons les restaurer." I could count on him bringing it up again on the downbeat. Not every time. No, more like every three times.
The last time was just before I left to ski. Rather than showing up with José and working, he showed up on his own late in the morning, knocked at the door late and asked to come in. He sat down at the table and accepted the espresso I offered him, which he refuses in the afternoon. He bbrought up the contract, how much money they were losing. This, I remind you, was usually Joaquim's role. He started in on the windows again, and I sat and listened, replying only, as I did each time, that we chose to spend our money elsewhere. He continued to lament the misunderstandings in the scope of work, the costs that were overrunning the estimate for everything, the role Eric had presumed to take in the whole affair. I didn't say a word.
He asked to see the contract. I pulled it out. He sat and looked at it, shaking his head to show me his disbelief.
Unh-hunh. I watched him.
"C'est vraiment n'importe quoi." He let go a sort of exhalation of disgust with a smile suggesting conspiracy, You see it, too, don't you, Madame Jacqueline? He shook his head again and slumped a little further back, "N'importe quoi."
"C'est dommage, mais c'est comme ça," dis-je. He shook his head again.
"Mais, Madame Jacqueline, pourquoi vous ne mettez pas des nouvelles fenêtres?" If Audouin isn't going to let go of the bone now, Georges wasn't about to let go of that one.
"Je vous l'ai dit, Georges. Nous ne pouvons pas. Cet argent doit aller au garage que nous devons construire. Nous n'avons pas le choix."
"Le balcon." He laughed mirthlessley again, looking at the price on the contract. They supposedly paid more than twice the estimated price for it, and we are supposed to believe that Joaquim knew that when he saw the contract Eric had had us sign, but chose to say nothing and to eat it, as a "man of his word", or honor, or something like that. A load of crap. Joaquim brought the final contract, the very same as the estimate Eric had had us sign for the bank, for me to sign. He had said nothing not because he is a man of honor, but because he didn't know any better, or it was a bait and switch. The evidence is all in favor of that since they got started. I said nothing in return.
Eventually, he left.
Eventually, they told me that they were not doing the chaux on the newer, smaller part of the house.
Today, a no show.
Au moins il y a du soleil.
I argued last night against any compromise with them with Audouin, who just wanted what he wants and out of a bad situation. It made my architect self crazy. It's what they want. They have been beating us down for months, and the longer it drags on, the weaker their position. This is not the time to let go, unless there is work we no longer want them to do, and where possible, it should be removed from the contract with no payment from us. At this point, we are entitled.
"On décide ce qu'on veut, sans tenir compte du prix, et on insiste là-dessus, et le reste, on leur le donne."
"Mais on ne peut pas ne pas tenir compte du prix," I argued. It all comes down to money. They want to make as much as they can, so they tell us how much they have lost with no proof and eliminate time and labor to boost their margin of profit. Easy as cake. We have to know how much it is worth and what we are giving them. He argued that we didn't. We give them what we don't care about, and we get what we want.
"Seulement si ce qu'on peut laisser tomber sans peine vaut dans leurs têtes le temps, le matériel et l'argent dans la banque qu'ils veulent. Et pour ce qui reste à faire, je ne pense pas qu'il y en a assez." I was beyond irritated. I was very worked up from frustration and unable to speak in civil tones. "C'est pourquoi il faut que tu appelles ton frère. Tu es médecin. Tu as passé ta vie à travailler dans un hôpital publique; tu ne sais pas la première chose dans la gestion des contrats et des gens comme eux. Il faut que tu apprennes à penser comme un homme d'affaire si tu vas à avoir affaire avec Joaquim et Georges."
"Tout dépend de si on va droit au tribunal ou non. J'essaye de finir cette affaire sans aller au tribunal."
"Si on va au tribunal ou non dépend de si on arrive à les faire marche arrière et décamper de leur position car c'est nous qui avons raison. Qu'on leur donne un rien dont on a rien à foutre, très bien, mais il faut rester sur notre position pour les amener là." Give them a crumb, but not money.
"Ils peuvent fermer la boutique."
"De toute manière, leur boutique ne vaut pas 5 centimes. L'entreprise est capitalisée à seulement 8,000 euros et elle a perdu 50% de sa valeur l'année dernière. Il y a une décision du greffe de leur permettre de continuer leurs activités soi-disant professionnelles malgré cette perte, alors il y a une sorte de preuve de leur part d'une volonté de faire vivre la boutique."
Moreover, beyond the loss of 50% in the company's value last year, there is record of a change in the head of the company and the status of the company, filed September 30 last year and decided on November 14. The very period when Joaquim talked non-stop about his divorce, his wife's betrayal, and his sexual frustration. Sigh.
Half the company's value went to his wife. Georges became the owner to protect Joaquim. That's what I surmise.
Joaquim appears to own other businesses in Orléans, three which are associations of owners of a building and one at the same address as these others, which builds houses and has a higher annual revenue and is in the black, unlike Batrénov, which is looking more and more like a front to distract his ex-wife, while he holds his income elsewhere. Peut-être c'est là où ils disparaissent toutes les 15 jours pour travailler, said Audouin, sounding a lot like Georges looking at the contract.
We decided unceremoniously and acrimoniously to disagree.
Not much happened. I made another fire to burn even more biomass, which came from a second go at the box hedge down the main stair, principally. It was so vastly overgrown when I arrived here. It looked like a box hedge from Animal's garden.
Oh! A frog! Kermit!
So, I am a little obsessed with frogs. Anyway, here's the box hedge as it was when I met it. Do you see the resemblance to Animal's head? No? No, not red. Not the color. The presence of what looks like long, hanging hair. Everywhere.
This photo was taken just about now, 6 years ago. You can see the Wisteria in bloom on the arch over the furry box hedges and stair, and the "white flowering shrub" blooming in the background. I now know that it is a Spirea. What I still don't know is what is the star-shaped, pure-white flower with faint gray stripes to the tips of the pointed petals on the second terrace. Anyone who has an idea, please, please let me know in the form of a comment. There are so many flowering plants that grow from corms, and so many varieties of each.
It looks a lot like a Star Lily (Zigadenus fremontii), but it doesn't have the same markings and the petals are not quite the same, either. Still, the buds of the unopened flowers are similar.
Back to the box hedge.
It has been a work in progress to tame the hedge, each year trimming it further and further back into the wood and letting it leaf out so that it doesn't look like a dry, brown box skeleton all summer, but each summer, it's too big. You have to turn a little bit sideways to make it down the side stairs on the intermediate terraces on either side (from where I took that photo). This is especially embarrassing on the other side, leading to the barbecue and the gazebo, where we often have lunch or dinner with guests in the summer. I get very tense as I imagine them thinking She could at least trim the box, for goodness sake. And she calls herself a gardener! Any self-respecting gardener would be ashamed.
Actually, that would be more like, Elle pourrait au moins tailler le buis dis donc. Et elle s'appelle une jardinière! Elle devrait en avoir honte. N'importe quoi. Je rougie.
Then, it got even worse some three years ago, when the box started to die out at the top of the left side. I had to cut it all out until there was practically nothing left. Guests asked about that, and I imagined them thinking Ah la la, ça il y est. Elle a tué le buis. Je pensais bien qu'elle est nulle et voilà la preuve. It's really terribly hard for me.
It came back, just like I said it would. Just a few chunks missing. A little patience is all that is required.
The St. John's Wort, or millepertuis, is all cut out and ready for the new growth to come in bright green and unblemished by the scorched looking crop left from the previous years. One is encouraged to go at it with the lawn mower at the end of each season. As I previously explained, a lawn mower is not practical in my beds, so the electric hedge trimmer had to do. Which brings me to my little story.
Back when the workers were still coming, they kept using the long black outdoor extension cord and throwing the circuit breaker in the house and garage. That's the same cord I have used for years in the garden, seeing it grow progressively shorter as I regularly cut it with -- the hedge trimmer. I'd have to go get a screw driver, cut the cord at the place where I had partially severed it (throwing the circuit breaker along the way), remove the plug, strip the insulated wires, reattach them to their proper contacts and reaffix the plug. After God only knows how many time the workers blew the electrical panel with it, I tried it the day I decided to mow the upper terrace and -- nothing.
"Audouin? Pourrais-tu voir ça," I handed him the cable. He, like his father before him, loves any project that involves a circuit and power tester thing, pliers, and etcetera. I can see the future. "Il ne semble plus marcher."
He went off in search of his -- power tester thing, sat down and got to work.
"Ca ne marche plus." Thank you. Thank you very much. "La terre est cassée. Il n'y a pas du courant dans la terre."
"Ben. Je vais en acheter une autre." This is a very important and pregnant sort of announcement. Nothing, and I mean nothing gets thrown away because every broken thing has its potential future use, making the purchase of a replacement highly dubious, and so I was very surprised when he said nothing. Made no objection whatsoever. The guy at the hardware store did say he was right, however, to keep the old one, "Mais il a raison votre mari. Ca peut bien servir un jour."
Les hommes. I smiled. You have to be very understanding and nice to them.
I brought home my new 25 meter outdoor electrical cord on a bobin with 4 built-in plugs and my separate additional 25 meters of cord to plug into the bobin for the farther reaches of the garden.
"C'était combien?" asked le mari.
"41 pour celle avec la bobine et 27 pour l'autre," said la femme.
"Ah, c'est cher quand même," exclaimed le mari, adding "mais c'est bien." Ouf, sighed la femme and went to mow the lawn, vowing to herself to be very, very careful with her precious new acquisition.
The day before yesterday, she went and got them out of the garage, plugged in the one on the bobin, reeled it out to nearly the end at the top of the box hedge, plugged in the second and set to work. All went exceedingly well. She finished the first go at the main box hedges and did the smaller ones on each side, as well as shearing the St. John's Wort on the left. Taking a break, she went to see her son to see what he was up to. She knew to go directly to the computer, where he was in a pair of tennis shorts, shirtless, headphones plugged in to watch How I Met Your Mother. Or something.
"Sam." She waited. "Sam?... SAM!"
"Huh?"
"Could you please finish your room."
"Hunh."
"Now." No movement. "NOW."
"I'm watching something.
"I see that. You've done enough of that, and your room still isn't done." It had moved at a snail's pace for several days, even though the dusting was pretty good, and I hate doing it, too.
"There's only 5 minutes left."
"Now."
"Mom! --"
"Now!"
"Jesus Christ!" swore the son, a furious eye fixed on the mother, and over went the chair. That mother thing snapped in her heart. There were two furious people in a very, very small room. She returned his glare, feeling her heart break, seeing the expression in the pupil of his eyes change in an awful sort of connection. Recognition. Realization. Decision. He wasn't going to take it back.
"You owe me an apology."
"No I don't. You owe me one," he spat at her and stormed to his room. She wished she could take it all back, but those who understand adolescent development tell her what she knows, that these awful confrontations permit him -- give permission to him -- to grow up. Why, God, does it have to be so extremely awful?
That, I understood later, was but the beginning. I went back out and got back to work, my brain recycling the outburst. Parents who have been down this road will tell you that "evil and belligerent" entities inhabit their sons for a period of time between 16 and 18. Nothing prepares you for it, and only hearing them tell you that it ends helps you pick yourself up, calm your hysteria as you think you are losing this precious and cherished warm, intelligent, beautiful person to the creature come to steal his soul.
It feels like the end of everything that has been most important and wonderful in your life. It feels like you will never be alright again. It feels desperate and very, very scary, like the child you know is getting lost. He's still there, but you fell like you have to hold onto him for dear life. And you should always get the keys to your car and drive away when he rears his head. Anything to stop the worst from happening.
You know that the English teacher's comment on the avertissment de comportement, recently arrived in the mail, that he used inappropriate language twice in her classroom is the same thing, even as he tries to explain it away. You know that she doesn't love him. She is only furious with him and wondering how you could have been such a fuck up of a parent. You wish you knew how, too. What you want to tell her is that he is so afraid and all that fear makes him more afraid still, and it comes out as anger and failure, making him even more afraid.
When they are hardest to love is when they need love the most... or the most love, said a friend, stopping me dead still in my tracks.
She is right, but I wasn't thinking about that when I was going over and over everything that is wrong and cut the cord nearly in two, with a horrible little bang! and black smoke issuing in a sudden puff! from the cord. I uttered an expletive in the abruptness of the silence, instantly thinking that Sam heard me through his open window and thought to himself with satisfaction Ha! Serves her right.
I went and threw the circuit breaker in the garage, dug out the old white cord from the workers' mess in the smaller of the two guest rooms they appropriated for themselves and went back to work. Audouin was on duty. I had until the next evening to go get a replacement and stuff the severed one into the nearest public garbage bin, where he'd never see it and be none the wiser. I'd go back to the hardware store the next day before he got home.
I did not feel proud of myself for that, or much of anything that day, and it got worse still. We scared ourselves silly that night. Or, I scared myself silly and humiliated myself in the eyes of my son, who got a taste of a woman's fear and rage as he defended his face, at more than 6 feet tall, from the slap I, at more than 9 inches shorter, tried to land. Failing, I went insane. I completely lost it in fear and frustration and anger. Just like Sam, almost every day.
I called Audouin at the hospital, who already had his fair share of emergencies to attend to, and sobbed into the phone.
"Peux-tu essayer de te calmer et me dire ce qui c'est passé?" I sobbed harder. Everything was wrong. All that is romantic about France, all that is wonderful about France also has its other side, and the fear I feel that I brought 7 years of suffering on Sam by bringing him here to this most horrendous of pedagogical nightmares -- even for French kids who don't fit in --, and, to make things worse, to have so totally bollixed up managing to parent any of our kids together so that everywhere I look, I seem to see failure and ruin of some sort, is just too much. I told him what had happened between sobs, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my old terry robe.
"Mais, s'il est en échec à l'école, c'est d'abord lui qu'il faut remettre en question." I hate this discussion. We have it all the time, and he is actually in agreement with me on most of it, but the French fatalist in him goes back to "you can't buck the system" with a shrug of the Gallic shoulders. My sister-in-law, who married one of his brothers, a less conforming version, said C'est Jacobean, with an air that said Voilà tout. It was like someone turned on a light and everything was thrown up in perfect detail. Better still, I was not wrong. "Sam a trop souvent entendu," continua-Audouin, "les discours contre l'école et le système d'éducation." I felt like a fly in a spider's nest.
I pointed out that he says as much to his youngest son all the time, saying that the teachers are often jerks who are less intelligent than many of their students, having obtained their tenured jobs with a minimum of studies for a maximum of state-sponsored benefits.
"Oui," he admits, "c'est vrai, mais je lui mets la responsibilitié sur lui de se plier est de répondre à leurs demandes, de faire ce qu'on demande de lui, sans répondre."
"Et moi? J'ai suivi ton exemple pour avoir moins de problèmes entre toi et moi, pour ne pas devoir entendre tes reproches, et tu sais aussi bien que moi que ceci ne marche pas dans tous les cas; 3 enfants sur 8 dans ta famille qui n'ont pas pu aller jusqu'au bout au lycée, ayant préparé le bac comme candidat libre," dis-je lui, adding that the situation of most of his own children wasn't particularly promising, and in the case of one, who exhibits next to no intellectual curiosity, it certainly isn't school here that is going to awaken it and help her develop a keen appreciation for the joy of learning and discovery.
"Ca ne compte pas. C'est le caractère," réplique-t-il.
"Bien sur c'est le caractère! Il faut savoir apprendre à tous les caractères et mêmes les valoriser! Martin qui pourrait finir comme Sam car Sam partage cet esprit révolté qui se répand autant dans ta propre famille (française)," retorquai-je.
"De toute manière," repris-je, "comment puis-je accepter que j'ai donné à mon enfant des années de souffrance au college et au lycée seulement parce qu'il a un temperament et un caractère qui provoquent les problèmes les uns sur les autres à l'école? C'est sa vie. Imagine que tu avais à vivre ça tous les jours au travail; tu serais fou. Et même toi," continuai-je "tu n'allais pas en cours à la fac car, comme tu le sais, les profs se servent uniquement de l'écoute, les enfants martelés par l'exigence qu'ils prennent des notes parfaites, dans leur façon d'enseigner bien qu'on sait qu'il y a 5 manières différentes d'apprendre. Dans la meilleure de la pédagogie anglophone, on essaye d'en tenir compte de toutes les 5 pour le plus grand bénéfice de tous les élèves." I was on my usual tracks. No stopping me now.
"Sam est visuel et physique, et, comme toi, il préfère de lire que d'écouter et de prendre les notes sans cesse et sous l'oeil critique des ses profs. On le sait, tout le monde le sait, mais leur pédagogie qu'il ne faut jamais remettre en question ne peut pas atteindre des bons résultas dans des tels cas. Comment peuvent-ils se contentent des tels bilans? Je suis d'accord que c'est la maturité qui aurait du permettre à Sam de transferrer leur modus operandi en le sien en s'appliquant d'avantage, mais il a déjà connu tout simplement trop d'échec," dis-je.
I'll get around to translating that. Or, maybe you could just stick it in the translator to the right and save me the extra typing.
Worse, we gave Sam Concerta and then Ritalin to treat a difference in learning style and a refusal on the part of the teachers to understand that such things matter a lot right along with the suffocation of spirit and creativity of thought that is the French education system. For shame. Just call the symptoms of the real problem, the misery in class, ADHD and hold the wrong party accountable.
"C'est mon sentiment," dit-Audouin, "que Sam a fait un choix, comme Grégoire en première, et depuis quelque temps a laissé tomber toute espérance à la réussite scolaire. Je lui parlerai demain. Essaye de te calmer et de dormir." Of course he has gievn up all hope of succeeding in school. That is exactly what is so terrible.
"Ce n'est pas un vrai choix quand l'indivu ne peut pas comprend les conséquences par un manque d'expérience de vie et poussé par la frustration qu'il resent depuis si longtemps. On parle des enfants et un système qui ne fait que de dire dans leurs soi-disants 'appréciations', même à ceux qui réussissent par tous les critères possibles, Peut mieux faire." lançai-je, furieuse but done crying.
I had no alternative but to calm down and sleep, hoping to find a shard of my relationship with my son from which to piece together a semblance of what we had had before the evil and belligerent entity became his roommate and I went crazy, and in the morning -- his morning, my noon -- I knocked on the door.
"Sam?" Nothing. "Sam?" I opened the door and smelled boy. He was still there. "Sam?"
"Huh."
"I was thinking, we had a really bad experience last night and scared ourselves. Do you want to get your camera and take the dogs up to the coast for the afternoon?" I had confiscated the camera the previous night, along with the keys to his scooter and his Thai boxing equipment -- anything that brings him pleasure and "distracts" him from school work --, just before I told him he was never going back to school and could find a place to live. I told you I lost it.
"Maybe."
"Think about it, but don't take too much time because it takes a couple of hours to get there." I returned to the garden on a gorgeous day. He came out sometime later.
"Is it too late to go?" We'll be okay. Somehow. It was a little late. We're leaving soon, stopping for lunch at the old port in Honfleur and then driving up to Etretat. He's never been there.
"Can you drive me up to the hardware store? You need to drive, and I need to get a new extension cord."
"Why?" I explained, adding, "and I can't tell Audouin because he'll say the same thing he always does." Sam drove me store, and as he parked, I said, "I wish you could go in."
"Why?" he asked, suddenly grinning. You see? I don't even have to explain. We know each other. I laughed.
"Yeah, I'm afraid the guy will recognize me." He already had when Sam and I went in the other day to get plastic storage boxes for his stuff. I knew he wouldn't really want to go in, sweaty after a run and wearing his marcel, like Marlon Brandon without a cigarette.
"You can always just tell him you need another one."
"Another one. Yeah. Another 25 meters of outdoor power cord." Like we live in Versailles. "Maybe you can find a garbage can for the broken cord."
I felt terrible.
"Or, maybe I should keep it. I could always stuff it in the attic and then bring it out, I suppose, and fix it one day, with a new plug (this one has the kind you can't remove). Of course, it would be obvious, but maybe I'll be feeling more courageous by then." He nodded, and I went in to buy the new one. The man remained, happily, in some other aisle and didn't see me. I didn't have to say anything, or even smile to warn him away. I felt really silly by the time we got to the Transamazonian on the way home.
"Maybe I'll just suck it up and tell him. I mean, it's really immature not to. I'm nearly 50, and here I am, acting like a 10-year-old with her father."
"You don't have to, Mom."
"Yeah, but what kind of an example is that for you?"
I told him. The motorcycle was there when we got home. He was back from the hospital. I could hear him talking to the neighbors, who were, it turned out, telling him that they had come by several times with a bouquet of flowers for me to thank me for their cat, who was doing just fine, his broken pelvis all mended after being hit by the car and finding his way to our garden (God only knows how he got over the walls), but I was never home. He came looking for me in the garden, where I was kneeling, weeding under the hydrangeas by the gazebo. I confessed the whole thing, just like a 10-year-old, including the fact that I was going to hide it from him.
"Tu l'as fait encore?" There was a very slight emphasis on the "again". He looked at me from inside the gazebo, fingering the sliced cord, and said, "Dans deux endroits." There was, in effect, not just one clean slice, sparing only the ground, but another less profound one some centimeters away.
"Oui. La taille-haie a du sauter dans l'instant j'ai mis à réagir." I thought I had been quicker than that. Worse, I had just moved the cord out of the way, thinking You're about to cut it.
"Ben." He was smart and considerate enough to leave it at that. I felt a surge of love for him.
"On peut peut-être la réparer." He nodded. We can fix it.
....
When they are the hardest to love is when they need love the most... or the most love. The rest, we'll have to keep figuring out with patience.
Today was a day of wonders. I nearly called one a miracle, but it isn't. Not really. It was nature doing what it does, when you haven't completely screuxed up (Jim gets credit again, although I have removed the "a" for correct sound in French).
It just feels like a miracle.
That was the first one of the day: the very light lace-cap hortensia from the entry courtyard, the one that was not more than a stub of a root system that I transplanted -- with as much care as I would had it had an intact and vigorous root ball -- smack in the middle of the hydrangea bed down behind the pool last July in preparation for the work on the house. Well, guess what?
It paid off!
It's not much to behold. It still looks exactly like it did all last summer and through the winter, except -- it has a branch and leaves sprouting from its base. It will become a bush in time, and give us flowers again.
....
Then, I saw a flower I have never seen before, growing among random things in the right second terrace planting bed against the retaining wall.
I have seen this somewhere. It has leaves with a white stripe like a crocus -- no.
You know what?
This is a crocus. A late-flowering white crocus. I still have research to do to be able to tell you which one, and I need to mark it so I can try to save the corm and perhaps use it elsewhere with more of the same (it's very lovely), or just let it come back in this random way.
No. No, it's not a crocus. I am so bothered by this one. Some kind of lily came to mind, and it resembles closely Spiloxene aquatica (fourth photo, top row of photos), but the stamens are white on mine, not yellow, and the leaves are not cylindrical in section, but more like crocus leaves, with the white stripe up the center.
This is going to take some time. I'll have to send a picture to some kind person at some site or another.
....
*And then, as if these weren't enough, the larger of the two frogs, who have remained faithful to the renovated pond-in-a-basin, appeared again, this time -- sitting on a still submerged water lily pad!
Is it genetic? Do they just know to sit on these?
....
Then, in the category of less-than-wonderful, but noteworthy, I was able to discover that the mottled but mostly black goldfish that came from the toxic fish basin is indeed a male.
This confirms the behavior Audouin and I witnessed, which appeared to be a sort of grade school courtship in reverse, where he chases the others around the pond (in grade school, it was the girls who did the chasing, as I remember it), tending to draw them toward the matted roots of the reeds, which is an excellent place to lay eggs, which he will encourage them to do and then spread his milt.
Euw. Fish sex.
I know this because I spotted without any shadow of a doubt the tubercules on his gill covers and along the top of his front fins. I was able to photograph the latter quite clearly.
They are the pearly white spots running along the delicate bone of the fin. Do you see them?
When he starts to nudge one of the rounded females (eggs), I will know that he is encouraging her to release them. I won't likely get to see this, since they are not in an aquarium. It is possible that the others will eat those eggs nearly as quickly as they are released, but I don't want to upset the fish by removing the male and one of the females to put them in a separate aquarium for mating, even though that would help guarantee fry.
They've had enough of being changed from vessel to vessel lately. Time to enjoy the spring in their new and very wonderful home.
....
All this and I haven't mentioned the Judas tree blossoms, the first Potentilla fruticosa (mine's white flowering) -- Bush Cinquefoil or Potentilla -- blossom and the first rhododendron bud opening down by the pool, and the pick-flowering dogwood in bloom, as well as the peonies threatening to do the same.
It's about to be a perfect riot.
Let's finish with a pretty picture, and then I have to get back to work. I am cleaning out the St, John's Wort beds -- something I have never done before -- and trimming the hedges along the stairs.
The morning was spent removing more than a decade of ivy from the walls at the terrace of the guest room. I have far more to do there, but I got sick of sneezing.
* I am nursing my disappointment. The frog was not actually sitting on a submerged water lily pad. He (or she) was sitting on a stone in the water lily plant pot. They do sometimes sit on the pads, floating, as they do, on the water. ....
All it takes is some nice, hot sunshine to tempt them out. I tiptoed out the door and around the basin with the dogs in tow (not such a good idea when you are trying to sneak up on timid frogs) and there it was, the larger of the two young frogs, sunbathing smack in the middle of the clump of moss I saved from the old basin and put back in. Audouin couldn't quite believe that I was going to save a large planting pot full of mud, crowned by a lovely tuft of moss, but this was always a favorite place to sun themselves. Granted, it was protected by lovely tall grasses before and now it is completely exposed, at least for now, but -- moss is moss, and I put it back in exactly where it had been.
Who's glad now?
I tiptoed much faster back into the house for the camera and tiptoed back out, stealthily approaching a reasonable angle and distance. Click. Splash!
It doesn't take much. I looked around for him in the bottom muck a bit, then turned my attention to the little one. There he was! Just under a large leaf from the other forget-me-not plant, the one with large, vine-like leaves and the flowers on feelers.
I need to learn to budget my time, or to do the things I don't want to do without making such a reason for major depression of it. I am perfectly capable of living without doing the things I don't want to do, as long as I can feel that I have been wondrously productive elsewhere, but now we are approaching the season of house-guests (I know what they feel like at Giverny), and I can't possibly put it all off anymore. Take a look at the guest room. The furniture of both is in one, while the detritus of the AWOL workers clutters the smaller. Then, take a peek at the base of the toilet. That's right. That's dog hair. It's coated in dog hair.
What are the dogs doing in the WC?
Or, is that cat hair? Does Shadow have a crush on the toilet?
The problem is that I am the sort of hostess who runs for the lawn mower, and not the vacuum cleaner, when guests are due to arrive. I panic that the shrubs aren't pruned with enough attention, rather than worrying about the piles of mail on the end of the dining table, shrouded in dust.
I don't even look up to the ceiling. Not unless the guests are really important, i.e. have never been here before and might still have reasonable expectations of my home and me.
So, my "to do" list:
Scan and send a copy of the worthless contract to Arnaud to see if he can't find a redeeming quality in it before our meeting with Joaquim on Saturday. Must do today, or hate myself. I can't get the damn scanner to work.It just hummed and fixed itself, right as I was about to reinstall it. Whatever. Crapped out after 3 pages -- the 3 most important, at least. It has power issues. So don't we all.2 pm -- check.
Call the plumber again to ask for an emergency visit for the furnace. Audouin neglected to mention in his message on Friday that it caught on fire in the chimney and only asked for a cleaning. Meanwhile, had we been absent, the petite maison would have burned down (hm... not so bad, maybe) and we have no hot water. Check.
Pick up the dog poo (check anticipated... heading out to do it now. Check.) scattered all over the right end of the second terrace and mow the lawns I haven't done yet. Ugh. Every time I walk out the door, I see more work to do. Making progress.6 pm -- lavender and rose bed weeded, fertilized, treated for those vegecidal maniacs, the cutworms and dung beetle larvae, of which I have an abundance. My arms are a mass of scratches.
Prune the shrubs of the gazebo terrace.
Figure out what I can do to make the hydrangea border as beautiful as I imagined it would be.
Set the guest rooms to right.
Move the clutter from the kids' room to the attic, the Happy Meals toys to the garbage and shift the old desk from Sam's room in there.
Oversee the progress on the cleaning in Sam's room. He's actually doing not half bad, more than half well.
Finish the details for the project for Christine. Not that they will really need them, but I can suggest what I had in mind -- mostly it is swiped from her cousin's house and collection of garden and farm buildings. The house and farm that used to be her grandparents'. I could live in that garden. The cousin's husband has a great sense of poetry and natural in what he does in it, from little built things -- like the lavabo -- to the vegetable bed, the chickens, and... well, just about everything. I hope he doesn't mess it up with the addition to the house. I didn't have the courage to ask if the builder's CAD renderings were to be taken for the volume of the addition and the suggestion of the materials, or if they way he described it was more accurate. I have discovered that I miss living with Christine. The company of another woman the long hours of a vacation with little planned is vastly more convivial than that of a man. (Sorry, guys.) First, there is conversation. Second, when we disagree about something, we explore it as opposed to insisting on proving the other wrong. I tend to become male in the presence of menfolk.
Clean the house. At least twice before the first weekend in May.
April 21
I need to append this list. It won't let me continue the numbering, so you'll have to think of 1 as 11 and add one to each number thereafter. Ready?
Tear the horribly overgrown ivy off the walls at the guest room terrace and apply moss killer for terraces to the paving. Progress toward completion.Needed a respiratory break from the dusty dead leaves.
Get a table and two chairs to make it a destination in the garden. (That's architect talk).
Trim the hedges at the stairs and the box borders on the intermediate terraces. Check.
Mow the St. John's Wort with the electric hedge clippers since the slope is a little much for the lawn mower, and the space is hemmed in and small. Check.
Burn stuff. Check. (Sometimes I add things to the list just so I can check them off).
I did see the larger of the two frogs I was able to reinstall in the fish-pond-in-a-fountain, very briefly the day before yesterday. I haven't see the baby one since Friday, when it spent most of the afternoon on the mats of reed roots. The weather hasn't been all that good. I guess they are mostly hanging out under those clumps of roots.
The fish, on the other hand, are highly visible, and visibly amusing themselves no end.
I am still waiting for the 5 adults to discover that their old home is renovated and return.
it's raining.
it's drizzling.
the young man is avoiding.
gone to his room,
to organize his things
'cause waiting for Godot
is so disappointing.
(Sung to the tune of well, you can guess. It's a bit of a train wreck with all the extra syllables, but you can do it.)
At least I think that's what all the noise up there is. I am unaccustomed to the sounds of cleaning over my head. It's desperate when Sam sees organizing his room and dusting, which can only be done after he places his cherished mementos of his enormously rich young life into the plastic storage bins purchased for this effect yesterday at Mr. Bricolage, under the amused and watchful eye of the employee, so charmed with my accent when I purchased new outdoor electric cables for the various garden power tools the other day, as superior to anything else he could possibly be doing. We heard all about his opinion of Waiting for Godot at lunch. Audouin most especially appreciated it.
"Et bien, ça revient à mes arguments de hier soir à propos de l'art moderne."
"Ah, non! Ne recommençons pas!"
"Tout depend de l'opinion de l'individu si c'est de l'art ou non." I take umbrage and a totally different point of view, which is that we are not all equally apt to judge art and pronounce a painting or a piece of writing as art or worthless. There are, in other words, determining standards not available to all if not prepared. My husband, while conceding a minimum of truth in this point of view, maintains that art is democratic and the criterion for determining whether something constitutes a work of art lies in whether it is pleasing to the individual.
That's when I start to see living rooms decorated with art market (you've seen them advertised on cable television, the ones for hotel managers, dental office managers and suburban home owners) sea landscapes and clown heads on velvet.
Art, the always subjective, according to doctors and statisticians, whose world is bounded by the unarguable and superior objective, where they feel they can rule both.
Warhol is the subject of the moment. In Brest, I bought Sam a collection of essays on Andy Warhol by Cécile Guilbert that won last year's Le Médicis Prize, Warhol Spirit. I had considered buying it for him for Christmas, but that was when I thought he might still be able to pull off a decent second première. I have given up. He bought a Holga from Hong Kong for a few euros and adapted it for 135 mm film ("120 mm is too expensive, Mom"), and he has been photographing everything again. He showed me his savings, a collection of euro pieces and monnaie in a plastic box on his desk.
"I've been taking a fork with me and buying salads to save from my lunch money for developing film." He's motivated. I broke down and bought him the book of essays and a book that situates Warhol in pop art. Warhol is the perfect complement to his fascination with gangsta' rap. He knows more about the Crips and the Bloods than the LAPD. Teen disillusion and frustration. I remind him the same courses through the veins of the racaille in the VF.
"You're the same."
He knows it.
He probably is an artist. Of some kind. Blame it on me unless his father has something to add to our understanding. His fascination with global politics and the three dictators of the second world war are not necessarily sufficient to motivate a university career in political science and economics for a career in international law, as much as he wants to make an indecent living and rule the world. Stewie, minus the Broadway songman flair, comes to mind.
What really motivates him is popular culture, litterature, photography and advertising (another way to earn an indecent living), so when Asmaa left him with a copy of Waiting for Godot, saying that he absolutely must read it in preparation for this year's attempt at the French bac, he dove right in, which I learned at dinner last night when he came to the table, collapsed on his left elbow, shoulders nearly in his plate, and said, "Attendant Godot c'est de la merde. Mais c'est nul de nul. Il ne se passe rien."
"That's the point."
"There is no point."
"You can read it as a commentary on the human condition. Situate it in its historical context, after the war." He wasn't buying it, and Audouin was having a field day, the sparkles in his eyes dancing, the wrinkles around them folding in the wide grin his cheek muscles were barely attempting to lessen. His point of view was ascendant, being illustrated by the resident litterary scholar.
I was ready to kill Sam. I get it. It's the story of my life. Call me Didi.
Waiting for the frogs.
"No truth value attaches to the above, regarded as of merely structural and dramatic convenience."
-- Samuel Beckett, referring to Waiting for Godot.
....
The ungrateful frogs might not be profiting from our joint labors, but the fish and the two littler frogs certainly are, just like Audouin and I might. It appears that cooperation -- working together on a common project -- helps increase the level of some hormone or another that enhances intimacy.
Do you suppose it still works even when you disagree about where to put some of the plants?
I gave in and let him put the cupid and its dolphin back in at the bottom. That has to count for something, doesn't it? After all, it was his idea in the first place, some years ago.
I have such a tiny area that this is all I could bring home for it, and only one of each at that. They don't all flower at once, so it shouldn't be too riotous. I also added some irises that had spread into the basin from who knows where (probably the basin), and some saxifragia from the bowls and pots alongside the border. Oh, and the angel hair grass I had planted nearby. A small tuft of it. My hope is that the grasses spread and sort of engulf the rest, along with more moss, making a wild mass like it used to be, with some flowers in it.
Some of the reeds that I had saved went back in, too. Audouin wanted to bundle the roots up right away to keep it from spreading, but I want it to spread (a bit) and the fish love the roots for laying their eggs. I think the frogs benefit from them, too, when it's time to hibernate.
The fish hid all afternoon, while we were around, and as soon as most everyone was gone somewhere else, they came out and started playing tag. All I had to do to break up the game was to come down from the balcony and approach the basin. Zoom! Gone. I stayed (nearly) perfectly still, and one and then two... they ventured back out. I can't say that I blame them. They have been through a lot, but things should settle down now that the water is holding.
I am hoping for the rest of my life.
We'll see if the adult frogs return from the bottom of the garden, where I am (nearly) certain that I hear them croaking away. Probably in the pool. Where they shouldn't be. I have seen them hop away from the basin before, off toward the planting beds, and then they come back. I suspect they have gone to do the same thing. Maybe we'll have even more before long. ....
I've let far too much accumulate before writing. That's what I do here, right? I write about stuff. But, when lots of stuff happens and I don't write about it, there's too much, and I have so many other things to do. It's high season in the garden, and it calls to me to fix all the things I didn't do very well before, take care of the maintenance regardless of whether I love what's there or not -- it's better taken care of --, and breath a sigh of resignation for the presence of the unused tools and scaffolding of the workers, who haven't been back since the fateful discussion with *Joaquim back in -- now what month was it? I just went to look. March. It was only March. The middle of March at that. It feels like it has been months and not just one, nearly to the day.
When I left off, two weeks ago -- and never have I been absent for so long --, I was heading to Brest to see my sister-in-law and help her with the design for a building she is putting in the place of an old "hangar". It looks more like a large garage, but the French call it that. My brother-in-law hung himself there, the day after New Years in 2006. She thought she would have it razed long ago, but somehow, it stayed, just like she did in their house that she thought she would need to leave. I remember telling her that it takes time to grieve, something as a doctor with a specialty in psychiatry she knew better than I, and no decision needs to be taken quickly. Time provides the answers. The house was her project with my brother-in-law; it was their home with their daughter and his son by his first wife. Don't run from it, I said.
We returned in May a year later, with one of my husband's sisters and her husband to help paint the kitchen, walk in the gorgeous, wind-swept rugged countryside near Brest, see the progress of her plants and eat meals together in the kitchen as the work of the painting allowed.
Nearly two years later, I returned with my laptop, photos of buildings I love that have something to do with the project she envisioned -- as well as the toit végétalisé that I wanted to convince her to put on the wood cabin portion--, and my own CAD drawings. The roses looked healthy, the natural slug trap made of the bottom of a water bottle set into the dirt and filled with beer, covered with three small sticks in teepee form hadn't yet captured a menace to her plants and charmed me no end, and the camellia looked enviably better than mine. See the previous entry. The slate tiles were installed in the kitchen, notes of what to buy at the grocery store and snippets of other things she didn't want to forget chalked there above the sink. My brother-in-law's work bench had found it's way into the living room, where it reigned from its position of honor, magnificent in the living room, while it had only been useful in the hangar.
She let her hand run along the streaks of pink and white paint.
"Cette rose, ce fut quelque chose qu'il préparait pour la chambre d'Odile, non?" She nodded and said what it was.
"On me dit que je devrais enlever les traces de peinture." We looked at them together.
"Non. C'est de l'histoire. Ce fait parti de lui." She looked up at me and nodded.
"Oui."
"C'est vriament beau ici." I meant to sketch it before I left and have another of my husband's brothers use it for the model for a table for our kitchen, made of rough-hewed old planks fit together without much hardware. I'll return soon and do it then.
We went to their Decathlon and bought Odile's first kite, which Léo taught her to fly in a big parking lot at the Moulin Blanc, the marina in Brest, a few days later. It rained between. They wanted to go to the beach, but Christine preferred to be able to sit at Le Tour du Monde, Olivier de Kersauson's bar, or the temporary one, set up along the dock while the real one is renovated, and have a cup of coffee, listen to the wind in the riggings. I thought the beach sounded good, too, but so did tea. de Kersauson is something of a local hero in French sailing and local legend, and she told me how another of our sisters-in-law was practically hopping up and down in anticipation of seeing him there. She had to settle for someone else, whose name escapes me, but who thrilled her none the less. We both preferred the temporary café, set up under a tent with windows looking right over the port.
When I showed the pictures to Audouin earlier today, he said, "Avez-vous vu le Géronimo?"
"Non, je ne pense pas. Au fait, on ne l'a pas cherché." "Mais, on ne peut pas le rater. C'est le trimarin de de Kersauson, le plus grand au monde." I guess I wasn't paying attention. It was there, or it wasn't, and I couldn't tell you which it was. I have seen these phenomenal boats in port in Brest. They are a vision to behold, but I was paying attention to the kite and the kids.
Driving out of the parking lot, Christine started, "Mais, il y a des toits végétaux là!"
"Où?" I asked, preparing to make a U-turn in one of the parking lots alongside Océanopolis.
"Juste derrière," she pointed to a couple of log-cabin style buildings with grass roofs.
"Tu veux que je fasse demi-tour pour qu'on puisse les voir de plus près?"
"Oui. Tu peux te garer là." That little bit of fortune did it. Even better, a friend of Léo's stepfather helped design Oceanopolis, and they can ask him about the grass roofs, so it looks like the toit végétal is a fait accompli! Funny how these things work sometimes.
Another day, we went looking for a galavanized tub like the one I had seen in her cousin's garden. Her husband told us he had found it at Espace Eméraude, and we went to both of the ones nearby without any success, but I did find a likely black plastic tub for the frogs. Even better, it looked like it might serve after inserted at the end of the raised planting bed under the downpipe for the gutter on the petite maison. I could use it to collect the rainwater that otherwise falls into the planting bed, creating heaps of moss and nourishing a stinging nettle patch from hell.
Returning home, I spent a full day reading in bed, mourning the Finistère, and the next, Audouin, who had taken the week off from work because he had his children, suggested that we attack the fish basin.
"No."
Then I thought about it. It was nice out. It had to be done. And, I had bought the plastic tub and brought it all the way back from the end of the earth for the frogs. Along with a blue child's net especially to catch the frogs, which I saw in a souvenir shop in Portsall, just before finally heading home on Saturday.
"Ok."
It was hell. My back still hurts. We yanked, hacked, cut, hauled, lifted, and finally emptied that damn basin. At one point, I nearly fell down laughing. There was Audouin, cutting away at the matted roots of the reeds to remove a rock that had been completely encased. He reached in and removed -- the cupid holding its dolphin.
"On dirait une césarienne! L'obstétrician coupe et sort... le cupidé et son dauphin. C'est comme un uterus! Ha!" I was delighted with the irony of the moment. He looked up and grinned. Alas, the camera was not in reach, and I was tugging at the other end of the huge mass of roots we had just hauled out.
Once we had it all out, it was evident. There they were, the cracks. Tiny vertical cracks at fairly regular intervals around the basin; they appeared to align with the joints in the concrete blocks behind the painted concrete lining. The first one I saw corresponded with the area where it was always especially wet on the north side of the basin, and it was the likely culprit since it was the only one that was more than superficial when we scraped it open to repair. I had wondered if the ground behind that area was wet because it was in perpetualshade, or if it were because the leak was there. It was the leak, and probably the former didn't help much. Moss always accumulated in that spot.
As for the frogs, there was no way I was going to get them, being much faster than I am, even equipped with a net on a stick that kept getting caught in the reeds, until we removed all the reeds. They'd have to go first, and we'd have to drain the water and catch them in the muck at the bottom. I was looking for 5 fairly big ones. I got 2 in a heartbeat. The third was slier, but couldn't withstand my net. We had to look for the other 2.
"Là! Il y en a dans le parpaign."
"Où?"
"Dans le trou du fond, à gauche. Baisse la tête et tu la verras. Ca bouge." I crouched down and looked. Sure enough, there in the back of the hole was a little breathing mass of dark, the same color as the muck. All I'd have to do is get on my knees, place the net at the entrance to his lair and reach in to make him move, possibly scooping him into my net.
"Tu l'as! Elle est là. Là!" I saw him. He was right at the edge of my net, but in Audouin's excitement, I got distracted and let him slip away.
"Elle est là! Là, à côté du piedestal. Tu la vois?" Yes, I saw him. Two eyes poking up through the surface of the dark green-brown muck. I repositioned my net on top of the bulge, and I had him. "Tu l'as? Tu l'as eu?"
"Oui." I've got him. I went and set him in the tub with the other two, and the black goldfish that came here from someone else's disgusting fish pond. Another red goldfish died. A smaller orange one is swimming in circles in a plastic container somewhere, up in the kids' room.
The fourth wasn't easy. We both suspected him of being in the muck under the old stone sink from the bottom of the garden that Audouin hauled up and gave a place of honor in the fountain turned fish pond, which rested on three concrete blocks at either end. We had both seen him there. This time, he had moved to between the stone sink and the pedestal of the old three-tired fountain capped by a cupid holding a dolphin that Audouin had hacked down to a single fish bath type affair.
"Je l'ai." I stuck the net on one side and pushed from the other, closing off his escape route. Ineffectively.
"Non. Elle est là," he pointed to his side of the pedestal. En effet.
I tried again. It took a few tries before I had him, following his muck-wake until he was still and slapping the net down where it ended.
"Celle-là est vive." I could barely keep it from squirming and leaping out of the net in my hands. "Elle est petite aussi. Ce n'est pas la dernière. Il doit y en avoir d'autres. C'est un bébé de cette année. Les 5 que j'ai vu sont plus grandes." I released it into the tub and returned to scooping muck out with a water bottle with the top cut off until Audouin refused to carry another pail of the muck away. Grève.
"Mais," he argued, "il fait nuit." He had a point.
The next morning, I saw movement in the muck over by the filter tube. Arming myself with my blue net, I struck and came up with the 5th larger frog. That made 6. A short time later, I heard Audouin shout that there was another one. It scarcely seemed possible. We had been scraping up the muck for hours while it managed to stay hidden.
"C'est dans le trou du filtre, ou quelque chose. C'est sans fond. Je me doutais bien qu'il y en aura encore là-dedans -- je l'ai." He straightened up with his hands cupped around another small frog, another baby from this year, or maybe last, if they grow slowly. I don't know that much about frogs. He slid it into the tub with the others, while I started to wonder if the tub really was large enough for all these frogs and the clumps of reed I had saved to put back in the basin. It gave them a place to hang out in the sun.
All seemed well until yesterday, when I didn't see the frogs. Not once all day. They had been hanging out, just like they did in the basin up until they disappeared. Completely. With the exception of one of the little ones, who has a favorite place to hang out already.
"J'espère qu'elles sont pas allées dans la piscine," said Audouin just now, looking somewhat despairingly into the tub while the basin fills slowly with water. It sounded an awful lot like it might be considered my fault. I think he'd have squished them all if it weren't for me, or thrown them over the wall below. But he knows they just come back if you don't carry them over to the bras mort of the Seine, across the fields. So much for my nature lover.
"Je les vois quelques fois, sautant du basin. Elles vont je ne sais pas où, chercher probablement à trouver à se reproduire. Puis, elles reviennent." He looked doubtfully at me. "Vraiment. Je les vois de temps en temps, sautant à travers le gazon vers les plates bandes. Elles reviendront."
Maybe.
If they don't, I tell myself, it will not have been for want of trying, and, it will have been by their own choice. Maybe I need to put steps back up into the tub for them so they can get back in. Actually, they'll go straight to the basin. They can hop back in there, and it's already refilling. Slowly.
The first thing is to see if the water level holds. It dropped fast before, several centimeters in a day. If it doesn't, then we can start to put the rocks, the plants and some of the muck we saved in buckets back in. The argument now is what to put in the old stone farmyard sink. I argue for it to be just the way it was, covered in moss and grasses. The frogs loved to hide in the grass, soaking up the sun on their moss beds. Audouin wants to plant nothing in it this time, placing pots of pretty flowers there instead.
Still, that's better than his idea of making a rock garden in it, but I am still opposed. I learned to love its natural quality. He is starting to want it to look like the people's garden in Méricourt. The one with the nains de jardin. The second argument is the sturgeon I want to put in there. I saw him at Florosny the other day. He is nearly 10 years old, dark gray with delicate light gray veining on his head. He is about 60 centimeters long, if not more, from the tip of his snout to the tip of his long tail, and he loves to be pet. This, it appears, is a characteristic of sturgeons. Audouin is convinced the basin, at 2.70 meters across, isn't big enough for him.
"Mais, Cédric dit que c'est parfait."
"C'est parce qu'il n'arrive pas à s'en debarasser."
"C'est vrai que quelqu'un l'a commandé et a désisté, mais pourquoi mentirait Cédric si ce n'est que pour le voir souffir? Il y en a chez lui, et ils les aiment bien. Il dit que l'aquarium chez Florosny est trop petit et ça lui fait du mal à le voir comme ça. D'ailleurs, il sait qu'on ne peut pas le prendre tout de suite car on est en train de réparer notre basin et l'eau doit rester dans le basin 2 mois avant de pouvoir l'installer. S'il y est toujours --" I let it drop there. I will have the sturgeon if I want the sturgeon, and he is still there in two months. And, I will name him Horatio, unless I learn that he is a she.
I left that day with a suffering carp koï. He gave it to me for free, since neither of us thought it would make it.
It didn't.
The work...
And, here are my photos from my last day, before I took the highway back home. It was my day to go back to my old haunts, from when I lived in Brest for a year from August 1987 to July 1988. I'd go back to live there.
* Speak of the devil. Guess who just called? Pshaw. He says they are returning in June, and tried to side-step the whole issue of the work that actually remains to be done. Now he's supposed to come next Saturday at 2 pm to discuss it all. I'd better get that contract to my brother-in-law for his comments. J'en ai marre.
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