Snow dog

Fia, a dog, a stick, and some snow

Among the joys of true, snow-covered winter is watching the dogs play in the snow. Not that it's really any different than watching them play in the grass, but the contrast of lustrous black dog on pristine white snow is certainly stronger, and snow flies up dramatically from under those powerful paws, and gets to fall again. Pure energy.

She's warming up for Argentière in the Chamonix-Mont Blanc valley in two or three weeks, a year after we placed Baccarat's ashes above the glacier on the backside of les Grands Montets and at the roots of a giant fir in the forest of the Moraine.

And, to own the truth, it's not "dogs", anymore, but "the dog", Fia, my "dark angel". One plays, the other tries to avoid her and to sit on the steps out of harm's and impact's way. At 12 in one month from today, I can understand Rapide. It's getting harder to make it back up the long middle stair of the garden, with it's 28 steps. She takes them one at a time.

One day, she'll not return, but for now, I am relieved when I see her pick her pace up into a trot as she rounds the fish-pond-in-a-(former)-fountain.

So, who wants to come play? Xander? Ramona and Hudson? I know you're all too far, and, Hudson, you'd probably rather sit on the sidelines with Rapide, although I think you'd find the climate in harmony with your ancestral memory.

Samantha? Do you want to come to France and play in the snow?



Perhaps as soon as those crazy but lovable and funny people with whom she shares her home start acting like humans and let her out the damn door. Sheesh.

Scooby Doo? Coco?

Coco, training center Maisons-Laffitte, Jan 13

Prof, you can sit on the steps with Rapide and watch the young ones romp.

Prof, "du dos", with Rapide and Fia

I'll join you two, with my camera, and then just as soon as Gina and the horses are back from Cagnes-sur-Mer, Rapide, we'll head to Maisons-Laffitte for another late afternoon play date in the Rond Poniatowski.
....

Bookends

Eric Tabarly roses, February 5

I didn't believe the weather report, or, more truthfully, I didn't really take it seriously. Snow was mentioned for Saturday night, but there hadn't been a flake all winter. The temperatures had dropped, yes, but snow? I took the dogs out for the last time with rock hard soil and crisp blades of grass and fallen Canadian oak leaves underfoot, and in the morning, the shutters still closed, my husband walked out the door of our bedroom and said, "It snowed!" I was on his heel on the landing in a heartbeat. 

I love snow. I cannot tell you how much I love snow. I love snow more than sand; I love snow more than green grass; and, I certainly love snow more than I love what has replaced the green grass, the bare earth, as a consequence of my fall from gardening grace this autumn with my absolute failure to rake up the linden tree leaves, which then covered the grass in a thick blanket of damp for many weeks and killed all the green. 

So, there was no one to warn the roses of their likely fate. Or the violets. They are frozen and discolored, like lettuce in a refrigerator turned up too high. 

It was snowing lightly when we woke up Monday morning, too, and it covered the roads as I drove to the train station to go watch the qualifiers for the 20th Open GDF Suez in Paris at Coubertin, my Christmas-birthday present from my son, which returns me to Coubertin for the quarter-finals Friday. I followed my neighbor, driving his used Jeep Cherokee, in our soon to be dumped Fiat Uno, and I wished his bulk left the room to pass him; I was going to miss my train if he didn't hit the gas a little more.

What's the point of driving your Jeep 4X4 to work in the snow if it's not to drive like there wasn't snow, especially when my little Fiat 2X0 was having no problem? I made the train by 30 seconds. The conductor made an effort to look stern and tell me that it was my responsibility to come looking for him when, in my rush, I forgot to have my ticket punched by the machine on the tracks; I apologized, feeling genuinely grateful that I wasn't going to get a 30€ fine, saying that was why I took the step toward him. He looked at me from under his lowered brow, and made a note on my ticket.

"Oh, vous voulez dire que j'aurais du venir vous chercher dans le train?" I asked, gesturing vaguely toward the space beyond, the cars ahead, closer already to Paris. He nodded, c'est ça, now you've got it. 

I didn't bother explaining what had to seem obvious, that I had no idea which way to head in my effort to find him, and he headed off toward the rear of the train, not looking at anyone's tickets. I could have gotten away with my forgetfulness, although, surely he would have heard my guilty heart beat as he passed close by where I stood on the crowded train. I tried not to feel badly about my honesty and concentrated on the snow-covered landscape between the train and the highway and the Seine beyond, watching the stations pass the direct to Saint Lazare. 

And today, the snow remains on the ground, although I can see the water dripping from the balcony through the panes of the living room window. The afternoon sun, my enemy, is doing its best to rid us of my winter pleasure, the thing that finally removed the constantly present harsh and critical voice in my brain, nagging and nagging: the blanket of lovely snow. Winter, I realized, when it comes properly, is a relief to the gardener. It is soothing. 

It's alright, it says, you may stop now and take a break. 

You have deserved it. 

When the snow does not come, there is no respite, no sense that you should not be doing something to clean up and ready your garden for spring (especially if you never made the slightest effort in the fall). The season drags on, it has no bookends. We are not given permission to move onto other things and return once the snow thaws for the last time, and the winter ends, leaving us to discover what has been germinating under that snug white coverlet. 

I can only hope for the clouds to return and bring more snow, while the calendar still says winter.

Of course, Gertrude Jekyll would just have gotten her work done.

....

Bending, a Christmas tale

Winter on the fields

As far as Christmas is concerned, the snowfall came too soon. The snow that covered the trees, bushes, fields and roofs is mostly melted here, although it still lies fairly thick once you pass Poissy and head into the Forêt de Marly toward Paris, where drivers, stuck in the heavy traffic, lowered their car and truck windows, pointed their iPhones toward the snow-covered tree trunks and branches and clicked.

"Ils n'ont que ça a faire," said my husband as his window slid down and he pointed his iPhone toward the white-frosted trees.

It was true. Sitting there in stop and go traffic on our way to the shopping mall in Versailles, there was nothing else to do but appreciate the winter forest landscape and take pictures. I hit the button again, and his window slid back up. The car in front of us moved forward a meter. The driver seated high up above me smiled over our way. I nodded slightly and smiled back. 'Tis the season.

There, the snow looked as though it had just fallen, where here, we only had the tiniest of flurries, hardly more significant than a delicate dusting of frost accumulating on the leaves that have not fallen and the crusty bits of melted snow that had hung on. Those minuscule flurries made me hope this morning, when I went down to the wood pile and peeled back the tarp to fill my rubber bucket, but now, there is no reason to hope for the white Christmas that seemed almost certain. Bright sunshine is forecast for Christmas day tomorrow, although temperatures will dip further below zero.

I also noticed that the frightfully overgrown yew down in the lower garden is still bent over to make an arched tunnel over the opening in the privet hedge, however, bringing it to within reach of my long-handled pruning shears. I ought to go down and prune it while I can, but at nearly 4 pm, it will be dark soon.

(I really ought to go clean up all the mounds of decaying dog pooh left apparent by the snow's withdrawal before it is too dark to see them. Not that anyone is at risk to step in it, over by the France Telecom utility building. No one but me and my dogs goes there, except whatever other dog on the poor diet it is who contributes his poohs without a similar contribution in clean-up by his master.)

When the snow was at its thickest on the branches and the tops of the clipped shrubberies, the boughs, as well as entire shrubs, bent their heads nearly to their feet, the falling snow mixing with the weight of the snow on them to fasten them tightly to the ground. My stepdaughter was alarmed.

"Papa, ils sont cassés," she reported, leaving the panes of glass in the French window.

"Qu'est-ce qui est cassé?" he asked.

"Les plantes. Elles sont cassées sous le poids de la neige."

I had seen them already. I knew they were bent. It's another miracle of nature that she can design boughs to withstand the force of wind, snow and ice, bending but not breaking, at least not until the forces are extreme. I know this, and I felt superior in my knowledge.

You paid attention in school and in life, the voice I know as my meaner self said to me. I didn't like the sound of that. I tried not to let it out.

"Les plantes ne sont pas cassées," I said, deliberately checking the impatience in my voice, and wondering if I had hit the right measure between checking too much and not checking at all, the terrible one that would leave her wondering if I had been unkind, or not. "Les branches sont souples, capables de se plier en réponse aux forces importantes de la neige, de la glace et du vent."

You could have added that you know they are nearly to their breaking point. In some cases out there, anyway, the voice I know as my meaner self, frustrated by my having attempted to check it, said in a counter effort to let me know I hadn't done such a good job in the event that I had failed to notice the edge in my spoken words. It hadn't escaped me. Like I said, I knew what I was doing, but I hoped it wasn't too noticeable, neither to my meaner self nor to her. I grabbed my gloves, slipped my boots on and crossed the terrace to the Nandina domestica.

The "heavenly" bamboo.

The slender branches that normally reach toward the sky and bend only towards their tips under the weight of the bouquets of thin leaves and airy bunches of green fruits that turn orange in the autumn and bright red in the winter, arched to the ground, where their heads rested on the crusted snow. Two short branches already lay nearby, broken clean off. I picked them up and considered my attitude one more time; it kind of looked like some plants were "cassées".

I took a branch and gave it a shake. Hard bits of snow flew in all directions, stinging my cheeks and making slightly metallic noises as they rained to the hardening snow, like bits of plastic confetti on a glass tabletop, or frozen rain on frozen snow, actually. It nearly broke off in my hand. I took more care with the next ones, shaking as much frozen snow from them as I could so they could stand almost as straight as they usually do.

Over the course of the afternoon, I watched the snow begin to melt and fall from the bowed branches of the yews at the top of the garden stairs, my sentinel yews, making faint, dull thuds. Each thud gave me the faint, dull pleasure of vindication.

See? Nature is hardy enough to survive what she throws at herself. It was my meaner self again, but I did not give her the pleasure of a hearing.

But, are our relationships? Those most fragile of human relationships, the "steps"? Can they take what we throw at them? The jealousies and the barbs of alterity and territoriality?

"You women think you have a maternal sense," my husband once said to me, "but you are essentially animals because it is only for your own. We care for all children, yours as well ours."

"That's not true," I had charged right back, my hackles up as though he had attacked my child, not merely my sense of maternity and sorority.

Maybe it is true, said the voice of the self I recognize as my better one. It sounds like it might be, you know. Look at you and how you feel about his children.

"Not all of them," I said, my defense at the ready, arguments all lined up and ready to go. "And that's not how I felt when once before I nearly had two stepdaughters. I missed them so much later that I cried, and it wasn't just because I hadn't had my own child yet, like he likes to say it is; it was because their mother didn't hate me for her own failings and try to ruin things. She let her daughters love me."

This was true. My better self had nothing to say, and since his daughter has come to live with us, my husband's will has bent under the weight of the consciousness that I am doing at least as much for her as I did for the heavenly bamboo, or that I am trying to anyway, and that counts between us nearly as much or more (but in a different way) than my succeeding. If we fail, we will have failed together now.

Two people can stand straight-backed in their mutual opposition, each defending his own position and giving the best of arguments for refusing to bend toward the other, but the truth, the very difficult truth is that it is only in accepting that there is also truth in the other's point of view and in his needs can one's own truth have any force of effect. In the absence of that acceptance, there is only sadness and loss. Truth falls to power, and with it goes down love.

So why is it so hard, then? Why is it so hard to answer the need in the other and give up insisting on one's own, when time and time again it is shown that in doing that, so much that one says one truly wants finally becomes possible? Is it more satisfying to continue to claim one's wants than to give in order to see them satisfied an hundred times over? Is that why Men continue to wage wars?

In the car, on the way to do our Christmas shopping for the older children, grown to make couples and careers now, I turned to him and asked, "Est-ce qu'on peut se mettre d'accord qu'on ne se fait pas de cadeaux cette année?"

I asked this question even though I had reason to believe that he had already gotten me a present. I hoped to avoid spending money we need for his daughter's riding lessons and that we will need for her competitions, soon. He hesitated a second before replying, just long enough to show me that I had been right. "Tu m'as déjà fait un cadeau alors?"

"Oui, mais ça n'a pas marché."

"Alors, on peut dire qu'on ne se fait pas de cadeaux de Noël cette année?" He nodded.

"Tu veux savoir ce que ça a été?"

Did I want to know what my failed Christmas present was, he wanted to know. I saw him smile a little sadly. I nodded. He paused, and then he said, "Un D300."

A D300? My brain turned over once, twice, and I understood.

"Un appareil de photo? Tu m'as acheté un Nikon D300? Mais -- j'en ai déjà un --"

"Je sais. Sam me l'a dit."

He knew I had one already, but that knowledge came too late. Sam had told him. But, why? How could he not have known? I use it every day.

He explained that thrilled with his purchase for me, he had told Sam that now we would have three lenses for our cameras. Sam had looked at him, not understanding what he meant by three lenses for our two cameras.

"J'ai acheté un D300 pour ta maman pour Noël," he told Sam, probably beaming.

"Mais, elle en a un déjà," Sam told him, most likely as confused as I was.

"Ce n'est pas le tien alors?" he asked, disappointment certainly creeping in along with the dawning light of realization that something had gone very wrong.

"Non. J'ai un Canon."

"Mais, Maman avait ton appareil, non? Tu l'avais laissé pour elle à utiliser."

"Oui, mais elle s'en est acheté un, alors j'ai repris le mien, le Canon, pour l'avoir avec moi à Paris. Les objectifs sont les siens. Elles les a eu avant."

Somehow, my husband had entirely forgotten whole conversations, but this is not amazing nor new. It is somewhat disconcerting, but less so since he has nearly always done that. I don't think Alzheimers starts at 30, and if it does, it generally gets much worse than it is now after a quarter century more has passed. And, were that the case, he should have been lost in the winter snow naked, only several fields over, long ago. He is otherwise thriving, albeit occasionally doubtful and disappointed about the various things he has to accept that he has indeed been told, and completely forgotten.

The very day I received my camera, I was exclaiming about the fact that I could take a picture of him from across the room, in the dim of the evening without a flash, and still see the herringbone pattern on the wool sweater I shrunk shortly thereafter.

"Avec l'appareil de photo de Sam?" he had asked.

"Non, avec le mien. J'ai acheté un Nikon D300 d'occas sur eBay, et Sam est allé le chercher pour moi à Paris aujourd'hui."

Another time, he asked if the camera I was using was Sam's. No, I explained again, trying to pronounce my words with extra clarity so he would be sure to hear them; Sam had taken his camera to Paris since I had gotten one of my own. I added that I had realized using his just how big a difference there was between my previously wonderful Fuji digital SLR-type camera after the little Russian Aptek I had used for my first "Garden Updates", emailed to friends and family, and his Canon Rebel XTi, and since I couldn't keep his camera forever and wanted to be able to photograph the dogs, my garden, travels and everything and everyone I love (or for whom I at least care, for one reason or another), I had searched for an used Nikon digital SLR for myself.

Now, he will not forget again.

Later, in between the freezing cold sheets, I put my even colder hand in his still colder one and said, "Merci de mon cadeau. N'importe quel des deux que je garde, l'appareil de photo sera toujours mon cadeau de Noël."

"Merci, mais c'est bête. Je suis quand même déçu."

"Il n'y a aucune raison d'être déçu," I said to him. "C'est vraiment un cas quand c'est l'intention qui compte. Tu as voulu faire le plus beau des cadeaux pour moi et c'était très généreux. Je ne m'attendais pas à autant."

In my mind, it really was the perfect case of the intention being as important as the gift. He had wanted to offer an exceptionally generous and considerate present to me, and it hadn't failed at all. The camera, whichever I will keep, will be from him because he wanted to give me that.

"C'était parce que je t'aime, et j'ai voulu te le montrer comme je peux," he said. Very quietly.

"Je sais," I said.

I know. I do know. I also know that it is because I bent and accepted the weight of his daughter, and it is amazing how far you can bend without breaking and become stronger for it.

Our hands felt a little warmer in the dark.

Joyeux Noël to all, or the joy and the peace of the spirit of Christmas to each of you.

....

Doors

The miscanthus in morning sun

The sun has modestly left the sky, leaving place for wintry clouds. I am glad; I have a chest cold, and sun is unwelcome from here in my nest on the sofa, in front of the Super-G in Val Gardena and the wood stove. My chest cold, on the other hand, is welcome. It affords me the opportunity to nurture my psyche, preparing myself for the still unsettling fact of anticipating my stepdaughter coming through the door each evening of the week, coming home from school.

Home. Coming home.

I would rather it stayed dark with the lights on the Christmas tree and the fire in the hearth, my own little womb where I ply needle and thread, examining my conscience, looking for holes and rips, weak spots, and darning my soul.

It's private work, but I share it with you. I admire most of all those who do not need to share anything, who can sew in the privacy of their home and go on with their labors without asking anyone to notice. That is a confession. I think of the farmer in Babe. I tell myself, "That'll do, Pig. That'll do." I try to find the same quietness of principle and conviction, but I am more like his wife. I am both. Secretly, I am in love with Arthur Hoggett. James Cromwell would be fine, though.

I think my husband has something of him. Sometimes.

If the skies are really kind, they will send down more snowflakes. They did last night, but not enough, thankfully, to provide an excuse for the teachers not to show up at school, disappointing the children. I trod down the sidewalk this morning, past the dark windows of the house where one girl lives, to confirm that the other's were brightly lit, as I expected them to be. Behind them are parents who share our commitment to our children belonging in school and getting them there. Lit, it meant that if the bus did not appear, she or I would be driving at least our two children to school. The darkness of the other set of windows I took as a message. Not today. If my phone hadn't rung, it meant she had information to say the bus would come.

I walked back into the house with the dogs, Fia driving me nuts, twisting on her leash and tugging back to goad the lagging Rapide, who wanted one thing only: for Fia to leave her in peace at her own pace. My stepdaughter refused breakfast as usual and wished me a nice day, heading out for the bus.

"Ah! Il a neigé!" she exclaimed, stepping out the door into the morning darkness. Don't forget, we live very far north.

I waited for the protest. It didn't come. I did not need to say, "Oui, il a neigé, et toi, tu vas aller à l'école. Dépêche-toi," but I don't yet call that progress, as tempted as I am after our homework session of the evening before last. I don't dare yet. That would be premature. It will require several more homework sessions like that one, and the grades that confirm their significance. On the other hand, perhaps the cooperation and good humor are more important than the grades.

I rather suspect they are, at least from a parent's point of view. You see, I might be an idealist (I have been so accused), but I do not believe that conflict needs to define the teenage experience. It's more nuanced than that. They will be secretive, insolent, difficult and unpleasant, and possibly rude, and loudly so, at least once a day (so will I, I promise), but it does not have to define the entire experience of being a teenager and growing up.

I do believe that we ought to expect this from them as a sign that they are doing their job and pay the least attention necessary, choosing instead to get "caught" by the kind words, the

thoughtful gesture, the moment of enthusiasm, when they cannot prevent themselves from sharing with you and give that lavish attention. Do any of us want to be remembered for our worst moments and have them shape everyone else's expectations of us?

I didn't think so.

I find in the middle of all this, from my place in the center of my warm nest, that I might like it. Or, if "like" isn't the word, it could be that I feel attracted to the work for some reason that remains a mystery. I also believe that anything that appeals to us and is difficult to understand is worth doing. I believe that it is the next hill for us to climb (or up which to roll that stone) so that we can see from its top, a new perspective on the same landscape of our lives, or a new one altogether, or the very same one, changed by eyes that see differently for having done it again. It comes as close to a job as anything I have undertaken in my life. I wrote a contract not only to keep ma belle fille in line, but to give a form to my own responsibilities and objectives in doing it at all so that I can see not only if I am failing, but if I might possibly be succeeding in my work, and possibilities of success somehow seem to breed more.

At least I have always found it to work that way.

Maddeningly, maybe, since I pronounced the words "Let's take her", two more possibilities for which I have wished might be presenting themselves. They involve work, paid and charitable, that could lead to more doors.

It is so strange how when you walk through one door, any door, corridors of them appear, and suddenly you find yourself contemplating just how many you can possibly manage and afford to open, rather than "Where are the doors?"

The snow is falling.

....

Melting

Droplets

Vapor rose like faint smoke from the concrete handrail of the garden stairs and heavy drops of semi-liquid ice fell from the leaves of the bows overhead, a steady patter of tree rain. There was vapor rising from the unsplit logs of firewood, and once I had placed the tarp back over the fire wood, lifted my rubber pail of split logs and turned to head back up through the wintry rain forest of what is left of the cedar row -- the twin sentinels at the bottom of the stairs -- and the arching wisteria, I saw vapor rising from the pool cover, too. Everything was warming in the December morning sun, turning ice and snow back to water, and then to air. Fallen wisteria leaves caught under unmelted ice on the stairs and the snow that remained, frozen on the brilliant winter grass, crunched under my boot soles.

For some reason, grass is almost brighter in the cold.

The last snow had melted from the tongues of euphorbia leaves and given hope of another day to live to the oleander. I made a mental note to bring it inside later, when my husband would be home to help lift and carry it to shelter. Perhaps the pots of surfinia that has not given up the ghost yet to the frigid nights. Last night one almost one of those. When I opened the door to take Fia out for the last time and go to bed, I discovered a deep black sky with brilliant constellations set into it, like a gift of diamonds in a vast stretch of black velvet to represent this moment of that night's sky for a Lady, made deeper black by the wisps of gray cloud and the branches etched into it in white snow and clear, twinkling ice.

Winter matches my mood these days of long nights with its solitariness, quiet thoughtfulness. It is tempting during these evenings to light candles like stars against the dark of the house lit by the glow of the fire, a night sun in the open hearth, and let the thoughts roam where they might, asking nothing of the mind to organize them or to make them useful. It is a time merely to be, between the periods of activity marked by the end of autumn and the beginning of spring. I could easily imagine traveling far north to Norway or to Sweden to make them longer yet. Why do we resist it? Perhaps this season is not lost, but has its lessons to teach, too.

In the midst of this, Christmas approaches, demanding that we get in the car and drive to stores to buy a tree, to become overwhelmed trying to decide what to give to people who themselves probably could scarcely care less what is inside the wrapping paper we have carefully chosen, folded and taped into place, securing ribbon tie or a bow in place.

Maybe this will be the year I will dare to make gift-giving as bare as the branches and as simple, I suggest to myself.

"They might not understand. It might seem only like you didn't care enough."

But, what if I could offer points of light in the dark like the stars in the clear black sky, the candles in the darkened house, the strings of lights on the tree, peace?

"They might not see. You need to spend money to make a present seem like a present."

Then, I will offer books and sweaters, shirts and DVDs, games and silk scarves, jewelry and reviews, and wish that I had offered peace and quiet.

"You will do better that way."

And I will offer myself light in the dark and peace.

"That will be good."
....

Snow

Snow-laden miscanthus

Delicate, tiny flakes have fallen without stop all day, the night before, and the afternoon before that. They fall now.

I hope they keep on falling, and falling, tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that.

It is quiet. Motorcycles are out of the question now, anyway, fewer cars travel the street, and those that do move slowly, carefully. So, do I.

Walking the dog this evening, my right foot slid out in front of me, threatening to cast me on my coccyx in the middle of the Grande Rue. This is why it helps to have abdominal muscles, to catch yourself. Even Rapide skidded out on her 4 paws and refused to take another risky step on more than one occasion. I don't know if she uses her abdominal muscles to catch herself, or if having two more feet on the ground makes the difference.

She can't say.
....

Argentière, once more

The pond in the playground of the Moraine

A glacier-fed pond, which streams on down from the mountain to meet the Arve that meanders down the valley from the Col de Balme, part of the Tour ski area, at 2191 m altitude to meet the Rhône where it leaves Lake Geneva.




These are the wonders of a snow-filled day and night and day, even if no skiing isn't.

Well, there's always tomorrow. It's supposed to be the one bright spot in a stretch of bad weather for skiing.

Bad for those of us here now. Good for those who will follow.

Maybe I'll just take Sam out of school and have him prepare the bac here. How much worse off could he possibly be? At least here he gets to meet really nice 40-something British property developer -- and his Australian mate, whose sabbatical might just turn into a life in the vallée -- who has started a little art gallery here in Argentière that he is trying to keep open, and who asked Sam to send him some of his photos; maybe he'll show him.

Sam is dragging his feet, waiting to have just the right photos to send to him.

Do not, my son, let perfection be the enemy of getting what you want.

And by the way, I hear it is raining down the valley in Chamonix, only a couple hundred meters lower in altitude.
....

All in a day's weather

Snowflakes

(it helps to have a clean screen)

The sun was out when Sam jumped out of the car near his school, grabbed his backpack and headed for the door before the clock struck 8:30 am, and switched from passenger to driver while the driver behind me suffered in silence. I made him drive since he takes his driver's license exam Wednesday. Tough for the nap in the car on the 25 minute ride to school.

"Mais il y a du verglas," my husband registered his own protest, arriving at my side as Sam was taking the keys. "Ca peut glisser." Thank you for the warning. I was perfectly aware of the fact that there were likely to be slippery conditions because I was, after all, taking them to school and the hospital in the car -- the only one of the four we own (sadly) that is in our possession and in running condition --, for that very reason. I was also perfectly decided not to have an argument or to back down.

"Il va passer son permis dans deux jours. Il devrait être préparé à conduire dans ces conditions de route." I tried not to cast a withering look in his direction; there's a vast plain between his own laisser faire upbringing and limiting our own kids' experience until they have none. He hadn't appreciated it one bit when I had Sam drive in the worst snow and ice conditions so far this year and suggested that he "test the brakes" on black ice along the Seine, but I think it is best for him to learn that at my side, too. After all, that's what parent accompanied driving for learners is all about; if Sam's going to get his license in two days, he'd best be prepared for whatever the road and the sky throw his way. He's also 18.

Back home, I passed the house, pulling up along the curb to park the car and made a mental note to take the picture I had missed yesterday of the ocher of the street wall against the blue of the sky with the bit of the stone wall across the street in the frame and hurried in to make my breakfast. I didn't want to lose a moment of the day (possibly) before I start priming the room I have been plastering for weeks if I could possibly be ready to paint as soon as tomorrow. The dogs were waiting for me to unlock the door and followed me to the kitchen, where I disappointed them by opening the shutters, closed against the night and the cold, and not feeding them again (one can always hope). I caught my breath.

The sky was low and heavy with the gigantic flakes that were falling thickly, blanketing the grass, beaten and worn thin by the workers' feet and wheelbarrow.


How, I wondered aloud to the group of animals still hoping for more food, did that happen?

I still got the picture of the house against the blue sky, once the snow squall was over and my first batch of plaster stuff of the day was troweled on. Listening to the snow on the roof just over my head from my perch on the ladder melt and run down the tarps to the ground, I thought about how much I don't like it when the sun comes out after the snowfall on a day that is just that much too warm to preserve the white and peaceful world, and I headed for my camera to get my picture, the day suddenly feeling like the promise of spring when heading into the house again later, I passed the split plastic flower pot on the steps and my eye spied those green shoots poking up through the dirt, which made me think of the crocuses. Sometimes they are out by now, but not this year.

Or, maybe the dogs have been snacking on them.



The gardening itch awakes.
....

It snows, and I can't see the winter sports

What kind of sense does that make?

Satellite depends on nearly perfect weather, but cable, like natural gas, real public transportation, or any household necessities, is not available here. We only got high-speed Internet access about 4 years ago, while it ran contentedly past us about 4 km away. I don't know what made them decide to take pity on our 400 residents, along with the handful over in Méricourt, and the two handfuls in Moisson.

Saturday evening, we had dinner at the Paris home friends of my husband's parents. At the end of the evening, our hostess looked at Audouin and said something that I knew from the word or two that I caught and the look on his face as he nodded "yes" had to have been something like, "But surely you don't wish to stay there forever?" I heard him acknowledge that he did, but that I surely did not. She looked rather beseechingly at me, hoping for proof that I was not hopeless, beyond her comprehension and reach.

Non, non, I reassured her, I could not imagine finishing my life here. I knew I would pay for that without even having to look at my husband. It came the next morning while we were putting the groceries away.

"Where else would we have the advantage of warmth when it is cold everywhere else? Look. There we were, chatting comfortably with the neighbor at her window, when in the grocery store parking lot, only a few kilometers away, it was so much colder?" The question was not rhetorical.

Of course, I had to admit that it is true that it is several degrees warmer here owing to the southern exposure and the protection of the chalk cliffs behind us, from which the space for our road and chain of houses along it is cut, but that is not all that makes one happy in life.

I don't think that our hostess would see fit to trade her little (dust-free) corner of Paris away for several additional degrees warmth in all seasons.

She has a grocery store across the street, and I bet she can watch a dust-free television whenever she chooses, which, knowing our hostess and the lack of a television in evidence in their tidy apartment, is not likely too often. Ah, but Paris offers so many other enchantments, nearly all of which I have forgotten how to enjoy.

I am getting old, and I am discouraged. Don't feel sad for me. That's just the way it goes when you have lost sight of what is actually important and how to be a decent person.

No, it's true, I have. I know it, and I am often reminded of it by any number of snags and pangs of conscience.

I am unable to be sufficiently charitable towards my husband's youngest children (long story that no one benefits from the telling), my contractor, my new president or myself. Impatient and not particularly well-suited or positioned to make a difference as far as the Big Issues that concern me are themselves concerned. Growing lazier by the day, but not proportionately indifferent (necessary to stability and harmony with the self and others). Philosophical, but not stoic. I know that nothing gets done if you don't start doing it. I know that. But what if I don't actually want it enough to do it, ever?

Take the couch. It's a wreck. It embarrasses me. I try to see the room without seeing it. And the same has come to be true for the garden, my bedroom, the petit salon, myself. I dream of being as efficient and content as Hunka Munka, broom in hand at the threshold to her tidy, comfortable little home in the hollow tree on a spring morning. Steady in the regularity and asperity of application, which always achieves its results. But, I can't see Audouin and I shopping for a new couch. Even once the room is done. I just can't. So, what's the point of thinking about how I want the room to be and doing the drawings, especially when the workers never come, always for perfectly good reasons?

Sort of.

Take health care. It's a wreck, and the supporters of single-payer argue amongst themselves over whether to stress morality or economics (Must we choose? Didn't that get us precisely where we are?), while Daschle is revealed to have ties to Big Health Care and made millions giving advice to insurers and hospitals, among others, according to the January 31 Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune:

The disclosure of Daschle's tax problems coincided with the release of the financial statement he submitted to the Office of Government Ethics, which details for the first time exactly how, without becoming a registered lobbyist, he made millions of dollars giving public speeches and private counsel to insurers, hospitals, realtors, farmers, energy firms and telecommunications companies with complex regulatory and legislative interests in Washington.

Or today's New York Times:

Beyond the ramifications for Mr. Daschle’s ascent to the cabinet, the disclosures about Mr. Hindery and the many clients Mr. Daschle advised on public policy offers a new window into how Washington works. It shows how in just four years an influential former senator was able to make $5 million and live a lavish lifestyle by dint of his name, connections and knowledge of the town’s inner workings.

The NYT article goes on to site some specific clients, such as:

Another client paying for his policy advice was UnitedHealth, a giant insurance company with many issues pending before the Department of Health and Human Services. About a third of its $81 billion in revenue last year came from federally regulated sales of Medicare Advantage and Medicare supplement and prescription drug plans.

The company boasted in its annual report that “one in five Medicare recipients participates in a UnitedHealth Group Medicare program.” (Mr. Daschle has said he will recuse himself from matters involving former clients.)

Oh. OK.

Not so hard in that light to see why single-payer is "off the table" and "unrealistic" for America, is it?

Oh, I don't mean he is necessarily a bad guy, just that a lot of good guys believe what they tell themselves so they feel better when they tie their tie in the morning.

And while House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman of California is the guy to go to to get health care reform moving, single-payer supporters are certainly not going to find an ally there, according to Physicians for a National Health Program's January 30 post, "Waxman Ready to Move -- But Where?", citing an article from the same date in The Washington Times, "Waxman to push '09 health care reform":

The top House lawmaker in charge of writing health care legislation said Thursday he is committed to passing a universal health care package by the end of the year…

“This is our time, we need to move forward, we need to get this job accomplished this year and get the bill to the president,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman at a conference sponsored by Families USA…

“The economic times which are so difficult is another reason why we need to do it right away,” he told reporters after his speech. “The health of our economy depends on a great extent on our dealing with the health of our health care system.”

But Mr. Waxman said private insurers would play a significant role in the implementation of universal health coverage, adding that relying solely on a Canadian or European-style single-payer system is unrealistic in the United States.

Don McCanne, MD -- providing the comment for PNHP -- writes in his comment following the post:

If a U.S. model based on private plans were as effective as the Swiss and Dutch systems, it would still leave about 7,600,000 individuals without insurance, which certainly tests the definition of universal. With much higher health care spending in the United States, the premiums for private plans, even with generous subsidies, certainly would test the definition of affordability. U.S.-style private plans, designed to enhance business success by creating patient barriers to care and payment for care, certainly tests the definition of social insurance.

Maybe James Clyburn did let slip the dark secret of the Washington reformers. If we were to continue with only incremental reforms, we would end up with a system that will leave many without insurance, that will leave health care unaffordable for many more, and that will leave in place an industry that takes away health care access and choice to further its own financial interests. Hmmm… Looks like another con job. Go the incremental route, but call it universal.

It just depresses me.

People I respect beg me not to be the fool of those who back a bad bill -- H.R. 676 -- that is destined to lose, even as they join their support for single-payer to mine, and without Waxman on board, they caution, nothing is going to happen. He's the man you have to convince. Conyers carries no weight for health care reform; he does not sit on the committee with jurisdiction.

Don't, they implore, undermine the the support we need to give President Obama, who has just made the Elena Kagan appointment to Solicitor General at the DOJ, (selects cases for advocacy in the Supreme Court and advises other federal agencies on selecting cases for other courts) and Neal Katyal to Principal Deputy Solicitor General (recommends cases and actually argues them in the Supreme Court), adding:

in all of American history, Neal Katyal ranks among the most important people ever, on the scale of preserving the Constitution and Rule of Law. He's the fellow who single-handedly took down the entire Bush Administration about Guantanamo. He sued and on behalf of a prisoner, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, arguing that the entire war powers views of Bush and Rummy re imprisonment and trial were unconstitutional. He personally argued the case before the Supreme Court, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

He won, and the Bush Administration's neo-fascist views were dead that day.

I broke into tears when I learned of his appointment last week.

And I wasn't even paying attention.

I will continue to back single-payer. I will continue to read and to educate myself, and I will continue to share what I learn, as well as my private embarrassments, suffered at the hands of those who do know more than I do, and do have more experience.

To Q, and you know who you are (if you read this), I say, go ahead, disparage, challenge, deflate my spirits if it is truth that you are speaking because we'll get nowhere otherwise. Who recently said -- ah, it was Harvard University -- that the point of a liberal education is to make young people uncomfortable, to take their world view apart, shake up everything they think they know so that they will have to reorder it all for themselves. Pain is growth, or growth is pain. I want nothing more than to shy away, take refuge in my corner of the countryside, a book in hand, but then I feel only... depressed. I have to return to turn on my computer and see what you have said and give it consideration.

Ah, but cheer up... there's still Colbert!

The Audacity of Nope

....

Cars and trucks have traveled the street along the house this morning, but none stop here, discharging the balcony.

It's precipitating mixed snow and freezing rain.

Another wasted day.
....

Update: February 2, 2009 New York Times Editorial, updated February 3,

The Travails of Tom Daschle

Mr. Daschle is another in a long line of politicians who move cozily between government and industry. We don’t know that his industry ties would influence his judgments on health issues, but they could potentially throw a cloud over health care reform. Mr. Daschle could clear the atmosphere by withdrawing his name.

I agreed, and I am heartened, like the NYT editorial board, that Mr. Daschle has withdrawn his candidature, as well as resigned from the position of health care reform czar. We didn't need to start reforming health care under a cloud of doubt, even if a brother in political arms wrote -- and I am sympathetic to this viewpoint -- "I'm so bummed out about the Daschle thing, I actually sent off the following story idea to The Onion:

Jesus Christ Returns!
Pays Back Taxes, Resigns From Deity
Ghandi Rumored Ineligible Because He Shuns Limos

"Now the "honeymoon" for Obama ends abruptly;" he continued, "we'll see how well he recovers. Healthcare, already down for 8 counts, takes yet another hit. It's time for Obama to address the nation on values, just as he did on race during the campaign."

I know that we aren't any of us working in a perfect system, unsullied by the reality of the workplace and the legislative place, where power, money and law meet.

We can't change it over night, or see the white knights sweep in from the Great Forest astride their mighty steeds, radiant perfection in human form.

I wish. That would be like Aragorn come to life with Gandalf and Frodo at his side, smiling proudly and benevolently at me, and I'd be 13 again, walking in the snow to school, imagining that I, too, walked silently and carried the ring.

But, we can do our human best to uphold the standards we say we will employ.
....

Thaw

From under the scaffolding this morning

More than a week of temperatures below freezing, and the snow stayed white and sparkling between the tire tracks on the roads less traveled -- even the route up on the ridge above the house --, on the lawn and fields, in little mounds on the frozen fish basin.

"Les poissons doivent être morts," dit Audouin.

"Non," I said no, reflexively, "ils ne sont pas tous morts . Tu veras. Ils vont bien. On ne perd qu'un par an, même en hiver." I sounded like a small child who knows the truth, and pushes it away.

"Il a fait très, très froid depuis longtemps," he said, "et il y a peu d'eau dans le basin." I knew. I imagined thick, thick ice trapping the fish in what is left of the water in the leaking basin. By the time we thought to add water for them, the hose was full of frozen water.

"Ah," Georges had said the day they showed up to work after the holidays and couldn't with the conditions they found here, "il fallait le purger." Of course it should have been emptied, but who uses it? You do, Georges. All we could do was bring some water out from the kitchen sink, pot after pot full. Buckets of water in the ocean. Useless.

Yesterday, despite feeling chilled where I worked in the petit salon, that is really the disordered, closet-like room that I consider my office -- I can see what it will look like, only it's far from that now -- I knew it was suddenly much warmer outside. I could hear the melting ice and snow running down the gutters along the street like a mountain stream. It sounded like a rainstorm when cars passed the window, a rainstorm without water falling other than the roof draining into the gutter and down into the downspouts.

A sodden landscape, depressing, muddy and soggy. The view went from a winter spectacle of light and white to one of drooping brown, dreary winter greens and gray. No joy. The lawn on which I work so hard every spring is not only destroyed from the work on the house, it is like a large wet muddy sponge covered with bits of struggling grass, weed and broken masonry. It squishes underfoot. It's enough to make me stay inside, except I accompanied the Dell repair person to the gate to check the mail (none) and close up behind him -- no workers today, and if they aren't here by now, they won't be, unless they show up after lunch by some miracle with the balcony, which I doubt, since they haven't taken the scaffolding down -- and on my way back, I noticed the water was overflowing from the basin.

I hunched under the scaffolding, water dripping onto my head from the upper part of the missing downspout into the garbage pail, placed there to collect it, between me and the spigot. I returned to the basin to check on the fish and felt sick. Sides. All I could see were the sides of fish, dead. Every one of them.

I have lived here for 6 1/2 years. Many of those fish were here before I arrived. Others were born since and grown and turned gold, orange or a mottled combination of the two (Audouin thinks those are ugly. He prefers the deep vermilion-orange ones). They lived in three groups, disappeared into the cement blocks under the stone sink Audouin found in the bottom of the garden when he came to live here, and hauled up to put into the basin, turning it into a planter for the marsh grasses into which the irises migrated and the moss the frogs love covers. They greeted me each time I walked out the door, swimming to the house side of the basin, all except the very few who live most clannishly on the far side of the basin, and rarely leave their spot, hoping I might feed them, mouths working at the surface of the water, broken by the thriving reeds Audouin brought back from Le Fé and set into the mud at the bottom. They are all dead. Tous.

Et, c'est ma faute.

The day we carried the water out, Audouin thought we should have removed them and placed them in their own water in the garbage pail under the downspout.

"That way we can start to empty the basin to repair the leak."

"No," I put my foot down, somewhere between belligerently and petulantly, but in truth I really did worry that it might not be a good idea. "What's to keep them from dying in the garbage pail?"

"They'll be fine." And, for once, he stopped insisting when now I can see that he should have won that argument. I was wrong.

I stood there gazing at the fish, unable to do anything but remove the ones that had come loose and floated to the surface where there were holes in the ice, and I thought how we could have taken them out and saved them this.

"But that's stupid," my head said to me while I went in for the kitchen strainer I use for the spinach, "They'd just be frozen in the water in the plastic garbage can."

"That's true," I thought, listening and considering.

"But no," my head corrected itself, "you could have brought the garbage can into the garage, or even the house, and let it warm slowly." Of course we could have. How stupid. How terribly stupid and thoughtless. We could have done that. I could have thought of that, and instead, every fish was dead because I had opposed Audouin, thinking I was acting in their best interest, when I was probably being obstreperous and piscicidal.

It is true, though, that day I went to look up what kind of frogs we have, I read that if frogs choose to come live in your basin, you have achieved a perfect ecosystem. As the muck on the bottom built up and the leak appeared, I knew Audouin was right, and that we had to empty and repair it, only I was afraid that we would be disturbing what he and nature had made, and that seemed wrong.

I was wrong, and now, not only is the house far from finished, and we are two months past the date they gave us and only halfway there at best with the outside and the inside yet to go, but the lawn is destroyed, the pristine and sparkling snow is replaced by mud, and all of the fish I have so appreciated are dead because I failed them.

Along with the recovery of the terrace, we can now repair the basin, but the fish we bring for it from Florosny in the spring will be new ones. I liked that the old ones that had always been here and made a place for me, and they deserved a better fate than I gave them.

Nothing is beautiful today.

It must have rained in Saint-Ouen-L'Aumonne before it rained here. If we don't have an extended stretch of decent weather, we might never see a finished project. As for working inside now rather than delaying outdoors, "Oh! Non, il faut pas faire les choses n'importe comment." As though they haven't been, for the most part, already. Whatever.

You're meant to shrug give up before you start.


3:15 pm

My goodness, José just scooted across the terrace, looking to see if I was inside. We raised out hands to one another, or I tried, but I am not sure I was fast enough. Wonder what they are up to.

Will miracles never cease to amaze?
....

Frigid

9 am, -9° C

15.8° F

It doesn't get that cold here. If it gets even close, it lasts for a night. Not a week. The fuel tank is nearly empty, and we filled it -- 1500 liters -- in the third week of October. Even taking into account the fact that one problem or another with the heating system has meant that we haven't heated the house for a period of time from November to the end of the year in each of the last 6 years, we have used a lot of heating fuel, and we keep the thermostat at 15° C. Trust me, that is lower than you probably do. Yes, President Carter, we wear sweaters.

And we stand next to the radiators for added comfort.

Yesterday I was Googling wood stoves, this morning, I flushed the toilet, only the flushing mechanism, associated with a tank built into an exterior wall that is due for insulating in a couple of months (too late), did not budge. I tried again. It didn't give a millimeter. Not one. I let out a cry of fury.

"La chase d'eau ne marche pas et c'est plein de pipi et --" I'll spare you the rest.

"Cherche un sceau. Ca descendra," said Audouin from the bathroom upstairs. Yup, you got it. The toilette is down on the first floor, at the other end of the (small, at least) house.

"Ce n'est pas ce que je veux entendre," répondai-je, and grumbling on, "Ce n'est pas normal que la chase d'eau ne marche pas jusque parce qu'il fait froid. C'est l'hiver. L'hiver existe, même ici." Nevertheless, I stomped off past Rapide, who had come to see what the fuss was about and be with me, for a pail, which was full of cleaning products, looked around the kitchen and grabbed a big cooking pot, thrust it into the sink and turned on the cold water. The hot water pipe had already refrozen yesterday. Joaquim, the contractor, drew my attention to this fact when he went to wash his hands, or something.

"Pour quoi," he asked, "l'eau chaude ne marche pas?"

"Oh, parce qu'elle vient de loin -- le garage -- alors elle met de temps à arriver."

"Non," he corrected me, "je veux dire que rien n'arrive de tout." I took it very well. Perfectly calm this time. I take pleasure in doing that with other people, especially contractors who are supposed to fix all these problems in the work they are doing on the house.

"Ah," dis-je, "le tuyau doit être gêlé à nouveau."

He was quiet for a moment, and then I heard, "Ce que tu souffres ici c'est plein de petits problèmes."

That make you crazy, went unsaid.

The fish and I continue to gaze at one another through a layer of ice and frozen snow.

....

Sam's hair

Already, Sam had gone about as far from unremarked upon yesterday as you can possibly be, and today isn't going to be any better.

"Sam, tu as les cheveux en bataille!"

"Sam, qu'est-ce qu'il y a? Tu as l'aire de sortir du lit, les petits yeux et les cheveux mal coiffés!"

One, he needs a haircut and refuses. Two, he has gone from a shower a day to two a week, and the longer his hair, the less successful the overall effect of his lack of grooming. I think he thinks it's unique, maybe virile, at least complementing his uncooperative and mildly rebellious "je m'en foutisme" at school. Yesterday, everyone had an opinion, from the French teacher, who seemed to have compared him to two writers he didn't recognize, to the head of the previous grade level (good humor, appreciated by Sam, "cheveux en bataille") and the assistant to the director of the établissement, who wouldn't let it go (see second quote above, and she didn't let up), to the boulangère and all his friends, about half of whom thought his hair is just great just the way it is. The other half did not.

"Sam. Get up. You have to at least wash your hair this morning."

"No."

"Sam. Wash your hair."

"I'm up. "

"Get up and wash your hair."

I heard him stir and went back to bed for 5 minutes. His footsteps into the bathroom between our rooms, then nothing. Footsteps back to his room. The alarm clock rang, and we dragged ourselves out of bed to face whatever nature had provided during the night.

"The Fiat probably won't start."

"Of course it will. Why wouldn't it?"

"Because diesel fuel freezes around -13°, and it was to go as low as that last night."

"In the US it gets a lot colder than that all winter in some parts, and diesel cars and trucks start."

"Then they keep them in heated garages."

"No they don't."

"Sam. You didn't wash your hair."

"There wasn't any hot water."

"Il y a de l'eau chaude," said Audouin from the sink.

"There isn't," said Sam from behind his closed door. I leaned over and turned the handle for the hot water. Nothing.

"C'est gêlé," I said.

"Il y a de l'eau chaude ici," said Audouin.

"D'accord, mais ici, c'est gêlé."

"You're getting your hair cut today," I said to Sam from the hall.

"No I'm not."

"Yes you are."

Today certainly won't improve the comments on Sam's hair. I have a call to place to the hairdresser and wood-burning stoves to Google.
....

The attendent

The gas station and garage

Rosny sur Seine, France

Someone has a sense of humor, or some time on their hands. Both.

The advantages, he doesn't take time for cigarette breaks, won't go to his doctor whining for an "arrêt de travail", and isn't temperamental. A disadvantage is that he is somewhat subject to a certain listlessness and possibly melancholy during unseasonably warm periods, in addition to being available only during the winter, for longer periods where the weather is harshest, less where the winters are capricious. He is ideally suited to northern climes and high altitudes.

Nose makes a healthy snack.

....

The BMW

After a month sitting in the little courtyard between the old school and the house of the neighbor kitty corner across the street, the BMW was taken away to the dealership this morning for repairs.

Why?

They (whoever "they" are) tried to steal it. Again. The first time was three years ago in the parking lot of IKEA in Plaisir. I came out of the store at closing time, my cart loaded with things to transform Grégoire's recently vacated lair into a guest room suitable for a friend arriving the next day, and there was the car, alone in a sea of space, vacant parking spaces where the lot had been full a couple hours earlier. I pressed the button on the key and noticed vaguely that it didn't make the usual noise.

Maybe I'd missed it.

I put my hand on the door handle, pulled up and noticed that it felt... loose.

I dismissed it.

I got in the car, and my foot hit a piece of plastic, and it was humming, like the ventilator was turning. As though it had just been turned off. My eyes roamed the dashboard, while I reached for the piece of plastic, and felt the wires dangling from under the steering wheel.

It dawned on me. No one had ever tried to steal my car. It took a minute for all the pieces to register in the cold outside a just closed IKEA in the damp December night.

"Amateurs," sighed the woman in the tow truck with pure derision. I stared at her. A woman tow truck driver. A woman tow truck driver in France. "Kids," she continued her explanation, "They don't know that you have to have the key to the car to hot wire it." I didn't know anything. Audouin was on his way to bring me home on the motorcycle. We assumed the car would go wherever they took broken-down cars in Plaisir.

"Donnez-moi la clé," she said, climbing into the driver's seat. I handed her the car key, wondering what would happen next and taking the seat next to her, glad I happened to have brought mittens and a scarf. "Avec la clé, normalement, je peux la démarrer."

"Cela veut dire que je devrais pouvoir la conduire, jusqu'à la maison?"

"Oui." She inserted the key into something dangling from the steering column and the car turned over, humming like nothing had happened at all.

"Will I be able to do that?"

"You will once I show you how." I thought about Audouin, just home from the hospital and on his way across the countryside of Les Yvelines to pick me up, while I sat in the warm car and waited for him. He'd already left, Sam told me, when I called to tell him he didn't need to. Wouldn't he be surprised, I thought.

This time, they had spotted the car and probably returned, waiting until I went to bed before they forced the door and set to drilling the ignition. I had been working at the computer in the little office across the street from where I had left the car parked, until 5:30 am. My consolation is that they had to wait a long time for me to go to bed. It was the cantonnier, or the village caretaker, who found the car's papers in the street the next morning, and brought them to José and Georges, and Georges who told me once I appeared late in the morning.

According to our mechanic for the routine maintenance, they try to steal it because they think that it doesn't have the security system, but it's a 1996, and while it's the same body type as the older ones that don't have the security system, this one does.

I called BMW. Monsieur Le Corre listened to me and drew breath between his pursed lips. Not good, "Vous devez allez voir si la direction est bloquée. Si oui, ce n'est pas bien. Vous ne pourriez pas la démarrer." He waited while I returned to the car and tried to turn the steering wheel, praying for it to turn so I could do the key in the little plastic thing trick the woman in the tow truck had taught me three years before. I heard a little click, and nothing. The wheel didn't turn. Had locked the direction just trying? I didn't ask. Worse, they couldn't even take the car until after the holidays. I made the appointment, reported the attempted theft to the gendarmes, and drove the others in our flotilla. It wasn't going to be easy for whoever was going to show up to tow it this time.

The car was parked perpendicular to the street in a courtyears alongside a stone wall, nose in, wheels turned to the left as I had left them when I got out of the car. We amused ourselves imaginging how they would extract it. Our favorite solution was the sort of vehicule they use to two parked cars in Paris. Large straps pass under the belly of the car, attaching over the roof, and an arm lifts the car, while the guy turns it in midair to orient it along the bed of the truck on which he will set it.

The guy who showed up last night, exactly when I had to get Sam at the bus 4 km from the house -- the scooter and motorcycles are grounded during the icy and snowy weather right now --, who was wearing only sneakers and had no gloves, and whose cell phone wasn't charged, was in a flurry. There were accidents everywhere. He searched for the ring to screw into the rear bumper to pull the car -- evidently I wasn't going to see my car fly in the air and settle on the bed --, couldn't find it in the falling dark, and had his mind completely elsewhere. He didn't stop talking once, and I stopped trying to follow all the words. He wanted to know if he could come back later in the evening, during the night, the next morning, take care of the people who were stuck alongside roads, their cars blocking traffic. He made phone calls, I got the papers to the car and the key and sent him on his way.

It was purely by chance that I witnessed the car's leavetaking. It was not easy.

He had to move the truck he was trying to position to pull the car out of the space several times to let people get by in the street, completely blocked by his truck, positioned diagonally across its width. Finally, the car's end was in the street. He tried to lift it directly onto the back of the truck. No. He opened the door and rocked it back and forth, actually managing to get it to roll backwards with the wheel turned, from the gravel, across the sidewalk and down onto the street. I moved forward from the Fiat, in which I had been sitting, watching, and he motioned something perfectly incomprehensible with his hands.

"Pardon? Veuillez que je vous aide?" demandai-je.

"Pourriez-vous monter dans la voiture et écraser la pédale de frein, écrasez-la bien pour que les roues glissent." I followed his instructions and sat behind the wheel with the brake pedal to the floor so that the wheels would slide, while he shouted further incomprehenisble directions. Lachez. Ecrasez. Lachez maintenant. Ecrasez bien. Finally, "C'est bon!" He came to the passenger window and indicated that I should pull up on the hand brake. More. More. Again.

"Bon. Et engagez la vitesse, " he said, pointing to the gearstick. I put it in first and got down, watching him lower the bed flat. The car secured. I shook his hand warmly and thanked him profusely for his efforts.

Now -- only now -- it occurs to me that I should have had une pièce for him. A small gesture. I hadn't been prepared. Maybe I'll drive up to Yvelines Auto in Bonnières with something in a little envelope. I'll ask Audouin.

....

Jacqueline! Jac-que-line!

Joaquim returned today, when I wasn't expecting him. I saw him through the French doors, and ducked like a soldier expecting enemy fire, making a bee-line for the far staircase, hoping that if I had been spotted, I'd been taken for one of the dogs down near the floor. I hadn't washed my hair since Saturday, and I was not going to be seen by anyone other than the towtruck guy (an accident) before I did. I wasn't so proud that I wouldn't take Sam to school with my hair plastered flat and at odd angles to my scalp. It actually hurt. That pain near the roots when you haven't washed your hair recently enough.

I was up in the bathtub, Baccarat barking furiously her greetings to Georges and Joaquim with my head full of shampoo when I heard Joaquim calling to me. He never calls first. If the door hadn't been locked still downstairs, he'd have been at the bottom of the stairs. I'd have been forced to shout back that I was in the shower. It makes me crazy, but I always get over it. That's what I tell myself each time he does it again. You'll get over it, so don't bother getting aggravated.

I took the time to dry my hair.

We made the rounds of the next phase of work. The balcony. The levelling of the entry courtyard and the pouring of the slab. Full bricks, laid on their sides, not thin bricks. Please. The lower part of the walls. The shutters and other metalwork leaving for the shop for sand blasting and painting. The brick walk. The steps and landing outside the living room French door. The yew that will really have to go, as much as Audouin wants to keep it. He wants the new glassed entry, and it's in the way.

"On en mettera ici, plus loin du coin de la maison." Joaquim looked at me with his eyes bugging, the sun glinting off the sparkling snow, the sky impossibly blue over the roof of France Telecom's little building behind his head. I tried to understand his confusion, why it seemed to strange to him to plant another one a little further toward the lawn to make up for the one we'd have to cut down. I'd put something else entirely, but about this, Audouin is adamant.

"Les racines! Tu ne vas pas les enlever! Elles vont droit dans le sol!"

"Elles sont plutôt horizontal, mais de toute manière, ce n'est pas très grande chose de les enlever." Even having explained that the roots of a yew grow mostly horizontal and are fairly easily removed, he still looked at me like I had gone completely crazy. I didn't much like the idea of a yew there, either, but.

"Mais il va mourir!" It would die? Why?

Oh. I got it. He thought I meant to move that yew forward. I laughed, "Mais non! Pas celui-ci. Un nouvel if! Tout bébé, ici."

The relief that I hadn't lost my mind, become so suddenly impossible, so difficult to manage spread across his face and Georges shook his head.

"Cousin, mais non. Bien sur un nouvel if!"

Of course a new yew.

We talked insulation, they tried again to get me to change the windows for double-paned now (later, if we decide to do it), and how to handle the trim work. He rejected moving indoors to work now. Laer, chaque chose dans son temps, il ne faut s'éparpiller.

He left a happy man, having left me the next bill to give to the bank.
....