Each year Eric and I take two weeks to do absolutely nothing but being together with our children. We have learned that around day five our bodies start a full exhale of deep rest and we emmerge back to normal life like a small rodent does after a long winter rest feeling a lot more hopeful and optimistic. Good sleep and a little ordered nature and a few bagettes eaten in the morning sun can do wonders for a crackly soul. The following is my travel journal in hopes that you too can experience some of the Parisian countryside rest (and butter) through my pen.
Friday, September 18
We landed in France very tired but in good spirits because of the snack bag. Traveling with children is simple if you bring an entire duffle bag full of interesting snacks and emmerge out of every aircraft covered in them all. Paris appeared grey and covered in graffiti and concrete as we drove straight out of the city to a small village and checked into our hotel. Our room was finely situated to see a small garden of trees and I’m sitting now listening to the chirp of the twilight birds. We had an early dinner on the veranda and Rafael and I flipped off our sandals and ran pell mell down a grassy hill. I have said, “Do you SMELL that grass?!” exactly 503 times already.
My dinner entrée was called yellow chicken with ratatouille, which I immediately attributed to the movie in which the main character, a charming chef rat, is named exactly that. The chicken came on a bed of golden garden vegetables and tasted quite like the kingdom of heaven with the side of crusty bread and a small glass of sharp wine.
Saturday, September 19
Eric and I shared a bitter espresso on our hotel bed then wandered up through the lawn to the breakfast buffet area. Rafael took one sip of his hot chocolate and said “This tastes like heaven.” There were croissants and creamy eggs and fresh fruit and organic yogurt with granola and we were just sitting in the sunshine so satisfied. Eric and I played a rousing game of fuse ball in which yours truly got genuinely angry because I lost by one point and I dearly love to smash my husband in games because he’s not accustomed to that occurrence. Afterwards Eric took the children to the pool where Rafael jumped in and swam across the deep side all on his own for the first time and I went into the sauna and hammam.
French hammam is not anything like Turkish hammam to my relief. Eric and I tried a small town Turkish hammam a few years ago and ended up in a big steaming room with some large Turkish grandpas and then taken to another hot room where we were lathered with what felt like large fishing nets and old chemical dish soap. The last step should have been a deep immersion in regular bleach to rid our bodies of fungal diseases.
But French hammam is just a large steam room that smells like eucalyptus and makes you sweat out all your stress or all your bacteria, however you like to think about it.
After we showered we tucked our clean and exhausted children into the car and drove to the town near us. I was pleasantly surprised to find clean wide streets covered in beautiful markets. French people take their markets to the streets— including their whole greenhouses. The children were sleeping in the stroller and carrier so Eric and I stopped at a crowded patisserie and ate three whole pastries without blinking once. One was intended to be for Rafael so when he woke up we stopped at another patisserie that had a long line and bought him a puff of meringue covered in chocolate shavings.
The food markets remind me of my french friend’s kitchens. Bright and welcoming with pops of colour and nice cheese.
All the tourists are sniffing about the patisseries for the best sweets while the French march in on a mission and leave about 1.5 seconds later with a baguette or two poking out of their bag. They buy baguettes like Americans buy toilet paper. I should have known that because my friend Mali made crusty bread deep in the sticks of a Haitian mountain village. I have a picture of her holding it like she just birthed a baby, she was so proud.
The last queen of the monarchy lived in a castle we passed yesterday. It is absolutely pristine and enormous, though too crowded for the queen so she built a hamlet in the forest to escape with her best friends and her children. They even had their own cow barn, which is exactly what I would have built as a French queen.
The French public disliked her and the understanding was that she stole money from the people so they ended her life by guillotine during the French Revolution in 1793. Her name was Marie Antoinette. Now millions of people are flooding the castle and hamlet to see how she lived and I’m not tempted to spend 70 euros after hearing about her dismal life and gruesome fate. I’ll just sit happily eating cheap pastries while the children sleep. I would however, love to wander the 700 hectare lawns. French people like their whole estates to be covered in pristine landscaping and fountains and lawns and they like to take a chair and sit peacefully there with wine. I should have known that though because my French bestie and I made a little garden carved into the Haitian mountain with a little seat right in the middle to sit peacefully during our chaotic little life there.
I took a photo of Mali in 50 years; a chirpy little grandma in a bright red skirt and a perky hat looking for all the world like she wins every battle she fights and eats fine bread and butter every day.
Sunday, September 20
This journal entry will be entirely about French butter. I didn’t spot it in the buffet yesterday because it comes wrapped in a small roll like a regular taffy, and is twice or three times as large as an American butter pack. It is decadent, smooth, sweet, and very salty. Rafael and Rhema and I ate it from the tip of my knife in tiny little bites. Our guts are properly healed and sealed for the next years, just ask Dr. McBride. I know now why Mali always says, “He looks so French,” when someone looks good because everyone actually looks like they eat good butter. The rest of the world thinks it’s the makeup and the added blush but I know where that French skin comes from; large dabs of creamy, sweet, fresh butter on a warm baguette first thing in the morning.
The children slept like babies should, freshly bathed and sprawled across the big white bed for hours. I drank tea and looked out the doorways and realized that French doors are a real design feature in the states too. They are windows and doors all in one and so charming. If you think about it, most nice things are French. Rotisserie chicken, chocolate and cheese fondue, and lingerie! French Manicures, French charcuterie, French crème brûlée, French kissing— the French really know how to do it. Maybe that’s why they colonised so many nations— they just marched into countries like they do into boulangeries for their morning baguette.
We drove to a rural farm today and were pleasantly surprised to find large sprawling farmland dotted with people gathering their own fresh fruits and vegetables. We bought yogurt and milk and radishes and picked apples and Rafael and I walked down huge rows of cherry tomatoes to find the brightest red ones for breakfast. There were fields of flowers; zinnias and roses prettier than I’ve seen. Last minute I grabbed a scissors at the farm stand and snipped a few to bring to our next stop.
Monday, September 21
Our Airbnb is a quiet cottage in the country side. There is a small potager garden outside the door, and a hammock in the lawn in the back. The roses are blooming brightly outside both doorways and we sleep in a creaky little attic built entirely of wood. Our host is offering us fresh tomatoes from the garden. I’m realising we won’t make a trip to any Lidl or Aldi while we’re here because we can feast quite cheaply and simply on the farmer’s markets. We ate butter and baguette and creamy soup and radishes for dinner. By the time we leave for home our body index will be comprised of 80% baguette and 20% butter and O% regrets.
I think when I’m very very old and can’t walk anymore I will find a cottage in southern France with Mali and we will spend our summers gardening and writing and managing all the programs we’ve started together. We will grow flowers and tomatoes and drink sharp wine with our cheese and sit in the morning sun. I will write out all the words that have hidden in my chest these busy years and we will cry over our beautiful children and make trips to Nigeria in our spare time. We’ll wear bright red little scarves and leather shoes and our skin will glow because of the good butter.
We picnicked with the geese at the free grounds of a lovely castle today, and took a slow walk to drink in the cascade of white and blue florals and hectares of green lawn. We came back to the cottage to make a big pot of French pumpkin soup to share with our hosts and ate it with crispy potato gnocchi outside at twilight.
Tuesday, September 22
The sunshine was perfectly warm today. I made a five grain creamy cereal with our fresh farm milk for breakfast and we spent most of the day wandering a large forest watching a bird show and some wolves and raccoons be fed. There was a giant jumping park suspended in the trees and I think I loved it more than Rafael and went bounding through like a genuine squirrel. We picnicked on popcorn and cheese and Kamboocha and I found a cup of cheap and weak coffee. We got so close to deer in the forest we just sat and stared at each other like old friends.
Wednesday, September 23
Rafael and I ran to the Boulanger for a fresh baguette this morning and ended up with two fine pain au chocolat with our bread. We ate it on the back porch drenched in morning sunshine. The coffee pot broke so I boiled our coffee this morning and it was weak and muddy. Rhema is fussing like a tooth is pushing, and Rafael says he can’t wait to go home to his legos.
“I like home best too,” I told him.
Eric is currently picking up a coffee at roastery we found and it might be our first good cup of coffee since we arrived.
We met Milano sheep today at an old sheep farm. King Louis wanted to overpower the Spanish wool industry so he herded 350 sheep to France and some of the flock still huddle together on this old farm, looking for all the world like they were used in a power bargain with a King Louis, with their curled horns and woolly coats and oppressed expressions.
Afterwards we lounged in the back yard in the sunshine, Rhema napping on Eric in the hammock, Rafael reading cartoons, and me reading Liturgy of the Ordinary. For dinner we drove the a nearby small town restaurant where we ordered a platter of raw meat and vegetables and fried them ourselves on a sizzling platter. We shared a Crème Brule before we left and just fussed and fussed about how good everything was. I’ve been thinking that we should pay attention to good things and fuss about them more because God made wonderful things and said “wow!” proclaiming it good. We emulate Him when we create beautiful things and call it good.
Thursday, September 24th
I woke early with the sun to bike to the bakery for a baguette and a pain au chocolat for Rhema’s first birthday. We cleaned our Airbnb to waive the fee and drove to town where I found a linen dress for Mali and some wonderful chocolate. We tried a lemon crepe and some cheese fondue which was gooey and marvellous. They rub a garlic clove on the pot and add some wine and three types of cheese. It’s a bubbling disaster of dairy and so good you can’t believe it.
The lady in one boutique said, “The thing about you Americans is that you have no good cheese and no good wine!” The emphatic way she stated it almost sounded like that alone might be the reason we have such mental health crisis. No good cheese and wine.
We drove to our next stay, a restored Abbey in the countryside. We found our room in the farmyard area, surrounded by a herd of brown goats and two white alpacas. The area was donated to a group of devoted monks in the 1800s who spent their lives in full time forest monkery, creating the sprawling Abbey and surrounding buildings with such astute creativity. During the French Revolution they chased the remaining monks away and the entire place went into decay. It took a group of very wealthy investors to buy and restore it and now it is a flourishing place of rest, perhaps the most beautiful I have ever seen. There is an enormous Abbey, surrounded with gardens and restaurants tucked here and there with a pristine lake where we took a rowboat out at sunset, and a small boat house where you can book a room inside. We were told there is free tea at the Abbey when we arrived so we biked from our farmyard room to the grounds where Rafael had the fanciest tea of his lifetime. He was aghast and so was I. Biscuits and pastries and tarts and panna cotta and apple pie and raspberry muffins. A few people swept my body down to my feet with their eyes and I’m sure it was because of my dusty Birkenstocks. They were all so fancy I just stared right back at them head to toe. The country mouse meets the city mouse.
We biked to the pool and took a cool swim before showering and going to dinner in an old boat house covered in flickering tapestry candles. Rafael coloured, thank God because there was so much glass and so little space and so many fancy couples having nice dinners, and Rhema was kept amused by small bits of food. We nibbled on a charcuterie board and ate delectable beef and they put a candle in a little bowl of icecream and we all sang happy birthday for our precious Rhema Eve.
She spit the ice-cream out as all good one year olds should in the midst of building a healthy microbiome.
Friday, September 25
Our last day with good butter. And our tenth wedding anniversary. Eric and I are kissing over the top of our two tumbling children and reminiscing the time when we were young and skinny and naive. We woke up on the farm and went to breakfast. The scrambled eggs here have straight cream whipped into them I’m sure because they taste like the kingdom of heaven.
The other night Rafael was eating dinner at twilight and said “This feels like God’s house.” It was such a sweet reminder that like CS Lewis said, “One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam towards the sun.” Beauty is the sunbeam guiding us towards the source of all goodness.
We fed alpacas and goats and an enormous hare this morning in the farmyard as Rhema bellowed, “BAAAA!” at every animal. She fell asleep on our bike ride around the monastery grounds. We packed up and drove to our next and last stop, an old castle built by one of the king Louis’ for his wife to be able to view the Chantilly forest. What chivalrous and nourishing King Louis’ France has borne! They built castles and farms for their wives to retreat and meditate. King Louis built a castle for his wife to have a good view of the Chantilly forest. King Louis built a farm for his wife to enjoy sheep. King Louis built a hamlet for his wife to escape the crowds. Either the Kings passed unusual benevolence down through the generations or the queens possessed an unusual love of forests and farms and wept in their chambers until they were doted on. Maybe both!
Our anniversary dessert is worth mentioning. It had a rhubarb sauce topped with a pavlova crust and topped with real whipped cream and some thinly sliced rhubarb. Rafael said “This tastes like heaven.” Eric held my hand across the table when he wasn’t grabbing Rhema. The almost-full moon rose above the Chantilly forest. Eric and Rafael played outdoor chess. My heart was full of love and beauty.
Tomorrow we will fly home with a few extra pounds of cheese in our midsection and a few baguettes in our hips to life in the city with very real problems. I will bring exactly three blocks of butter with me for gifts and another tub of it to serve to guests at lunch tomorrow so we can drown all our sorrows in smooth French butter.
What a marvelous gift it is to catch the warmth of the suns rays and trace it back to the source of all light and to experience God by touching small animals and bright flowers and devouring crusty bread and sweet butter and kissing my husband of ten entire years and watching my children laugh with pure delight. If life can hold such beauty, what is heaven? If nature here can be so alive with life, how tantalising will heaven be? If butter can taste this good from cursed cows, how sweet will it be churned from heavenly bovines? If our frail human bodies can bake baguettes this crusty and melty, what will the grand ovens of God’s eternal kitchen produce for the marriage supper of the lamb?
If all these “small rays” of beauty can evoke such joy what ecstacy will we experience in the presence of the sun for all eternity?
It will be marvelous beyond words.
I think the French will bring the butter.
Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash
