Writing. Life.

Deja Vu

This month has been a time of return, remembrance and renewal for Mia and me. We returned to Gordes, in Provence, a place of great peace and beauty for me. It was where I first felt healed from the trauma that had dominated our lives to that point, and it was where I felt a sense of profound pleasure, of great sensual delight for the first time in twenty-five years. And for the first time I realized that such things are not a luxury, they nourish us as much as food, air and sleep.

We are in Budapest for two weeks to visit my family, some of whom Mia is meeting for the first time, my great-niece and great-nephew (having a great-anything is a sobering thought.) We usually start each day at Nagycsarnok, the biggest indoor market in this part of the world, to buy some of the amazing produce grown in Hungary (and a poppy seed pastry or two... or three.) It’s a beautiful glass and metal building with a soaring ceiling, reminding us that this is very much a nineteenth-century city, complete with several structures designed by Gustav Eiffel and wrought ironwork that is a national treasure (or should be considered so, it might nudge the city to restore more of it.)

Mia took a two-day side trip to Brno, in the Czech Republic, to spend the night in what was once Morava, the school/facility where she herself first began to heal. Of course, she was forced to go (by yours truly) and it was a lock-down facility (so she couldn’t run away for the fifth time,) but it was where she first learned to love herself again. It’s now a small resort/pensione, but the cook you read about in the book, Francesca, is still there and made Mia the same lunch she used to make the girls. She also got to spend the night in her old room, in her old bed. It was a very significant trip for her, nostalgic, bittersweet and delightful in its way. She’ll post about it later this week

Greetings from Provence!

Hello there, it’s Mia this time. This post is coming to you from Avignon, a fortified city in the South of France where my mother and I are working on a new project. France has proven to be both delightful and depressing. Delightful in that, well, it’s France. Depressing in that as my waistline slowly gets bigger thanks to all of the bread, cheese and chocolate, my bank account is getting not-so-slowly smaller thanks to the weak dollar and the fact that I quit my well-paying, full-benefits 9-5 to take on this project.

But back to the delightful... My mother has been to France six times and has yet to arrive early enough to see Provence’s lavender fields. Braving foreign driving rules and signs, and the speed and impatience of the French when they take the wheel, we rented a car for the day to do just that. My initial impression of a lavender field was rather underwhelming, a peppering of purple amidst sage-colored tufts of grass. It wasn’t until we drove by and saw the field from a different angle that the plants suddenly organized themselves into row after row of what looked like giant, purple, Dr. Seuss-like earthworms. PICTURE A GORGEOUS FIELD OF LAVENDER LEADING TO A HUGE STONE ABBEY HERE (where the photo is supposed to be but isn't loading for some reason - check back soon.)

While I was charmed by sunny hilltop villages, I was most impressed by the Abbey at Senanque and totally seduced by a little shop in otherwise-drab Apt called the Bonbonierre, where I bought a confection that sinfully combines candied clementines, marzipan, honey and chocolate. PRETEND YOU CAN SEE THIS CANDY HERE - SORRY!

This trip is the first summer my mom’s enjoyed the lavender. It is, however, the sixth summer she’s enjoyed this candy (quell surprise…)