Nostalgia

I was kindof expecting to be hit with waves of nostalgia when we got back to France.  Aside from the usual bumps in the road that you hit when you move internationally with an infant, and then stay with relatives, and then house sit instead of finding your own apartment, and then move back in with relatives again, and have to start all over again from scratch and find new friends/doctors/banks/mechanics/grocery stores it was a pretty easy year.  I didn't find myself missing France much at all.  And then, when we got back a few weeks ago, it didn't feel like we'd ever left.  The only giant pang of sadness I felt was walking through the market in one of my favorite parts of town.

 

How did I go a year without buying fresh olives scooped into baggies?  Without saying bonjour to the hunched-over grey haired granny selling lavender sachets? Without buying giant ruby beets, and slow-roasted chickens stuffed with bell peppers and potatoes?  Without reasonably priced goat cheese, except the stuff at Costco, which gives Josh a stomach ache? 

I'm not sure.

Maybe it was the ease of driving everywhere, of having a beautiful American kitchen, or a bathroom with no sewage smell backing up from the shower drain.  Maybe it was wall-to-wall carpet.  Or grass.  Or canned sweet potatoes.  

Or maybe, like one of my friends pointed out when I told her that I didn't feel sad about not living in Aix any more, it's just that we're not meant to be there right now.  I like that answer, although I think I would like easier access to French food.  So would Bout-Chouette: we held her up to look in the display case of a bakery while we waited to buy our baguette.  She took a good, long look at the pastries...and then started clapping.

  

One of the biggest sacrifices you make when you live in more than one place is that you'll always love something that's somewhere else.  On one of our strolls through town (which were few; I spent 90% of our time in France studying), we passed the old apartment of friends of ours.  They weren't there any more--Josh was supposed to be making a sad face in the photo.

But I guess the smile works, too; when we get back to the US, we'll be living down the block from them.  I'd say that's almost worth missing out on the goat cheese.