Here is the profound and disturbing question I asked myself this morning bathed in sunlight sitting in what has become my morning breakfast chair.  Why does the first cup of coffee taste so fantastic that I immediately want a second cup, but if I indulge in that second cup it puts me over the edge? If this is not a metaphor for my life, I am not sure what is.  

Think of the sheer volume of revelations in this one question.  Why do I need that cup of coffee in the first place?  Is my life so stagnant that it requires a caffeine spark to jolt to action after a night’s sleep?  Okay, so the answer to that question has been and always will be, duh, yeah.  For those of you who do not drink coffee and have the uncanny ability to rise and shine sans caffeine, I am convinced you evolved from a separate branch of the human tree: homo sapiens non julius.  

Second question: if after repeatedly making the same mistake and indulging in a second cup of coffee only to inflict tremor-like agitation throughout my central nervous system, why do I allow myself to repeat this insanity every morning?  My brain knows to stop at one cup.  What organ in my body drives me to drink the second?  My heart?  Now that would be interesting.  I am literally killing myself with my own kindness.      

Sort of along the same lines, Melissa is addicted to swimming, not the splash in the pool type, but the goggles and cap, flip turn, stay the hell in your own lane type.  She has shown remarkable restraint and control, however, lasting several days, even a week or two, before methodically plotting, via Google, the most direct route to the nearest pool.  Remember, please, we are in a 12^th century, medieval town in the middle of France.  Nonetheless, Melissa identified a public pool within a radius of us that she determined (through her own remarkable Watson-encrypted reasoning) would make the perfect day-trip.  A couple of cab rides and a few kilometers walk later, we completed our laps for the day. 

I won’t mention the ratio of Melissa’s laps to mine.  I swam in the lane with the elderly lady doing something resembling the backstroke and wearing (I am not making this up) her reading glasses.  I was only marginally faster than her.  Melissa swam in the lane with the slightly overweight guy also wearing a swim cap and those difficult to get out of your mind’s eye jockey swim trunks, who looked as if he was about to explode trying to keep up with Melissa’s dolphin-like pace.  I was able to observe all this because I had a wee bit of time between completing what I considered an appropriate work out and what Melissa considered an appropriate work out.  

I am actually glad I married this woman.  Many of my male friends struggle to keep off that little pudge around their middles, and I sympathize.  They work long, hard hours and come home to dinner and a beer or two.  I, on the other hand, take a six month sabbatical only to discover that in addition to visiting six countries I have never set foot in before, I have also swum in six different pools including a few truly extraordinary ones in Australia.  It could be worse.  What if Melissa was in to BMX bike racing?  Please don’t tell her I suggested that.

We are nearing the end of this two-week stay in Sancerre.  Melissa’s French has improved dramatically, especially after a few glasses of wine.  At least I think it has.  I can’t understand anything anyway.  However, after a few glasses of wine, I am better at pretending to follow the conversation.  After ten days in Sancerre, I seem to have a similar issue with drinking that second (or third or fourth) glass of wine as I do with drinking that second cup of coffee. Melissa says the wine is not as strong here.  I’m going with that.  

In the spaces between the silliness and fun of this trip, I ask myself, more seriously, how did doing nothing become so fun?  Case in point.  On Saturday we walked about a mile to a bike shop, intent on renting a couple for the day, only to discover the shop was closed.  Undaunted, we wandered aimlessly until we came upon a bus stop and decided we would take the only bus to Bourges, a nearby town.  We waited an hour.  The bus never showed.  You might wonder what we did for an hour, what we talked about.  I have no idea.

Pressing on, we wandered along the canal into one small hamlet after another with no objective other than finding something to eat.  We suddenly realized we were quite hungry.  After being told at several places that dejeuner was terminé, we stumbled into a patisserie, bought a pizza-like square of melted cheese, mushrooms and ham and a palmier (my favorite), sat on a cement wall next to the road and called it a picnic.  By late afternoon, we completed this random rambling circuit by trudging up the hill to our apartment. In any other place at any other time in our lives, the events (or non-events) of this day would have generated at least one or two grouchy moments.

If for years I have caved in so easily to the temptation of a second cup of coffee, why have I resisted, until now, the joy of doing nothing with someone I dearly love?

C’est la vie.

We wake up at 7:45 in our spacious bedroom with twelve-foot ceilings, wood floors, red and gold wallpaper, and a wrought iron chandelier painted white hanging from the center of the ceiling.  The floors creak loudly, more like a groan, as I cross the room to pull back the black out shades and let the brilliant morning sun pour through the white lace curtains, a stream of butter colored butterflies bouncing off the walls.

Through the door to our bedroom is the large main dining room and kitchen with matching chandelier and five foot windows on opposite walls, the kind of windows that look like glass paned shutters and open inward giving meaning to the phrase “pull open the windows.”  Here the wallpaper is pink and cream stripes, covering not only the walls, but the back of the door to our bedroom.  The entire apartment is very French and very old, with exceptions made in a nod to modern convenience like the Whirlpool dryer squeezed into the corner next to the radiator.  From the moment we crossed the threshold and stood in the small entryway, it felt like home: warm, bright, comfortable. 

Melissa showers first in our tiny bathroom.  The shower stall is only slightly bigger than the width of two people standing side by side. No toilet.  It has been strategically wedged into what must have been a small closet off the entryway.  The powder room is so small it is almost impossible to sit on the toilet and close the door without banging my knees.  Yet, in that wonderfully French aesthetic, the door to this little closet is also wall papered like the rest of the room so that when closed any thoughts of this unsightly necessity literally vanish into the woodwork.

We are here for two weeks while Melissa spends four hours each morning in French language classes with about a dozen other Francophiles, most of whom are returning to this school for their second or third time.  Melissa is not the youngest student, although arguably the most energetic.  There is a brother – sister duo in their twenties, but other than the siblings, Melissa is towards the less senior end of the spectrum. 

Two of her classmates, Brawnwin and Jillian, met for the first time several years ago while attending the school only to discover that they lived four blocks from one another in Melbourne.  At a wine tasting outing the other night to which I, as the trailing spouse, was invited, Brawnwin, seated next to me, leaned over and whispered, “does Melissa always laugh this much?”  “She’s in her happy place,” I said, which was true.  The vin blanc was merely a catalyst for her mirth.  If it’s French, Melissa loves it.  If it’s French and old, Melissa adores it.  If it’s French and taste good, Melissa wolfs it down without a second thought, and this from the woman who, despite swimming two hard miles, will treat herself with half a chocolate chip cookie.  Put some pate on that sucker, and she’ll eat the box.  Vive la France!

With Melissa engaged from 9 to 1 most mornings, I spend my time reading, writing and walking around this quaint, quiet town.  Sancerre, France is both a region (known for its wine) as well as a town.  Our apartment is located in the same building as the school, Coeur de France, which is located pretty much in the center of Sancerre, a block from the church and central plaza.

Think of your basic medieval town perched on the top of a hill and surrounded by a thick stone rampart.  Most of the streets are narrow cobblestone alleys hemmed in by two and three story stone buildings that form one long undulating wall in various shades of ochre and pale pink intermittently punctuated with blue, violet, black and green shutters.  The streets are virtually deserted and spotlessly clean.  I crossed paths one morning with a street-cleaner sucking up tiny tidbits of trash using what I can only describe as an unplanned mating between a vacuum cleaner and riding lawn mower. 

Our little hamlet overlooks acre upon acre of rolling hills covered in a geometric patchwork of freshly tilled vineyards, a checkerboard in shades of brown.  The Loire river meanders through this pastoral scene, a wide blue brushstroke on an earth tone canvass.  On my walk, I see up close tender green tendrils sprouting from ancient, thick vines pruned hard to the ground.  In six weeks, these fields will billow like a thick green blanket. 

This is a quiet time for me, a time to think and reflect.  The language barrier – I took Spanish in high school – erects a kind of wall that is hard to describe or break through.  Most mornings, I interact briefly with a few merchants as I point and mime the things I want to buy – pate and ham from the charcuterie, cheese from the fromagerie, a baguette and pain au raison or pain au chocolat or both from the boulangerie, and, of course vin from any one of the multiple wine shops. Despite the sincerely friendly greetings and helpful, funny interactions, these encounters are not conversations.  They are more like holding a door for a stranger.  It feels nice, but it’s not enough to sustain me.  

In the first month of my tenure as President of Agros, I visited a rural village in Guatemala, a twelve-hour drive from the nearest town.  During the day, an interpreter as well as a two-person American film team accompanied me as we visited with several families, discussing their farm operations.  In the evening, we returned to the main area of the village, a rough, somewhat level field of grass and rocks adjacent to a primitive structure that served as a type of community center. 

The interpreter and film crew left me to capture a few more shots to complete their documentary. Some boys started a soccer game in the field while a host of children too little to join the game darted about the fringe of the field engrossed in their own play.  Men in twos and threes slowly returned from their farms and reclined in the community center quietly watching the soccer game, occasionally calling out or laughing at a missed shot on goal.  The women clustered in small groups observing silently.

I stood at the edge of the field encased in and isolated by my status as President, my privilege as a white American, and my inability, despite four years of Spanish in high school, to communicate.  At some point, a small girl with bright eyes and black hair stood next to me.  I squatted so that we were at eye level.  I can’t recall why she approached me, or what, if anything we said.  We would not have understood each other anyway.  I do remember the mischievousness in her face, her shy, endearing effort to engage with this stranger.  I remember feeling less awkward.  The videographer who had accompanied me on the trip happened to return to the village at precisely the right moment to snap a photograph of this charming little girl and me.  I keep a copy in my office.  

As beautiful as Sancerre is, I understand the limits of beauty.  Without someone to share it with, its life-giving effects wither.

Melissa bursts through the apartment door a little after one, her face beaming like her best friend just showed up unexpectedly, or like that place inside her that craves interaction with another human has been jolted with a four hour stream of stimulation.  At her core, Melissa is both teacher and student.  My heart flutters.  We’ll eat lunch together and then go for a walk.  Another pretty girl, another mischievous smile.  I am in my happy place. 

 

Don tightens his grip on my hand as we enter (the) PATH after our dinner out, sometime around 9:30.  Though the lights are still on and there are no signs telling us we can’t be there, the place is eerily quiet and deserted. Maybe we just imagined the mid-day hubbub of quick-striding suits and high heels.

“Be alert! Are you alert?” he whispers before he shows me how to dart my eyes in different directions and angles. “You have to be ready for anything down here at night.”

“If it’s so dangerous, then why did we come, Don?”

“Shhhh…do you want to die?!”

After 10 days in Seattle and a lot of laundry, Don and I repacked our bags and headed back out – this time to France, via Toronto. The side-trip was hatched as a way to avoid the rather elevated U.S. fares. We could fly AirCanada, explore a new city, and spend much less than it would cost to buy a coach ticket from Seattle to Paris. If there was ever any doubt that we could get our travel groove back, it was put to rest the minute we got off the plane. Having survived the 7 am flight, we could take our sweet time figuring out how to get from the airport into the city. We had two days to do whatever we wanted.

I have often wanted, but not known how to retrieve, a sense of play that could balance all the duties and responsibilities of adulting. Then I travelled with Don, a grown man who, in wonderful ways, still sees the world as an energetic 10-year-old who constantly improvises fun and games, no matter the situation. After taking the train in and following the map to our Air Bnb, we were handed a key to an apartment on the 66^th floor of one of the high-rise buildings that soar above downtown Toronto. On the elevator ride up, Don pointed out that we’d really “get some air” jumping on the way down. But he forgot this idea as soon as he opened the door to #6606 and dropped his bags to run over to the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“This window actually opens! Come see.”

“Wow,” I offer after glancing down, mentally noting, I won’t do that again.

For the next two nights, I had to try and forget the dizzying effects of that view and my need not to feel the building swaying in the wind. Sixty-six floors is a long way up, and the vulnerability of our perch was confirmed the day we left, when security used an invisible intercom to tell us to “stand by” while the fire department investigated an alarm that had gone off way below us, on the 37^th floor.

As the opening for this entry suggests, PATH was the coolest thing ever, especially since we didn’t even know it existed our whole first day in the city. For one thing, it solved our problem of having no warm clothes. Don had insisted that we not pack any more than we absolutely needed on the Mediterranean, so that left us a wee bit underdressed for the 50 degree weather. Was it starting to rain? No problem, we could just get on the “PATH.” That night, I had already assumed that purposeful walk you use when you’re a little scared. Don, though, saw and seized the opportunity to channel Jason Bourne evading capture. As we tunneled our way beneath the city, Don showed me how to relax my arms and “Gumby” my legs down each set of stairs. Having toggled between our pied-a-terre in the sky and this 19-mile-long underground city of shops and restaurants, we were suddenly masters of the city’s vertical axis.

On the horizontal axis, we walked above ground to Kensington Market, finding a lunch that Don dubbed the “healthiest” he had ever eaten (later that afternoon, our churning stomachs reminded us what “healthy” does to your digestive tract). We’re hip to “only plant-based proteins,” but Don went all out, ordering macha tea on top of vegan soup, seed, bean, and raw vegetable salad, and a non-gluten brownie made from a combination of non-wheat flours and essences we’d never heard of.

• 

After lunch, we strolled over to AGO and walked innocently enough through a side door that put us on a balcony where we could watch a school full of children doing art. The next day, we found the front door and paid to get in (after Don confessed our transgression to the woman in the ticket window). A lovely docent took us to see several 19^th-20^th century paintings and directed us to an exhibit of photos and films (by Man Ray and others) shot in the 1920s and 30s. The black-and-white experiments in solarization, light and shade, and photo montage were fascinating, as were the artists’ shared obsession with steel and sense that machines were speeding time up. I just finished Ian McEwan’s new novel Machines Like Us, which plays with this question: Are humans becoming like machines, or are machines becoming human?

Our other venture into the arts was buying tickets at the last minute to The Brothers Size, by Terell Alvin McCraney, at Soulpepper Theater. Like the screenplay for Moonlight (which McCraney also wrote) this play is intimate and intense, all about a brother’s return home from jail in the Deep South and the crisis of identity that follows. The soul music and the actors’ graceful, dance-like movements were beautiful.

• 

• 

We found our inner child again at Ripley’s Aquarium, where we ran around doing every single exhibit: turning the crank to simulate tsunami waves in the tank, rewinding the video to see the shark seize the seal in its mouth over and over, dipping our arms into the water to touch the rays’ slimy backs and have our fingers “cleaned” by the shrimp, staring dumb-struck at the nurse and sand sharks that sliced the surface of the indoor tank with their dorsal fins. After this great field trip, we sat outside drinking 8-oz beers at the brewery at the old railyard. Who orders an 8-oz beer? We did, and we laughed about it.

For dinner our last night, we found two seats at the bar at Momofuku, David Chang’s hot new restaurant for Asian-American cuisine. It was a blast to have front row seats to the production. We watched the young chefs tend the wood fire, grill the beef and escarole, and meticulously plate the food: brie and beef drippings served with round loaves of flatbread; grilled beets with chick peas on hummus; trout with cabbage and butter sauce. Don and I critiqued each dish mimicking the expert judges we watched several times on a cooking show in Australia.

Today is Sunday, a day of rest, croissants, a walk around town, and grocery shopping. Tomorrow I start my classes with an oral exam first thing (eek!), while Don finally gets some concentrated time to write. The transition from Toronto to Paris to here was hard, due to bad mattresses, the 7-hour flight in economy class, rain and cold, and waking up during the night. But we have landed well and are so excited to be in medieval Sancerre (two hours south of Paris) for the next two weeks. Love to all!

Here we are again strapped into seats 26A and 26C about 35,000 feet above Fargo, North Dakota vectoring in a more or less straight line towards touchdown in Toronto.  Only after zig-zagging across the huge expanse of the Pacific Ocean does a four and a half hour flight feel like a short hop, but there it is, one of the many things that has changed after three plus months detached from our former reality.

For those of you who may recall our prior airport adventures, I am happy to report that we had no dramas this morning.  Of course, I made absolutely certain Melissa all but signed a written waiver not to complain about our 7:00 am flight, a time we mutually agreed upon after searching endlessly for the cheapest way to get from Seattle to Paris.  I woke her up at 4:45 am, fifteen minutes before the taxi would arrive.  Eyes closed, hands in a death grip with the comforter, she asked, “do I have five more minutes?”  It was more a pitiful murmur than a question.  

We had spent about two weeks in Seattle, an astonishingly fleeting, interim existence that felt like sleepwalking through a familiar dream.  I remember the first morning waking to a beautiful spring day without the faintest idea of whether it was 6:00 am or noon, and stopping dead in my tracks on the way to the bathroom confused by all the clothes and shoes in my closest.  Where did all this come from?  I counted at least fourteen pairs of shoes including five different pairs of sandal/flip flop/slipper things.  I tried to wear all of them at least once while I was home.  I failed.

Later that day, we called Melissa’s mom to catch up.  In the middle of a conversation that had been all oohs and ahs over the spectacular natural beauty of New Zealand, Carol suddenly pivoted to her serious mother voice, the one she uses to make dire predictions about our future if we fail to follow her advice, and declared in a tone that brooked no dissent, “tell Don if I see him in another picture wearing those plaid shorts again, I think I’m going to die.”  They are not plaid.  They are monochrome.  The next day, Melissa and I walked to Nordstrom and bought new clothes for our trip to France.  I’ve got a big closet.

By far and away, the most delightful thing about being home (even more so than the glorious spring weather) was seeing Nick and visiting with friends.  A particular heartfelt shout out to Laura and Emory who not only hosted and fed us along with a few friends one night, but allowed us to linger in laughter with them for over five hours.  If there was ever a time when such gracious hosts were entitled to, as I learned by watching Queer Eye, gently usher their guests out the door by serving coffee, that night was one of those times. 

The next several days flew by in a blur.  I remember cooking a few dinners, laughing with Nick, who, by the way, did an impressive job of handling the house, catching up with Meg and Josh and Jack and my mom, wishing my brother Mike a happy birthday, and obsessing, along with most of America, over Season 8, Episode 3 of Game of Thrones.  Melissa, not a huge GOT fan – not a big fantasy fan in general — actually watched all of Season 7 with me (my third time) as well as the three episodes in Season 8.  She only fell asleep once in Season 7.  Yet another facet of this otherwise “literary” woman emerges.  Thank you Australia.  Khaleesi Melissa is in the house!  If you do not understand that last sentence, it just means you are normal.  

On the plane today, I read a terrific essay by Christopher Beha in Harper’s.  Here’s the quote that caught my eye and got me thinking about our brief layover in Seattle. 

“When I try to envision a better future, I find myself hoping for a society in which we all spend a little less time thinking and talking about politics.  I know I’m not alone in this hope.  Never before has the political, in the narrowest, electoral sense of the word, so saturated every corner of our lives.” 

It occurred to me after reading this quote a second time that during our short stay in Seattle we had spent virtually no time talking to our friends and family about politics.  During our lovely five plus hours with Laura and Emory and friends, “he who should not be named” did not intrude once on our delightful conversations.  By the way, I know the Harry Potter line is “he who must not be named.” I intentionally changed the “must” to “should.” We can use Donald Trump’s name without fear; we just should not allow it to interrupt our sanity as much as it does.  And that, with all due respect to the rather more intelligent and thoughtful insights of Christopher Beha, is his main point in the quoted article.  

I’ve mentioned before how I have wrestled with my ardent desires to remain permanently on sabbatical as opposed to returning to the United States, and, in particular, to the rude rhetoric building once again as we head into the election.  Beha provided me with a perspective on this sabbatical. It’s not that we should all run away or disengage from what has now been dubbed “the resistance.”  As Ellie Wiesel stated simply, but profoundly, “We must all takes sides.  Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.  Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”  Rather, as Beha explains, periodic disengagement from our obsession with politics (small “p”) makes needed room for reengagement with knowledge, beauty, laughter and each other.  Again, Beha,

“Knowledge and beauty; pleasure and delight; the contemplation of truth, irrespective of its instrumental uses; the intimate encounter with another human consciousness offered by the best works of art – these are among the things that make life worth living.”

Perhaps Beha’s most powerful insight, however, is how our collective obsession with Donald Trump and his tweets, his masterful, but dangerous manipulation of the press, moves us ever closer to a totalitarian society.  The “defining feature of totalitarian societies” as Beha notes, is that “they are places in which all modes of life are subsumed under the political, in which each citizen’s most important relationship must be his or her relationship to the state.”  Sound familiar?  So, how much time did you spend watching CNN or Fox last week?

Our brief stint in Seattle was as rejuvenating as our three and a half months overseas precisely because we returned to the joys of friends and family, the beauty of spring, and even the cathartic experience of doing some needed yard work (not one of Nick’s many talents).  As Beha helped me understand, “[t]he ultimate aim of scaling back our political attention is not apathy but the creation of autonomous space for social, spiritual, and aesthetic experiences.”  I am not apathetic about voting Donald Trump out of office along with those craven republicans who have empowered him verbally or through their silence.  I am, however, refreshingly aware of how a time out, a break from obsession with the nonsense we call Trump, especially his incessant “chit chat” via twitter, is, as Beha rightfully states, a form of resistance.

If my political views have touched a nerve with any of you good people who make time to read about our adventures, please take a moment to appreciate how much I love you, seriously and sincerely.  I don’t intend or hope to change your political opinions.  In fact, I encourage them.  Democracy is built on thoughtful dialogue.  Can we agree, however, to advocate for our respective positions respectfully and civilly and, as much as possible, with a sense of humor?  If Beha is correct, and I believe he is, allowing our political disagreements to fuel the fire of obsession leads inevitably to totalitarianism.  I feel confident that we all prefer a democracy.  So, if it’s okay with you, let’s keep the political chit chat to a minimum.