A feel of warmth in this place.
In winter air a scent of harvest.
No prayer is needed,
When by sudden grace attended.
Naturally, we fall from grace.
Mere humans, we forget what light
Led us, lonely, to this place.
The Blessing by John Montague
Here in the southwestern French countryside the summer season is surrendering later than usual. The abundant wine grape and corn harvests are almost finished. While last night’s unexpected rain and wind were busy sweeping my heart clean I thought about the best experiences I’d had over the past 3 months. One stood out.
About 2 years ago I was contacted by the online magazine I write for, Bonjour Paris, asking if it was alright to pass on my phone number to a man who’d followed my articles for some time and was interested in a tour. I said yes and a few weeks later a man with a charming southern accent called me from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He explained he was very interested in exploring Gascony and wondered whether one of my tours would be viable for him and his wife. I sent him the link to my website, but didn’t hear from him again until last January.
To my surprise he booked a private tour for himself and his wife and 2 friends. Touring Gascony was on their bucket list. They arrived late last month and stayed for 10 days. The weather could not have been better, the food tastier, the wine smoother, nor the armagnac we sipped more potent—a heady mixture for the uncommonly special relationship that developed between us.
We visited fortified villages, historical chateaux, WWII sites, new wineries and old armagnac distilleries, farmers’ markets, the religious sanctuary of Lourdes, and took a pastry class in the art of making French macarons. We spent hours in each other’s company, sharing bits and pieces of our life stories. With one exception my guests were in their early 80s. They’d all been friends for almost fifty years. Both couples were successful beyond their wildest expectations and could afford to travel the world. Now both women were facing unavoidable surgery on their return home. I was reminded that no matter how fortunate ones circumstances are, life could be challenging.
We talked about everything under the sun from our opposite political opinions to our religious beliefs and we discovered that no matter how different our backgrounds and persuasions were, we shared a commonality unique among women: friendship, marriage, divorce, retirement, and a humorous female perspective on men. As I led the way to our first appointment, my front seat companion drawled, “…I was reading from a tattered library book a while ago that men’s brains are ever so slightly larger than women’s, and, in the margins of that book a female hand had written, ’So why can’t the big-brained, excuse my French, “bastards” use a toilet brush!’ We all laughed till we cried. All women need for bonding is a couple of chairs and a pot of tea, or in this case a long drive in a car.
Towards the end of the tour we were joined by a friend of mine, an oenologist and contributing writer for the Guides Hachette des Vins, the bible of the French wine industry. We took 2 cars to our scheduled tastings and, as often happens, the men went in one and the women joined me in the other. We shared more stories about ourselves, our children and grandchildren, as mothers, daughters, sisters, and now friends — deeply personal stories of success and loss, and everything in between.
The day before their departure we had our pastry class in a small, professional facility tucked into the village of Vic Fezensac. Inside the professional kitchen fitted with stainless steel countertops and Kitchen-Aid mixers, each of us took turns making French macarons, mixing the egg whites, adding the colors, caramelizing the sugar, using a pastry bag to squeeze each little round top and bottom onto the large baking trays, then filling them when baked. The master pastry chef was a delightful teacher who told us he rose every morning at 2:30 to begin his baking day for the sheer pleasure it gave him, and indeed, we could taste the joy while licking our fingers clean. By the end of the class we had made over 250 macarons in 6 different flavors.
The drive to the airport very early the next morning was emotional for us all. At the security checkpoint, with our eyes beginning to tear, we said our goodbyes. Even the men shared their vulnerability, a sign of strength, not weakness. Our affinity for each other was palpable, our kinship fixed in the beauty of the Gascony landscape.
The Blessing, photo by Colby Chester
