It’s a holiday Monday here in France. There are families out
on their patios, lingering over their noon meals, and teenagers biking through
the little village where I live. I’m in an empty house, my housemates having
left Saturday for two weeks of vacation.
This afternoon, I sent off my good friend, Amber, who was
here visiting for the weekend. What’s funny is that I didn’t drop her off at
the train station. We didn’t load her backpack in the trunk of the car and go.
Nope, leaving this little point on a map meant that we set out on foot to the
nearest bus stop. Amber was laughing, because in Paris, where she lives,
getting on a bus is at worst a five-minute walk. Here, it was over an hour,
through fields, forests, vineyard, and hamlets of white-stoned houses and
potted flowers.
It’s been—gosh!—almost three years now since my Honda Civic
got mysteriously ill and I sold her for a pittance before heading to France to
be an au pair. Since then, carless is the word for this girl. In city and utter
countryside, in the US and here in the country I’ve adopted, I have been living
the adventure of not owning a vehicle.
Easier said than done, let me tell you! Like many of you, I
grew up in Suburbia, where each person comes and goes as she sees fit. But, as
I have discovered, relinquishing the ownership of a car means giving up your
independence. Where transportation is concerned, I have come to move to the
rhythm of others. I can borrow a car from my (generous) housemates when the Papa comes home from work. Carpools are
good for long distances, but their timing is up to the driver. The closest bus
comes three times a day: early morning, just-after-noon, and early evening.
With all this, a person learns to wait. “Se patienter,” we say in French, “to patient
oneself.” Once again, I find myself living slower than the people around me, a
snail on a leaf watching my dragonfly friends buzz and flit. Where to find the
sense in this? How to justify it?
What I do know is that I am learning the value of things and
the meaning of distance. As I communicate with people about transportation and
am helped, I weave and construct new relationships. Sometimes I have to wait
for hours in an unknown location in between modes of transportation, and it
gives me the opportunity to explore. I know back roads and woodland paths that
locals don’t.
This scenery is becoming a part of me, and I a part of it. I
am seeing fields, hamlets, villages, and cities in great detail. And I don’t
just see; I also smell, taste, touch, and listen. It’s my great pleasure to
know, now, where to go to renew my wildflower bouquets that both smell and look
vibrant, and collect precious handfuls of wild cherries that make me pucker.
I’m watching a patch of Saint-John’s-wort put out its flowers so I can learn
how to steep it in oil for sunburn treatment once they are ready.
Recognizing a thing or a place, and knowing its name, is to
honor it and bless it. Tracing the hidden bumps of the countryside is
intimately knowing it, and I feel as if I am slowly earning legitimacy in this
place through this knowledge.
All of this reminds me that the Father’s kingdom is
topsy-turvy. You gain your life by losing it, as Jesus says.
