Cabris, Day 1

I write as someone who fears waking from a dream.

I’m going to take some time to get the words right for this landscape. My head was in a tisy from all of the travel of the last 24 hours. But still I got notions of Mexico, Malibu, Colorado, Dallas. I’m a liar if I try to make that make sense on day one of my stay.

Everyone keeps speaking French. This is unbelievable. It doesn’t inspire heart-pounding excitement. There is a steadiness in this landscape for me. Which is good. Anything that gave me a big head-rush would have been cheap, wouldn’t have lasted. But with a steadiness I’m able to acclimate, I already know it.

There are children playing piano downstairs and they are playing it well. I’m watching lights flicker on in the towns below. A cloud of smoke from a bonfire across the hill is wrapping around rooftops still.

I’m finally here.

If I close my eyes and fall asleep right now, I’m afraid that I’ll wake up somewhere else. I’m specifically scared that I’ll wake up in my childhood bed. The one before my parents divorced, with the white quilted pillows and pink lace around the edges. I fear I’ll have to start all over again. I’m scared I’ll wake up there again, fearing life and unsure of what it all was for. Once when young I woke up in that bed and was positively, unquestionably certain that life was a dream. Have I reached the pinnacle? Here in France, am I at the height of the dream or am I finally awake?

When I wake up tomorrow does this just get to keep going? Will everyone still be talking French and will I still be here to experience the land, the people, the fat cats that creep in and out of bushes? There’s a bakery down the street. I could walk to the grocer from here. If I wanted to I, truly, could wake up tomorrow and keep living like this. Feeling like God made a land for me when in reality it was He who made me for this land.

God save the queen. Liberty, equality, fraternity.

Time to learn to speak the language.

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(The flip side of this coin is succinct but heavy. To whom much is given much is expected. And what is expected of me now that the secret desire of my heart has been given to me with more blessed abundance than I dared to dream?)