I dipped my hands into the fountain. The cold water felt so good I sunk my hands deeper, up to my elbows. Instantly, I was cooled off. In our village there are sixteen fountains, it is not uncommon to see someone cooling off by sticking their arms into one of them. Next to our home, there are three fountains, not even a stone's throw away.
Sitting by the fountain was an older woman, someone I have seen many times before and have often said hello to as I pass by. Yesterday, after I said the customary Bonjour, she added, "It sure is hot today isn't it?"
Asking or talking about the weather is a classic conversation starter, it is safe, friendly, and easy to add on to. I agreed with her, "Hot, but not as hot as my native California."
With that, we started talking. She sat on the stone bench, and I sat on the edge of the fountain under the massive plane trees.
Her story unfolded… she never married, she was a clock mechanic, all her family had died, she moved to our village several years ago. She wore a red and white striped dress, with spaghetti red ribbons straps.
When she was a young girl she was in a car accident, "… I was bouncing my neighbor's baby on my knee when another car struck us, the baby flew out the window, luckily she wasn't hurt, except for a scratch on one hand…. a miracle really… the parents weren't hurt either. But I bite my tongue in half. I had too many stitches to count, I had to relearn to talk, that is why I speak as I do."
As she continued to talk about bits and pieces of her life, I dipped my hand into the fountain, I rubbed my neck, letting the cool water run down underneath my shirt across my heart. I felt a door open and felt myself walking into a new friendship.
Later that evening, at a dinner party there was a young man from Canada, he was very funny. He described himself in quarters, I am one-quarter ginger, one-quarter coke a cola, one-quarter baguette, and who knows what the other one-quarter is.
In France, it is customary at the end of a funeral to have a bucket of holy water at the end of the coffin. Those gathered are invited to come up and bless the coffin, by dipping the brass stick (I do not know the name of that thing! Crazy that I don't!) into the holy water and making the sign of the cross over the coffin.
I dipped the stick into the holy water, held it up over Mr. Porte's coffin, and instead of saying, "In name of the Father and of the son…
I heard myself say with tears running down my cheeks, Tomatoes, Green Beans, Cherries, and Figs… Amen Friend!"
What four things could describe you?
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Note:
Thank you, Marie-Claude for the name of the brass stick:
"GOUPILLON".
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