Author: Heather Robinson

“O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree…” well, I don’t know the rest of the words to the song but it didn’t stop me from humming the tune the entire way back to the house from the market yesterday as I carried one in my arms–not at easy feat as it is far taller than I am. I had bought it, as I always do, from the gentle giant that drives down from the mountains in the Ardeche region each year with a truck full of freshly chopped trees. He has pointy teeth and stutters if I look him directly in the eye but seems genuinely delighted each time someone chooses his wares over those of the other sellers. I joked with him that I feared that Remi would be furious with me–I always get ambitious and chose the biggest tree possible and this year was no exception. I figured that who knows where we will be next year or if we will have such high ceilings, so why not?

Remi had the rather brilliant idea of securing the trunk in the base for the outdoor umbrella. But it just wasn’t the evening to do more. I was up on the ladder, ready to go when Luciano Pavarotti singing “Ave Maria” on the stereo took me by surprise. My Dad was a huge “Luch” fan (as he called him) and would drive us all crazy by turning the song up to full volume as we were trimming the tree. “Listen to this! Listen to this!” he would say with delight, even though we had all heard it so many times during so many holiday seasons. My Dad didn’t even enjoy decorating and would usually disappear after ten minutes only to later pout that we had done it all without him. So I don’t know why I started to cry so hard but I did. It isn’t the first Christmas since loosing my Dad but it was just one of those moments when it still seems so recent.

So tonight will be take two. Time to light all of the candles and continue the tradition with joy and gratitude in my heart because that is what the spirit of the holiday season is all about.

…is sometimes just to stay. A gift of being so relaxed and ready to keep spending time together, most especially as we all swing into the dance of the holiday season.

On Saturday, we invited a small group of friends to join us for an “After the Market” buffet-style lunch. This our new favorite way of receiving folks as it is like tapas on steroids, you can serve as much as you wish without breaking the bank and everyone finds something that they enjoy. Here is the table as it was at 12:30ish, with most of the group arriving at right before 1pm.

Blinis topped with either lobster or scallop purée, toasts with tapenade or sun-dried tomato “caviar”, two kinds of olives (including a rather slimy version with anchovy paste), a jumbled pile of crudités, mini-red peppers stuffed with goat cheese, sliced Andouillette (if you don’t know what it is, you probably don’t want to), a pepper and zucchini Provençal tart, a salmon quiche, two dozen oysters, a charcuterie plate of smoked ham and paté, another of chorizo and saucisson…Oh, and don’t forget the cheese plate! All of this served with the amazing cremant from Bourgogne that our dear friends Sonny and Michael convinced us is far better than cheap champagne and an earthy red from the Luberon.

Now, this is a group that we don’t get to see as often as we would like. It turns out that everyone has a lot going on, major changes in the air, so there was much to discuss. I mean really. A lot. We just kept talking and picking at the food and sipping and listening and talking some more. Until it was 5pm, which meant that we could somehow qualify it as time for the “Apero”, the Frenchified version of cocktail hour. Remi showed some of his most recent photography, dogs were walked and the fire was kept well-stoked. In the blink of an eye it was 8:30pm when everyone became peckish again, here is what the table resembled at that point:

With my ratty Dallastown High School Cheerleading sweatshirt pulled up over my ears, I stomped through the garden this morning, trying to stay warm as I reluctantly picked up fistfuls of leaves, crunching them into three garbage bags. How many memories are packed into that gesture, especially as some of the best that I have with my Dad were from days just like this. The only difference being that, then, there were so many that he would rake them into a giant pile for me to fall into, one sweetly redolent of sap and rot.

I did what feeble pruning I dared save for the rose bush which still has two loopy white blooms lolling off its branches. I stacked up the many small candle holders that lit up our summer nights like fireflies and replanted a lone hyacinth bulb. Will I be still living here in the Spring to see what has survived the chill? Or will it be for someone else to finally see the camellia tree bloom?

Remi and I let the air out of the massive iron radiators–we need all the help they can give us–and will soon head out to buy more fire wood. The kitchen cupboards are already packed to the gills with reserves of coffee, rice, pasta, everything I would need to make any soup that struck my fancy as well as small jars of things like curry mustard from Fauchon that always seems too “good” to open.

So we are prepared but I am already (already!) sentimental about the Fall that has just left us. My favorite season and a whole year lies ahead before I will see it again. Only one thing to do, drag out the box with the holiday lights.

I can’t be the first person to think this, but Paris seems to me to be more about the idea of a place than the reality itself. Whether it is the preconceived notions of a kid from the country about the impositions of the capital, the hopes of illegal immigrants that have climbed up from Africa to make the most of their hard-won French or just the open-faced dreams of honeymooners who cast their love on the banks of the Seine. Somehow all of these thoughts, floating through winter’s silver light, make Paris seem as if it is not entirely solid, as if you could walk up to the Louvre and push your finger into it as if it were a cream pie.

It had been four years since I had been there and even that was a mere jet-lagged stumble on my way back from a story that Remi and I had done in Bali. At the time, I was still cloaked in the resentments and disappointments acquired during my four years of living on the outskirts (because aren’t I always?) in the suburb of Vanves. However, I had nothing but hope in my heart for the visit last week. Remi was exposing three of his abstract pieces at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Indépendants, the very one that had been formed by the “rejects” of the Beaux Arts in 1884. Four years later, Vincent Van Gogh, another bad boy with a love of Arles, debuted his paintings from Provence there. Last Sunday, we arrived under the glass domes of the Grand Palais with two thousand other artists, lined up to drop off their works. Admittedly, my inner fashionista was fascinated to be in the home of Karl Lagerfeld’s brilliant Chanel shows, but the look of diffused pride on my loved one’s face firmly brought me back to the present.

The rest of our trip flew by in a flash of footsteps but there are quite a few lasting impressions. Leaving behind the snobbism of Paris Photo to be the last couple to cross the Jardin des Tuileries in the dark before the gate was closed for the night. Showing up smiling at the office of an important magazine. Unveiling to Remi the Orangerie whose two rooms of Monet’s Nympheas very well may be some of my favorites on Earth. And most importantly, the Opening Night of the Salon, where we served champagne in plastic cups to a loyal group of friends and family gathered in front of Remi’s photography.

Earlier that day, I splurged and got my hair trimmed with a blow out by the charming owner of an old-school salon in a bourgeois neighborhood. As I sat in a café afterwards, waiting for Remi, I studied the passer-by but also my reflection in the window. How much has changed since my arrival in Paris nine years ago. I was terrified, had lost my much-treasured ability to express myself in face of a new language and felt the heavy stares of disapproval over everything from my rock and roll leopard coats to the way I held my fork. I had left behind my career and family, buoyed only by being wildly in love. Now I can communicate with anyone with nary a “Pardon?”. True, at forty-one, I am “Madame”, my days of “Mademoiselle” gone for good. If I have grown up a bit, I have also grown out. I do not know what project will be next. But at that moment, inspired by Remi’s bravely surging into a new field of art, the weighty warmth of the surrounding café patrons and the impermanence of Paris, I was ready for all that lies ahead.