la france

So, here's the only deal:

I adore France to the absolute bottom of my heart- I love visiting, I love reading about it, I love seeing pictures, I love the food and the art and the atmosphere- and yet, I am going to fail AP French in school parce-que je ne peux pas parler francaise (because I can't speak it). I wish I could just open my mind and my heart and the culture would flow in through my pores.

My mother grew up in France. What a life that musts have been... Paris in the '60s...

To live in the twists and turns and secret corners of this city

And spend summers in these fields by the sea in Normandy

To lie in these fragrant fields for hours...

And when you tired of that, to lose yourself in a place where no one knows you, but the city itself accepts you...

To drive this car along endless roads when you needed to get away...

To come here and picnic with family (she has four brothers) and read poety on a blanket...

And to come home and curl up in a window seat and watch winter strike Paris with all his strength, but never conquer...

Photos via here, and here

The one story that stuck with me out of all the Paris stories was this:

One morning when my mumma and her twin brother were just two years old, they got up before anyone else and (god knows what possessed them) picked up their mother's huge old Underwood typewriter between them and proceeded to shove it out a third story window of their appartment at the Place Vendome (here). My grandmother was awakened by a knock from a kindly, albiet slightly apprehensive, Parisian holding her mutilated typewriter. By that time the twins, having acomplished their goal, were back in bed like little angels.

Aren't children delightful?