Adult-like Wonder

     I came across this quote last week:  "We talk about childlike wonder, but I think it's important to have adult-like wonder. . . . Let passion and curiosity lead your life."  So writes Leigh Ann Henion in her book,"Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer's Search for Wonder in the Natural World."  I have not read her book.  This quote appeared in one of the publications that I get monthly and I realized this is exactly why I love to travel!

Me in the Dordogne region of France where I first fell in love with the idea of  living in France

      There are moments in my travels that I remember so clearly, as though they were just this morning.  Those moments are imprinted in my mind because they inspired that "adult-like wonder."  The first such memory is from 1973.  At the end of my 3 1/2 month stay with the Burchett family in northern France, my cousin, Cindy, and I had eurail passes and traveled all around Europe for 2 weeks (one of those "if it's Tuesday it must be Belgium" kind of tours!).

Carcassonne

     The moment came when we first saw the medieval city of Carcassonne in SW France.  I had never been to that part of France and had only read about it.  Cindy and I got off the train at the station in the modern city by the same name and asked how to find the ancient city.  We were told to follow the signs to "La Cité".  We walked about a mile and rounded a curve in the road, and there it was.  We were stunned into silence and awe.  We both remember just standing there with our mouths open and eyes wide taking it all in.  The oldest double-walled city in the world still standing in its entirety.
     There was very little on that trip that compared to Carcassonne.  It's still one of my most favorite places to visit. But certainly in all my years of travel, there have been other "wonder" moments.  The medieval fortified abbey island of Mont St Michel is another one.  I have been there twice and each time it was cloudy and rainy which gave an aura of mystery and magic to the sight.

Mont Saint Michel

     A few years ago, Andy and I spent a week in Nice on the Riviera.  Our favorite day was spent driving through the maritime Alps.  Only an hour north of the sea and we were in the mountains.  We got lost a number of times, but didn't really care!  And we both remember with great fondness the lunch we had in a little Alpine village at a cafe we found quite by accident.  We had no idea that this little restaurant, which catered to the local workers, had a Cordon-Bleu trained chef!  And for all of 10 euros each, including wine, we had a 3 star lunch!

Maritime Alps north of Nice

     I am always in awe of the art and artistry in the gothic cathedrals.  How did they build those 1000 years ago?  We have buildings in the US that don't make it 100 years!!  How many skilled workers and artists were involved in the building of these amazing structures?  I could spend hours (and have!) looking over every foot of stone and marble and marveling at the workmanship in the stained glass, the statues, the columns, the chapels, the wooden staircases, the golden altars.  They have left their mark on the world for all to see.

Saint Sulpice in Paris

     And, of course, there's nature!  Within the 600 sq miles (approximately) of the country of France you can experience just about every type of climate, flora, fauna, geographical feature, etc, that exists in the world.  Desert, mountain, sea, ocean, volcanic outcrops, caves, forests, beaches, meadows, farmland, and of course, vineyards.  The French have an expression for describing their wines:  "terroir".  Roughly translated it means the combination of all plant-life, rocks, minerals, dirt, and anything else that contributes to the taste of the grapes.  I think it applies to the people, too!  And I hope it will have its way with me.  But that's for another blog!

The Tour de France and a field of sunflowers

     In France, there are endless possibilities for wonder, passion and curiosity.  My wish for all of you is that you find and hold onto that "adult-like wonder" wherever you may be.   I do find wonder all around me here in Colorado.  But, as my favorite author, Francis Mayes, wrote: "I am always more susceptible to surprise."
 Thank you for joining me on my journey.  Merci!
    

Groovin' and Dreamin' while Scrapin' and Paintin'

     Layers of paint - dusty pink, yellow, mint green, linen white.  Layers of wax.  Layers of dust.  Layers of time.
     I own an 89 year old house.  I would love to know its beginning.  Who chose the pink for the walls?  I imagine it was a color that was very much "en vogue" in 1926.  I think that electricity and indoor plumbing may have been an afterthought.  Many of the houses in my area (The Old North End) have wells on their property.  I don't know that mine ever did, but I'm sure wells were quite necessary at the turn of the century.  The bathroom on the main level (I added on to the back of the house about 20 years ago) is wedged between what used to be two small bedrooms.  And apparently there was no need for closets larger than a refrigerator box!  Each room has only one electrical outlet, no matter the size of the room.  Oh, how times have changed.

My great-great-grandparents: Captain Daniel H and Maggie Page

     Layers of time are all around me as I work on the house.  I have gone through all of Mom's old photo albums and made copies of old family photos that I have sent to my 18 first cousins!  Some of the photos are of our great-great-grandparents and were taken around 1900.  Those are "layers" of me.  I have furniture and other wooden items that my dad made in high school, so I have those "layers" as well.  And love seeing my mom's bluebird collection and my dad's blue glass collection.  Layers and layers.

My grandmother, Maude Boyles Ooley, is the baby

     I have found that I work well while listening to "Golden Oldies"!  There's a cable channel on TV that plays them and I love it!  So I'm "groovin'", as the Young Rascals so eloquently sang, as I scrape and paint.  I sing along and it seems that the work gets done a little faster. (The "whistle while you work" adage?)   These are songs from my teenage years and even before.  I remember the Christmas that I got a little pocket transistor radio with earplugs!!  Oh, how I loved it!  I could fall asleep listening to the local Rock and Roll station.  That was the same radio I took to school after lunch on November 22, 1963 so that I could listen to the updates on President Kennedy while I had cross-walk duty.
     The past, present and future intertwine while I'm working on the house.   I see the past all around me as I clean out rooms and dressers and desks.  As I scrape and paint and renew the floors.  Certainly the present makes itself known as my lower back complains about all the climbing up and down the ladder and reaching up to scrape and paint! 
     But the future is always in my thoughts.  That's why I'm doing all this work.  I dream about what it will be like to do this work on a house in Gascony.  Perhaps a 300 year old house like the one we stayed in last September.  Will it seem like work then?  I'm sure there would always be something to work on.  But there will also be many things to explore.  Just think about all those bends that I have yet to find!

The 300 year old farmhouse in SW France

     My muse, Francis Mayes, summed up her linkage between past, present, and future by writing that "any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different. . . I'm here  because I climbed out the window at night when I was 4."  We are the sum of all those bends that we have been around in our lifetime and all the bends that are yet to come.  And I, for one, am excited to see where those roads will take me.  Thanks for joining me on this journey!  Merci!
    

Uh-Oh, Ouch, and Oh-là-là

     Everything I've read about housing projects has said to expect it to take twice as long and cost twice as much as was first expected.  I've watched enough HGTV to know that unless it's the "Property Brothers" doing the work, you can expect it to not finish on time or on budget.
     I really haven't experienced anything too upsetting, but just a couple of bumps on the bend these past couple of weeks.  I am pleased to report that I have one room completely finished and I have posted the photos to prove it.  One of the "Uh-0hs" happened while working in this room - the little bedroom on the main floor.

Bedroom floor before

    I was so happy to have finished scraping, washing and painting the ceiling as well as washing and painting the walls. So the time had come to touch up the stain on all of the wood trim and baseboards.  The walls, as you can see in the photo, are a putty color and therefore anything dark will show up quite easily.  And the floor (thankfully I had not refinished it yet) is a light oak.  I had the can of stain sitting on the little shelf that is on the ladder.  And, lest you think I was not prepared, there was a sheet on the floor.  A cloth sheet.  Not a plastic drop as all my plastic drops got used and thrown out after the scraping and painting and I was sure that the sheet would be enough to catch any little drips that might fall.
     Perhaps you see where I'm headed . . . .
     As I was (carefully) moving the ladder, my foot slipped on the sheet and the stain can began to slip off the shelf.  I was proud of myself for catching it and not getting any of it on me.  However, it sloshed its way onto the sheet in a rather large puddle which immediately soaked through to the floor.  I was concerned about the dark stain making the poor oak floors even worse so I got down on my knees and started sopping up as much stain as I could.  Once it looked like the floor was ok, I looked a little higher and there were mahogany colored "freckles" all over that section of the wall.  Fortunately, they were pretty easy to clean up.  So, all in all, it was not a fiasco!  Whew!
     I have a few "battle scars" which is to be expected as I am doing all the work myself and I'm not the most graceful of people.  Unless, you put my in a costume and on stage with a good choreographer, then I'm not bad!  But on a ladder . . . well, you see what happened in the above story!  So I have bruises on both shins where they press against the ladder to help steady me.  I have a bruise on the inside of my arm that I have no idea where it came from.  And my poor back is certainly feeling the constant up and down from the ladder and the bending and stretching for scraping, washing and painting.  But it's all good because I'm seeing results.  As Cindy said, I don't have to worry about working out or lifting weights!  And I am extremely thankful for my hot tub!!
  
 So here is my Oh-là-là photo!

Bedroom floor after

 The above photo shows the wood floor before I refinished it.  And this one is the "after"!
I am really pleased with how it turned out.  I used a kit made by Rustoleum to renew wood floors.  It was a two step process and was really pretty easy.  These floors are 89 years old!  My house was built in 1926.  The ceiling and walls are plaster and are really in pretty good shape considering their age.
     I've now started on the dining room area.  I scraped the ceiling yesterday and today started on washing it and touching up some of the cracks in the plaster.  I'm hoping it turns out looking as nice as the bedroom.
     Oh, I forgot to mention that the other "bump" was getting my couch and motorized recliner steam cleaned so I can sell them.  The guy came on time and was really doing great and then the water pump went out on his machine.  He was very apologetic and will be back in the morning to finish up, hopefully!  Know anyone who would like to buy a recliner couch or a motorized recliner chair?
     But I may not work tomorrow afternoon.  It's supposed to be sunny and in the 60s so I think I'll go to the zoo! :-)  I'll leave you with a photo I took today.  One of my favorite sights in the world. 
     Thanks for joining me on this journey!  Merci!

Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak

My Ongoing Love Affair

     Francis Mayes (whom I reference often) said that it's possible to fall in love with a place like one falls in love with a person.  And I certainly believe this to be true. My love affair with France and all things French began in junior high.  When I was in the eighth grade I took an Introduction to French class and I was smitten!  I spent hours in the library reading everything I could find about the country, the language, the history, the culture.  My best friend, Nora, and I continued taking French throughout high school. 
   At one of our class reunions many years after graduation we realized that of the twenty students in our 4th year/AP class, at least half of us went on to major in French and become French teachers.  And we credited that to our beloved Mademoiselle Fullmer who was not just our teacher, but also our friend and mentor.
      At the beginning of my junior year at Oklahoma Christian College I made plans to study abroad my second semester.  One of the deans of the college was a friend of an American missionary family who had been living in Reims in northern France for nine years.  He helped me contact the Burchett family and I made arrangements to fly there for a three and a half month stay.  The Burchetts met my flight in Paris and drove me to their apartment in Reims, the capital of the Champagne region.  I was in awe!
     The photo above is of Notre Dame de Reims - a beautiful example of Gothic architecture and my favorite of any I have seen anywhere in Europe.  I could walk to town from our apartment and I never missed an opportunity to go inside the cathedral and just sit and take in its beauty.  To imagine all the nameless artists and artisans who gave their lives to build this amazing edifice and to decorate it with statues, stained glass windows, elaborate trim work.  The cathedrals were built to be visual Bibles for an illiterate public and so the statues and windows tell the stories of the Bible.

     I am never disappointed in my visits to France.  Francis Mayes talks about layers of time. France has evidence of the earliest humans on the European continent.  The caves of southwest France are filled with art that date back 30,000 years! And then there are the wonderful Roman remains - France has more of them intact than any other European country.  The photo here is of the Pont du Gard, a Roman aquaduct/bridge (the tallest in the Roman Empire) built in the first century BC.  All through southern France you can visit arenas, bridges, temples, baths, even cities that the Romans built.  The southern region called Provence gets its name because it was Rome's favorite province.  The Romans knew where to go for vacations!

    And then the almost 1000 years of what we call the Middle Ages with some of the most amazing structures to be seen.  The cathedrals, the castles, the fortresses all speak of a time of needing protection - from a neighboring kingdom or a bordering country - a time of superstition and daily survival.  When you look at these reminders of this layer of time, you can almost understand how fearful a time it was.  But then you see the beautifully decorated and mighty cathedrals and realize the living, active faith that they represent.  The photo to the left is of one of my most favorite places in France - Mont Saint Michel on the English Channel.  A perfect example of medieval architecture and representation of the fear and the hope of that time period.

     After France was united under Francois I in the 16th century,  this layer of time brought about a sense of peace and now the lovely royal chateaux and palaces were able to be built - not just built, but designed and decorated by the best artists and craftsmen that France (and sometimes Italy!) had to offer.
It was good to be a nobleman in the Renaissance!  The photo to the right is of the Palace of Versailles, designed and built by Louis XIV, the Sun King.
     As you can tell, I could go on and on about the layers of time in France.  And then there's the food, the wine, the art, the music, the literature, the celebrations (for later posts).  But I hope what I have shared with you here will provide evidence of my love for a country that is "endlessly alluring".  Yes, I am in love!