Admitting Defeat

Yesterday afternoon I had to run outside and pull the half-dried laundry off of the line as a thunderstorm moved in over the farm.  I set up the sechoir in the living room.  A few hours later, a woman from New York, whose daughter married one of the local boys, came to pay me a visit.  I didn't notice until the end of her visit, when I walked her to the door, that she was sitting in the chair with the view of all our underwear hanging on the sechoir. 
 
The village which is nearest our home, but not our official, postal village, is celebrating their annual three day fete.  The first night is an outdoor dinner with duck roasted over grape vines. The tables are placed end to end and the entire village turns out; even the people who grew up in the village but now live in the big cities, make an annual return pilgrimage.  The day after the dinner, just before lunch, the village has what my son calls the "hangover aperitif." He rode his bike there, drank a Coke, and chatted with the neighbors.  They couldn't believe that he didn't want to have a beer.  But he told them that he has an agreement with his mother that if he doesn't drink, she won't drink.  He was mad at me on Friday night because I mentioned at the dinner with Norman and Pamela that my son wasn't circumcised. So, telling me that I'm stupid when I drink, we made the no-drinking deal. My son returned from the aperitif and said he wanted to revise our deal so that he could drink for remaining two nights of the fete with its bands and dancing.  I agreed, but for his two nights, he had to give me five, which he willingly did.   
 
We didn't go to the village dinner this year because we had another dinner invitation, but my husband and son did walk to the village last night to listen to the two bands play.  They returned home at 12:30am and my husband told me that he had spoken with two anti-American French men, and that he couldn't disagree with what they were complaining about.  And then my husband went on and on about how sweet our neighbors Jose and Evelyn Boudet are.  So I couldn't get back to sleep for a while because I kept wondering what made Jose and Evelyn were so very kind and sweet.
 
Jose is a vintner, son of our local Horatio Alger and Evelyn works in the big town in an office. When she was a child, she lived in a house by the side of the road outside her small village.  The house was connected to her parent's gas station and small grocery. Today, she lives in a house that abuts the side of our road.
 
I lay awake and wondered why personalities such as Jose's and Evelyn's weren't the norm in life.  Why is it so unusual to meet people who are gentle and kind?  My husband is an options trader on the floor of an exchange, and I was one, so I suppose that being exposed to raw capitalism every day, and its attendant greed and deceit, we are extremely amazed by and appreciative of kind, giving people. 
 
Two years ago, a small parcel of land, which borders one side of our driveway near the road, came up for sale. Our ex-caretaker told my husband that the land could be purchased, and my husband readily agreed to buy it.  One of the problems with our ex-caretaker is that he talks constantly, and as soon as we had agreed to buy it, he ran across the street and blabbed the news to Roger and Jose, who live side-by-side with their front windows facing this field. Then the busybody ex-caretaker, ran back and told us that Roger and Jose were unhappy that we were buying the property.  The caretaker explained that since we were Americans, Roger and Jose were worried that we would pave the little piece of land.  I found this all amusing, because we wanted to buy the terrain expressly to prevent anyone from building on the property.  We wanted to preserve it as agricultural land.
 
The ex-caretaker said that if we wanted to preserve peace in the neighborhood, we needed to only buy a third of the property, the third closest to our driveway.  Roger and Jose would each purchase another section.  I told my husband not to do this.  I warned him that no good deed goes unpunished and that the ex-caretaker was probably exaggerating the animosity that was festering in the minds of Roger and Jose.
 
But my husband, who isn't as cut-throat as I am, was convinced by the caretaker to allow the division of the land into three tiny parcels.  We found out after the purchase papers were signed, that since the land is so near the ruisseau that it would be against modern law to build a house there; and, we discovered that the tiny piece of land had been for sale for a long time, but that Roger and Jose, knowing that a house couldn't be built there, and that the small parcel wasn't of interest to any other farmer, didn't want to spend the money, so they just let the situation remain as it was year after year. 
 
The next summer, Roger had us over for aperitifs with the Boudets.  He went to a lot of trouble, having Evelyn bring in pizzas from the big town for the event. We were having a good time, enjoying Roger's ratafia and peach wine when, simply to make conversation, I asked if they thought it was a good idea for us to plant fruit trees on our little patch.  Roger didn't think that fruit trees would do well there.  Evelyn Boudet perked up and announced that they were going to either put in a swimming pool or a garage on their part.  I kept a smile plastered on my face, but inside I was fuming.
 
When we returned home, I let go of a rant directed at my husband telling him, "I told you so. You should have bought that entire parcel."  We were trying to prevent anything being built on that land, and now some ugly garage would be built there.  For about a month, I just seethed whenever I drove out of our driveway, envisioning a garage materializing on the pasture.  Then, when one of our very nearby neighbors built a very ugly, asymmetrical garage behind her house, built by the same local carpenter I assumed the Boudets would hire, my annoyance was acute.
 
But time has passed and I'm slowly beginning to realize that I can't stop the countryside from being raped and pillaged, and if anyone deserves to have a garage, it's the very sweet Evelyn and Jose.  And so I am forced to learn to go with the flow, as the flow overwhelms my miniscule abilities to control the order of the world.  Everyone is my teacher, and I couldn't have a sweeter pair to teach me than Evelyn and Jose.
 
(Correction:  My son read this post and said that I had said that his member was "large and uncircumcised, and he wanted me to correct my mistake.)