St. Roger

Monday is Toussaint here in France, All Saint’s Day. The French, seemingly very secular people, take the day very seriously. The businesses and government will be closed. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is buying their chrysanthemums to decorate their loved ones’ graves. Roger told me he was going today to buy his flowers in a neighboring town, and at the same time, he would pick up my sacks over there for bagging my walnuts. I asked him why he was buying flowers. He looked at me in surprise and said, “Why it’s Toussaint!”

He estimated that I have around 600 kilos of nuts. That’s not very much when I consider all the backbreaking work I did to get them off the ground. And I fear that I will not bring in more money than Mr. Reste did last year . . . which was my goal. Roger has agreed to handle the sale of the walnuts for me. I told him that I thought that a French man who used to raise walnuts would get a better price than an American female who doesn’t know a thing about walnuts. He agreed.

The Toussaint before we purchased our place, I was staying in a hotel in the eastern part of our departement. One crisp morning, I looked out the window and saw a beautiful sight in the covered market in the square: hundreds of pots of colorful chrysanthemums lined up for sale. I had a dinner engagement that evening in Toulouse, and so I went out and thoughtfully purchased a plant for my hostess.

That evening when I arrived, I proudly handed her the pretty flowers. She didn’t say anything. When I was helping her clean up after dinner, I noticed that she had put the chrysanthemums out of sight in a corner of her apartment’s terrace. I just assumed that she didn't like chrysanthemums.

A year later, I was studying a French lesson regarding French Holidays, and discovered that chrysanthemums are only to be put on GRAVES in cemeteries! Quelle horreur! What a faux pas! I must have appeared as the Grim Reaper when I showed up at my friend's door. I immediately called her up from the States and apologized. We had a good laugh.

All the French schools are having their two week holiday that centers around Toussaint, so our town is filled with people from other parts of France who have come back to visit breathing family members and the others who are filed away in those French grave vaults.

When you die here your coffin is laid on top of, side by side, and eventually under, the other coffins of all your other family members. At least your bones aren’t alone through eternity . . . you’ve got your mother-in-law right there with you. It’s pretty easy to research your family tree here . . . they’re all shoehorned in the family vault.

In the U.S. we’re always paying lip service to the importance of family, but here in France they live it with their de rigueur Sunday family meal with all the relatives, their reverence for their dead ancestors, and a true respect for their blood relatives which includes a strong attachment to their ancestral lands and home.

Tonight, I go to Francine’s for dinner. We’re celebrating Roger’s birthday with a dinner . . . two days late, because I thought it was today! Another hideous faux pas on my part. I’m bringing the cake. Roger’s bringing champagne, even though I volunteered to bring it, and Francine is doing all the cooking. Two other friends are joining us.

Roger came over last night around 6:45, just before I was heading off to a dinner with my British friends at 7:30 (who apologized for serving shoulder of lamb, but I swear it was mutton . . . make sure you read the mutton recipe I posted). Roger never comes over in the evening to socialize. He said he hadn’t seen me for a while so he thought he'd pop in. I told him that I’m just too tired and dirty in the evening to come over and knock on his door begging for ratafia. He said that the new batch of the ratafia that he just made will be ready in three months.

I mentioned his birthday party coming up the following day, and he said that his birthday was the day before! Luckily, I had purchased a fancy box of expensive chocolates for him just a few hours before he showed up so I was able to quickly demonstrate that my intentions to remember his birthday were honorable. The chocolates were beautifully wrapped, with the elegance that only a French chocolate store can produce for a food gift. He was very happy to get the chocolates and to know that I had remembered his birthday. He told me that birthdays were never celebrated in his family. He didn’t know why.

Last year I gave him a painting I made, in the manner of Henri Martin, of St. Cirq Lapopie. He loved it. He went and had it framed and hung it up with a light over it. I meant to paint him something this year, thinking that I would have time because I thought I would be finished with my nut harvest, but I still haven’t finished the nut harvest. (Despite an earlier post which might have led you to believe otherwise.)

I felt really badly that I had missed his birthday, because I had wanted to go over that exact evening for a drink with him, but thought that since I was tired, and since we were meeting for dinner on Thursday, I would be polite and not invite myself over for drinks. When I closed my shutters at 7pm, because it was getting dark, I noticed that his outdoor light was on, which it never is, unless he has lit it for you when you’re leaving. The French are very, extremely frugal with their electricity usage. So when he told me, in essence, that I had missed his birthday I felt rotten that he had been alone for it . . . and I assume that the light was lit for me.

All month I kept writing down that I needed to plan a party for Roger. And so when Francine said she would have the dinner for him I was happy that Roger would be honored and that I wouldn’t have to worry about planning the dinner . . . especially when I was still harvesting nuts. But I blew it. And I feel horrible. Even though he’ll be thrilled tonight with our drinking and eating and singing for him, I’m sure he was disappointed that no one came over to visit him on his birthday. I wrote down in my organizer in big letters on the monthly calendar that on October 26, 2005 it will be Roger’s 77th birthday. So I won’t miss it.