Yesterday, I was sitting on a bench in my kitchen, putting on my work shoes, while eating a rolled up crepe I had made earlier in the morning. Our dog was lying in the doorway looking attentively at me. The sun was streaming through the windows. My son was picking up walnuts in the walnut grove. My husband was in town at the hardware store.

I experienced a true moment of perfection.

As I contemplated that moment while picking up walnuts, I realized that I had creatred an unrealistic dream of moving to France. It was unrealistic because I had absolutely no idea what living in France meant. I think that deep down, I thought it would be the life depicted by old travel posters and Audrey Hepburn movies. It would be a castle with a tower, constant shopping and cafes in Paris, summers on the Riviera.

The initial dream that prompted me to lobby my husband to move here was a dream engendered by the media and by my previous tourist excursions to France.

The reality is something much less cosmopolitan and much more complex. It’s chickens strutting across my driveway . . . six-weeks of brown hands from picking walnuts . . . it’s my walking club of septuagenarians . . . it’s taking naps in the pasture with my sheep . . . it’s the endless repairing of roofs . . .it’s knowing that I can always depend upon my neighbors for help . . . it’s struggling with a new language and being really thrilled when I make a breakthrough. . .it’s shopping in Bordeaux and running errands in Toulouse . . .it’s occasional train rides to Paris . . .it’s incredible food and great wines . . .it’s gathering wood for your fireplace . . .it’s civilly discussing politics at the dinner table.

In short, it’s contentment.

The dream that propelled me to move here was full of images of elegance and excitement.

The reality is much more pleasing and rewarding.

But not everyone finds it so . . . the Americans from New York who owned a mill near some friends of ours sold their property and didn't buy another. Their mill would flood in the spring and was a nightmare. They sold it to some unsuspecting Canadians.