Practicing Patience

Happy first day of August. The sky has been drizzling off and on today. Perhaps the dog days of summer are behind us.

Léonce arrived at 6am to start work. As usual, the dogs barked at him for a full fifteen minutes. As usual, the Husband and I woke up muttering our disapproval.

At eight o’clock, Léonce persistently rang the doorbell. I opened up my shutters and hung out my bedroom window.

“Are you ready to go to the quarry?” he queried.

“I told you that I was going to go there on my way to __________ (the big town), at nine. They won’t even be open yet.”

So he replied with a long explanation. I translated it to mean that he wanted me to drive him to the quarry because he needed to deal with the stone mason, because I wouldn’t be capable of such an undertaking

“So you want me to take you to the quarry?” I repeated.

“Oui.”

Okay, I’d take him to the quarry with me. I would nix the trip into the big town that I had planned with the Husband in order to end this grand ordeal of the stone lintel.

As you might recall from last summer’s postings, Léonce, Nanou, and the Husband were repairing the terrace and putting in a balustrade railing all because I had happened upon some old, inexpensive balustrades at an auction. Léonce and Nanou were going to make end pillars and the top railings for the balustrades out of concrete. I wanted them carved out of stone. They rolled their eyes and then cut off the re-bar they had laid for the concrete pillars.

I ordered four pillars and two long railings from the Portuguese stone masons. They said they’d have them the following week. They didn’t and after four return visits, alone and with the Husband, they still didn’t fill the order. I told Léonce and Nanou to go ahead and make the cement pillars and railings. They cut and reinstalled new re-bar.

Now, this summer, Léonce is building the shepherd’s hut, and last week, he reached the point where he needed a lintel for the doorway. I drove him to the quarry where we had ordered the rocks for the walls of the hut; but those men told him they didn’t carve rocks, they just dug them out of the quarry and broke them up. Léonce needed to go up the road to the stone masons. I had an uneasy feeling that we were heading towards the same Portuguese guys; and we were.

Today, because the Portuguese guys haven’t answered their phone in over a week, Léonce insisted that we go in person to see if the lintel was done. I told him it wouldn’t be.

Old people here have a habit of hitting you on the arm when they talk with you. I hated driving in the car with the previous owner of our farm because he hit my arm constantly. Léonce does the same thing. My elbow started hurting so I asked him to quit hitting me.

He agreed that he shouldn’t because “women are fragile like flowers.”

That development made the ride a little more pleasant.

He spoke rapidly, and constantly in his patois French. I understood about a third of it.

We arrived at the Portuguese guys’ place. No they hadn’t made the lintel. No, we couldn’t buy an uncut stone from them because the owner wasn’t there and they didn’t know what price to charge.

We went looking for other quarries. We checked four. They were all closed. First day of August=VACATION TIME!!!!!!!!

We gave up and were heading for home when we passed the entrance to our original rock dealer. He was open.

Léonce got out, ferreted around the quarry, found a large rock and then returned to the car. He insisted I stop reading my French novel so that I might approve of the rock he picked out. I argued with him, telling him that it wasn’t necessary for me to approve the rock. They all looked to be the same color to me . . . light burnt umber. He insisted. I rolled my eyes, sighed loudly and went to look at the rock.

I approved of the rock. But then Léonce didn’t know if it was big enough. He hadn’t brought the paper with him, and he couldn’t remember, the length measurement! I couldn’t believe that he made me drive him twenty kilometers, ruining my elbow, and wrecking the morning I had planned in the big town with the Husband.

“We’ll return this afternoon,” he told the worker. AAAGGGGHHHHH, I screamed to myself.

Back in the car, he immediately began his ceaseless chattering. I pondered what I could possibly do to make myself a more patient person. Lord knows I’ve been working on trying to shed my impatient American mien. I feel I’ve made great progress, only to be proven wrong when I’m easily driven crazy by an annoying albeit, well-meaning, overly-talkative man.

Breathe deeply. You have a lot more to learn. Léonce is here to teach you.

At least the car was headed towards home. There weren’t too many more minutes left where I needed to practice being patient. Soon I would be home, locked safely away in my bedroom where I could relax alone and read a book on Zen.

On the way to the quarries, I had made the mistake of asking where Nanou lived.

“We’ve already passed it,” Léonce had told me.

On the way home Léonce remembered my question and decided that he must show me Nanou’s house. “Take a left,” he ordered as he took off his seatbelt.

“Why are you taking off your seatbelt,” I asked in horror. “I’m not going to stop.”

“My daughter lives up here.”

“Well, I’m not going to stop,” I said. He didn’t put his seatbelt back on. As long as I was in the driver’s seat, I wasn’t going to stop. Even if his sweet daughter was out in her garden tending her flowers and looked up in fright when she heard her father screaming as I sped by, I wasn’t going to stop. Breathe deeply, I advised myself.

Léonce pointed out Nanou’s house. Great, I thought, now let’s head for home.

Then he pointed me in the direction of his daughter’s house. Why I headed that way I don’t know. I should have told him I had a roast on fire in the oven back home.

We were driving through the vineyards, through many blind intersections; intersections just like the one where Léonce recently totaled his Deux Cheveax. “Doucement, doucement,” he admonished every ten seconds. An escargot passed us on the side of the road.

Léonce pointed out his daughter’s house. Yuck. One of those awful modern atrocities, I sneered to myself. I kept my foot on the accelerator. I will pretend that I do not understand his French when he tells me to stop.

“Ah, nobody home,” he sighs wistfully.

Whew.

I drove slowly through the vineyards.

I pulled into the driveway of our farm. “Well, what time do you want to go this afternoon?” he asked.

“When you want,” I replied, too mentally beaten down to argue that we should wait until Hell freezes over.

“At three.”

“D’accord.”

It’s 14:53 now. The Husband just returned from hooking up the trailer to the car. I’m about to go out for my second lesson of the day in patience.