Too many moments to stumble into a beginning, awake at 6am on Saturday, shocked at how thrilled I was to greet the sunrise, and kicking myself HARD, finally awake to the fact that not being exuberant to find the gift of another morning should be and had always been a rarity.
The last few months were harder than I realized, but they are fading into the triage of lessons learned and pains outgrown by now.
By nine I was showered and scrubbed with magnolia oil on a rough brush (a treat I save for moments when I most appreciate them) and off to my first french haircut.
The ensuing lecture about "protecting the wonder that is in your gorgeous curls" (BOY did she get tipped well) was a a sweet glory and the scent of the creams from this morning's dutiful obeisance is soft enough to not feel too... Girly. Sweet and soft and feminine, but far enough from the horrors of plastic high maintenance that all is still regalia. I am learning great new things.
By ten, we were off in Seb's pickup and laughing at the rays of Montreal-like sunshine bouncing off the dashboard.
A stop in the country for Stephanie amidst the perfume of pines and open glinting greenhouses and we were off to the hills, on my first experience of les soldes.
By the time we'd turned off the highway something felt too comfortable, and venturing out of the back of the pickup, the green awnings of the strip mall bounced at me precisely the way the ones in Pointe-Claire have done on so many summer afternoons whilst meeting kaff and whisking her off somewhere.
Sitting out on the stoop as the kids wandered into the oversized toystore (the stores in the strip mall were all the same too, from the toystore to the shoe stores) I leaned into the sun and remembered a thousand comfortable things.
Wandering about, moving off to the next mall, the giggling was more musical in it's honesty than a million mp3s pouring into my headphones at work could have been.
Returning to Paris triumphant in the leather jacket that I'd been looking for these past few years, the warmth of the rumsteak fondues on Rue Mouffetarde set a certain lovely glow to the faces of the rollerbladers huddled around bottles of heady Chambolle.
Afraid I'd drunk one glass too many and made one too many wisecraks, when Seb turned to me at three in the morning (twenty hours later!) to thank me for having made everyone's evening so cheerfully wonderful, it was another gift, and as he went on to explain that the whole club will be terribly upset with me when it comes time to leave...
I woke up just moments before the breakfasters arrived on Sunday, uncomfortable with each other their first meeting since they'd broken up, pouring coffee and cutting pains au chocolat and aux amandes in half for everyone to get a taste of everything, I surprised myself with the handful of jokes left over -- just enough to smother the stress beast hovering in the air.
The marathon was difficult, my aching knee and red hangover, but the bises and hugs (yes! they're learning!) and cheerfully returned wisecracks (they were avenging themselves) were a pure delight. We numbered over ten thousand, and so many of those were the new faces from the night before, out because I had begged them to join us.
And they did.
Landing on the dull swells of my purple knee twice yesterday (once during a beautiful tumble that resulted in my nipple scraping concrete), I limped back into the car before heading over for girl's night at Mapie's.
Nail polish (pretty and dusky rose but already chipped and assuaging my guilt at such an indulgence) and cinderella movies, and tears about the men in our lives.
Oh we are so in love... So helpless with it. So shocked that our independant-woman rationalizations have become so many fluttering things in the great gusts that have swepted us up.
So many poingnantly beautiful things in just this past year... The boot-to-the-head effect of his achingly sincere poem for Valentine's last year, and the immaculately worded disclaimer which followed it, as I in all my mule-headed stupidity had forbidden him to indulge in sweetness.
I limped home, just catching the bus and avoiding the nervewracking wait at a bus stop on a bad corner late towards midnight, I fell asleep with delicious gratitude of having had the sheer fortune of crossing paths with David. Of encountering so many legendary things in his wake, in the wake of US, impossible emotions and realizations and yet so strong as to become drunk with them.
Waking up this morning, exuberant as ever, seven on the needle and just in time to catch David at his machine.
Hearing of another miracle to burst into this weekend and my heart is overfull.
Hearing his joy in his little girls, crippling stresses overcome by a burst of a courage I have come to believe in him, and this afternoon's phone interview with work before heading in there tomorrow can only be a joyous event.
There is so much wonder in each day... and these laughing fortunes are more than I had even hoped for in my dark and bloodied adolescent cage.
I have learned the meaning of gratefulness.