I have a new boyfriend. His name is Andr�.
He's sixty-nine years old and S�b warned us as we bumped up the lane to his cottage that he was the pervert of Faussemagne (the town we were nearest to in the Perigord).
After a manic-paced day of castle-ruins climbing (in which I climbed onto a window sill to lose my breath on the rolling hills below, of course), disappointing horse-back riding in which they took me for an american and thence treated me like an idiot including ATTACHING A LEAD to my horse and WALKING along side me...
...if we hadn't been such a large group with children in it, I would've taken off at a nicely controlled canter and afterwards explained that when I said beginner I meant "I can only jump small obstacles and my dressage is only good enough for trail-riding, not competition..."
In any case, raiding the butcher for lamb and porc (Seb hates lamb) and sausages and mustard, we grabbed potatoes and pat� (The Perigord is the goose-raising region) and bread and red peppers and raided the forest for firewood.
As we were building the fire, Andr� showed up and told us stories from Seb's boyhood, shared our wine and vegetables, watched us eat the most succulent fire-roasted lamb that I've ever had, and continued talking at us well into the morning, well past when we would've liked him to take his leave.
Helping Seb cart things into the attic, Princess on the ladder handing up the things I handed to her, she remarked that she had the impression that he was staring at her ass...
Peering around her pant legs (yes! She wore pants that day!) the look on his face was disturbing. Not far licking his lips...
And as we were doing the four required bises goodbye, he lingered a little too long over princess, and then when it came my turn, he did one, two, and for his third aimed straight at my lips, and then turned and skiddled out the door.
I still have the impression that I was smacked in the mouth by a half-dead fish.
At the castle I bought the storybook of Jacquou le Croquant, a man who's story is tied inexorably into the countryside.
At the cemetary, I thanked Seb's father for having raised his son.
At the farm down the road, I giggled politely at Seb's uncle's jokes, amazed at how a seventy year old man could be so vibrant with life, brilliance, strength...
His eyes were blue fire. And no, I haven't been reading fantasy novels.
We chased his chickens and left with a gift of over two hundred fresh eggs, so flavourful that I'm going to have trouble buying them at the grocer's for a while.
I want to be back in that countryside, wrapped around David, huddled against the fire while Seb shoots down birds for the cats to feast on.
He gifted me with his childhood crossbow, and with sharpened pencil arrows I pierced a tree.
It's a good crossbow.
A large gift from his childhood.
We ate cepes from the forest, and plums packed in syrup last year from the trees surrounding the cottage, and this June I want to go back with Seb's mother and help her pick the next batch.
I want to breathe in the countryside from the castle again.
I want to race through the fields, arms filled with firewood catching in the tall grass, stumbling and laughing simultaneously.
I want to detail every gorgeous thing that my eyes fell upon, I want to share it with everyone.
I have a handful of pictures from the borrowed digital camera, and the strange feeling of each time that princess called me "mom". "Wow, mom made dinner, wow, mom made breakfast, wow, mom cleaned up already, yes mom, I'll be careful, yes mom, I'm okay, alright mom, I'm getting out of bed..."
At first I cried out at the implications of having become old and boring and then I realized...
...I've been fighting for this maturity.
Making dinner is now officially a pleasure from now and forever, and will never again be a chore.
And you're all invited. We're all family.
Maybe mom doesn't have to mean what it used to when I had to say it in apology. "I'm sorry you were wrong and I have to be punished, mom..."
I could go on in this new discovery of myself, but I have work to do, the D�fense is waiting for me.
But I will not sense the glares of the m�tro on the way there, behind my armour of the countryside.
(And if anyone out there feels up to helping me with a rather long poem, I've forgotten how to write and I'm desperate here...)
Ack.
Coherence will return in the morning.
Signing out,
Monstre of the mountains.