taking a breath

I feel as if I've spent the last days in the high winds of a hurricane, now dying down to a spring storm. From Paris to the Ottawa Heart Institute via my basement apartment will go down as one of my epic life journeys. It's not over, this time of upheaval; I still have 17, count them, 17 more days till I get my house back; my daughter is counting the days till her son decides to vacate the premises and make himself known; Mum is having a major operation next Tuesday, at exactly the time my spring teaching term begins; the event in New York looms in June, though the producers are too busy right now to deal with it; and my brother's life is in major upheaval also. The usual things - reading the newspapers, some sort of fitness regime, healthy eating - have gone out the window. I've no idea what's going on in the world, hope never to have to eat at a hospital Tim Horton's again, and my legs feel as if they'll soon drop off.

But this morning, friend Scott is coming over to help me bring the garden to life, and later today, I'm getting this shapeless fuzzy bush of hair cut. Normalcy returns. Tomorrow I may even make it to the Y, and that would really be a joyful hello. Maybe even my favourite second-hand store, Doubletake. Last night, I made it to neighbour Monique's Friday night Francophone soiree, though I was too dazed to last for long. They were arguing about quota systems in the professions and the point of universities - what are they for? - when I left.

Just happened on a few Paris blogs - there are a lot - including one with the happy title "Lostincheeseland.com" which I wish I'd thought of myself. She quotes the Irish food writer Trish Deseine, who has lived in Paris for 25 years, in an interview:

What you’d miss most if you had to leave?

In anywhere other than Italy, I'd miss how pleasure is taken for granted. In France it is an entitlement, something noble and natural, to strive for and include in one's everyday life, in a million little ways. French people don't feel the need to reflect on this, it is a part of them. 

Nice to know that pleasure is still there, waiting, when the time is right, for my return. And yours.