A few days ago, I was in New York.

I was having dinner with my daughter, walking crowded streets, dodging traffic, and moving through a city that never seems entirely convinced it should slow down.

This week, I’m back in the Dordogne, France.

The loudest thing I’ve heard all morning is a dove.

The transition is always a little strange.

One minute I’m standing on a crowded sidewalk in Manhattan. The next I’m standing in my garden looking at a stone wall that’s older than the United States.

The distance between those two lives is about 5,000 miles.

Some days it feels much shorter.

Some days it feels much longer.

Every time I visit America and return to France, I notice things differently.

People often ask me what it’s really like living here.

The funny answer is that it depends entirely on whether you’re looking at the postcard or the reality.

The postcard version is true, of course.

France is beautiful.

The villages are beautiful.

The markets are beautiful.

The food is beautiful.

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Tomorrow my first Airbnb guests arrive.

At this moment, the property is holding its breath.

The beds are made, the towels folded into precise white towers that suggest I am a far more organized person than I actually am, and the welcome basket sits on the table waiting for its next occupants. Lavender sways in the garden, mourning doves stitch the morning sky together, and even the ducks appear to have agreed to suspend their usual nonsense. At the bottom of the property, the pool sits there looking positively smug, the exact shade of a Tiffany box and fully aware that it is currently the prettiest thing on the property. After months of delays, invoices, discussions, second-guessing, and one particularly spirited disagreement with a pool company, I occasionally find myself wandering outside simply to admire it.

This is normal.

Or at least I hope it is.

For most of the year, the gîte (cottage) sits quietly across the courtyard, its shutters closed and its rooms waiting patiently. Then June arrives and it’s as though someone has switched on the lights. The beds are dressed, the flowers put on a show, the pool begins showing off, and the gravel driveway starts crunching beneath unfamiliar suitcases. Different languages drift across the garden. New stories arrive. The house stretches awake after its winter nap.

And not just the house.

By June, the Périgord Noir undergoes a transformation that can only be described as rural France’s answer to Las Vegas.

Not actual Las Vegas, obviously. Nobody is arriving by helicopter to see Céline Dion.

But roads that spent the winter carrying little more than tractors suddenly fill with Dutch campers, Belgian bicycles, British hikers, German motorhomes, and French vacationers armed with picnic baskets and opinions. Every village appears to be hosting a market, a concert, a food fair, a night market, or a celebration involving duck, walnuts, wine, or all three simultaneously. Fairy lights materialize in trees. Long tables appear in village squares. Accordions emerge from storage. Even the villages seem surprised by their own social calendars.

The Dordogne spends nine months pretending to be sensible and then, for twelve glorious weeks, turns into a dinner party that accidentally got out of hand.

The season hasn’t even started yet. The universe is merely stretching.

At the moment, however, everything exists in that magical state that lasts roughly twelve minutes before guests arrive: every cushion fluffed, every flower behaving itself, every surface suggesting that I have my life completely under control.

The illusion is magnificent.

Tomorrow the curtain rises, the audience arrives, and another season begins.

Summer doesn’t arrive quietly here. It comes rattling through the gates dragging suitcases.

For the next three months, complete strangers from around the world will arrive carrying backpacks, sunscreen, expectations, and occasionally questions that have never before been asked in human history.

Somewhere this summer someone will send me a message beginning with the words, “Just a quick question...”

It will not be a quick question.

Somewhere this summer I will receive a message describing an emergency. By the time I arrive to help, the emergency will have solved itself. Somewhere a guest will ask where to buy bread. Another will ask where to buy wine. A third will ask where to buy the exact wine they drank yesterday. By the end of the week, someone will be browsing French property websites and casually wondering whether a seventeenth-century farmhouse might be a reasonable life choice.

This is how it starts.

By mid-summer, the property develops the energy of a tiny independent nation. The gîte is occupied. Friends are visiting. The pool is fully booked. The washing machine has been running so continuously that I suspect it now considers itself a member of the household.

At any given moment, one guest is looking for the market, another wants restaurant recommendations, someone is trying to connect to the Wi-Fi, and somebody else can’t find the pool towels despite standing directly beside the pool towels. The ducks are holding what appears to be a committee meeting. My phone is buzzing on a frequency normally reserved for minor emergencies and political campaigns.

Meanwhile, I’m crossing the courtyard with a basket of laundry balanced on one hip, mentally inventorying wine bottles, baguettes, pool chemicals, and spare lightbulbs, while attempting to remember whether I already started a load of towels or merely thought about starting a load of towels.

The entire operation begins to feel less like hosting and more like directing air traffic at a small regional airport that also happens to serve wine.

And then, almost inevitably, someone appears at my elbow and asks if I have a corkscrew.

Somewhere this summer I will walk outside and discover that every piece of outdoor furniture has migrated to a new location. Not one chair. Not two chairs. All of them. As though they held a meeting after dark and collectively decided the view was better elsewhere.

I no longer ask why. I simply accept that furniture, like migrating birds, follows instincts beyond my understanding.

At some point a text message will arrive accompanied by a photograph and the words:

“This may sound strange...”

They’re usually right.

Of course, every season eventually produces something nobody could have predicted.

A few years ago, during a violent summer storm, lightning struck the gîte. Not nearby. Not in the general vicinity. The gîte itself.

Most hosts spend their evenings answering questions about restaurant reservations and Wi-Fi passwords. I found myself explaining to guests that being struck by lightning was not, strictly speaking, one of the advertised amenities.

It was not the sort of excitement I normally aim to provide.

The guests later described the experience as “memorable.”

On that point, we were in complete agreement.

This, it should be noted, was considered an unusual week.

Every circus has rules. Mine exist because, over the years, guests have demonstrated a level of creativity I could never have anticipated. Some are preventative. Some are aspirational. A few were clearly written after specific incidents.

After a few summers, patterns begin to emerge. Not enough to prevent chaos, unfortunately, but enough to identify its preferred habitats.

Experience has taught me that certain topics return every year with remarkable consistency: wine, stairs, recycling, wildlife, hot tubs, and the occasional lapse in judgment.

Which is how the House Rules came to be.

HOUSE RULES

(Compiled Through Experience, Distress, and Documentation)

The House

This building is older than your country.

Please act accordingly.

The Wine

One bottle of Bergerac enjoyed on the terrace may lead to thoughts such as:

“We should move to France.”

Two bottles may lead to:

“We should buy a farmhouse.”

Three bottles may lead to:

“We should buy this farmhouse.”

Please note that these feelings are temporary and generally disappear by breakfast.

The Jacuzzi

The jacuzzi is intended for relaxation. It is not a licensed therapist.

While it has listened patiently to discussions involving marriages, careers, retirement plans, inheritance disputes, politics, and one surprisingly heated debate about air fryers, it is not qualified to provide guidance.

The bubbles create a false sense of wisdom.

Do not trust them.

Recycling

The French recycling system appears to have been designed by a committee of highly educated raccoons.

Should you find yourself standing in front of four bins holding a yogurt container and questioning your entire education, congratulations.

You are integrating successfully.

Lost Property

I may be able to help you locate sunglasses, hats, flip-flops, and dignity.

For passports, perspective, and common sense, you’re largely on your own.

By August I will have answered questions about Wi-Fi passwords, adapters, restaurant reservations, weather forecasts, hot water, recycling, local markets, pool covers, and whether the ducks belong to anyone.

Then the review arrives.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Relaxing.”

Which is technically true.

For one of us.

The reviews always make me laugh because they reveal the magic trick.

The guests see the flowers spilling over stone walls, the pool glowing in the late afternoon sun, the stars overhead, and a glass of wine on the terrace as the village settles into evening. They see the quiet. The holiday. The effortless version of the story.

I see the weather apps, the laundry, the maintenance, the adapter hunt, the text messages, and the invisible choreography required to make everything appear effortless.

The guests see the show.

The host sees the circus.

And honestly, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

Every week people arrive looking for a vacation.

Most of them find exactly what they came for.

They linger at the gate, take one final photograph, look back at the house, promise they’ll return, and drive away.

I stay behind and reset the stage. Fresh towels. Fresh flowers. A new bottle of wine in the welcome basket. The beds remade. The cushions fluffed. Another opening night. Another audience.

Their vacation is over.

Mine isn’t.

That’s the part that still surprises me.

Five years ago I was counting down to vacations.

Now I wave goodbye to them.

I spent most of my adult life planning escapes, watching calendars, and waiting for those brief moments when real life paused. Then one day I moved to France, bought a 400-year-old farmhouse, survived a renovation that occasionally resembled armed conflict, opened a gîte, and somehow ended up living in the place other people come to escape to.

It’s a strange thing.

A wonderful thing.

And not something I take for granted.

Tomorrow the first guests arrive.

The pool is Tiffany blue.

The dog is already suspicious.

The towels are folded.

The welcome basket is waiting.

The house is ready.

So am I.

Mostly.

The circus is back in town.

And somehow, after all these years, I still own the tent.

A few days ago, I was flying home to France after spending time with my daughter in New York.

The flight had no WiFi, no screens, and no plugs, which meant I was left alone with my thoughts for nine uninterrupted hours. A dangerous situation under any circumstances.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, while emotionally supporting myself with a barf bag and staring at a map that suggested our aircraft was roughly the size of Belgium, I found myself thinking about this house.

The one I’m returning to.

The one built in 1647.

The one with the pool, the gîte/cottage, the ducks, the occasional plumbing uprising, and a long history of making its problems feel like my fault. Many of you know this house.

You’ve seen the pool.

The renovations.

The ducks.

The occasional plumbing uprising.

What you may not know is that when I bought it, I had never actually stepped inside.

Which, in hindsight, feels like relevant information. The house, however, seemed perfectly comfortable withholding details.

Act I: The Search (a.k.a. The Spreadsheet of Insanity)

In my previous life, the one with income, structure, and reasonably functioning WiFi, I had a holiday home in the Dordogne. It was dreamy. We split time between the hustle of Seattle and the slow-bubbling cassoulet pace of rural France.

But when I blew up my life and set out on my Mamma Mia adventure (minus the singing but with considerably more paperwork), I told myself I needed something new.

Except I didn’t.

What I apparently needed was a French farmhouse, some ducks, and a fantasy involving a gîte (Cottage), a pool, and somewhere to park the contents of a 20-foot shipping container currently sweating in a warehouse in Málaga.

I flew up from Spain twice with a real estate spreadsheet the size of a medieval scroll and roughly the same number of footnotes. At one point I considered adding a scoring category for “general emotional stability,” but none of the houses would have passed.

My requirements were simple:

• Total privacy

• Room for guests

• Room for my vintage cookbook collection

• Room for my American delusions about laundry rooms

• And a kitchen large enough to host either a dinner party or a low-grade identity crisis

In retrospect, I should have included:

• Functioning electricity

• Basic wildlife boundaries

• A contractor who liked me

Act II: The Drive-By Purchase

I came very close to buying House Number Eleven.

It was charming. Private. Sensible.

The sort of house purchased by people who make reasonable decisions.

I decided that if the next and final house I was scheduled to see that day didn’t work out, I’d stop looking and buy it.

Enter: House Number Twelve.

We arrived.

The realtor forgot the code to the lockbox.

A strong opening.

He tried one code.

Nothing.

A second.

Nothing.

Several increasingly optimistic combinations.

Still nothing.

Eventually he suggested lunch while he figured it out.

And since this is France, “lunch” meant two hours, three courses, two carafes of wine, a discussion that drifted through local politics and duck production, and exactly zero progress on the lockbox situation.

By dessert, I had learned considerably more about regional foie gras than I had about the house.

We returned.

The lockbox remained undefeated.

At this point, most people would have considered this a warning.

I considered it lunch.

I had still never seen the inside.

So I walked around the property.

I peeked through a few windows.

I saw old shutters, crumbly stone, slanted slate, and a giant plane tree that looked like it judged everyone who had ever owned a leaf blower.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

The agent stared at me.

“You haven’t even seen the inside.”

“I can change the inside,” I replied.

“I can’t change the outside.”

Looking back, this may not qualify as due diligence.

But it was apparently enough.

A few weeks later, I became the owner of an estate built in 1647, complete with a pool, a gîte, two hectares, and a collection of surprises that had apparently been waiting patiently for my arrival.

Act III: The House Begins Negotiations

The day I moved in, the house began revealing its terms and conditions.

Unfortunately, none of them had been disclosed during the purchasing process.

The house wasn’t ready to be habitable. I hadn’t even laid eyes on the inside yet. The container was still in Málaga so I moved into the gîte.

First, I couldn’t get the front door open.

Then I discovered the previous owners had taken everything that wasn’t nailed down and several things that were.

By nightfall the gas bottle had given up entirely.

By the end of my first evening, I had managed to purchase a 1647 estate, run out of gas, and find myself watching YouTube tutorials on propane replacement while wearing socks and questioning the decision-making process that had led me across two countries and into this moment. The house seemed pleased.

The house was just getting warmed up.

First, mice chewed through the gîte’s electrical wires.

Then a mystery leak appeared in the ceiling.

I assumed it was water.

This was optimistic.

It turned out to be a fouine, otherwise known as a stone marten.

If you’re unfamiliar with stone martens, imagine a ferret with poor boundaries and a strong opinion about real estate.

Apparently, it felt the attic belonged to it.

Lightning struck a fence.

The fence shared the experience with a tree.

The tree fell into the pool.

Sidebar (and Spoiler Alert): At that time, I didn’t know a two-ton cow would one day follow it.

Act IV: The French Renovation Revolution

Buying the house was the easy part. Living in it was its own French Revolution.

The Contractor Firing Squad
Every rebellion needs a dramatic beginning. Mine came in the form of a contractor who, in a plot twist worthy of a melodrama, fired me. He fired me. This remains one of the more surprising performance reviews of my career. The house appeared to support his decision.

All I asked was to be informed when artisans were coming so I wouldn’t be ambushed mid-bathrobe. Apparently that was “too American,” and he rage-quit before anyone had so much as picked up a trowel. Diva status: confirmed. Him? Me? Your call.

The Beam Offensive
Then came the snow, and the delivery of four 600-lb antique beams in a flurry of sleet and second guesses. Just as I began to wonder if I’d be stuck with the world’s heaviest lawn ornaments, they showed up: a crew of French men in wool beanies and forearms sculpted by scaffolding. They installed all four beams in a single morning with the speed of a pain au chocolat sellout on market day.

I stood there breathing in sawdust and snow air, thinking: Okay. Maybe this is going to work.

But the house introduced another challenge.

The Great Flush Resistance
Main bathroom estimated time to remodel: two weeks. Actual time? Two months, one plumbing crisis, and a beehive behind the shower wall that may have been registered as a UNESCO site.

The first round of tiles looked like prison rejects. The second was grouted crooked, like the bathroom was winking at me in defeat. I lived with grout dust in my ears for weeks.

Also, surprise: the plumber forgot to connect the hot water line. I didn’t discover this until a chilly January morning when I emerged from the shower sounding like a 19th-century sea captain.

But now the hot water flows. The tiles stay put. The bathroom is small, bright, gloriously functional….and blessedly bee-free.

The Pool Mutiny
Ah, the pool. A beautiful blue rectangle of false hope. The pump didn’t work. The filter sounded like a tractor trying to yodel. At one point, the water turned a shade of green that can only be described as radioactive absinthe.

I once found a frog, a beetle, and a half-dissolved baguette floating in it, which honestly feels like a metaphor.

Looking back, I couldn’t have imagined that years later, a two-ton cow would fall in that pool. But that, my friends, is a story for another day.

Closing

Looking back, I thought I was buying a house.

What I actually bought was a relationship.

The house has strong opinions.

So do I.

For five years we’ve been testing each other.

The house introduces a challenge.

I introduce a solution.

The house raises the stakes.

I buy another ladder.

Somewhere along the way, we reached an understanding.

It occasionally wins.

So do I.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:

Never assume you’ve seen everything an old French house can do.

Especially one that’s already survived nearly four centuries before you arrived with a spreadsheet and opinions.

Besides, I still hadn’t seen the strangest thing that could happen to that pool.

At this point, I think we’re both too stubborn to leave.

By the time I entered Chanel in Bordeaux, I already knew I was underdressed.

Not visibly. Not offensively. No one tackled me at the entrance or sprayed me with perfume-grade holy water. But I knew.

Luxury stores have a way of informing you of your status without anyone technically saying anything. The lighting changes first. Then the silence. Then the saleswomen begin gliding toward you with the calm precision of people who have never once carried a leaking grocery bag up a flight of stairs.

Outside, Bordeaux was hot and chaotic and alive. Scooters buzzed past cafés. Someone nearby was arguing into a phone with operatic conviction. A tiny dog in a striped harness barked at a waiter carrying oysters.

Inside Chanel, it felt as though sound itself had signed a confidentiality agreement.

The floors glowed faintly. Mirrors appeared in strategic places like emotional ambushes. Every handbag sat alone under museum lighting, as if awaiting diplomatic clearance.

And the women.

French women understand luxury stores the way medieval navigators understood the stars. Instinctively. Silently. Their movements inside these places are extraordinary. Nothing jerks. Nothing flails. Nobody digs through a handbag looking for reading glasses while accidentally throwing lip balm across the room.

Everyone appears to have arrived already composed.

I, meanwhile, entered clutching my phone, sunglasses, and a vague but rising sense that my bra had shifted into a new administrative region.

A saleswoman approached wearing beige so exquisite it almost achieved moral superiority.

“Bonjour, Madame.”

The French “Madame” inside luxury stores is different from regular “Madame.” It contains no warmth, no hostility, no urgency. It simply acknowledges your temporary existence within the ecosystem.

I nodded too enthusiastically.

Already weak.

The strange thing about luxury shopping is that almost nobody looks happy.

Focused, yes.
Intentional, absolutely.
But happy? Rarely.

Everyone looks as though they are participating in an elegant hostage exchange.

A woman in cream linen examined loafers with the concentration of a bomb technician. Another held a handbag against her body and stared into the middle distance as though imagining an entirely different future.

Luxury is never just about the object.

That’s the first thing you realize.

The object is merely the prop.

The real product being sold is proximity to a version of yourself who does not sweat in public.

Coco Chanel understood this better than almost anyone.

Before Chanel, French fashion worshipped structure. Corsets. Boning. Restriction. Women assembled like architecture. Versailles with breathing privileges.

Chanel looked at all that and essentially said:
What if women moved instead?

It sounds obvious now, but at the time it was borderline revolutionary.

She borrowed fabrics from menswear. Jersey. Softness. Ease. She lowered the waistline, loosened the body, removed layers, simplified movement. Suddenly women could walk without looking like they required three attendants and a pulley system.

She did not destroy the line.

She relocated it.

The control moved inward.

That is the genius of French fashion. It adapts without surrendering authority.

Even now, walking through Chanel, you can feel it. The performance remains, but it has become quieter. More internal. Nobody is visibly trying too hard, which of course means everyone is trying extremely hard.

A saleswoman handed me a jacket that cost approximately the GDP of a medium-sized village.

I put it on carefully.

Immediately my posture changed.

This is the danger of good tailoring. Your nervous system starts negotiating with fantasy.

For one brief moment, standing beneath strategically forgiving lighting, I understood how people end up spending four thousand euros because a sleeve hit correctly.

I turned toward the mirror.

The mirror turned toward me.

Luxury mirrors are not normal mirrors. They have been engineered by scientists working somewhere beneath the Alps. They reveal things with cinematic precision. Cartilage. Fatigue. The exact location of every croissant consumed since 2019.

Nearby, a woman emerged from a dressing room wearing head-to-toe wrapped in expensive shades of oatmeal and an expression of serene devastation.

And suddenly I understood something important.

Everyone in this building was auditioning.

Not for wealth exactly.
For coherence.

For the fantasy that one perfect jacket, one perfect bag, one perfect version of ourselves might finally align the whole chaotic operation.

And honestly?
I found that oddly comforting.

The woman in a shade best described as Wealth Adjacent was no longer ridiculous to me. Neither was the teenager trying on sunglasses with terrifying confidence. Neither was I, standing there mentally calculating whether elegance could be financed in installments.

We were all performing identity theater beneath extremely expensive lighting.

French fashion simply admits this more honestly than most places.

Dior understood fantasy after the war. Louboutin decided women apparently required red-bottomed anxiety. Chanel understood movement. Freedom. The possibility that power could look effortless while requiring extraordinary calibration underneath.

By the time I left the store, I had purchased absolutely nothing useful.

Not the jacket.
Not the bag.
Certainly not the loafers.

I left with bone-colored lipstick, a security alarm accidentally attached to the tissue paper, and a small box of macarons I panic-bought downstairs because luxury retail had activated an ancient survival response requiring carbohydrates.

Outside, Bordeaux had returned immediately.

Scooters. Heat. Noise. Dogs. Life.

I stood on the sidewalk eating a pistachio macaron in full emotional recalibration mode while a woman in linen floated past carrying a Chanel bag with the calm authority of someone who had absolutely never hidden a sandwich in her sleeve while driving to the dump.

And yet somehow, in that moment, we both looked correct.

First, The Déchetterie (aka The Dump/The Tip)

It all began with a broken dryer in my trunk/boot. No, not metaphorical baggage, but an actual dryer and let’s just say, the fourth dryer that I’ve taken to the dump in 3 years. Still under warranty and haunted.

So, first I’m headed to the déchetterie, France’s version of a municipal dumping ground where appliances meet their end as well as everything else. It’s not like in the States where you just throw it all in a huge hole. Nope, you must sort everything out and I learned this the hard way. I once came with a 200 litre garbage bag filled with expired hummus, a Barbie head, tangled Christmas lights and what I thought was a dead mouse but turned out to be an old loofah. They had me ‘dump’ it out, go through it and deposit each and every piece in its ‘proper’ place.

Anyway, where was I…

It’s early morning for rural France, 9:00 am. I’m wearing my favorite Uniqlo joggers (that have survived hard water stains and carried me through a lot worse than this), my daughter’s NYU Ambassador hoodie that doesn’t zip, and the moral clarity of someone who hasn’t had enough coffee yet this morning. BTW, in rural France, this is what getting ‘dressed up’ looks like.

I pull in, wave to Gérard (resident dump guardian and part-time philosopher), and head directly to the bin labeled “Gros Électroménager.”

Gerard comes over as I try and wrestle the dryer out of the car. “Non, non, non”, I tell him. “I got it in, I can get it out”…..and I immediately regretted this.

It somehow got heavier during the trip and a mysterious goo only found in items that have lived too long in French basements or a Nickelodeon Episode is now covering my car inside and out.

I try to pivot and twist, then curse…that worked! The dryer finally topples into the bin like a body in a noir film.

Victory! Next stop, Lidl.

Lidl: The Chaos Carnival

I pull into Lidl. The plan: bin liners, emotional recovery from the dump, maybe a snack for Fleur (my dog who has been patiently judging me from the back seat).

Instead: flamingo slippers, discount power tools, and a woman yelling at a tin of Duck Confit.

I make my way through aisles of impulse buys, past discounted garden gnomes and post-Brexit confusion and somehow end up with: Four pineapples, a miniature chainsaw, three kinds of mustard and still no bin liners

The cashier scans in silence like she’s training for the cashier decathlon finals in Paris 2028. I try to pay – you know, that TAP thing with an American Card in rural France? I give up. My card rejects like a bad Tinder date.

Eventually, it goes through and I escape though spiritually and emotionally drained, fiscally confused, and still no closer to cleaning my trash can.

Next? Need Petrol.

Diesel and Despair

I need Gas, or Petrol as they say here. I stop at the station. Oh, looks like the man’s in the “cabin” today. No prepay, apres pay.

Wrong side and too late. I stretch the pump hose like a panicked slinky in distress. It pops right out! Diesel mist sprays my shoes et all. I now smell like a primaeval tractor.

Never mind, car filled up. I inch toward the cabin to pay, all the while trying to get close enough (and, and of course, scraping my alloy wheels, again) to reach the pay pad. I’ve done this drill before. The man in the cabin holds the machine juuuuust close enough where you must unbuckle the seat belt, open the door 3.5” and extend your arm with the card in your hand.

Unbuckle, open door, reach out and, because of course it did, the card falls on the ground.

I start to apologize profusely: “Je suis desole, je suis desole”. I’m so close to the cabin that I can’t open the door more than the obligatory 3.5” and truth be told, I’m just not that svelt (yet) and there are 5 cars behind me. Right now, I am the problem.

Already unbuckled, I contort like a Cirque du Soleil castoff. I wedge myself into the backseat, perform a forward fold worthy of Pilates sainthood, retrieve the card, reverse the process, and pay.

A man nearby nods solemnly. He knows something I don’t.

Note to self: always tie a string to my credit card.

And yes, dear reader, this is all still before noon.

Thankfully, Lunch

It’s time.

I find a boulangerie. I order a Parisien — ham, butter, pickles, crusty enough to file your taxes on and throw it into the car thinking (will I EVER learn?) that I’ll eat it on the way for a walk with the dog. But, this is France. You don’t eat in the car - remember that?

Ah heck, maybe I can do this without anyone seeing me. I am at the one red light in the Village (Europe is all about roundabouts) and I attempt to eat the sandwich subtly. I sneak in a bite. The butter escapes. The pickles rebel. Crumbs go full Jackson Pollock in my lap.

A woman in the next car is staring. I make eye contact with a gendarme.

Still worth it.

Next The Car Wash

After launching the haunted dryer into the abyss and coating my car in a mystery goo of uncertain origin (Part basement? Part dead frog from last summer?), I pull into the car wash hoping for a miracle and no line.

It’s one of those old-school, do-it-yourself, coin-operated jet washes with faded instructions and buttons that haven’t worked since Sarkozy was president. Deep breath, you can do this Jenny.

I put in the coins. Nothing.

I bang on the machine and kick it like I did when I needed my jacuzzi pump to start working. Nothing.

I yell at it in English. That worked! Then, water explodes from the wand like Poseidon’s bad mood and spins in a wild circle because—surprise—I forgot to hold it.

I chase it down like it’s a venomous hose snake while my car gets power-blasted on one side and my shoes get waterboarded while getting the side-eye from Fleur, again.

The goo mostly comes off. My dignity does not.

A man drying his Peugeot looks over, nods once, and resumes buffing. We do not speak. The NYU Sweatshirt says it all.

Finally, a Dog Walk

Ok, so the poor dog has been through this whole episode of Netflix’s Breaking Bad Decisions: Dordogne Edition. It’s time to get in a walk before we go home. I’m already covered in goo, pertrol and suds from the car wash. What could go wrong? It’s just a walk, right? Famous last words.

It’s been quite wet around here lately so I decided to go where it’s flat and well travelled – the Soccer park. Two steps in, I slip. And slip. And keep slipping, on my ass. I am mud. Mud incarnate. A one-woman swamp. Everywhere. I’m coated like a schnitzel. I looked like one of those Mud Truck Revival Series entrants. Fleur is thrilled, licking my face because I’m now at her level.

I finally make it back to the car, peel off my pants and the sweatshirt and throw them in the NOW CLEAN trunk. I then get back into the car half naked. Surely, no one will see me, I’m only 10 minutes from home.

But, as they do, after I had pulled into the park, the Terrasson City Workers decided that the park was too muddy for fun, and they put up barriers and closed the entrance/exit – with me inside. I get out of the car, move the barricades in my underwear hoping no one sees me as a cyclist whizzes by, yelling, “Bon Courage!”

Merci, stranger.

I drive home in my underwear (fashion tip: pair Uniqlo pants with tractor muck — chef’s kiss)

And, of Course, The Reward

The day ends in a stone-walled bar with chairs from 1983 and wonderful wine that costs less than soap. The are playing “Born in the USA” on the radio.

There are three men at the bar. One is yelling at the rugby match on the TV, one is asleep, and the third is nursing a single espresso like it’s his last meal.

The barman is polishing glasses that don’t need polishing. The fireplace is on even though it’s 60 degrees. The floor is sticky. The vibe is immaculate.

I sit. I sip. I unravel.

The pants and hoodie are still in the trunk. I’m not ready to face them yet. They’ll sit there like two disgraced soldiers until I decide whether to wash them or set them on fire.

Tomorrow? I embark on The Quest for a New Dryer™. Come with me. Bring your French Debit Card, a lot of patience, and backup pants.

Fin.

ACT I: RUSTIC CHIC

There are moments in life when you picture yourself participating in rural French traditions and imagine something cinematic.

Golden afternoon light.

Rustic baskets.

Maybe a scarf.

A weathered farmer nodding approvingly while you gather walnuts by hand beneath ancient trees, looking like someone who has strong opinions about heirloom pears.

This is not what happened.

What happened was agricultural combat.

Karen and I had been invited to help with the walnut harvest at a local farm near the village. Karen is British, which meant the two of us approached the situation with completely different but equally useless instincts.

My first concern was what to wear.

Not practical concerns like: Would there be mud? Would machinery be involved? Could I die beneath a tree?

No.

I was focused on achieving what I believed to be “rustic chic harvest energy.”

France, meanwhile, had organized an industrial walnut operation involving giant shaking machines, conveyor belts, tractors, and enough flying debris to qualify as a small weather event.

Now, to understand the seriousness of all this, you have to understand something about walnuts in the Dordogne.

Here, walnuts are not merely walnuts.

They are history. Economy. Identity.

There is an actual Route de la Noix winding through the region, which in hindsight should have warned me that the French were taking this far more seriously than I was.

The walnuts here have protected status. Entire villages smell faintly of walnut oil and wood smoke in autumn. Markets overflow with walnut cakes, walnut wine, walnut liqueur, walnut bread, walnut pâté, and tiny jars of walnut oil displayed with the reverence usually reserved for religious relics.

Meanwhile I was arriving dressed for what I thought might be a charming countryside photo shoot.

ACT II: THE BOMBARDMENT

The first sign that I had misunderstood the assignment came when we arrived at the orchard and I noticed a massive machine gripping the trunk of a walnut tree like it was about to interrogate it for state secrets.

The entire farm smelled faintly of damp earth, crushed walnut husks, diesel fuel, and fresh wood. Tractors moved slowly between the trees while workers shouted to one another across the orchard in rapid French I couldn’t remotely follow. Somewhere nearby, someone had brought coffee in a thermos. Another man smoked quietly beside a mountain of walnuts as if this level of agricultural chaos were completely ordinary. And somehow, it already felt oddly familiar.

The machine began violently shaking the tree.

Walnuts exploded downward like nature had finally snapped.

Bonk.

Bonk.

Bonk bonk bonk.

Now, a reasonable person might step away from this situation.

I did not.

Instead, I stood directly underneath the tree staring upward while walnuts ricocheted off my shoulders and head like I was participating in some deeply specific French carnival game.

Nobody else appeared alarmed.

The French workers, walnut leaves stuck casually to their gloves and jackets, moved calmly through the chaos with the quiet confidence of people who had accepted long ago that being struck by falling walnuts was simply part of life.

Karen watched me getting hit repeatedly and laughed so hard she had to lean against a trailer.

“This seems unsafe,” she said in the driest British tone imaginable.

ACT III: THE FIRST SORTING STATION

The walnuts were eventually swept into large containers and hauled toward the sorting area, where Karen and I were assigned our first official task.

We stood at the end of a large flatbed while a burly French man shoved mountains of walnuts toward us with alarming speed. There were crates stacked everywhere.

Our job sounded simple.

Remove the bad walnuts.

Remove the tiny walnuts.

Keep the good walnuts moving toward the washing machine.

Before we began, someone handed us industrial gloves roughly the size of small kayaks.

The gloves made us look less like skilled agricultural workers and more like two women about to participate in underground boxing.

This system relied heavily on several assumptions:

1. That we knew what constituted a bad walnut.

2. That we possessed hand-eye coordination.

3. That Karen and I would not dissolve into complete hysteria within four minutes.

France dramatically overestimated us.

At first, we tried very hard to appear competent.

We nodded seriously.

We squinted at walnuts with investigative intensity.

We developed what we believed was a system.

Then the walnuts started coming faster.

Suddenly there were too many walnuts.

Every walnut looked suspicious. Several old men watched us in complete silence, like judges at an agricultural Olympics.

Karen held one up and asked, “Is this one diseased or just ugly?”

Meanwhile the French workers continued operating at the speed of Formula One pit crews while we descended into a kind of agricultural improv theatre.

The burly man pushing walnuts toward us began shouting instructions.

Faster.

More sorting.

Not that one.

The little ones over there.

Where was “there”?

Nobody clarified.

Walnuts rolled everywhere.

At one point I entered full survival sorting mode, throwing walnuts with the confidence of someone who no longer understood the system but refused to stop participating.

Which, if we’re being honest, is also how I handle my life.

ACT IV: THE CONVEYOR BELT

Eventually someone decided Karen and I might be more useful at the next station.

This was optimistic.

We were moved to the conveyor belt. After the walnuts had been washed, it’s where they emerge glistening and damp before heading into the drying barn.

If you have ever seen the famous I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel work at the chocolate factory while the conveyor belt speeds up beyond human capability, you already understand the emotional structure of what happened next.

The walnuts arrived faster and faster.

Pull out the bad ones!

Not those!

Too small!

Move faster!

Karen was laughing so hard she could barely stand upright.

One of the French workers had apparently decided this was an excellent time to flirt with her, which somehow made the entire operation even less efficient.

The walnuts began piling up at the end of the belt in increasingly dangerous quantities.

At one point, trying to steady myself while reaching for another walnut, I grabbed what I believed was a support rail.

It was not a support rail.

The conveyor belt immediately sped up.

The walnuts surged forward with horrifying enthusiasm.

Several workers began shouting at once. I was laughing so hard at that point I could barely breathe.

Every time I regained composure, Karen would make eye contact with me again and we’d both collapse immediately.

I attempted to fix the situation by touching more controls, which only deepened the crisis.

Somewhere behind me, a French man yelled something that sounded very fast and extremely disappointed.

I lost all ability to identify walnut quality and entered what I can only describe as survival sorting and random walnuts throwing.

At one point I locked eyes with another worker while desperately shoving walnuts forward with both hands like a woman trying to stop a tiny edible landslide.

Then, I looked around and realized something slightly astonishing.

Nobody was irritated with us.

The French workers weren’t rolling their eyes or sighing dramatically or questioning why two foreign women had been allowed anywhere near a nationally important agricultural process.

They simply kept working around us with the calm acceptance of people who understand that harvest season is chaotic, everyone starts somewhere, and occasionally an American needs to be rescued from a conveyor belt.

One man quietly reached over and redirected an entire avalanche of walnuts we had failed to manage.

Another gave me a look that seemed to say, kindly but firmly:

“You are not good at this.”

Which, to be fair, was accurate.

And somehow…

we loved it.

All of it.

The noise. The chaos. The speed. The laughter. The absurdity of two foreign women failing publicly in the middle of a walnut harvest while an entire French farm carried on around us with astonishing patience.

ACT V: THE BAG OF WALNUTS

By the end of the afternoon, I was filthy, exhausted, and carrying home a giant sack of walnuts.

Which was particularly ironic because I don’t even like walnuts.

I rank them only slightly above truffles on my personal list of foods that taste vaguely like expensive dirt.

Still, I carried them home proudly.

And when the farmers asked if we wanted to come back next year, I felt absurdly happy.

Because somewhere between the falling walnuts, the conveyor belt panic, and Karen nearly collapsing from laughter, something had quietly shifted.

This wasn’t tourism anymore.

I wasn’t observing village life from the outside.

I was in it.

Badly sorted walnuts and all.

The first time I encountered a French national strike, I assumed something catastrophic had happened.

Trains were canceled.
Schools were closed.
Traffic lights appeared to be functioning on faith alone.
Smoke was rising somewhere in the middle distance.

Yet everyone around me behaved with the emotional urgency of people discussing pollen.

“Ah oui,” Jean-Michel said, shrugging lightly while loading onions into a reusable basket. “La grève.”

The strike.

As though this explained not only the current situation, but perhaps the weather, regional plumbing, and the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Coming from the United States, I found this deeply unsettling.

In America, disruption is treated like a software malfunction. We become furious if a Starbucks mobile order takes longer than four minutes. People start checking weather radar apps and threatening Yelp reviews. Entire emotional support systems collapse if the Wi-Fi flickers during a meeting called “Quick Monday Touch Base.”

France, meanwhile, treats societal inconvenience like a form of seasonal expression.

A transport strike?
Naturally.

Garbage piling up in Paris?
Très compliqué.

Farmers blockading highways with tractors and wheelbarrows full of manure?
Well, obviously. The tomatoes have become political.

It took me a while to realize the French are not protesting because the system is broken.

The protesting is part of the system.

This is not a country that believes discomfort should remain private.

In France, dissatisfaction is considered a community activity.

At first, I kept trying to determine whether things were “getting better.”

This was my first mistake.

French strikes are not problems moving toward resolution. They are atmospheric conditions.

Like fog.
Or jazz.

You don’t conquer them.
You move through them carrying pastries.

The truly astonishing part is how calm everyone remains while society appears to be briefly unraveling.

During one Yellow Vest protest in Paris, it started raining while my daughter and I were walking past an H&M.

I insisted we run inside and buy an umbrella because apparently my survival instincts end where mild dampness begins.

Moments later, metal security gates began slowly descending over the entrance.

The entire store stopped.

Over the loudspeaker, a calm voice announced that protests were approaching down the boulevard and the store was temporarily locking down “for customer safety.”

Nobody screamed.
Nobody panicked.

People simply continued holding sweaters and examining scarves while democracy moved toward us in the distance.

My daughter looked at me in horror and whispered:

“Mom. Is there anything worse than getting trapped inside an H&M?”

Honestly, there was not.

A few minutes later, the gates reopened, the protest rolled past, we bought the umbrella, and everyone carried on with their day as though temporary retail imprisonment during civic unrest was a perfectly normal interruption between errands.

I once watched a man in Terrasson calmly select avocados while an animated debate about pension reform erupted nearby with the intensity of a minor naval conflict.

No one left the produce section.

An old woman continued examining melons.

Someone’s dog was asleep under a display of endives.

Meanwhile, on television, Paris appeared to be experiencing the opening scenes of Les Misérables directed by Michael Bay.

At some point, I realized the French relationship with striking is deeply philosophical.

Americans tend to believe a functioning society is one in which inconvenience is minimized.

The French seem to believe a functioning society is one in which people still care enough to complain publicly and set things on symbolic fire.

During one strike, someone set manure on fire in the middle of a roundabout near Montignac.

Traffic slowed respectfully around it.

At one point, I caught myself trying to take a selfie with it and realized my understanding of “normal public behavior” had shifted considerably since moving to France.

And honestly?

There is something weirdly admirable about that.

In the U.S., most people fantasize privately about overthrowing systems while continuing to answer emails titled:
“Gentle Reminder!”

The French skip directly to:
“No ❤️”

Then they drive a tractor into a government building.

Efficiency.

Of course, there are levels to this.

There are the small strikes.
The medium strikes.
The “perhaps don’t attempt rail travel this week” strikes.

And then there are the truly majestic ones.

The strikes where garbage collectors stop working long enough for Paris to begin resembling an 18th-century painting about human consequence.

The strikes where teachers vanish, trains disappear, and everyone you know says:
“Yes, but this is important,” while calmly drinking coffee at noon.

That contrast never stops amazing me.

France can make civil unrest feel… curated.

There will be a man passionately screaming about labor rights while wearing an excellent scarf.

Someone will absolutely be carrying a baguette.

A grandmother will cross directly through the chaos wearing an apron and the expression of someone mildly annoyed by parking.

And somehow, despite all of it, dinner reservations remain sacred.

That may be the most French thing of all.

The government may be collapsing.

Public transportation may exist only as a rumor.

Half the country may currently be blocking the other half with agricultural equipment.

But at 7:30 pm, people still sit down and discuss duck confit as though civilization is holding beautifully.

Which, in a way, perhaps it is.

Because after living here for a few years, I’ve started to suspect the French understand something Americans don’t:

A society without friction is not necessarily healthier.

Sometimes the noise means people still believe they belong to the outcome.

Sometimes complaining is a form of optimism.

And sometimes, apparently, democracy smells faintly of smoke, espresso, and tractor exhaust.

French fashion has never really been about clothes.
It has always been about structure.
Not beauty. Not trend. Structure.

The corset. The silhouette. The waist snapped in half. The heel that changes your spine and, with it, your posture in a room. Even the little black dress which pretends to be effortless while enforcing discipline with terrifying efficiency.

This is not decoration.
It is control.

Every year the Met Gala reminds the world that fashion is spectacle. Capes. Drama. Human chandeliers wobbling up museum stairs. But in France, spectacle is secondary. The real work happens underneath. In seams. In boning. In lines drawn so precisely they decide who gets to breathe and who does not.

I realized this standing in my kitchen in rural France, wearing black for the fourth day in a row, holding a pair of heels that would sink straight into my gravel driveway like artifacts from a monarchy that never met mud.

France did not invent couture to decorate women.
It invented it to control the line.
And once you see the line, you cannot unsee it.

If you want to understand French fashion, start at Versailles.

Not in the Hall of Mirrors.
In the dressing rooms.

In the quiet violence of being assembled.

The palace was a machine. It did not just house royalty. It manufactured hierarchy. Every ribbon, every fold of silk, every inch of lace was calibrated to signal exactly where you stood and how close you were allowed to stand to someone else.

Clothing was not personal expression.
It was political positioning.

At court, a woman did not wake up and choose an outfit.
She was constructed.

Layer by layer. Structure before softness. Form before breath.

The corset was not an accessory.
It was infrastructure.

At Versailles, dressing was not vanity. It was ceremony.

The day began publicly. Even intimacy had witnesses. Women of rank were dressed in stages, according to hierarchy. Who handed you a sleeve mattered. Who tied your ribbons mattered more. A misplaced gesture could signal allegiance or insult.

You did not simply wear silk.
You were calibrated by it.

The bodice held you upright. The panniers widened you into architecture. Skirts did not float; they occupied territory. To move through a doorway required calculation. To sit required choreography. To turn required clearance.

There is a reason portraits from that era look so controlled. The clothing made spontaneity nearly impossible.

Even proximity was regulated. The width of a skirt determined how close another body could approach. Space was measured in fabric. Power was measured in inches.

Nothing about it was accidental.

The palace ran on optics and oxygen.

Breathing too freely was not encouraged. Moving too casually was not admired. Ease was suspicious. Precision was rewarded.

And the women learned.

They learned how to hold still.
How to command attention without appearing to reach for it.
How to conserve breath and deploy it carefully.

Structure first. Expression second.

By the time they entered the Hall of Mirrors, the performance had already begun hours earlier, in smaller rooms with tighter laces.

Imagine being laced so precisely that inhaling becomes a negotiation. Not suffocating. That would be dramatic. Just restricted enough that every breath requires intention.

Posture corrected. Spine aligned. Ribcage disciplined. Shoulders squared. Movement altered.

You don’t slump in a corset.
You don’t forget yourself either.

And if you faint, you faint beautifully.

Which, historically speaking, was still considered success.

I once tried on a reproduction corset in a small boutique outside Bordeaux. For educational purposes.

Within three minutes I understood two things:

Women in the 18th century were stronger than I am.
Power is easier to perform when someone has physically arranged your body into it.

The woman lacing me tightened one more inch and said, “Now you look correct.”

Correct.

Not comfortable. Not beautiful.

Correct.

That word has been doing a remarkable amount of work in France for centuries.

French fashion did not merely shape how women looked. It shaped how they occupied space. How straight they stood, how far they leaned, how much of a table they were permitted to claim before it became indecorous.

The line of a garment became the line of a life.

Control the waist, and the spine follows.
Control the spine, and the room adjusts.
And once the room adjusts, you rarely need to raise your voice.

The corset has been criticized, defended, romanticized, reclaimed. It is easy to see it as oppression. It is also possible to see it as armor. What is harder to deny is that it worked.

It created a silhouette that commanded attention long before the woman inside it was permitted to speak.

When the laces were pulled, I stood straighter immediately. I breathed differently. I understood, briefly and slightly alarmingly, how structure can feel like certainty.

And how certainty can feel like power.

Revolutions loosened the corset. They did not erase the instinct.

The line migrated.

Into shoulders sharpened like strategy.
Into waists drawn high and tight in new ways.
Into hemlines that rose or fell depending on how much freedom could be tolerated that decade.
Into the choreography of entering a room as if the room were already yours.

French fashion has always understood something quietly dangerous: structure changes behavior.

Change the line, and you change the posture.
Change the posture, and you change the room.

I have lived long enough in France to know that rooms matter here.

And once you see the line—in silk, in boning, in gravel—you cannot unsee it.

Next, Part II: the woman who decided breathing was not optional.

I watched The Devil Wears Prada 2 recently, which confirmed something I’ve suspected for a while.

Miranda Priestly would not survive in rural France.

Not because she lacks authority.
But because here, authority arrives in slippers, owns a chainsaw, and does not care what you’re wearing.

In Paris, Miranda controls the room with silence, posture, and a single raised eyebrow.

In the Dordogne, the woman at the marché controls the room by ignoring you completely until you demonstrate a working knowledge of seasonal produce and basic respect for goat cheese.

I once asked for something out of season.

She looked at me the way one might look at a person who had just suggested we should boil the Mona Lisa.

We moved on.

The first rule of Miranda’s world is appearance.

The first rule here in rural France is… competence.

You can arrive in linen, silk, or what you believe to be a thoughtfully curated outfit.

None of it matters if you:

• can’t reverse down a one-lane road with a stone wall on one side and a tractor on the other

• hesitate at a roundabout

• or fail to acknowledge the existence of a neighbor who has been watching you park for the last six minutes

Let’s talk about transportation.

In Miranda’s world, a sleek black car glides up to the curb and someone else opens the door.

Here? You are the door. You are the driver. At times, you are also the obstacle.

French country roads are less “roads” and more suggestions that something once passed through here successfully.

They curve without warning. Narrow without apology. And occasionally introduce you to a vehicle that has no intention of yielding.

There is a moment, always, where you must decide who you are.

I have, on more than one occasion, chosen incorrectly.

Miranda has assistants.

I have Jean-Michel.

Jean-Michel is not my assistant.

Jean-Michel appears when something breaks, stands over it thoughtfully, and then disappears for two days before returning with a part, a cigarette, and an opinion you did not ask for but are now required to consider.

If Miranda ran Runway magazine like Jean-Michel runs repairs, the September issue would arrive in November, slightly crooked, but somehow still impressive.

Then there is the matter of lunch.

In Miranda’s world, meals are efficient, controlled, and often skipped entirely.

Here, lunch is a structured event with emotional weight.

You do not “grab something.”

You sit. You wait. You participate.

Courses arrive in a sequence that feels less like dining and more like a philosophical exercise in patience. There is wine. There is bread. There is a moment where you realize you are no longer in control of the timeline.

And no one seems concerned.

Miranda does not cook.
Miranda delegates cooking to someone who understands heat, timing, and risk.

I, unfortunately, do not have that option.

I once attempted to grill duck breast.

This felt like a reasonable extension of my skills.

It was not.

There is a very specific moment when duck fat meets flame and becomes something closer to a public safety concern. The fire rose quickly, decisively, and with a level of confidence I did not share.

A neighbor appeared.

Not summoned. Just… present.

He watched for a moment, nodded once, and adjusted something with a calm authority that suggested this was not his first duck-related emergency.

We did not speak about it again. Miranda would have fired me before the flames reached the second course.

And then there’s the outfit.

Miranda would never be seen in the same thing twice.

Here, I have seen the same man wear the same orange pants for what I can only assume is a multi-year commitment.

No one comments.

Because it is not about the pants.

It is about whether he:

• shows up

• does what needs to be done

• and leaves without unnecessary discussion

This is the part Miranda would struggle with.

Not the clothes. Not the cars.

The pace.

Because at some point, it becomes clear that nothing here is trying to impress you.

It is not trying to optimize your time, streamline your experience, or anticipate your needs.

It is simply… happening.

At its own speed.

With or without your understanding.

And eventually, something shifts.

You stop trying to manage it.

You stop trying to “do it right.”

You stop trying to win.

You just start… moving through it.

Which, now that I think about it,

is exactly what Miranda Priestly would never do.

By 9:17 a. m. this morning I am on the ground in the Intermarché parking lot with one arm fully committed under a row of carts, trying to retrieve a one-euro coin that is visible, technically within reach, and absolutely not coming back without a level of effort that feels disproportionate to the situation.

There’s gravel in places I didn’t know existed. At this point, I have committed too far to exit this situation with dignity.

A man with a baguette is watching.

We’ve made eye contact.

No one is stepping in.

You think it’s going to be lavender.

That’s the version people carry around. The one where you wake up in rural France and the light is already doing you a favor, the window opens onto something picturesque, and the day unfolds exactly as it should. You move through it like someone who has made a series of very good decisions, possibly barefoot, definitely unhurried, certainly not lying face-down in a parking lot negotiating with loose change.

Back to me.

Still under the carts.

The coin has not moved.

Eventually, I get it.

Not gracefully, not in a way that suggests this was handled well, but the coin is retrieved, dignity is negotiable, and we all move on.

I stand up, brush off what I can, which is not everything, and head inside like this is exactly how I meant to start the day.

Inside, the store has its own system, and I am not part of it.

It’s not slow. It’s…committed. Focused. Like everyone has quietly agreed that this is where decisions are made and no one is leaving until they get it right.

A woman is pressing tomatoes like she’s narrowing down a suspect list. Not aggressively, just with the calm certainty that one of these is the correct tomato and she is going to find it if it takes all morning.

Next to her, a man is turning a melon in his hands like it’s a small, uncooperative planet. He rotates it, pauses, rotates it again, holding it at eye level like it might reveal something if he waits long enough.

No one rushes.

Not physically. Not mentally. Not even conceptually.

The entire place feels like a low-stakes, high-commitment decision-making environment where everyone understands the rules except me, and I am doing my best not to draw attention to that fact.

So I adapt.

I pick up a tomato.

I press it.

I wait.

I press another one.

I stay longer than I need to.

I leave with three cheeses that feel like they come with expectations, a melon I did not choose so much as inherit, and a jar of something that seemed like a good idea at the time and will almost certainly require interpretation later.

No one here seems to be trying to finish anything.

Back home, the house has already started without me.

Laundry, for instance, is no longer a task. It’s a situation.

In theory, you wash things, you hang them, they dry, and you move on with your life.

Here, it feels more like I’ve joined a conversation that’s been happening for hours and no one is stopping to explain the context.

The machine hums in that steady, slightly superior way, like it knows something about moisture and timing that I will never fully understand. Outside, the line is strung between two trees, and the sheets and shirts aren’t drying so much as existing in a long-term negotiation with the air.

They move slightly.

They pause.

They continue.

I stand there holding a sleeve up to the light like I’ve been given a role I’m not entirely qualified for, trying to decide if it’s done or just… continuing.

At some point, I decide it’s done.

It does not argue. I’m starting to suspect I’m not in charge of this.

It should feel like a chore. It doesn’t.

The garage door doesn’t open.

Not dramatically.

Just… declines.

Like it has already processed the request and moved on to something else.

There’s a note from La Poste on the counter informing me that a package exists somewhere in France, which feels less like useful information and more like a general concept I’m meant to accept.

The jacuzzi acknowledges my presence, blinks once, and then returns to stillness like it briefly considered participating and then decided against it.

And somehow, none of this feels like a problem.

I take the dog out for a hike.

It’s chasse season, which means this is, objectively, not my best decision.

Fleur is up ahead looking like a small, perfectly rendered woodland creature with full Bambi energy, delicate, alert, absolutely thriving in an environment that feels designed specifically for her.

I, on the other hand, am dressed like a highlighter.

Chartreuse. Hot orange. Not subtle. Not negotiable. If visibility is the goal, I have achieved it on every level.

We step into the forest like this is fine.

Fleur moves forward with complete confidence, like she belongs here, like she has paperwork, like someone waved her through earlier.

I follow behind her, deeply visible, slightly concerned, and suddenly very aware that I may be the most obvious thing in a several-kilometer radius.

There’s a sound somewhere off to the side that could be a branch.

Or could be someone seeing me from a distance and adjusting accordingly.

Fleur doesn’t even look back.

We keep going.

At this point, turning around feels like admitting I didn’t think this through, and I’m not ready for that level of self-reflection.

Lunch doesn’t interrupt the day.

Lunch takes it over.

It starts slowly and then, without warning, becomes the structure everything else rearranges itself around. Plates arrive, bread appears and reappears like it has a long-term plan, conversation expands in loops that don’t need to land anywhere.

At some point, I realize I’m eating something I would once have questioned.

Now I’m nodding.

Agreeing.

Reaching for more.

Fully committed.

Not to the dish.

To the situation.

There is no exit strategy at this point.
This is happening to me now.

Time doesn’t stop.

It just… stops being relevant.

There’s no sense of time passing. Just… happening.

I’m halfway through pretending I might try the garage again when I hear gravel.

Jean-Michel.

Of course.

He pulls up like this was always going to happen and I’m just late to understanding it. No text. No warning. Just gravel, car door, Jean-Michel, bottle of wine. The full sequence.

He holds the bottle up slightly, like it explains everything.

Which, to be fair, it does.

I am still standing there with whatever plan I thought I had for the day, and within about thirty seconds that plan has been downgraded to a suggestion.

Glasses appear. I don’t remember getting them. We’re suddenly standing just outside the door, and the conversation has already started without a clear beginning…something about the weather, then wood, then a fence, then something with a long and complicated backstory I’ve arrived in the middle of.

I nod.

I participate.

I lose track of what we’re talking about almost immediately, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The point is not the topic. The point is that we are now here, doing this.

At some point I realize I’ve stopped thinking about everything I was supposed to do.

At some point after that, I realize I don’t care.

And then, like it’s just occurred to him, Jean-Michel says he came to invite me to lunch on Sunday.

Which is apparently why he’s here.

It just took a full glass of wine to get to it.

This is not what I planned, and somehow that’s the best part.

Somewhere between a second glass and a story I’m only half following, I remember the list.

Laundry. Groceries. The things.

But it feels distant now, like something I wrote down for a different version of the day, one that no longer seems particularly convincing.

The laundry is dry.

Of course it is.

The house is still.

And everything that needed to happen… has happened.

Not in the order I planned.

Not in the way I expected.

But completely.

Every day is Saturday here.

Not because there’s nothing to do, but because the doing doesn’t stay where you put it. It stretches into conversations, into meals, into things that interrupt you just long enough to remind you where you are.

The laundry still needs to be done.
The groceries still need to be bought.
Things still don’t work when they should.

None of that changes.

What changes is something quieter.

Somewhere along the way, the ordinary stops feeling like something to get through…

…and starts feeling like the thing itself. No one announces it.

And then, without planning to, you look up.

Something unfinished in your hands, something unexpected just ahead and you realize you’re not waiting for the day to begin.

You’re already in it.

If this sounds like your kind of Saturday, there’s more of it waiting just below.

There’s a version of “I Went to Buy a Dress in Bordeaux” that works well on paper.

It’s visual, structured, slightly chaotic in a controlled way like everything unfolded exactly as it should and I was simply there to observe it and translate it into something coherent afterward.

That’s not the version I experienced.

The version I experienced had layers. I was there to find a dress for my daugher’s engagement party in NYC next month.

There was the movement, the noise, the constant shifting of direction, the kind of energy that makes you feel like if you stop for even a second you’ll lose your place in it entirely.

And underneath all of that, there was something else running quietly alongside it, not attached to anything in particular, but present in a way that was difficult to ignore.

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THE DRESSING ROOM INCIDENT

The zipper stops halfway up my back and I immediately blame France.

Not the country. The lighting.

The dressing room at Galleries Lafayette is aggressively bright, the kind of brightness that makes you aware of cartilage. The curtain refuses to close all the way which is how I end up stepping backward into Cabin 8 and discovering a man in gray boxer briefs holding a pale blue shirt like we’ve both been assigned the wrong scene.

We freeze.

The mirrors multiply us into an exhibit called Poor Timing.

He says something calm. I say “pardon” three times in escalating pitches. I had entered the cabin with two options: a responsible navy sheath and a sequined suggestion of poor judgment.

The curtain jerks but does not close, stretching the silence long enough for something wildly inappropriate to assemble in my brain. I consider asking him if he’s single. Not casually. Not jokingly. I mean genuinely like this might be the meet-cute no one ordered, which is not a reasonable direction for my thinking while half-zipped in sequins under chandelier surveillance. And yet there it is, partially dressed and ready. Like Bordeaux has decided this is my arc. Not dignity. Not growth. I briefly calculate whether this is how people meet their second husbands, and if so, whether I look like a woman who owns matching towels. In Cabin 8. Fluorescent. Half-zipped. Emotionally pre-approved for nothing.

I do not ask.

But I do think about it longer than is structurally sound.

Somewhere outside the curtain someone laughs, and I briefly wonder if the entire floor has access to this angle.

The zipper is still stuck.

This is what happens when your daughter announces an engagement party in New York City and you decide Galleries Lafayette in Bordeaux is where transformation will occur.

I am still half-formed.

The chandelier is thriving. I am not.

I wrench the curtain closed, abandon the navy dress like it betrayed me, gather the sequins before they defect entirely, and step directly onto the escalator because horizontal mistakes now require vertical solutions.

ASCENT

I step onto the escalator like I planned this sequence, one hand lightly resting on the rail as though I have not just been multiplied in boxer-adjacent lighting. The sequins tick against the rubber edge and I pretend not to hear it, because hearing it would imply awareness, and awareness at this stage feels dangerous. Halfway up I notice I am still holding a hanger that does not belong to me, white plastic and deeply confident in its innocence, and instead of turning around like a rational adult I adjust my grip and stare forward as if this has always been part of the ensemble.

The escalator rises with bureaucratic indifference, having processed far worse women with better posture. I rise with it.

Shoes will correct this.

Shoes always look corrective. This has never been more true.

GRAVITY TEST

The shoe department looks calm. Which should have been my first warning. I sit in the curved chair and immediately discover angles in my knees I did not authorize, then slide into a black heel that implies structural integrity I have not demonstrated today.

It fits.

Which feels like a setup.

When I stand, I see the dip in the carpet. I fully acknowledge the dip. I decide the dip is decorative.

My ankle shifts half a degree and I reach for stability, landing on the central pole of a rotating tower of sunglasses arranged like a black plastic galaxy. The tower responds by turning, gently at first, as though we are collaborating, and I turn with it because letting go would signal defeat and I am not prepared to concede.

For one long second I believe this is recoverable. I even commit to the face of someone recovering.

The base tilts. The heel sinks. The galaxy lowers itself to the floor in a controlled collapse, as though it has been waiting for me specifically. Sunglasses spreading outward in glossy arcs while the escalator continues humming like it has not just witnessed my audition for gravity. A child claps once. I do not look to confirm. I have chosen denial.

I remain holding the pole longer than necessary, which is how pretending works.

“Perfect,” I say, because if you narrate confidently enough, events sometimes reconsider.

They do not reconsider.

COINGATE

By the time I reach the restroom I am still carrying the hanger, which has begun to feel symbolic, and the entrance is guarded by a waist-high metal gate with a coin slot that suggests fairness but radiates indifference.

I insert one euro.

Nothing happens.

I insert another.

Still nothing.

Behind me a heel taps once, slow and judicial, and I consider whether this is how revolutions begin. Not with ideology. With bladder urgency and a one-euro coin that refuses diplomacy. I have never felt more European, which is impressive considering I am arguing with plumbing.

Here I am, standing in Galleries Lafayette negotiating bodily access with machinery while holding plastic I do not own.

Coingate is underway.

I contemplate climbing it. Fully. With intent.

Instead I stand very still, as though patience is a language I speak fluently, and the gate releases with a mechanical cough that feels less like permission and more like resignation.

I step through quickly before it changes its mind.

Inside, the faucet launches water at my sleeve and I blot it carefully while staring at my reflection, which appears unbothered and faintly smug.

The zipper remains in negotiations.

PAINT

The cosmetics counter glows from beneath like an aquarium for the emotionally unstable. Brushes stand upright in glass cylinders like a jury.

A woman approaches without asking what happened to my sunglasses orbit and lifts my chin as if I have requested supervision.

She twists open a tube labeled Audace.

Bold.

Of course it is.

She paints carefully, professionally, as though my mouth is the only part of this situation requiring discipline.

When she hands me the mirror, the woman looking back appears fractionally more deliberate than the one who entered Cabin 8. Coral mouth steady. Hanger still in hand like a prop in a play no one rehearsed.

I nod once.

I do not buy a dress.

I buy Audace. Bold, apparently, costs extra.

ALARM THEORY

I wander briefly through Bridal where a measuring tape appears at my waist without invitation and I say “Mother” with such clarity that it retracts instantly, which feels like a small victory in a day of structural negotiations.

I head toward the exit holding coral and the hanger.

The security pedestals erupt in alarm.

Not a polite beep.

A declaration.

Heads turn. The escalator continues delivering civilians upward like nothing has occurred. A guard approaches with a small device and snaps something invisible free with a crisp magnetic click.

It is attached to the hanger.

Of course it is. For half a second I consider running. Not from guilt. From narrative consistency.

Instead I nod gravely, as if this was expected, and step outside into Bordeaux air.

The coral stays. It did not collapse under pressure, which is more than I can say for the sunglasses.

It cost eighty-five euros, which feels aggressive for something the size of a thumb, but I have already tipped a galaxy of sunglasses and negotiated with coin-operated infrastructure, so perspective is relative.

I hold the hanger for a moment longer than necessary before handing it to the guard, who receives it without ceremony. I step outside into Bordeaux air holding nothing but coral and a plastic lesson.

BLACK

I drive home.

I open my closet.

There they are.

They are not new.
They do not sparkle.

They do not require negotiation, each one perfectly capable of attending an engagement party in New York without rotation, coin insertion, or structural collapse.

I’ll choose one
Of course I do.

It occurs to me that I did not need a new dress.
I needed an incident.

New York will get black.

Bordeaux got the rehearsal. Cabin 8 remains undefeated.

The Pause (This Is Where It Starts to Go Wrong)

There is a pause.

Not a normal pause.

A pause where the table, collectively, has to decide what to do with me, where someone sets down their fork and someone else takes a sip of wine that feels strategic and the host looks at me.

Not offended.

Worse.

Concerned.

This is because, moments earlier, I had said:

“I hate truffles.”

And then, because I am apparently incapable of stopping once I’ve made a poor decision, I kept talking.

The Statement (I Should Have Stopped Talking)

Yes, I kept talking, explaining that they smell weird, like something that should still be underground and left alone, and clarifying, that I didn’t mean that in a charming, rustic way but in a very literal “why are we digging this up and putting it on eggs” way, and that they taste like dirt, not good dirt, not French dirt, not terroir, just dirt, and that truffle oil is aggressive and unnecessary and possibly a personality trait I don’t respect, and that I don’t understand the hype, and at some point I may have said, “I think it’s just a mushroom with good PR,” which, at the time, felt like a useful contribution, and then I kept going, because at that point stopping would have required self-awareness and we had already moved past that point…..

The Correction (I Did Not)

“No, no,” someone says, very calmly, which is how you know things have shifted into a different category entirely.

“You haven’t had real truffles.”

This is how it happens, because you think you are expressing a preference. Something light, something conversational, something that might lead to a quick exchange and then back to the wine, but you are not expressing a preference, you are triggering a demonstration.

My host stands up slowly, deliberately, like a man who has just accepted responsibility for what comes next, and disappears into the kitchen without a word, leaving the rest of us in a silence that is no longer casual but organized, expectant, and slightly instructional. No one speaks, no one jokes, and I consider apologizing briefly, in the same theoretical way one considers exercise or learning a language, and then decide against it, which, in hindsight, was not the turning point I needed it to be.

He returns with a box.

Of course he does.

A small wooden box that immediately explains everything and nothing at the same time. The kind of box that does not belong to you and never will. He places it in the center of the table without introduction, without commentary, just the box, which is somehow enough.

And this is the moment where I realize, too late, that I am no longer having lunch.

I am being corrected.

The Field Trip (This Was Not Optional)

Apparently, in this situation, being corrected is not theoretical, it is logistical, because the next thing I know I am being told—calmly, firmly, in the tone of someone who has already decided what kind of person I am and what must now be done about it—that we are going to the market. Not tomorrow, not later, not “if you feel like it,” but now, immediately, as if this has already been agreed upon somewhere above my pay grade and I have simply been added to the itinerary.

I don’t actually say yes, which feels important to note, but I also don’t say no, and that turns out to be the same thing. Suddenly there are coats and the chairs are moving and I am standing. Then I am outside and then I am in a car, and at no point does anyone check in with me because there is nothing to check in about, this is not a discussion, this is a correction.

The drive is quiet in a way that is not awkward so much as settled, like everyone else has accepted the terms of what is about to happen. I am the only one still trying to figure out if there was a moment where I could have exited and simply missed it. I briefly consider walking it back while softening my position, introducing nuance, becoming a more flexible version of myself. The window for that felt closed in a very real and binding way, and also slightly embarrassing to attempt at this stage.

The Transaction (This Felt Binding)

We arrive at the Sarlat market, which is already fully operational. People buying, selling, discussing, negotiating, moving with purpose, except for one stall that is doing none of those things, because it does not need to. It is operating on a completely different system, one that does not involve signage or pricing or any visible attempt to attract customers. Just a man, a table, and several small, irregular objects that I now understand are the reason I am here.

We walk directly toward it… of course we do. There is no hesitation, no browsing, no pretending we are just passing by. My host gestures lightly, almost casually, in a way that is somehow more serious than anything that has happened so far, and says, “This is where you will understand,” which is not a suggestion, it’s a statement of outcome.

I do not want to understand.

This is no longer relevant.

The vendor looks up, not surprised, not welcoming, just aware, and there is a brief exchange between him and my host that does not involve words but clearly communicates everything necessary. I am included in that exchange only as an object of interest, not as a participant.

“I’d like one,” I say, because at this point, I am still under the impression that I am making choices, which is incorrect.

He selects a truffle, not quickly, not randomly, but with a level of intention that suggests this is not just a purchase but an assignment, and places it on a small scale that immediately becomes the focal point of the entire interaction. The numbers begin to rise in a way that is both gradual and relentless, like something that knows exactly where it is going and has no reason to stop. I commit fully to watching them, because looking away feels like giving up the only control I have left.

The number settles somewhere that feels too personal.

He says the price, softly, without emphasis, without apology, as though this is a completely normal thing to say to another human being who has just asked, casually, for dirt. I nod immediately, decisively because at this point, hesitation would not reduce the number, it would only expose me. I have already exposed enough. I am not entirely sure what he said, not in a confident, “I’ll clarify” way, but in a very specific French-numbers way where I catch maybe half of it. The other half arrives scrambled, and now I am standing there trying to determine, in real time, whether I have just agreed to €50 or €80 or something involving four twenties and a ten that may or may not exist. There is absolutely no version of this where I ask him to repeat it because that would reveal everything and I briefly consider doing the math, but that would require confidence, and I no longer have access to that.

And then, just as I am preparing to complete what I assume is a normal transaction, something involving a credit card and a quick, quiet exit with what little dignity I have left, the situation shifts again in a way that feels both inevitable and deeply personal. He does not move, does not reach for anything, does not even glance in the direction of where a machine might be if machines existed here, which they clearly do not.

“Espèces.”

Of course.

Of course it’s cash.

Of course, I am standing in the middle of a French market attempting to purchase a small, aggressively respected piece of dirt that requires immediate liquid assets like I am closing on something. I let out a small, light laugh—reflexive, hopeful, completely misjudged—and it lands nowhere, because no one else is laughing. No one has ever laughed, and nothing about this situation has suggested that laughter would be appropriate.

I do not have cash.

Not this kind of cash.

Not “truffle” cash.

I have a card, which suddenly feels like a suggestion rather than a form of payment.

There is a pause, but not the same pause as before, not the lunch pause, not the social recalibration pause, but a logistical pause. The kind that suggests the situation is about to resolve itself whether or not you are equipped to participate, and my host steps in, smoothly, efficiently, and without commentary. There is a brief exchange, fast, quiet, practiced, after which money appears, his money, not mine, and the transaction continues as though this had been understood from the beginning. It’s as though I have simply been playing a role in a process that does not require my input.

And now I am no longer just financially involved.

I am indebted.

Socially.

Structurally.

Possibly permanently.

We leave without discussion. Without debrief. Without anyone asking what I think, because this was never about what I think. I am left holding something that is technically dirt but has been treated, from beginning to end, as something far more structured, far more important, far more inevitable than anything I said at that table.

I left with a truffle I did not want and did not understand.

The Experiment (This Is Where It Falls Apart)

I got home, and there was no discussion, no recap, no gentle debrief where someone checks in on my emotional state or asks whether I feel differently now that I have been formally introduced to subterranean luxury. There is just the quiet, unspoken understanding that I now own a truffle and therefore must do something with it, which feels less like a choice and more like the natural continuation of a series of increasingly questionable decisions that began the moment I opened my mouth at lunch.

At some point it ends up on the counter. It is still wrapped, still intact, still carrying itself with the same level of quiet authority it had at the market, as if none of this has been surprising to it at all, as if this is exactly where it expected to be all along and I am simply catching up.

I unwrap it carefully, because now I know better, now I understand that there are rules, that there is a system, that dirt can, in fact, outrank you if handled correctly. I take a moment, just a moment, to acknowledge that I have been brought here, emotionally and financially, by a root vegetable with influence.

I smell it again.

It is still aggressive.

Still committed.

Still arriving in the room like it has something to prove and no interest in making friends along the way.

So I do what I have been trained to do over the past few hours, which is shave it. Carefully, deliberately, onto something that feels appropriate, which at this point can only be eggs. If we are going to do this, we are going to do it consistently, and I sit down like a person who has been through something and is now ready to evaluate the outcome.

I take a bite.

And there is a moment, an actual moment, where I am prepared, fully prepared, to have been wrong, to experience the transformation, to feel the shift, to suddenly understand what everyone at that table understood. What the man at the market assumed I would eventually grasp, what the entire system has been gently but firmly guiding me toward since the second I said the words “I hate truffles.”

And then nothing happens.

The Conclusion (Nothing Has Changed)

Nothing changes.

It still smells weird.

It still tastes like dirt, not in a charming, rustic, French, terroir-adjacent way, but in a very direct, very personal, very unmistakable “this came from the ground and perhaps should have stayed there” way. I sit there, in my own kitchen, having completed the full arc of this experience, from ignorance to correction to financial commitment to attempted appreciation, and realize, with absolute clarity, that not only do I still hate it, I now hate it with context.

Because now I understand exactly what is happening.

I went to a lunch, I insulted a truffle, I was corrected, I was transported, I was educated, and I was financially involved in a way that feels binding, and at no point, not once, did any of that result in me liking it even slightly more.

If anything, I hate it more now.

Not just the taste.

The situation.

The process.

The way a small piece of dirt can reorganize an entire afternoon, a market, and a portion of your bank account.

And yet…there is something almost impressive about it, the way it moves through this country with quiet authority, the way people handle it like it matters, the way an entire system will rise up, gently but firmly, to correct you if you get it wrong.

I don’t like it, I even hate it.

But I understand it now and I respect the commitment.

If you’re enjoying this level of chaos, there’s more of it behind the paid door……for the price of a cup of coffee.

The tractor blocked the only road to my house.

Not “blocked” like inconvenient.
Blocked like: this is your life now.

It had chosen that exact afternoon, while 24 expats were on their way to my house for apéro, to die in a position that felt deliberate and, if I’m being honest, a little targeted.

Inside the tractor sat my neighbor, Jean-Michel, who is approximately 150 years old and had absolutely no intention of getting out.

Behind him, my guests began to arrive.

One.
Then three.
Then eight.

And then all of them, standing there in linen and optimism, looking at the tractor, then at each other, then back at the tractor like it might explain itself.

From the kitchen window, I watched this happen while slicing radishes into animals that had started out decorative and were now becoming increasingly aggressive.

On the terrace, the apéro trays sat in full sun (cheese included) which I acknowledged briefly before deciding not to get involved.

The Dutch formed a committee.
The German assessed the incline.
The American suggested pushing.
The British apologized for existing near heavy machinery.

No one moved the tractor.

Jean-Michel did not move.

And at that point, it became clear that this was no longer a tractor problem.

This was now… something I was clearly about to be responsible for.

At first, no one moved, which is exactly what happens when a group of well-dressed adults encounters a problem that does not belong to them but is clearly about to.

They stood there adjusting sunglasses and expectations while someone said, “This is kind of… amazing?” and someone else said, “This is so French,” which was technically true and also not helping.

The group split almost immediately into those who believed this was a problem and those who believed this was an experience, while someone sat down - fully sat down - on the side of the road in linen, which felt like a decision.

Jean-Michel remained still, one hand on the wheel, looking out over them like a man who had already accepted the outcome and was now waiting for everyone else to catch up.

Inside, I kept slicing radishes into shapes that were now less animal and more interpretive.

I had a brief thought about the cheese.
I let it go.

No one had been invited to take charge, which did not stop anyone.

“Maybe we should just… move it?”

The tractor, for context, was not moveable. It was not a chair. It was not a mood. It was a presence.

“We just need leverage,” said Charles (in loafers that had never made a mistake) without specifying where the leverage would come from or what it would be applied to, which somehow made everyone more confident.

Behind them, someone opened a bottle.

A soft pop.

No objections.

That felt like a shift.

Eventually, someone tried French.

“Ça va?”

Jean-Michel turned slowly, looked at him, looked at the group, looked at the horizon, and said, “Elle est morte.”

And just like that, we were no longer dealing with a problem.

We were dealing with a loss.

Inside, I paused.

Because this was now happening.

From the window, I could see them fully stalled. 24 people in linen, gently deteriorating in the heat, holding gifts and expectations that were no longer aligned with reality.

No one was coming up the road.

Jean-Michel remained in the tractor.
The tractor remained in the road.

Everything had stopped.

I briefly considered moving the entire party to the road.

Setting up the table around the tractor.
Serving there.

Calling it immersive.

I stood there, holding one of the trays, actually thinking this through.

Then I stopped.

No.

We are not those people.

I put the tray down.
Picked it back up.

That did not help.

So I went outside and, or course, grabbed the apero tray on the way out, which immediately raised questions I was not prepared to answer.

The air hit differently, thicker, expectant, already carrying the first signs of thirst, and twenty-four faces turned toward me at once, smiling in a way that suggested both confidence and complete dependence.

This was now my problem.

“OK,” I said, clapping once, because that felt like something a person in charge would do.

“We’re going to walk.”

I started moving immediately.

Momentum felt critical.

Behind me, they followed, not confidently, not efficiently, but with commitment, and one person removed their shoes, which did not improve anything, while linen moved through brush, loafers negotiated terrain, and one heel made a brief, dramatic exit before being recovered with dignity.

I was still holding the tray.
This felt unnecessary.
Also too late to correct.

Claire carried her wine like it had legal standing.
Susan was already laughing, which meant she had left the present entirely.

“Is this the way?”

“Yes,” I said.

It was not the way.
It was a way.

Behind us, the tractor remained.

By the time we got to the terrace, things were already… off.

The trays were not where I had left them.

They weren’t far.
Just… wrong.

Like someone had picked them up, reconsidered, and put them back somewhere else without finishing the thought.

The cheese had changed.

Not melted.
Not intact.

Just no longer committed to its original structure.

No one said anything about it.

Which told me everyone had noticed.

Mark had a bottle and had decided, without discussion, that he was now in charge of wine, moving through the group and correcting glasses in a way that suggested this had always been his role.

Claire had one of the trays.

She had made decisions.

I don’t know what they were, but the tray looked different and she seemed confident about it.

I was still holding one.

At some point I realized I didn’t know why.

I set it down.

Immediately lost it.

That felt like the right move.

Someone asked what something was.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s French-adjacent.”

This was accepted immediately.

At some point, I realized I was no longer hosting.

I was participating in a situation.

The laughter changed - less polite, more committed - as everyone accepted what this was now.

Every so often, someone glanced toward the road.

“So… is he still in it?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course he is.”

No one questioned this.

At some point we were at the table, although I don’t remember making that decision and I’m fairly certain no one else does either.

There were chairs. There were glasses. There were trays.

Not arranged. Not placed. Just… present.

People picked things up without hesitation.
No one asked what anything was.

Which, at that point, felt correct.

“To Jean-Michel,” someone said.

That felt right.

After that, whatever structure had been pretending to exist gave up completely.

People moved.
Sat down in different places.
Picked up glasses that were not theirs and stayed with them.

The cheese had fully committed to its situation.

No one addressed it.

Then, someone leaned in and ate directly from a tray.

Not casually.
Not discreetly.

With intention.

I watched it happen.

I thought about stopping it.

I did not.

Because at that point, stopping it felt like a worse decision.

Mark was still pouring wine.

Not refilling.
Maintaining.

I realized no one had mentioned the tractor in a while.

Not as a problem.
Not even as a joke.

It was just… still there.

Out on the road.

Exactly where it had been.

And somehow, without anyone deciding, that it had stopped being something we needed to fix.

ACT I: The Sky Gets Aggressive

I am from Seattle.

We have earthquakes.

They rumble politely from below like disgruntled tenants. You stand in a doorway. You nod. You continue your life.

Lightning, however, screams at you from the sky like Zeus has been following your personal development and is unimpressed.

And not just unimpressed.
Disappointed.
Like he attended a parent-teacher conference about my adulthood and brought charts.

The night it hit my house, I was wearing flip flops.

This is important.

Not boots.
Not rubber soles of destiny.
Flip flops designed for iced coffee and denial.

The first strike was white.

Not bright.

White like a camera flash at a crime scene.

Every appliance died simultaneously.

The dishwasher froze mid-cycle like it had other plans.
The pool pump made a noise that sounded like a blender swallowing a fork.
The jacuzzi exhaled in what I can only describe as a spa death rattle.

And because I am an adult, I ran outside.

In flip flops.

Toward electricity.

The garage door was electric.
The breaker panel was behind the electric garage door.
The car was parked directly in front of the manual release like it had been personally aligned with chaos.

This is structurally similar to storing the spare key inside the locked car.

Rain began falling sideways. Not drizzle. Performance rain. The kind that suggests a sequel.

The second strike hit as I was sprinting back from the garage which, for architectural reasons that felt personal, houses the breaker panel behind that electric door that no longer believed in electricity.

White again. Violent. Immediate. The kind of flash that feels like the sky just took your photograph for legal purposes.

I ran.

Not strategically. Just ran.

I burst through the enormous glass front doors soaking wet, flip flops slapping like applause for poor decision-making, and launched myself directly onto Fleur, my dog.

Full body.
Mid-air.

Barely missing the 16th-century trunk in the foyer - the one topped with an ancient Chinese display that has survived dynasties, wars, revolutions, and now me.

If lightning had not taken me out, a museum curator surely would have.

Fleur was shaking violently.

I was shaking selectively.

She looked at me with wide, noble eyes, the kind that suggest she believed she was here to protect me.

I, meanwhile, was using her as a lightning mattress.

She did not move.
She did not protest.
She accepted her role as structural insulation.

Which, frankly, is more leadership than I demonstrated.

There are moments in life when you realize you are not leading the situation.

This was one of them.

ACT II: The House Revolts

The silence after impact was not peaceful.

It was administrative.

The kind of silence that says, “We regret to inform you.”

The house smelled metallic. Ozone and damp stone. The beams overhead—thick, ancient, patient—absorbed the chaos without commentary. Sixteen hundred and something and still standing. I, meanwhile, was narrating like a war correspondent with poor footwear.

Instead of selecting one problem, just one, like a rational homeowner, I chose all of them.

I sprinted toward the cottage.
Then toward the garage.
Then toward the pool.
Then back toward the cottage.

I was essentially a woman playing electrical whack-a-mole in a 400-year-old stone fortress.

I grabbed my phone to use as a flashlight.

Bold choice.

The phone was already wet and possibly composing its farewell letter. I briefly wondered if I owned rice. Not to eat. For resurrection.

Standing beneath beams older than my country, I Googled:

“correct footwear for lightning.”

It is unclear what answer I expected.

“Rubber boots of destiny?”
“Steel-toed optimism?”

Instead, my phone calmly informed me I had 17% battery remaining.

Seventeen percent is not urgent enough to panic.
It is not safe enough to relax.
It is the emotional equivalent of “we’ll see.”
It means nothing and everything simultaneously.

Rain intensified.

A tree in the woods decided it had had enough and collapsed into the fence between my property and the pool like it was exiting a stage production.

I attempted French swearing.

There is a difference between knowing vocabulary and knowing cadence.

What I produced was less “local authority” and more “confused exchange student.”

Now, how about the lightning rod?

I have one.

It stands proudly above the house like a moral compass.

When I bought the property, someone explained (in French) that the lightning rod “protects” the house.

I heard: shield.

What it apparently means is: invitation.

A lightning rod does not repel lightning.
It attracts it.

This feels like a crucial distinction that should be communicated more clearly.

When I would later explain all of this to the Orange electrician, (Orange in France is like the equivalent of AT&T) I would do so with the confidence of someone who had read half a Wikipedia paragraph.

“The rod,” I would say. “It draws the energy down. Into the ground.”

He would nod politely.

“Yes.”

Encouraged, I continued.

“It is grounding the voltage. The surge. The atmospheric pressure of the sky event.”

This was not a sentence.

He glanced at the rod.

Then at the fuse box that had sacrificed itself in honorable combustion.

“Yes,” he said again.

It was at this moment I realized I was explaining electricity to a man who repairs electricity for a living.

While wearing flip flops.

The rod, meanwhile, stood tall and unapologetic having technically done its job by guiding catastrophic enthusiasm directly toward my wiring.

It did not fail.

It succeeded aggressively.

Which is technically what it was built to do.
Invite celestial violence.
Channel it politely.
Destroy my fuse box with civic pride.

The rod did not protect the house.
It escorted lightning inside like it had a reservation.

ACT III: The Morning After

Morning did not arrive gently; it revealed damage with theatrical indifference. The sun rose as though it had not participated in the previous evening’s electrical coup, and the birds chirped like unpaid witnesses.

Coffee had to happen.

This was not optional.

I retrieved the emergency gas bottle stove which was a camping relic I once purchased for “just in case,” privately convinced that “just in case” would never apply to me because I live in Europe now and we have civilization. It took three twists, two languages, and one diplomatically inadvisable whisper before a small, defiant blue flame appeared, the pilot light of my remaining authority. I have never negotiated so hard for caffeine.

Not even in Seattle.

I made instant coffee in a saucepan normally reserved for elegance and stepped outside to survey what looked less like storm damage and more like a Renaissance painting of ruin.

The fence lay flat.
A tree had split clean down the center like a baguette with rage issues.
The lightning rod stood tall and smug, having technically done its job by inviting doom directly toward my electrical system.

I flipped every breaker in the house with the escalating confidence of someone who has no idea what she is doing but refuses to admit it. Nothing changed.

I opened the dishwasher again.

Pressed the button.

Waited.

“Hello?” I said, leaning closer, as if it might respond out of embarrassment.

It did not.

I have never spoken so tenderly to an appliance.
Not even in Paris when I tried to operate a shower that required a structural engineering degree and a prayer.

When I walked toward the pool pump and tried again, “Hello?”, I understood that I had entered a new psychological phase of homeownership.

Then I saw the WiFi line lying in the middle of the road, not dramatically sparking but simply… present, like it had resigned from modern life and gently placed itself on the asphalt as a form of protest.

My phone flickered to 4%.

Four percent is not battery; it is a memoir. A reflective chapter before the screen goes black.

I refreshed for signal anyway.

Of course, nothing.

ACT IV Enter Orange

Naturally, I called Orange.

A man arrived in a small white van with the word ORANGE written on it in large, cheerful letters, as though we were about to discuss citrus.

He stepped out, glanced at the cable draped across the asphalt, then glanced at my house. 17th-century stone, lightning rod smug, tree split like bread with anger issues and nodded once.

“Ah.”

That was it.

He picked up the cable, examined it, turned it slightly as though it might apologize.

Then looked at me and said, “Yes.”

I gestured toward the devastation behind me like Vanna White presenting catastrophic infrastructure.

If there had been a wheel, I would have spun it.
Bankrupt.
Lose a Turn.
Replace Entire Electrical System.

“The sky tried to kill my dishwasher,” I explained.

He nodded again.

“Yes.”

He stepped over the fallen fence, ducked beneath a half-leaning branch, and disappeared toward the breaker box like a man retrieving mail.

Meanwhile, I stood in flip flops, holding instant coffee, wondering if this was the correct footwear for infrastructure collapse.

He returned ten minutes later.

“It will work later,” he said.

Later.

Later is a French unit of time.
It exists somewhere between “calm down” and “perhaps.”

Seasonally?
Emotionally?
By Christmas?

He drove away.

The WiFi cable remained in the road.

ACT V: Skybox

The insurance company called me in a few days later, and I arrived prepared for dismissal. I had rehearsed dignity in the mirror, you know, the calm nod, the measured tone, the responsible-adult energy of someone who definitely did not Google footwear during a lightning strike.

“Yes, of course.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Yes, lightning chooses.”

Instead, the representative smiled and said, almost casually, “Would you like to join us in our skybox at the rugby match this weekend?”

Skybox.

Champagne.

Corporate lanyards.

I blinked, certain I had misheard or perhaps suffered delayed electrical confusion. This was the same week I had launched myself onto a Labradoodle in flip flops while narrowly preserving a 16th-century trunk and its ancient Chinese display. The same week I had addressed my dishwasher conversationally and refreshed my phone at 4% like it might perform a miracle.

And now I was being handed a flute of champagne.

There is something deeply French about this sequence of events. The sky attempts to erase you; the insurance company offers bubbles. Catastrophe becomes hospitality. The shrug becomes a lanyard.

As I sat in that skybox, glass in hand, I considered the lightning rod - tall, unapologetic, technically correct - and the flip flops still waiting by the door at home, drying in the quiet aftermath.

We did not conquer the storm.

We did not outsmart the sky.

We simply remained standing long enough to be offered champagne.

And honestly, after a week that began with electrical whack-a-mole and ended with VIP seating, that felt like the most reasonable outcome available.

If you’d like the unedited version of life in rural France, become a paid subscriber.

That’s where the parts I don’t include here tend to end up —
the stories that go a little further,
the ones that wander,
and the ones that probably shouldn’t be told in public at all.

There is a very specific fantasy people have about romance in France.

It usually involves a man in a scarf, a glass of wine that appears without being ordered, and a conversation that somehow becomes meaningful without anyone having to try too hard. Everything feels effortless. Intentional, but not forced. Like the entire country agreed, at some point, to lean slightly toward seduction at all times.

Possibly while lighting a cigarette.

No one is entirely sure why the cigarette is there.

But it is.

This idea did not come out of nowhere.

The French spent a good portion of the 19th century building it.

The Romantic Movement gave us longing, intensity, and the belief that emotional suffering is somehow attractive if done correctly. People wandered around writing letters, staring into the distance, and feeling things at a level that now feels… ambitious.

It was, objectively, excellent branding.

The problem is that modern-day French romance is not a continuation of that.

It is something else entirely.

For one thing, it is not subtle.

There is no slow build, no gentle shift, no moment where you think, is this happening?

It is already happening.

Usually while you are holding a baguette, trying to reverse your car, or mentally translating the word for “receipt” while someone is speaking to you at full speed, as if you’ve both agreed this is a perfectly reasonable moment for emotional escalation.

There is also a detail that rarely gets mentioned in the fantasy version.

A surprising number of French men are married.

This does not appear to interfere with the general concept of romance.

I’m not offering judgment here. Just reporting from the field.

There seems to be an unspoken understanding that romance operates on a separate track from logistics, like a high-speed train that does not stop at the same stations and no one feels the need to explain why. It is less “affair” and more… “ongoing subplot,” delivered with a level of calm that suggests everyone involved has agreed not to examine it too closely.

Understanding whether someone is flirting with you is, in itself, a skill set I do not have.

In the U.S., there are steps. A structure. A shared understanding that two people are participating in the same moment.

Here, the signals are more abstract.

Eye contact may mean something.

Standing close may mean something.

Saying something very direct may mean something.

Or it may mean nothing at all.

It is entirely possible someone likes you deeply and expresses this by standing three feet away and not speaking for an extended period of time, which I now understand may or may not be a sign of interest.

How to Tell If a French Person Is Flirting With You

(A Field Guide Compiled Under Mild Duress)

At this point, I have developed what I can only describe as a working theory of romantic behavior in France.

It is not based on evidence.

It is not supported by patterns.

It has, at times, directly contradicted itself.

And yet, it is all I have.

A French person may be flirting with you if:

• they make sustained eye contact for an amount of time that suggests either interest or a formal review of your character

• they stand close enough that you become aware of your breathing, your posture, and whether you should have worn a different outfit

• they say something very direct, very fast, and then look at you as though you have already agreed and are now simply catching up

• they say nothing at all and remain near you with a level of quiet intensity usually reserved for art installations

They may also be flirting with you if:

• they ask you a question you do not understand and then nod encouragingly, as if this is a shared success

• they light a cigarette mid-conversation, which appears to signal a shift from “interaction” to “moment”

• they say “on pourrait boire un verre” in a tone that suggests this is not a suggestion but a development

• they tilt their head slightly and look at you as though you have just been selected for something that has already begun

They may not be flirting with you if:

• they are married

• they are not married

• they have made eye contact

• they have not made eye contact

• they have just delivered what sounds like a deeply romantic statement that may, in fact, be about directions

At this stage, these indicators appear to have no measurable correlation to outcome.

There is also a category of interaction in which someone is clearly engaging with you, but you are unable to determine whether it is:

• romantic

• philosophical

• logistical

• or about cheese

I have learned not to assume.

I have, on more than one occasion, left a conversation with the distinct feeling that something significant has taken place, without any understanding of what it was, what I agreed to, or whether I am now expected to appear somewhere later, at a time that was implied but not stated, near a location that was referenced but not confirmed.

In at least one instance, I am fairly certain I was included in a plan.

I was not aware of the plan.

In conclusion:

I believe I have been flirted with several times.

I also believe I may have accidentally committed to something.

There is no way to verify either.

The first time I encountered this in a meaningful way, I was not prepared.

I was not sitting at a charming café or walking along the Seine. I was standing somewhere completely ordinary, doing something that did not feel remotely romantic, when a man approached me with the unmistakable confidence of someone who had already decided this was going to go well.

There was no introduction.

No transition.

He simply started speaking.

He spoke quickly, in French, with complete confidence. I understood almost nothing—just enough to know that this was not about directions or a missing item or anything practical.

So I did what I have learned to do in these situations.

I nodded.

I smiled.

I participated in what can only be described as a conversation-shaped experience.

At some point, it became clear that I was being hit on.

This realization arrived slowly, like a delayed subtitle.

Now.

In theory, this is the part where I respond in kind. Where I say something charming, or at least coherent, and we move forward together in whatever version of romance is currently unfolding.

Instead, I said something that, to this day, I believe translated to:

“Yes. Bread.”

Which, to be clear, was not the direction I intended to take the conversation, but at that point we were no longer making decisions, we were just seeing what happened.

There was a pause.

Not a long one. Just enough for him to reconsider his life choices, my language skills, and possibly whether this was the interaction he had imagined.

There are moments in life when you feel a conversation quietly slip out of your control. This was not one of those moments. This left abruptly, took a turn, and did not look back.

To his credit, he recalibrated and continued, which I respect. We managed a few more exchanges that hovered somewhere between polite and deeply confusing, and then, as quickly as it began, it ended.

He left.

I stayed exactly where I was, trying to understand how I had agreed to something involving bread.

This was not, as it turns out, an isolated experience.

The second time it happened, I understood slightly more French, which felt like progress until I realized that partial understanding is, in many ways, worse.

Because now I could catch fragments.

Words like:

• jolie

• belle

• boire un verre

Enough to understand the general direction of things, but not enough to respond with any real control over where it was going.

There was, again, a moment.

A pause.

A clear opportunity to respond like a normal, functioning adult.

And again, I did not take it.

Instead, I defaulted to something I can only describe as polite confusion with strong eye contact, which I am increasingly concerned may be interpreted here as confidence, interest, or a willingness to continue the interaction, none of which were accurate.

What I understand now is that romance in France is not designed to be comfortable, or even particularly logical. It appears when it wants to, says what it wants to say, and leaves you to interpret it afterward.

And, perhaps more importantly, I don’t feel the need to chase it in the way I once thought I might.

Spring has arrived.

There is a shift in the air, a sense that things are opening again, that something new might be just around the corner. People are outside. The light has changed. There is a feeling of movement again.

And yes, romance is part of that.

Just not in the way I imagined.

Now, when something like that happens, I notice it. I appreciate it for what it is - slightly absurd, occasionally flattering, always interesting - and then I carry on.

Because it turns out you can live in France, surrounded by charm, wine, and men with a very high level of confidence, and still feel completely at ease standing exactly where you are.

Even if, from time to time, you accidentally agree to something involving bread and have no clear understanding of how you got there, why it happened, whether you are now expected to follow up, or if, at some point, you agreed to meet someone near a fountain at an unspecified time and are now, technically expected.

There’s always a little more to these moments than I put on the page. The part that comes after - the one you only understand once you’ve lived it - is where things really shift.

I share a bit more of that on the paid side of my Substack. I hope you will consider joining me.

At some point in the last five years, I stopped asking for help and started buying power tools.

It didn’t happen all at once. There was no ceremony, no moment where I stood in a field and declared, “This is the new me.”

It was quieter than that.

It looked like me standing in a French hardware store, holding a chainsaw I had no business owning, nodding like I understood what the man was saying as he explained something about oil ratios and kickback in rapid-fire Dordogne dialect.

I did not understand.

I bought it anyway.

The tree had been leaning for months.

Not dramatically. Not in a way that suggested urgency. Just… slightly off. The kind of lean you notice, register, and then ignore because there are other things on the list.

There are always other things on the list.

Substack stories to write.

Etsy orders to pack.
Airbnb guests arriving early.
A pool that leaks in ways that feel personal.
A dog who believes mud is a personality.
A daughter you love more than anything, living her own life somewhere else.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that… a tree.

In Seattle, I would have called someone. Probably from Angie’s List.

There would have been:

• 3 quotes

• a schedule

• a man with equipment and insurance

Here, there was just me. And the tree. And a growing awareness that no one was coming to deal with it.

So I bought a chainsaw.

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They say you don’t find yourself in Bordeaux. You get lost.

Not symbolically. Physically. Emotionally. GPS-wise.

I got lost in a vineyard bathroom, pressing my face against cool tile, trying to scan a QR code while wine fogged up my reading glasses. Someone behind me whispered, “Courage, madame,” like I was giving birth in a cave instead of trying to download tasting notes and maybe remember my name.

So no, this isn’t a survival guide.
It’s a fermented field report.

Bordeaux doesn’t care about your spreadsheet.
It doesn’t care about your outfit.
It doesn’t care how much wine knowledge you brought with you.

Bordeaux is here to swirl, sip, and silently watch you unravel.

It hands you another glass and asks,
“Are you ready for the next pour?”

You’re not.
You do it anyway.

Let’s Set the Scene

There’s a certain look to Bordeaux wine country.

Manicured vines stretching toward eternity. Ivy-draped château’s that whisper, “We host weddings but emotionally we’re divorced.”

Tasting rooms so polished you’re not sure if they’re run by sommeliers or intelligence agencies. Inside: whispers. Stemware. Marble counters. Cheese knives that haven’t seen actual cheese since 2004.

There’s always:

• One woman in a silk scarf nodding like this is a deposition

• One man using the word terroir like a threat

• And someone named Isabelle attempting “see, swirl, smell, sip, savor…” at Olympic speed

The lighting is soft. The atmosphere reverent.

And me, the unprepared outsider, was trying to wipe wine from my chin without looking like I was raised in a barn or recently escaped one.

The whole experience hovers between religious ceremony and a very quiet panic attack.

And that was before I insulted the sommelier.

1. I Tried to Plan. Bordeaux Had Other Ideas

I arrived with a spreadsheet.

Color-coded. Timed. Regions mapped out like I was preparing for a wine-based military operation: Crémant, Médoc, Pessac-Léognan. I looked like I was cramming for a sommelier’s bar mitzvah.

Google Maps immediately dropped me in the middle of a field.

A lone sheep blinked at me like,
“Oh honey. This is not Pomerol. This is purgatory.”

That was the moment I surrendered.

I tossed the spreadsheet and followed the fog. The kind made of grapes and poor judgment.

At one point I joined a tour group I’m 87% sure I wasn’t booked on.
I still don’t know which château I visited.

I just know someone handed me a glass, and I said “merci” like I had clearance.

2. Wine Tasting Is a Blood Sport, and I Was the First Casualty

I thought I was ready.

I’ve had wine. I owned a wine cellar in Seattle. I have swirled. I have even spat. Once. Under supervision.

But Bordeaux is a different ecosystem.

This isn’t tasting.
This is ritual. Performance. A polite form of psychological warfare conducted in linen.

While I was calculating whether I could steal a cracker without triggering a diplomatic incident, someone sloshed a full pour of red across my arm.

There went the blouse.

I looked like I’d been lightly stabbed by a grape.

I accidentally called the sommelier “Gary.”

His name was Philippe.
Of course it was Philippe.

He forgave me with his eyes.
Or sentenced me quietly. Hard to say.

Around me, people murmured things like, “brambly mid-palate,” while I was trying to determine if chewing audibly would get me deported.

3. I Said “Oaky Finish” With Conviction and Faith

By glass four, I was just… speaking.

“Mm. Bold. Yet emotionally evasive,” I said, like I was reviewing a man who ghosted me in 2012.

A woman next to me detected pencil shavings and orchard floor.

I said,
“I’m getting remorse. Possibly 1997.”

We nodded.

This is how cults begin.

4. I Forgot to Eat. Again.

There was a cheese board.

Or the idea of one.

Someone mentioned tapenade.
Someone else mentioned patience.

At one point, I ate three decorative grapes and bit into a fig leaf out of spite.

I licked tapenade off a napkin and stared out the window like I had seen things.

Hydration was theoretical.
Bread was a rumor.

I briefly considered gnawing on the edge of a wine barrel like a woodland creature with ambition.

5. I Finished the Flight. No One Clapped.

I deserved a medal.

Or bread. Or a chair with emotional support.

Instead, I ended up in Saint-Émilion, tipsy and spiritually unstable, arguing with a man named Thierry about Merlot.

He said it was misunderstood.

I said Merlot gaslights people.

We agreed to disagree.

But let’s be clear.
I won.

Final Thoughts

I didn’t survive Bordeaux.

It tolerated me.

I left with:

• Three bottles I don’t remember buying

• A linen blouse that smells faintly of cherry and remorse

• And the firm belief that wine tasting should come with bread, water, and an exit strategy

But I will never forget:
The cheese that never arrived.

Or the man who said,
“It’s a dry finish,”
and I replied,
“So was my last marriage.”

Bienvenue.

Historical Interlude: Because I Googled While Hungover

Bordeaux wine goes back over 2,000 years.

The Romans planted vines around 60 BC because even then, someone said, “We’re going to need a drink.”

Things escalated in the 12th century when Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II and essentially said,
“You can have me. The wine comes too.”

Bordeaux is built on blends: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec.

They swirl together like French drama. Complex, bold, and one wrong move from spilling everywhere.

Some wines age beautifully.
Others peak early.

You know the type.

Swirling aerates the wine, lets it breathe.

Unlike me, who held my breath every time someone asked,
“Do you get the tobacco notes?”

Those big glasses? Designed for bold reds and dramatic exits.

So next time you sip Bordeaux, close your eyes and say:
“Mmm. Definitely getting 18th-century trade routes and unresolved personal issues.”

Bienvenue. Again.

America is a rectangle.
France is a hexagon.

This explains everything.

I didn’t know this before I moved here, but France has a nickname for itself: l’Hexagone.

Six sides.
Six angles.
No right angles anywhere in sight.

When I first saw it on a map, I thought it was charming.

Now I understand it as a warning.

It’s not just a shape. It’s a worldview. A very scenic, slightly judgmental worldview that would like to know why you’re in such a hurry.

A rectangle stacks.
It aligns.
It moves forward with purpose and quarterly goals.

A rectangle wants outcomes.

A hexagon wants discussion.
Preferably seated.
Possibly with wine.
Almost definitely involving someone named Pierre who hand-picks his mushrooms and casually refers to butter as a state of being.

Living in France is less like relocating and more like accidentally enrolling in a semester-long seminar titled Angles You Didn’t Consent To.

On Angles

Geometrically speaking, my life has acquired too many angles since moving here.

Nothing proceeds directly from point A to point B.

There is always a turn. Often two. Occasionally a detour that involves a conversation with someone who knows your neighbor’s cousin, remembers the winter of 1983, and insists you must understand this context before you can be permitted to buy bread.

I once tried to schedule a plumber.

This required:
– a phone call
– a follow-up phone call
– a discussion about rainfall
– a mention of someone’s Grand-mere
– and a spontaneous apéro that lasted until sunset

The plumber did not come.

I once tried to ask a simple question at the Mairie.

Just one.

It began with:
“Excuse me, where do I submit this form?”

Twenty minutes later I was:
– seated
– offered water
– told the history of zoning in 2004
– corrected on pronunciation
– and handed a different form entirely

No one ever answered my original question.

The form was approved anyway.

In a rectangle, corners are decisive.

In a hexagon, corners linger.

They invite you to pause, reconsider, and possibly sit down for a small drink that mutates into dinner.

France does not believe in straight lines when a gentle curve might lead to plums, a handshake, and mild bureaucratic foreplay.

On Maps

The map of France looks like someone dropped a ripe camembert and traced it. Possibly drunk. Possibly on purpose.

Borders bulge. Edges soften. Nothing appears especially interested in symmetry.

You don’t look at the map and think, This country has a plan.

You think, This country once had a sword fight over lavender regulations and lost track of the outline, or maybe even the punchline.

Once you are inside the hexagon, the map stops being useful anyway.

You are no longer navigating space.

You are navigating precedent, tone, and whether today feels like a paperwork day.

A GPS here isn’t a tool. It’s a polite suggestion.

The first time mine routed me through what I later learned was a goat pasture, I briefly considered apologizing to the goat.

The second time it routed me through a vineyard, I stopped resisting.

If the hexagon wants me in grapes, I will be in grapes.

You do not fight a shape with that many sides.

You comply.

On Time

I no longer measure time in hours.

I measure it in interruptions, pastry rounds, and rogue accordion solos.

Morning ends when someone tells you about a wild boar incident.

Afternoon begins somewhere between errands that mutate.

Evening starts when chairs appear.

Last week, I stopped at a roadside stand to buy cherries.

Ten minutes later I was:
– holding a lukewarm beer
– listening to a man in overalls explain why the government is ruining garlic
– accidentally petting a lamb
– and being shown a photo album of someone’s granddaughter’s quinceañera in Spain

At no point did I pay for the cherries.

Instead, someone handed me a Tupperware of tapenade and told me,
“Come back in September when it’s fig season. You look like a fig person.”

I left without cherries.

I also left without urgency.

Which, frankly, felt more radical.

This is not inefficiency.

This is hexagonal time.

All roads lead to a side quest.

France is not slow.

It is deeply committed to the moment it is currently in, and it will not be rushed out of it for your spreadsheet.

On Sausage

There are six kinds of sausage in every market, minimum.

One for each side.

They are not labeled in a way that helps.

Some are fresh. Some are cured. Some are regional. Some are metaphysical.

One is aggressively fennel-forward.

One is sold exclusively by a man who looks like he has been arguing about salt since before the Revolution… or at least the last strike.

You are not meant to choose quickly.

You are meant to listen.

This is not abundance.

This is doctrine.

You are not shopping.

You are participating in a loosely structured oral history of pork.

I once nodded confidently and purchased something I did not understand. It tasted like regret and thyme. I ate it anyway.

The man watched me take the first bite.

He nodded once.

Approval in this country is subtle.

You earn it in pork.

On Why Nothing Is Straightforward

A rectangle wants clarity.

A hexagon wants context.

This is why simple questions receive long answers.

This is why instructions are verbal, conditional, and may include anecdotes about someone’s uncle who once made the same mistake in 1997.

France is not trying to confuse you.

It is trying to situate you.

You may not need the full story.

But the hexagon insists.

It insists like a wine uncle at a wedding toast long after the point is made, but too entertaining to stop.

On Meals

Meals inside the hexagon do not progress.

They unfurl.

Courses arrive when ready.

The salad appears when it makes sense.

The cheese is not a decision but a solemn rite.

Dessert is not a reward, it is a palate epilogue.

Coffee arrives with the authority of a local magistrate who would like a word.

You are not the main character.

You are a guest in the ritual.

And you will not be excused early.

Not until the pear tart has been served and someone has referenced De Gaulle.

I once tried to signal for the check too early.

The waiter looked at me gently, as one might look at a child who does not yet understand gravity.

We were not done.

I tried to explain that in America we like efficiency.

He blinked.

He said, “Why?”

And that was the end of that.

On Acceptance

At some point - quietly - you stop trying to impose rectangular logic on a six-sided country.

You stop asking why things are done this way.

You start noticing that they simply are.

One day, without realizing it, you catch yourself saying, “Ça ira,” when told the plumber fell into a ditch and your paperwork is lost.

Not because it’s fine.

But because it is what it is.

You’re already seated.

The coffee’s on its way.

Arguing will only delay the sausage.

I didn’t move to France to straighten things out.

I moved into the hexagon.

And somewhere between the side quests, the goat pastures, and the fennel arguments, I realized something inconvenient:

The hexagon isn’t inefficient.

It’s attentive.

It’s paying attention to things my rectangle never had time for.

Conversations that wander.

Meals that stretch.

Plumbers who may or may not arrive but will absolutely have an opinion.

The hexagon is not in a hurry.

And slowly. to my deep rectangular discomfort, neither am I.

Possibly with butter on my sleeve.

Definitely with a sausage in my bag.

ACT I: THE FIRST MISTAKE

There was a time when I could cross an entire city block in four-inch heels without blinking.

Seattle sidewalks were smooth. Predictable. Civilized. You could walk briskly in heels there. Confidently. Heroically. Like a woman with a meeting, a purpose, and at least three opinions about private schools.

You could stride across downtown without once questioning the ground beneath you.

Yes, we had earthquakes.

But you still wear the heels.

France, as it turns out, had other plans.

My first week in rural France, I wore heels to the market. Of course I did. I had chosen them carefully for the outfit. Black. Three-inch. Patent.

This was my first mistake.

The second mistake was assuming that cobblestones was simply a charming European word for sidewalk.

It is not.

Cobblestones are geological warfare.

They are uneven, ancient rocks placed deliberately in patterns designed to remind women that gravity is undefeated and history has no sympathy for fashion.

The market square was already busy when I arrived. A fish vendor was shouting something cheerful about sardines. A woman was arguing passionately over peaches. A dog was asleep in the exact center of the street, radiating the quiet authority of someone who understood the terrain.

I stepped confidently onto the stones.

I made it approximately fourteen steps, which is also the number of steps it takes for dignity to leave the body.

One heel wedged itself neatly between two stones like it had finally found its purpose in life.

My ankle tilted. My balance disappeared. My arms windmilled in a motion that I can only describe as interpretive panic.

I lurched sideways and grabbed a rain gutter.

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