15 September 2003

Exploring Senlis

Living in town is one big adventure after another.  Most of my adult life has been spent in the countryside.  Even on vacation I love the luxury of forests and beaches where people are rarely seen.  Rural life offers comfort to me.

Being happy living in Senlis France is a surprise.  I will try to explain.

First of all, when was the last time you just walked around your town and studied the flowers or the buildings?  I suppose if you are serving on some governmental body that is doing a study for some funding, or you just like to check out the neighbors you might have walked around with a spying eye, but for most folks it doesn’t seem a likely activity.

Yesterday was a warm spring day so I grabbed my camera and unlocked the wrought iron garden gate of my house to explore the little French town I live in.   I honestly never tire of doing this.

There are pansies, clematis and roses blooming everywhere.  The colors spring together like tiny rainbows.  Even though it is fall window box looks as if it is a painting.

After a while I stopped noticing the flowers because the buildings took on a special interest.  Some of the large stone houses along the main street had different sized holes in them.  I recognized these as signs that machine guns had fired on them. 

For a while I let my mind float back to my mother’s youth and her stories of WWII.  I remember her telling about the movie “Since You Went Away” with Shirley Temple and I think, Jennifer Jones.  In the movie the boyfriend goes off to war.  I don’t even remember what happens in the end.  All I can remember is that my mom said she couldn’t stop crying when she saw that movie.  She also told about the end of the war when everybody, but her went downtown (Columbus, Ohio) and kissed and got really crazy.  My mom had trench mouth and couldn’t go outside.  For years she kept the newspapers from that great day in her life.

It was impossible to think what it must have been like to live with the enemy of a nation on the street firing a gun at my house.  The fear must have been tremendous. 

Then last night just as I was falling deeply asleep I was jerked awake by two loud bangs on the street.  My husband and I jumped up to open the balcony windows so that we could get a better view of the street.  A municipal police station wagon with a dog in it had crashed into the stone house across the street.  My heart was thumping as another police car pulled up and tried to assist the man inside of the car. 

I tried to imagine what would cause such a silly accident.  Then I thought of his family and how scared they would be to receive the call about his accident.  I kept hoping the injured man wasn’t hurt too badly. 

This morning some of the car parts were still lying where the car had crashed to offer a reminder that something awful had happened earlier.  The building was visibly wounded but unmoved by the crash.  I wondered if year’s later people would tell stories of the crash and the results.

Such is life in a small town.  There are endless stories to discover, or maybe invent.  My grandma would have to call up Georgia Mock, her dear fishing friend (Grandma didn’t fish, but Grandpa did) and tell her all about it.   Ooh la la! As they would say in French.