Enjoying the Little Things During Quarantine

It’s a deliciously warm day, in Les Baux, so warm I can *almost* pretend I’m on vacation and soon will saunter through the sunlit vineyards to go for a morning skinny-dip in the local clothing-optional salt water pool, under the olive tree’s with the wild lavender, like I did three years ago when I came here for a week holiday after a busy performance schedule….I can just barely almost pretend that now but then I open my email, and my Facebook, and look at BBC news online, and then I remember. There are more deaths on my feed, and then I remember some more.

The world is so full of sad and still there is timeless comfort in sunshine.

I turn my face up to it like a cat while drinking the first coffee of the day, squinting into the field outside my terrace, watching the neighbors in their yards.

Today, I can see the same nice men are out who pushed my car up the hill two days ago when I could not make it up the hill, not even in first gear.

Now these same nice neighbors are currently making lots of loud, growling, roaring-engine noises by pulling this and that on their tractors.

The sound of the tractor comforts me.

I like watching them work and suddenly feel a surge of tenderness for them, thinking how in another time I would make them lemonade and bring it out and have a chat, but we are not supposed to touch things other people touch or even really engage… So I just wave and smile, wild- haired and in slept-in sweats. Then I squint further off into the fields, wondering exactly which house that one really loud rooster is coming from.

The neighbors have been slow to recognize me but this morning, the one grandmother who lives across the way, she asked if I was well and staying healthy.

I almost swooned from the social triumph, this unexpected pearl of new intimacy in our neighborly relationship.

Americans might laugh at that but  it was a big deal!

We Americans give ourselves away immediately to anyone.

We have no boundaries around small talk.

For us the whole world is a talk show and we are the guests. Or we are the hosts and they are the guest. For us, the entire planet is made up of Susans and Sandras and Owens and Bills; Mrs and Mr is even insulting because it implies somebody is over the hill; we don’t have any formal tense and we all know the words how are you do not require any actual answer, since every American understands that particular question is not a real question, it simply means “hello.”

I’ve lived in these parts a long time—not France, but northern Europe—and still sometimes must remember. that folks here have a different sense of privacy and boundaries with new people. You are vous or a Sie for a long, long time, maybe even a whole life-time. The words “how are you” are not thrown around carelessly. This is meant to be a sign of respect and politesse. Today I will try to remember to take it as such.

Today it is also my Carrefoure market day.

Did you think you’d ever be living in times where marketing gave us a frisson of existential danger?

Yeah, me neither.

My new shopping protocol is this: French Government form, painstakingly copied out in French, swearing I am out for the purpose of marketing: Check. Rubber dishwashing gloves inside the store, a cut-up t-shirt wrapped around my face for a mask, hand gel: Check. Cell phone and wallet will be left in the car so I don’t have to expose them: Check. A thorough wiping down of the steering wheel and window button and gear shift with hot soapy water will occur before I leave: Check. Soap up all packaging on the terrace when I get home, and then dry all packaging off: Check.

Last time I went to Carrefoure a little boy stood too close to me in line, so I asked him in French to move back.

He stared at me and moved back about a quarter of an inch.

And at the pharmacy last week, my card would not work in the machine, so the pharmacist reached to take my debit card out of my hand.

“Non, non!” I yelped, reflexively, and then felt embarrassed.

She just blinked at me through her goggles and mask, as if this happened too many times a day to count and said in a bored voice “Madame, moi je suis plus disinfectee que vous.”  which translates roughly as, “bitch please, I’m probably more disinfected then you.” She might have been right. I still didn’t want any human touching my damn anything. Sigh.

I know everyone has a car in the countryside but I will ask the neighbors if they need anything from Carrefoure. Maybe I’ll bring them something even if they don’t. Maybe I can help Jacques human with something. I will ask before I leave.

It occurs to me that before COVID-19, I did not usually ask older or vulnerable neighbors if they needed anything from the store.

And that I like being a human who thinks of neighbors and that when we get to the AFTER part of all this, we should hold on like crazy to a lot of these new, ancient human habits we are developing now because every single damn day, it seems like this might be a terribly big, woefully big, part of the point.