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Photo by Stephanie Greene on Unsplash
Elizabeth Lara told me how she was struck by a coup de foudre, French for bolt of lighting, when she saw Erasmo, across the room at a party in DC many years ago. Two years later she moved to the Dominican Republic to share his life. Liz had to learn to live a la Dominicana, a straight talking American girl from Illinois.
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Photo by Angele Camp on Unsplash
Please forgive me while I clear my throat…
petulant petals pity party
Are we in purgatory?
I met with my besties on Zoom yesterday. Friends of many years, some living at significant distances. They’re listless, unfocused, cranky. Our world has shrunk again. O M I C R O N. It sounds like the plague.
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The white heron in the old Chinese tapestry.
With winter under way and night creeping in at 4:30 in the afternoon (in New York) I have a lot of inside time at my desk. Sitting. Sitting. Sitting. So I tried this poetry exercise over many weeks.
From my kitchen window I see the hydrangea balls of winter—dry, dusty, brittle, crunchy. They’ve shrunk to little fists.
My old Nike sneakers squeak loudly on the red oak floor under my feet.
I’ve been trying to write about this experience (I’d worried I’d be awed and speechless) but I am stuck on the word apricot, which makes my mouth water but conveys something very different than peach. More tart, a little brighter, more perishable.
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I’ve moved to the patio with my laptop hoping I can put together good words for you. A mosquito buzzing near me hasn’t bitten me yet.
I could tell you about a recent MRI experience, because a complicating event offers riches. I am starved for detail,
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My old tree with octopus arms.
In the quiet of the morning a squirrel’s tail is swaying from behind a still woody bush in my neighbor’s yard. No sounds almost. Birdsong is muted by the glass of my window. Across the driveway the old cherry tree reaches up for sunlight. Its thick, curving branches look like monster octopus arms. The cherry may be as old as this house, a hundred years?
Read moreTeresa walked in smiling, warm and ebullient, her curly hair, loose and wild. At the far end of the living room Orlando stood watching and fetching things for their dog Nina. He sported an Elvis Presley pompadour, black, black, black. I liked them instantly.
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Newly vaccinated (all but the children) we visited our son and his beautiful family three hours north of us. It’d been a long year since we’d stayed overnight at their house; five months since we met masked and distanced at a midpoint town in Connecticut on a blustery day in the fall.
Read moreHere’s a “Postcard from Paris,” a new mini adventure on my blog.
Sara Somers is an American in Paris—looking out her window into the city she now calls home. You could say I’m a Panameña en Nueva York. We each bring an outsider’s perspective, and we both love having our feet in different worlds.
Sara recently shared my Aqueduct story about vaccines in New York. Below is a glimpse into what is happening around Covid19 in France. Here are notes from Sara’s blog, Out My Window:
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Photo by Ben Neale
]I’m beginning to feel that we’re half past something, feeling bursts of hope a full year after the Covid19 pandemic began in the US that hit us so terribly in New York. I am also worrying that some of the interiority that we’ve gained may be lost as we begin to quicken our steps in anticipation of living as we used to.
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