In the Footsteps of Van Gogh

Birthdays are memorable.  I remember celebrating my 23rd in Vietnam, my 27th and 66th in France, and my 49th in Morocco.

I’ve just celebrated my sixty-ninth birthday, April 10, in St. Rémy de Provence, in the footsteps of Van Gogh, with Melanie, Nancy and Jim, Melanie’s cousin and her husband from Taos.  Nancy and Jim treated us to lunch at a very nice restaurant in St. Rémy, L’aile ou la Cuisse.   We sat in the outside patio, and what a scrumptious meal it was!  Pictures of what I ordered follow, a delicious mosaic of salad, fish and dessert.

We spent the night in St. Rémy at a “chambre d’hôte,” a bed and breakfast, in a very small, but neat and comfortable, room attached to the main home a few steps from a swimming pool.  Before retiring for the evening we took a walk downtown where we drank a “pression.” a draft beer, at one of the sidewalk cafés that are abundant throughout France.  While sipping my beer, I noticed a waiter, sharply attired, exiting from the chic hotel across the street, with a sole drink on a tray.  Once the traffic had subsided, allowing him to cross the street , he immediately approached a table near us where several young people were animatedly  chatting.   He placed the drink, to their surprise, in front of one of them, a young man whom he obviously knew from the laughter that ensued.  It was a droll happenstance of life in a small French village.

St. Rémy is a charming village.  It’s easy to imagine why Van Gogh would find the town and its environs an inspiration for his painting.  In reading the placards disbursed across town that detail Van Gogh’s life, Melanie and I imagined walking with him as he ambled along these same streets.

The soft colors on Provençal houses.

The next morning, we ate the simply prepared French breakfast of bread, cheese, butter, jam, coffee and tea that our hostess had prepared for us.  Before leaving, this seventy-eight year old widow, Jacqueline, short in stature with a gracious smile and stately demeanor, chatted with us for half an hour about  what life has been for her recently.   She had buried her ninety-year old mother just four months ago.  The last three years of her mother’s life had not been good.  Her mother lived in Champagne and the burden of caring for her was left to her sister who lived in Paris.  And for those last three years, she went frequently to Champagne to help her sister care for their mother.  As she talked, it become increasingly obvious to us that she was lonely and happy to have someone with whom to talk.  She said that living was getting harder.  And although she meets interesting people, her work keeping up the “chambre d’hôte” is hard for her.  She continued sharing personal stories, mentioning that her sister’s husband was an alcoholic which added to the stress of caring for their mother. Because of her loneliness, she herself thought that life was no longer worth living, until her grandson one day, who had been  contemplating suicide, said he did not because of her.  So she carries on for him.

Before leaving St. Rémy we visited the asylum where Van Gogh spent his last days.  There we visited his room and walked in the gardens where he painted.  The place is still a functional mental health facility. Had  twenty-first century treatment of mental illness been available to Van Gogh in late nineteenth-century France, there would have been perhaps a different outcome to his life and many more hundreds of canvases before he eventually died.  In the short ten-year span that he did paint, there are over seven hundred canvases in museums and private collections.

The day before my birthday lunch we met Nancy and Jim at another one of their favorite restaurants, Jardin sur le Quai, in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.   Jim and Nancy are  gourmets; they appreciate what delights food brings to the palate.   They know the best places to eat; each spring  they caravan in France for two to three months.  Amanda, Melanie’s daughter, another fine dining aficionado, joins them them every year for a couple of weeks, but she will arrive a few days later.   After lunch,  Nancy and Jim returned to their caravan, and Melanie and I  strolled along the main street popping in and out of antique shops.  In one of them, we saw a beautiful, lavishly ornate,  seventeenth century Mazarin desk at the princely sum of $24,000 euros.  Naw!  We were not tempted!  It did not suit our tastes, nor did it accommodate our pocket book.  However, if I had the resources of Monsieur Trump!

And speaking of the leading Republican candidate, our French friends are horrified and consider him dangerous!  They are fearful that Trump may be America’s president, and wonder how such a person could possibly be elected as President Obama’s successor.  We have tried to assuage their misgivings, but Trump’s rise mirrors the political climate here in France with the growing popularity of Marine Le Pen’s  radical right National Front Party.  The disgust for Trump is widespread.  The cover of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper that suffered the terrorist attack in January of last year, has a special edition of the entire front cover depicting the Donald with a toilet bowl refresher hanging from his mouth.  I’m saving that edition as a souvenir.

So after two weeks, we have not done as much traveling and exploring as we have in the past.  We’ve been content to “just be,” absorbing, as much as possible, Provençal life.  And although we like to discover new things, we don’t feel compelled to run hither and thither, as tourists often do.We spent one afternoon  at the beach in Giens, a twenty minute car ride from our apartment, where we happily watched the dozens of wind and kite surfers.  We were amazed that among the hordes of kites in the sky there were no entanglements.  We also marveled at the graceful leaps in the air of the kite surfers. We learned later that surfers who compete train here.

We’re also content to sit quietly with a book.  We’ve been reading French translations of novels by Martha Grimes and John Grisham.  They are interesting reads because we learn new idioms and slang, expressions used in daily life but not found in the more literary texts that we’re accustomed to reading.

Yesterday, we ventured into downtown Toulon on the bus with our senior passes.  We made brief stops at the grocery store and pharmacy for Advil and a balm for the nagging pain in Melanie’s shoulder.  From there, we lunched at our favorite outdoor café, Le Marais, near the Arab Quarter.
It’s under different management now, but the food and ambience were still fabulous.  We chatted with the new owner, David, and the chef, Gregory who came out to greet the diners.

As we walked through the Arab Quarter, it struck me how natural and normal life was there.  We stumbled upon the Tuesday afternoon market, bustling with Muslim and non-Muslim shoppers, families and other pedestrians passing through.  Some women were draped in traditional clothing, others with their heads covered, but many dressed in modern, western clothing.  We saw one Muslim family, the husband with his arm around his wife who was covered, a public display of affection not usually seen among Muslim couples.  Both of their kids were dressed casually in jeans and sweats.  But what was most noticeable to me was the lack of angst and fear that might have been expected due to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Bruxelles.  The only evidence that we saw of any tension or heightened alertness was at the Marseille airport.  When we arrived, there were only two soldiers pacing around that we noticed, and only one with a weapon.

After lunch, on our way to the bus stop, we turned a corner into a deserted street, where a Muslim man with a bottle of Heineken was speaking loudly to himself in French, and obviously very drunk.  As we exited the street, another Muslim man with contempt for this scene, pointed a finger to his head and nodded indicating that he thought the other man was crazy.  Just another slice of life in Toulon.

Birthday Lunch with Jim, Nancy and Melanie