Sunday French Rituals or Le Weekend
Roasted Pumpkins and Branch Clippings
Sunday Fireside Coffee…
Slow French living begin here. Winter in the Southwest of France is often muddy and grey, damp rather than frozen, so the sparkle of frost on left over leaves is a welcome seasonal sign as I gather the wood for the morning fire. These Sunday mornings begin the same each week—with a flood of slow memories. Café au lait and toast and unsalted butter and small pots of elderberry jam clutter the kitchen table; a fire brightens the room as it cranks out the first heat against this frosty clear French morning. Sunday is my day to savor these smaller moments and take some time for myself which sounds like a strange thing to say as I live alone. But the outside world is always at the virtual door and like most people, I am continually looking down the road as to what I need to be doing, what I should be doing, next. “Living in the moment” seems impossible when the moments are always stacking up in domino fashion and ready to tumble into chaos. And then Sunday happens.
Years ago, my good French friend Vétou called me one Sunday late morning and casually asked what I was doing. As I reeled off a list of projects, everything from cleaning the chicken coop to building a new gate to planning some classes, she paused and said in her very wise French grandmother’s way, “Kate, don’t you take Sunday?”
And so on that long ago Sunday, which was like any other day to me, I learned a lesson that Sunday’s were supposed to be special days. Even if Church isn’t one of them, gathering the French family for Sunday supper is. Shops and businesses are closed for a reason. The countryside goes even quieter this one day a week and the sounds of farm mornings are punctuated only by a neighbor chopping wood for his fire. Or someone’s dog whistle piercing the towpath silence before a whoosh of fur and tongue goes racing by. And at my house? How does usually quiet Camont celebrate the quieter yet Sunday?