THE KEY IS IN THE LOCK

November 11 2013We left Buonconvento a week ago, today. We left an hour later than planned because on a final trip to the garbage we locked ourselves out of the house, the house mockingly holding all our worldly possessions: suitcases, cameras, cutlery, wooden kitchen utensils, kettle, bedding, cushions, food, a novel in progress. All these items waiting to be packed in the car, the car locked, the key inside the house, along with all the big stuff to be portaged by van the next day. And, of course, our cell phones.We walked to the neighbors who phoned Silvia who was on her way to Siena to take her daughter to school. Normally she would drop her off in the village and the bus would do the rest, but with the road and the bridge still out, that option is not longer possible.The sun was shining, a wind was picking up. We sat outside and meditated on the six months we’d just spent there. I struggled with feeling that the house had turned on us, as if our leaving was a betrayal worthy of punishment. I began walking the circumference of the exterior, spinning a thread from which I would eventually detach.The sight of Silvia’s car coming down the dirt road half an hour later was an uplift that was soon dashed. You see, the key was in the lock, inside the house. When the door slammed shut behind us it automatically locked and although Silvia had a spare key it could not be inserted due to the other key taking up the space. The door is huge, it having been a barn door. Now it is made of reinforced glass. We had, of course, tried all the windows in the faint hope that we would find one not properly fastened. It was one of those moments when one curses one’s meticulous duty to leave all hatches battened.We watched in painful horror as the neighbor took a mallet to the door, the glass at first living up to its guarantee of being reinforced before shattering into the proverbial smithereens. I wept. This was our 3rd time living in the house and the longest. Each year we have put a little more of our stamp on it while respecting its essence. And now we had wounded its entrance.By the time we cleaned up the glass, taped the door and packed the car, the rain had started and it wept us right out of Tuscany. We put on a CD of Kate McGarrigle’s songs and sang and cried our way to France, arriving in Cap Ferat late afternoon, just in time to settle in for the night and take a walk along the beach at sunset. Photo by MaggieFrom six months on a Tuscan farm to one night in a 5 star French hotel, was disorienting beyond description. A generous off-season discount made the partaking of such luxury possible and it was a hoot; from the bed of dreams, to the huge mirror, which, with the push of a button became a TV screen and who, after 10 months without TV can resist a little surfing. Such horrors, to be seen in several languages. We put it out of its misery and took a bath instead, before descending the stairs to the hushed opulence of the dining room where we spent the next two hours enjoying several courses cooked in what I assume was a rare serenity for the chef, we being the only diners that night. Where the other hotel guests went, who knows, but they sure missed a treat. As it was we got to not only dine on superb French cuisine but we got to hang with the two waiters, young men in their 20’s who were up for an evening of jollity with two oldsters.The drive to Bonnieux the next morning was uneventful and fast, giving us time to stop in our favorite health food store and stock up on luscious local produce, before putting another key in yet another lock.We lunched on some bread and cheese we’d brought from Tuscany and a fresh salad and then went to work unpacking. When the village shops re-opened at 3:30 I had the pleasure of buying our first baguette, chicken breasts and mushrooms, reveling in the warm greetings of the shopkeepers.How did we manage to end up in these two villages, the one in Tuscany, the other in Provence, both of which fit us like old slippers? And how does one hold joy and sadness in the same moment; the joy of being here again; the sadness of not being there; the joy of seeing our dear friends Sharon and Paul again; the sadness of leaving Gianni and Luana? And even as I write that last sentence I hear the voices of our American family and friends crying, “Hey, what about us?” To which I reply, we love you, we miss you, and we wish you were here with us. Just as when I’m in America I miss our friends here, not to mention my family and friends in England.People. Places. Two different categories. You can’t compare the two. I’ve lived in so many different places in my life; six countries, countless cities, towns and villages. Very few of them have spoken to me. There was an island on a lake in the middle of Mexico, back in the 70’s, that spoke to me in such seductive tones that, as young I was, I really thought for a moment, ‘here, right here, for the rest of my life.’ But I knew it could never be. I knew I could never really belong to that primitive place, because I had lived too long in its opposite. But Cornwall, Provence, Tuscany, those places are proven, as I am to them. Yet how does one spread oneself between them and what price does one pay for not being able to take one’s loved ones everywhere one goes?We watched a film last night in which Michael Caine played an aging American whose American wife had died. They had lived in France for many years, their grown children living back in the States. His language had been the language of love with his wife and although she spoke French, he didn’t, and so when she died he lost language, too.I think about that. As I think about this incarnation of my life in which I came into the world parentless. I think of the long search to belong, the people and places along the way that have reached for me, and I think perhaps there is a part of each of us that can never be reached. Perhaps, like the farmhouse in Tuscany, our belongings and the key, are on the inside.