Posts filed under ‘Neither Here nor There…’
Apologies from an American in Europe
I was in Troyes, in northeastern France (in the Champagne region) on Wednesday, November 6. Which is the day we learned, most of us to our dismay and dread, that Donald Trump had been reelected as President of the United States.
I waited a couple of hours before allowing myself to believe that it was going to be true; that Kamala Harris was going to concede the election, that we would be faced with another Trump presidency.
But it was true, all right. And when I went into the Office de Tourisme in Troyes later that day to buy some pretty postcards like the one pictured above and the woman asked me (as a matter of course, for their records) what my nationality was, I said “Américaine.” And I added, “I’m so sorry for what we have done.”
We’ve only begun to see just how bad things are going to be this time around with this man as our president. It’s not looking good: not for the US, not for our neighbors and allies, not for all of Europe.
But I had certainly suspected it might be this bad: and that is why my first thought was to apologize to the first European who asked me about my nationality.
This choice was not mine. It was not the choice of many millions of Americans. (Probably more than the current records show. We’ll leave it to future historians to figure that out.)
But in the meantime, it’s clear that this presidency is a disaster not only for the US, but for much of the world. For many people in many other places around the world. Especially those who need the most help just getting along. Just simply surviving.
And so, I just want to say, on behalf of my fellow citizens–the millions of us who feel the way I do–that I am so sorry for the harm that has been caused already, and for the harm that still will be caused by this disastrous situation.
We are also embarassed, ashamed, and a bit fearful of what lies ahead.
But many of us–I hope most of us–will be working hard to stop the damage, to reverse and undo the damage, and to turn things around just as quickly as we can.
We will need help to do this. It is good to see European leaders stepping up, determined to meet the challenge of supporting Ukraine quickly and meaningfully in the wake of the sudden loss of the help of an important partner.
There’s lots of work to be done, in the US and abroad, to rescue and safeguard democracy from the clutches of the authoritarian types taking hold in various places, including in the United States. It isn’t going to be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. But history tells us that working together we can find a way through whatever lies ahead. People have done it before.
And there is some good guidance out there for what to do, and how to go about it. (Timothy Snyder, Lady Libertie, Robert Reich, to name just a few.) There are many others, and many of them are posting on Substack, and sharing on Bluesky, two relatively new social media sites not owned by oligarchs that are answering the need for a public space where people who believe in democracy can find ways to work together to save it.
We’re all in this together. This is no time to throw up our hands in dismay. It is time to roll up our sleeves, and get busy. There’s no time to waste.
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer/editor who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France. You can also find her writing at Searching for Home.
Happy Thanksgiving, America.
So once again it is Thanksgiving time and all across the United States people are trying to figure out how to get along with family members whose political views they do not share. (Takes a lot of extra figuring this year for some people, and that (I think) is all I’m going to say about it. 😦 )
Thanksgiving tends to be the favorite holiday of many Americans. It is not religious, and it is not commercial. There have been attempts to make it commercial, of course. But it seems to be more or less impervious to these attacks on the sanctity and simplicity of the holiday. (Especially if you choose to boycott that godawful Black Friday that follows so quickly on Thanksgiving’s heels…and I strongly urge you to do so. You will be much happier.)
It is not even, strictly speaking, a “national” holiday, even though we all celebrate it, in one way or another.
It is above all, as a friend said to me recently, “our kindest holiday.” It’s really just about food. Family. Friends. Feeling gratitude for our blessings (whether you want to use that word or another one). It’s about reaching out to and including new friends, or even strangers, at the table, sometimes at the last minute.
It’s also a time of cherished traditions. And one of the traditions is the requisite Thanksgiving drama. Sometimes it has to do with food. (The turkey dropped in the kitchen during the carving process. The plastic spoon melting into the stuffing. etc) Sometimes it has to do with personalities clashing at the table. Or toddlers pulling on the tablecloth and all havoc ensuing…
The requisite Thanksgiving drama is not planned and you don’t know in advance what it will be. You just know that probably there will be one, and when it happens, people just smile, shrug their shoulders and remark, philosophically, “Well. There’s always gotta be one…” 🙂
Just today I discovered a wonderful Thanksgiving post, titled “Happy Messes.” It begins with the line “There are many ways to cook a turkey, all of which require heat. When I was 12, in 1974, my mother forgot to turn on the oven…” 🙂
It doesn’t matter. It’s still about family. Friends. Food. Gratitude.
Like most Americans in France, we celebrate Thanksgiving every year, either on the Saturday before the real day, or the Saturday after. This year we celebrated five days ahead of Thanksgiving.
As usual, we invited both French and American friends to join us in our celebration. As usual there was a lot of confusion about what the final number would be. (We started out with a potential number of 15, and ended up with 6 this year as illness, deaths in the family, and other matters interfered with our carefully-laid plans.)
As usual, there was some good-natured negotiation/discussion of the menu in the days preceding our celebration. For example, must we really have turkey? (Harder to find in France at this time of year, and also quite expensive.) The answer to that was provided by one of my sons who made it very clear he was not going to be happy with any kind of substitute. (Happily our local butcher found a turkey for us and it was wonderful! Much better than the Butterball turkeys we used to get in the US, and also better than the Picard turkeys we relied on here in France for a few years, which have since been discontinued.)
Then there was the last-minute confusion and several dashes to the store for forgotten items, or items we suddenly realized we needed. For example: To my delight I had found my mom’s “fancy” silverware, discovered in the trunks of things I had shipped over here last year. (Well, okay, it’s not really silver. But it’s fancy, and it kinda looks like silver. 🙂 ) Looking happily at the sparkling display of knives, forks and spoons I had laid out I suddenly realized that paper towels were not going to be a suitable napkin to use for this meal. And so, it was off to the store again…
In the end the meal turned out wonderfully well, thanks to many cooks. Even our French neighbors who were coming to their first Thanksgiving meal had somehow heard (or been told? but not by us) about the potluck nature of Thanksgiving meals. They brought little crabmeat verrines for our apéro, providing a lovely French accent to the meal, and also some to-die-for chocolate truffles for dessert. In between apéro and dessert we had turkey/stuffing/gravy; mashed potatoes; green bean casserole; cranberry sauce; cornbread; and two kinds of pie (pumpkin and pecan). Everything, in short, but the sweet potato casserole that American friends in a nearby town were going to bring but couldn’t at the last minute because one of them got sick. 😦
We did our now “ancient” (three-year) tradition of writing what we were grateful for on slips of paper that we then drew out of the “gratitude vessel” and read aloud–trying to guess which person was grateful for each of the sentiments expressed, accompanied with much laughter and warm feeling.
And of course there was champagne: this year our chosen champagne was Nathalie Nourissat, made by good friends and vignerons who live in Essoyes, and it drew praise all around.
We did not read a Thanksgiving poem aloud this year but if you’re looking for one, here’s one of my favorites. (Along with the poet I repeat, and repeat: “Bless the world outside these windows…Dear God, grant to the makers and keepers power to save it all…”) [My emphasis]
Wishing one and all a Happy Thanksgiving, for all we have to be thankful for.
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer/editor who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France.
Back in Essoyes: October 2024
It’s been a while since I’ve shared my news here, other than news about the endless task of downsizing and redistributing things that appears to be an ongoing feature of my life from here on out (c’est la vie!) so this will be an attempt to share a few highlights of the other parts of my life for those who may be wondering. (I know. It’s a small public. But it matters, to me anyway, and I hope to some of you. 🙂 )
I’m back in Essoyes after six intense (and wonderful) weeks in Minnesota spent catching up with friends, family, and engaging in the task of getting some of those precious artifacts (referred to in my previous post) into the collections of places that will find them interesting and keep them safe for posterity.
Now, after a few weeks here I’m almost settled into something resembling my “normal” routine. It has been an unbelievably beautiful autumn here, warm and mostly sunny with just enough rain to keep the greens green and the crops in the fields next to our home growing.
I have been to Paris twice in the past month, once as a featured author at the American Church in Paris’s annual Bloom Where You’re Planted orientation program for Anglophones new to Paris. (Thanks, Red Wheelbarrow bookstore, for the support!) That trip allowed me to pop over to Lille also for a quick visit with my son Sam before he left for a couple of weeks in New York to do some recording of his songs, play a couple of shows, celebrate the release of his new single, and catch up with his friends too.
I want to say a SUPER BIG THANKS to the friends who came to see me in Minnesota, and even hauled me around a bit, sometimes at great inconvenience to themselves, because I wasn’t able to get to where they were this time. It was so wonderful connecting with these friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in a very long time.
The BIGGEST THANKS OF ALL goes to my wonderful sister and brother-in-law who not only hosted me for most of the time I was in Minnesota, but also carted me around more than any of us had planned, due to the fact that my leg injury was taking its own sweet time to get better. (It’s finally almost normal again, thanks for asking! 🙂 ) My sister was my patient and kind chauffeur on a series of projects I had lined up for my time there, some of them mundane, some of them kind of fun (a visit to the Howard County (Iowa) Historical Society), and some them really fun (Cousins’ Week 🙂 . She and my brother-in-law kept me well nourished with mostly Mexican meals and included me in their social activities–church, wine tastings, book group meetings, trips to the lake. I owe them EVERYTHING for their warm hospitality and their steadfast love. MUCHISSIMAS GRACIAS, HERMANITA Y CUÑADO!!!
Upper left: Cousins week on the banks of the Mississippi; Upper middle: Me and my sis at Rustic Roots Winery in Scandia, Minnesota. Upper right: Visiting the wonderful Howard County (Iowa) Historical Society. Lower left: Me and my sis at the classic old Carnegie Library in Cresco, Iowa. Our grandmother and great-grandmother loved to come here! I gave them a copy of A Long Way From Iowa for their collection. 🙂 Lower right: Me, my sis, and my brother-in-law as I’m heading off to the airport.
Now it is nearly November, and it’s time to hunker down and hope for a good outcome to a very important presidential election back home. I’m grateful to friends back home who have been doing the footwork I can’t do from here–canvassing, phone banking, helping to get out the vote. The Harris/Walz ticket has given me (and so many others) hope that we will have the chance to continue to recover from the disastrous presidency of you-know-who (and I don’t mean Biden!) We’ll see what happens. I’m just hoping that enough Americans will see that “the man behind the curtain” is a fraud, a real fraud (among many other despicable things); and they will vote for someone who cares about democracy, and about all of us. And who is super smart and capable of managing one of the most important, and most difficult jobs in the world.
On this side of the ocean, Democrats Abroad have been working hard for that goal. They will be having an election night “watch” party in Paris, which of course we all hope will be a happy event.
Keep your fingers crossed, your prayers ascending, and your encouragement of your friends and family to vote (and vote wisely!!!!) Remember: it ain’t over til it’s over. (And…being American, I would say it ain’t over even then. That may be when the work really begins…)
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France; and coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home. You can also read her writing on Substack.
Adventures in historic preservation…
Here is part of my What I Did on My Summer Vacation “report” this year. More to come later (on nonarchival activities). Stay tuned 🙂
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France; and coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home.
A New Year 2024
Our Christmas celebration this year was a wonderful mix of old and new. One of the things that was new was that we had a very special guest we’ve not had with us before on Christmas Eve. My son’s partner, Diane, joined us for Christmas Eve this year, which is for me a very special, even sacred, holiday. And she shared with us a very special tradition from her family, which you see pictured above. When we arrived back from getting a last-minute Christmas tree, she had prepared a 13 desserts-de-Provence array, a tradition passed down in her mother’s Provencal family. We didn’t have 13 different sweets in the house, but Diane managed to gather 10 and arrange them on this pretty wicker platter. The festive tablecloth is one of many things that had been kept in captivity for eight years (!) in a storage locker in Maryland. I was very happy to be able to release the contents of that locker this summer with the help of one of my sons, who was good enough to spend part of his summer vacation helping me with this far-from-fun task. What a great guy!!!
Another item rescued from the storage locker was my beloved piano! (Interesting fact: when you ship things by sea, you do not pay by weight, you pay by volume; at least that is the way it was for me. So I was able to ship the piano to France at a reasonable price, and in fact it cost less than it probably would have to ship it to some other location in the US–with the added advantage of it now being where my son and I can actually play it! And play it we did, and we will continue to do so in the months and years ahead. What a joy to have this wonderful musical instrument back in our home again. And it has somehow made this place feel even more like home than it did before.
There were many other things rescued from the storage locker, none of them nearly as big as the piano, but altogether they filled one “lift van,” which is essentially a wooden crate that holds about 200 cubic feet of whatever you put in there. In my case, not surprisingly, most of the space was filled with boxes of papers (letters, journals, baby books, photos, etc.), and books; but there were also a few trunks and plastic tubs of things like Christmas decorations, many of them handmade by my Swedish grandparents, and some special quilts and the like. Plus assorted miscellaneous things my sons had been separated from for all those years. Some of it was stuff that should have been pitched long ago, but most of it is not; it is “stuff” that is good to have, and to be able to sort through and digitize and/or save. Or just to enjoy.
We don’t emphasize gift-giving in our home, which removes a lot of the unnecessary stress leading into the holidays. But there are usually a couple of special gifts that are given. This year Diane was very happy to receive her very first Christmas stocking (“We didn’t have them, it’s not really a French thing,” she explained.) And I was really happy to receive some beautiful watercolors painted by my older son, created from images he captured in photographs when we were in Sweden this summer. What a wonderful way to keep the memories of a wonderful time spent in Småland; and beautiful additions to the artwork in our home.
Clockwise, starting from upper left: the creche I grew up with; Diane and her new Christmas stocking; Champagne, smoked salmon, pain paillasse, and various French cheeses, color me happy! Phin and Sam planting a new tree; apéro time; new artwork for our home, images of Sweden!
I like to go to Christmas Eve church services when I can, and my sons are very good about going along with me, even though it’s not really important to them. However, this year, due to their busy schedules, we only had about 36 hours when we were all together. So even though they offered to go to mass with me, I said I preferred to stay home this time and just enjoy being together. We had so much to do in such a short time! We had to have special Christmas treats (smoked salmon, Swedish meatballs, champagne, bûche de Nöel); Diane needed to call her (French) family, who were gathered in New York; and we even got in a couple of rockin’ Christmas tunes, with me on piano, Sam on guitar, Phineas on tambourine.
Another one of our Christmas Eve traditions is to read aloud. Sometimes it is How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Sometimes it is a passage from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, or The Best Christmas Pageant Ever; sometimes it has been A Child’s Christmas in Wales. This year I read aloud the Christmas letter I had written to friends and family after the last Christmas we had in Brooklyn, when my sons were four and seven. Then we watched Charlie Brown Christmas, which offers the important (to me) recitation of the Christmas story as told in the Book of Luke, by sweet little Linus. If I get to hear that beautiful passage read aloud at least once on Christmas Eve, for me the essential meaning of the holiday is acknowledged and honored, and I am happy. (As Linus says: “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”)
We’ve started another new tradition in our family in the past couple of years, of planting a tree on Christmas Day. This started the year we lost 32 spruce trees in one year (!) due to an insect infestation that is devastating this type of tree all over Europe. That year it felt somehow not quite right to buy a dead tree! So since then we have been buying living evergreen trees that are not vulnerable to this destructive little insect, and have been planting one, or more, each year.
So now we all arrive at a New Year, here on planet Earth. It’s certainly not hard to imagine many ways in which it could be better than the one we’re just finishing up. Let’s all see what we can do, each of us, to make that happen–shall we?
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France; and coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home.
All’s Well That Ends Well…
At a certain point I thought that instead of spending my 70th birthday with my two sons in Paris, I was going be spending it alone at our home in Champagne, waiting for a repairman to come and do the necessary work to avoid our entire swimming pool emptying into our basement.
The night before, when my son was cleaning the pool filter, a key part–the screw that holds the pressure gauge on top of the dome-like structure that the water passes through in its cleansing process–broke and left my son stuck holding the gauge firmly in place in order to avoid water spouting out of the top of the dome and continuing on to empty the contents of the pool into our basement. Quite an awkward position!
I’ll skip over some of the next steps, which involved an emergency call to my husband–who is known to keep a cool head and offer brilliant practical suggestions in such a situation–and who offered same from his home in Vermont. With the help of his long-distance creative thinking (and his knowledge of the basic physics and mechanics of the pool mechanism) and with my son’s admirable practical ability to fix things and also stay calm in these kinds of emergencies, as a temporary solution my son ended up fashioning a plug made from a wine bottle cork that he was able to insert in the place where the pressure gauge should be, and fasten it down with several layers of some very strong tape.
This part of our unplanned evening adventure ended at about midnight, at which point my son, who was really supposed to have been packing for his trip to the US 36 hours later, not doing makeshift pool filter repairs, went off to bed, exhausted, saying he’d have to pack in the morning.
Before turning in for the night, I composed an email message to our pool maintenance service with the subject line “Situation URGENT!” hoping that they would read their email first thing in the morning and maybe–if we were very very lucky–they would be able to come to the rescue sometime the following day.
Americans in France do quite a lot of complaining about their feeling that French service providers do not respond to requests for service as quickly as they ought to. (Americans have a rather inflated sense of entitlement as consumers. They don’t really get that the “customer is always right” mentality just does not work in France.) I have often remarked, in response to such complaints, that it seems to me that French service providers tend to respond to requests for service when they are able to actually provide it, and sometimes not before. This can, I agree, be frustrating for Americans, who expect an answer one way or another, and often don’t get it from French people, or don’t get it as quickly as they think they should. “Well they tend to respond in their own time,” I have said more than once, in trying to help bridge this particular cultural gap. But I have always added: “EXCEPT when there is an emergency, in which case they tend to show up very quickly.”
I was hoping that would be the case this time.
And indeed, the first good thing that happened on my birthday is that I got a call at 8:00 in the morning from the owner of the pool service, responding to my appeal for help. I was not really holding out hope that I would be able to get them to come on that very day (and–not to stress the point too much–but it was my birthday). So I was resolved to it just being one of those birthdays that didn’t go quite the way you had hoped.
However, to my surprise, here is what happened next. (The hard bits will be translated from the French.)
Pool Guy: Bonjour, Madame, c’est [first name, last name]
Me: Oh, merci, monsieur, you got my message…
PG: Oui…
Me: And you can come and help?
PG: Yes, I don’t want you to be bothered by this problem…
Me: And [holding my breath] when can you come?
PG: Today.
Me: Today…
PG: This morning.
ME: Oh, that’s good! [Then, remembering] But…I have to take my son to the train station, I have to leave here about 9:30…
PG: That’s okay, we’ll come before then.
ME: Oh, that’s wonderful, thank you! (Oh, c’est très bien, merci!)
PG: Pas de soucies. Bonne journée. (No problem. Have a good day.)
ME: Merci, monsieur, à vous de même… (Thanks, monsieur, same to you…)
Now I must confess that I did not fully believe that they would be able to get someone to us quite that quickly. The pool place is nearly an hour away from us, and it was already 8:00. So I still didn’t really think I was going to be able to go to Paris that day, and I wasn’t sure I would even be able to get my son to the train he was hoping to take either. Nevertheless both of us began preparing as if this rather unlikely event was actually possible.
And now: having made my point about French service people answering with an amazingly quick and helpful response when it is truly needed, I’ll skip to the happy ending of this story: a young technician got to us in time to make the needed repair; he gave us a couple of bits of advice about how to deal with the problem we were also having with controlling the chemical balance in the water; and he went on his way.
And as he left, my son and I went into a sitcom-worthy race to the train (you can imagine the giddy sound-track yourself): we quickly closed up the house, threw our bags into the car, and drove off as quickly as we could to our train station; where we got the last available parking space; and ran (through a rather heavy downpour) to the platform; and got onto the train–which came gliding into the station at the exact same moment that our feet hit the pavement of the platform. And we got onto the train. Which then pulled out of the station, and away toward Paris. (It is a very short stop at our station, very short.) And we weren’t even that wet, since our race had been so rapid, and our time in the pouring rain so brief.
So. When a friend gave me a one-day-late birthday greeting on Facebook, and said he hoped I had had a nice birthday, I answered as briefly and as truthfully as I could. “It was wonderful,” I said.
And I saved the rest of my answer for this post. 🙂
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France, and coauthor of Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home.
Mothers and Daughters, and Sisters…and Book Groups!
Mother’s Day is a nice holiday, but it is also a holiday that is hard for some people. Daughters who have lost mothers; mothers who have lost daughters (or sons); women who wanted to become mothers but couldn’t, or didn’t, for some reason. Mothers and daughters (or sons) who feel that they could have been better mothers (or daughters, or sons). Mothers and daughters and sons who are in a bad moment–or a bad way in general–when it comes to these relationships. I’m sure there are other reasons too.
I am going to try to make this post one that celebrates and honors women, period. Mothers. Not-mothers. Daughters. Sisters. Aunts. Women friends. Even book groups!
Why book groups? Because many (though by no means all) book groups tend to be composed of women.
And because my wonderful sister has just shared my long-awaited book (long-awaited by at least her and me, and a few other people) with her book group.
My book is about mothers and daughters. My mother was a wonderful mother. My sister is/was a wonderful daughter. I was a pretty good daughter, but I was not an easy daughter for my mother to raise. (She loved me anyway. I wrote about our close, but not perfect, relationship here.)
And now I have finally published the book I decided to write thirty years ago, when I suddenly realized, in one of those profound moments of life that sometimes grabs you by the throat, or the heart, or in the gut–that I owe so much of who I am and have been able to become because of not only my mother, but also her mother. The grandmother I actually didn’t really like that much. (You’ll have to read the book if you want to know why.)
I don’t remember when I told my sister I was working on this book, but it was quite a few years ago. And so my sure-fire, eager audience of one (my sister) waited all those years and always let me know that she was really looking forward to reading “the book.” (She called it, calls it still, “the book” as if there were only one in the world! 🙂 )
And now that it is a real book, she shared the news with a group of her “sisters”–the members of her wonderful book group in Minneapolis. And they read the book (this means, by the way, that they also bought the book: this means a lot to authors!). And this week they discussed the book, and apparently they really liked it.
The picture on the right above is of my sister’s book group, holding up my book at the festive meeting (French wine included) at which they discussed it.
The picture in the middle is my hermanita (my little sister), reading my book. (I don’t know who took that picture, but I’ll bet my wonderful brother-in-law did. Maybe. Or it could have been my wonderful niece or nephew. Anyway, I love the picture.)
The picture on the left is my mother, taken on one of her happiest days, and mine. She is looking on with love and pride at my sister, and at my book, and at my sister’s book group. I know that if she were alive all of this would please her so much. (Well to be honest, maybe not every single thing I said in the book. But the general idea of the book, she would love that.)
So anyway. On this Mother’s Day I want to honor and thank my mother, and my sister, and the women in my sister’s book group, and all the other women who have so kindly nurtured me in a variety of ways throughout my life.
And I want to honor–and remember–all those mothers and daughters and sons out there who are hurting in some kind of way. I hope those of us who have been lucky in our lives and in our relationships will find ways to be kind and understanding, sensitive to and supportive of those who may not be quite as lucky. I hope we can all find ways to recognize and honor the love that comes from mothers, not-mothers, sisters, not-sisters, all women who share their nurturing and their love with others in whatever ways they can–and who may be hurting on this day.
And to let them know that we do, and that we care. Because all those love songs are right–it really is the most important thing. And everyone needs it.
Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divides her time between the US and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France.
That most wonderful time of the year…
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration here a few weeks ago: a nice mix of French and American friends. There was a lot of food, all of the usual menu items for Thanksgiving (except cornbread! I couldn’t find any cornmeal this year). But! We were treated to not just one but two different kinds of homemade (!) pumpkin pie. And we had both cranberries, thanks to our friend Rosanna who snatches them up whenever she sees them, and freezes them. And we tried airelles also, as a cranberry substitute before we knew Rosanna had the cranberries. Both a success! This being France, we also had escargots during the apéro, and a cheese course after the meal, during which we were treated to some very special cheeses brought by my son’s French friend.
This year we instituted a new way of “giving thanks,” suggested by our friends Darcy and Roger, who shared a family tradition of theirs. Before the meal, as we were enjoying our aperitifs, each person was invited to write down what they were grateful for and place it in a vase. Then, at a certain point in the evening–after the main meal and before dessert–we went around the table and each person drew out one of the pieces of paper and read it aloud.
This was a wonderful way to make sure not to miss the whole point of Thanksgiving–giving thanks! without that awkwardness and putting people on the spot that can occur sometimes in other ways of doing so. It was really fun to see what everyone had written and although some of the slips of paper were not credited, we were able in all cases to guess who the author was. There were some funny juxtapositions: one slip said “I hope you like the cheese I brought,” and the next one gave thanks for a meal with “not too much cheese.” That brought a big laugh!
The final note was the perfect one to end the exercise, and le mot juste went to our good friend Rosanna, who covered it all by saying “Merci, la vie!”
There was also a lot of live music–banjo and guitar and trumpet. I even picked up my flute for the first time in years and tried to sidle into some of the jamming, rusty as I am…
The following weekend I was excited to be invited to a very cool Christmas party in Paris–this one given for patrons and guests of The Earful Tower podcast, creation of the wonderful Oliver Gee and his lovely wife Lina Nordin Gee. If you don’t know about The Earful Tower, you need to know! Oliver, who is Australian, and Lina, who is Swedish, are just brimming over with creative good energy and they have drawn a wonderful community of interesting, nice people around them. And their podcast is the best! Oliver and Lina really get into exploring each and every corner of marvelous Paris–their enthusiasm is infectious and the videography is superb. Check it out!
The party was held at the beautiful Cercle Suedois/Cercle Norvégien on the rue de Rivoli. There was live music, there was fun and games, a lot of lively conversation–and a delicious buffet of warm and cold treats, served in a room decorated with extraordinarily beautiful Nordic landscape paintings by Odile Fontaimpe.
I’ve worked with Oliver on all four of his books–the last three are a collaborative endeavor of this dynamic couple, a series of children’s books featuring Parisian animals (so far a crocodile, a liger, and a giraffe). Oliver writes the text and they are beautifully, charmingly illustrated by Lina. In each case, we have had fun talking over some of those last-minute decisions that go into every work of literature. Oliver even had me on his show once, to talk about my work as an editor.
Next week my kids will be heading home and it will be so nice to have them here for Christmas. As I write this morning, a light sprinkling of snow is covering everything, imparting that quiet winter beauty so dear to my heart. Of course, as the temperature drops, life becomes harder for those who are not lucky enough to have warm, cozy homes to be in and plenty of food. As you count your own blessings, try to remember to spare a thought for those struggling, whether in Ukraine or Africa, or right next door, and figure out what you can do to help. There are so many ways, and each of us can do something.
Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divides her time between the US and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You. Her memoir, A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France, will be published in early 2023.
Bands & Birthdays & Bouchées à la Reine, OhMy!
What a fun month this has been! Never mind all the highlights, I’ll share just a few of them today.
I got to go to Paris twice in one week this month–and in my mind nothing is much more wonderful than that, other than maybe spending the whole week, or whole month, there.
The first trip was a one-day trip to celebrate my friend Adrian’s 70th (!) birthday, along with a packed house of her friends and fans, at her monthly Après-Midi meet-up. Here’s a picture of me with Adrian (center) and Cara Black (left). Cara is the author of the bestselling Aimée LeDuc series of mysteries set in Paris–and now also the author of two books with an American sharpshooter heroine named Kate Rees, who is helping to fight bad guys in Europe during World War II.
I was up nice and early to catch a train from Vendeuvre-sur-Barse to Paris, a very pleasant, less-than-two-hour ride. I met Adrian for lunch at the Café de la Mairie in the Marais, where she has held this monthly event for more than 20 years. Then, after lunch, she kept us all entertained (and feeling young!) with her stories of ups and downs (and ups and downs again!) during her 28 years in Paris. Someone asked her toward the end of the session what the one thing is that she regrets the most, the one thing she would have done differently if she could have. She thought about that for a moment, then gave an answer that was worthy both of her favorite inspirational writer, Eckhart Tolle, and Edith Piaf. (“I don’t really regret anything,” she said.) 🙂
After the event it was time for me to begin the trip back to Champagne. I regretted having to leave so soon as I strolled through the Square du Temple, which was filled with children playing, young and old people alike enjoying a lovely warm, sunny afternoon. But I needed to catch my train, and so I walked back to Place de la République, where I took the Metro to Gare de l’Est.
I love taking trains in France, I really never get enough of it, and this time was no different. I enjoyed the ride back, looking out the window at recently tilled fields, graceful windmills sweeping their giant arms against the sky, as the sun set.
By the time I got to Vendeuvre again it was dark. It was a full moon that night, and as the moon rose against the horizon, the fields I drove through between Vendeuvre and Essoyes were bathed in moonlight: it looked almost as if they were covered in frost, but I knew it was too warm for that.
Just a few days later it was time to return to Paris so that I could see (and listen to) my son Sam (aka Samjo, pictured above) warm up the crowd with his lovely, lyrical songs before performing with Solomon Pico at Les Disquaires. They had packed the house and were rockin’ the crowd that night, what fun!
One week later a friend and I were invited to join friends formerly of Essoyes, who are now living a couple of hours away from here in the Pays d’Othe. The drive there was lovely, and when we arrived we were treated to a “real French meal” prepared by our friend Pascale. The entrée she had prepared for us was so beautiful I had to take a picture of it. (This concoction is apparently called a bouchée à la Reine, and it was every bit as good as it looks.)
Next Tuesday is Toussaint, and today the excitement is mounting in Essoyes, you can feel it everywhere. Toussaint is a major holiday in France in which the dead are remembered and honored, their graves groomed and decorated by their families, and everyone gathers for long, drawn-out, wonderful, delicious meals. Already you can feel the bustle and stir before such a holiday (kind of like Thanksgiving in the US). People are coming and going, preparations are being made, pots of chrysanthemums are being sold in the stores and carried about in the streets, to decorate the graves of loved ones. And although the custom of children dressing in Halloween costumes and trick-or-treating is fairly new in France, it is already a much loved tradition in Essoyes. (The children don’t go door to door from house to house, but they do visit all the shops in town, and the mairie, and hold out their little plastic pumpkins, or bags, hoping for treats.)
There will be more to come later: for now here’s wishing you a safe, happy Halloween. Keep wearing masks!
Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divides her time between the US and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You and will soon publish her next book, A Long Way from Iowa, a literary memoir.
The Story of a Dream Come True…
This is the story of a beautiful little gypsy caravan that an American artist bought and lived in on the banks of the Marne River outside of Paris for several years in the late 1970s.
Much of the story you can learn here, through the artist’s own words and pictures. (You should look around the rest of his website also: his work is awesome!)
The link above brings the story through last summer (2021). This summer has been very exciting around here because this summer the dream of restoring the roulotte (that is the French word for it)–a dream that has taken the artist 15 years to complete–came true. The roulotte is now more beautiful than ever, and is positioned in our garden; and the artist, who is also a musician enamored of gypsy jazz guitar–is my nearest neighbor.
Our son is a musician too–a singer/songwriter who also plays pretty much any instrument he decides to pick up. One night in August he played his songs for a very intimate audience–just his immediate family–thus bringing the lovely music that filled the roulotte once upon a time by his dad, and who-knows-who before that back within her wonderfully acoustic walls. That was a very special occasion.
Now that the roulotte is ready to be truly enjoyed in the way it should be once again, I’m looking forward to hearing much more music coming from within, and to having that music shared with others as well. Stay tuned for more of the story!
Janet Hulstrand is a writer, editor, writing coach, and teacher of writing and of literature who divides her time between the US and France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You and will soon publish her next book, A Long Way from Iowa, a literary memoir.
Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road 