MY FRENCH ADVENTURE, CHAPTER 4
The Cosy Cottage That Wasn’t
And uncertainty about what to do next
Although I’d packed Pema Chodron’s book “When Things Fall Apart” in my luggage, I hadn’t expected things to fall apart quite so quickly — or so literally. I stood in the bedroom, as plaster drifted from the ceiling onto the concrete floor and over my still unpacked suitcases. I couldn’t even summon a smile when a dusting of white settled on the cover of Pema’s book.
I dragged a faded blue rug from the concrete floor of the living room into the concrete-floored bedroom. Then I pulled the orange duvet cover from a suitcase — my daughter gave it to me because her husband didn’t like the colour — and spread it across the bed. Gaudy plumage amidst the plaster and concrete dust. It didn’t help.
“What are you doing?” Joe asked, looking up from his phone where he’d been Googling scenic routes back to Paris. “Redecorating?
I shook my head. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
Pema writes about groundlessness, that feeling of having the rug pulled out from under you. Your spouse asks for a…
