RAINY DAYS IN PROVENCE AND MUSKOKA
A rare August rain is always welcome in Provence. Seeing the clouds gathering the day before, the owners of the apricot orchard behind the old mas at Buis-les-Genets, where we were spending our summer holidays, had left their work in the ripening vineyards to plough the earth around the trees. Now the rain could soak into fresh-turned earth, instead of running off over sun-baked ground.
The picturesque rose-tiled roof of the mas didn’t take kindly to wind and rain. As a gloomy dawn broke under pelting skies, all hands came on deck to place buckets, cans and pots under leaks where tiles had been dislodged. When the confusion resolved itself we flung ourselves into chairs around the cold hearth for a breather. It was also story time.
Round-eyed we listened while my sister-in-law told us, once again, the saga of primal leaks when they had first occupied the old mas. From her dramatic description, these were not mere leaks, but gushers heaping mounds of accumulated debris onto unsuspecting sleepers in the middle of the night.
Incredibly to us Canadians and Swiss, neighbouring families who had been around for centuries were inclined almost to boast about la gouttière in the corner of the living room, the one by the fireplace, the one in the attic, and so on and on. Meanwhile, my husband Paul, the legend-breaker who had restored this old sheep station from its ruins, had already marked the new infiltrations. He would be up on the roof as quickly as it dried to replace tiles ripped off by the mistral.
On a rainy day like this, the atmosphere of the mas reverted to grimmer, older times. Windows were taxable not long ago in France. Slits high up in the north walls lent some colour to suspicions that this place could well have doubled as a fortress. The old shepherd's refuge had no panoramic view of the valley outside. One of us was playing patience at the table by the high, small window that looked out on a small section of the porch roof and a tendril or two of grape vine.
We had congregated in the main room of the mas, around the unlit fireplace. The big lamp had had to be turned on for those working on a giant jigsaw puzzle, slowly taking form on a large piece of plywood. My suggestion that we light a small, cheering blaze of olive wood was dismissed with a snort of contempt.
Memory of rainy days in Muskoka
A brief, wistful memory of rainy days in Muskoka flashed across my mind's eye. They seemed long ago and so far away, years before my marriage. We must have been very stiff-upper-lip, my Anglo-Saxon family, as we made a cosy fire in the fireplace and a concerted effort of cheerfulness on every such occasion. No one would have dared to complain about the weather. Instead, we found ways to make it fun.
Instead of eating around the big table outside on the screen porch, where it was a trifle chilly, we pretended to have a restaurant in the living room, using several smaller tables. My mother and brothers installed theirs by the fireside, but I preferred to dine beside the long row of windows on the north side. I could glance up from my game of patience and admire the long valley to the north, romantically blurred under mist and rain.
All this home-made entertainment was played against a background of leaks dripping into buckets, but the sound seemed to soothe rather than irritate us. We were taught to enjoy what we had - rain, and not bother about what we did not have - sun. Waiting inside was wise. Rock faces can become dangerously slippery when their moss gets wet.
An empty chair in Provence
The hours wore on in the old mas, punctuated by "plink- plank - plonk" from one leak, "pinka-pink-pink" from another, "drip, drip, drip" from a slower one. I could have enjoyed the mingling of these gentle tunes, but my heart wasn't in it. I was not alone in feeling a void where there had been a gentle presence, linking us in affection. When people thought no one else was noticing, glances would stray toward an empty chair in the corner that no one seemed ready to occupy. We all missed my dear mother-in-law, affectionately known to everyone as Grand'maman.
When the rain stopped, near the close of day, I just had to get out of that house in Provence, get away from the bombardment of emotions, my own and others'. Down in one of the cellars, I found some old rubber boots, and headed for the apricot field behind the house.
I tramped toward the western end of the orchard, hoping dimly for something like a sunset to lift me out of my bad mood. Already I had become attached to the silhouette of the house to the west of us - the picturesque jas, with its two guardian cypresses and its umbrella pine.
Westward, far beyond the sea, lay Canada, which I was beginning to regret leaving so hurriedly and so irrevocably. I began shuffling through my mental pack of problems, like a patience-player of interminable layouts. I seemed trapped within patterns, unable to command enough detachment to stand aside and watch what was happening in me or among us.
Strong forces that I could only sense but not identify were at work. I seemed to be a puppet controlled by others, and at the mercy of circumstances. Or were we pawns on some gigantic chessboard?
This mental impatience game was not coming out, again. A game of patience or solitaire with real cards would have been less frustrating. Meanwhile, my walk westward came to an abrupt end when I reached the brink of a shallow, dank, ravine, ringed with brambles. A westward glance showed lowering clouds too thick to allow a sunset. I stared blankly into the ravine, then turned back, took one step, and stopped.
Two fountains of colour had arisen from beyond the eastern horizon, spanned mountain and sky, then spilled back down to earth in some invisible distance. A double rainbow - the first that I had ever seen - was arching over the dark loom of the Mont des Buisses. A sign of hope when I most needed one. That was how I was tempted to take it, but I brushed the idea aside as too fanciful.
Still, it was a natural phenomenon, and might divert scientifically minded relatives from their preoccupations, after being cooped up together all day. I tried to rush back toward the house, and found the newly-ploughed apricot field impossible to hurry across, muddy as it was after an all-day rain. Especially when trying to watch a rainbow at the same time. The colours were beginning to fade after a few squelching steps. I realized that the rainbow would be gone well before I could reach the house and rouse anyone who might be interested.
And so, I decided to stand and stare. Quiet and receptive, I knew that all would be well, whatever tests were in store for me and my family. My being soared above muddy earth, above attachments on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. Time and space were temporarily overcome, spanned by a double rainbow that reflected a double existence.
Contentedly, I waited while the magnificent colours took their time to merge back into the whole. Then, full of love for people and places everywhere, I went back to the house.
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