I’ve mentioned before the wise advice of a friend to ‘find the purpose in the way things are’. The last three months have necessitated reaching out to those words and hugging them close and often.
Let me elucidate. When I moved to France. To Cantal. To the pays perdu that I persist in calling home, I cleaved to it. I knew I was home. Clock forward two years, two months and a few days and I was thrust into a New World. The New World. A doddle for a cosmopolitan gal like me.
Or not. The fact is that I struggled to settle and root even a little here. The fact is that my heart and my eyes and ears and all my senses were gazing, reaching and yearning for France. The fact is that I went through the motions every day. I strove to get myself into a groove on my long playing record that would make a melody that I could sing along to. Hallelujah and pass the tambourine, I got there. I AM here. And I now honestly feel that I can love the one I’m with (or more accurately, in). I have retrieved my inner explorer and pressed re-set. I am finding so much to be enraptured by. And why on earth wouldn’t I? What an opportunity I have. To live on another continent, find the beauty and the warts and the eccentricities and get under the skin of a place that is such a collosal collision of cultures that a few meagre months or years can never do it justice. And, I finally get to live with my Two Brained husband – one love. My love.
And as it happens (such a coincidence) One Love is the prompt for the Weekly Photo Challenge beautifully represented here by people far smarter and more creative than I.
The picture? Walking up Mount Eisenhower in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was a tough walk up because, apart from being relentlessly uphill and steepish, at the time I had neither crampons nor poles to walk with and above the line it was frozen to the sleekest shiniest glass whenever the canopy of trees gave a skimpy opening for the glacial breath of winter to polish the ground with her frigid glaze. And all of a sudden this …. my Narnia moment. Paradise frozen – water (my enduring love) stopped in it’s tracks until Spring decides to wave her wand, scatter her fairy dust and let it flow once more.
PS: The quote is C.S Lewis from The Problem of Pain … known for the Narnia Chronicles it is worth getting to know Lewis, the Christian writer whether or not you believe in his God. He said ‘love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness’ and though I am a true devotee of kindness I support his assertion unreservedly.