Towards the end of my November 2005 trip to France, I had tried to convince Cécile to come back to Phoenix for a visit. It was getting so cold in France. Cold and rainy and grey. Surely she would want to be where the sun was shining and the weather was warm. She was slightly reluctant.
"Perhaps you could come back to Paris?"
"Paris in January?" I don't know about that.
I told her we could go down to Mexico and visit Aztec ruins. The idea intrigued her and she agreed. We looked into it after I got back home. We decided on Belize instead. Mayan ruins would be cool. Belize would be cool. I bought two round trip tickets. I sent a deposit down to a really cool hotel that was in the jungle. I went to a doctor and got some pills for dysentery and malaria.
I bought a steam-cleaner. I disinfected the house.
It was 2:00AM on the day she was supposed to arrive when the phone rang. It was Cécile. She was at the airport...Charles de Gaulle airport. She was crying. They wouldn't let her on the plane. Apparently, the passport she had used last June was no longer good enough. Travelers to the U.S. now needed a visa. She didn't know anything about it. It seems that most of the people in France didn't know anything about it. They wouldn't let her on the plane. She wasn't coming.
FUCK!
That was a bad night. If you ever saw that scene in Pulp Fiction when Bruce Willis finds out that Maria de Medeiros didn't remember to bring his father's watch, that was me.
After calming down, it was time to rethink. Ok, if she couldn't come here, I could still go there (January in Paris...hmm...all of a sudden, it doesn't sound so bad). I exchanged my ticket to Belize for one to Paris. Cécile was so excited. She immediately planned the whole trip. She would pick me up at the airport and we would drive to Mont St. Michel. Then we would take a tour of Brittany. Her great grandmother had passed away a few years ago but the family had held onto the house in Maël Carhaix. We could stay there. It sounded great to me.
And it was.
Mont St. Michele was just as magical as I imagined it would be. In January, there aren't a lot of people there. We stayed at La Mere Poulard. It was beautiful. Cold, but beautiful. We ate mussels that were pulled from the sea that morning. That's kind of a big deal when you're a guy living in Phoenix.
Then we drove to Maël Carhaix. A small town! The house was cute. Aside from the little problem we had with the hot water heater, everything was great. Cécile had brought sheets and blankets and food.
Then it snowed. It never snows. I didn't mind. I liked it. Snow is also a big deal when you're from Phoenix.
The snow was pretty much gone the next day so we went hiking in a granite gorge.
We drove up north to Perros Guirec and the surrounding area (Le Côte de Granit Rose). Along with all the other lovely things to see, there was a store there that sold knives...beautiful knives. I saw one in the window that I really wanted, un couteau de poche avec un tire-bouchon. Unfortuantely, the store was closed. I thought that was strange. It was Monday. The store was closed on a Monday? Cécile said that Mondays are like Sundays in France. Vraiment? Very well, then. We went back the next day and the store was still closed. Whomever owned the place just didn't feel like opening that day. Cécile said that it happens all the time. It was so strange to me. How can you have a store and not open it? Now, I had to have a pocket knife. But not just any pocket knife. I had to have that pocket knife...just out of principle.
In every town we stopped in, we tried to find a store that sold knives. Ploumanach, Treguier, Carhaix-Plouguer, Huelgoat, Châteauneuf-du-Faou, Châteaulin, Quimper. I was obsessed. Finally, in Concarneau, we managed to convince a guy to open his store at 2:00PM (Can you imagine that? Trying to convince a store owner to open in the middle of the afternoon.) I ended up getting one without the cork screw. The handle is made from South African Cow Horn.
After that, we ate lunch at the old town wall of Concarneau. I sliced the bread. I cut the pepper. I spread the Pâté de Campagne. I love this knife. We used it almost every day after that. I still carry it around sometimes just to have it with me. Funny how things bring back memories.
We were having a great time. We drove to Auray to visit some of Cécile's family. Her aunt, Christianne, was staying with Cécile's cousins Justine and Julien. I thought "ok, that would be nice to stop by and say hi." Cécile neglected to tell me that we would be staying there overnight. After we got there, it turned out that we were staying for 2 days.
Two Days???!!!! With your family???!!! In Auray???!!!
I was angry. I thought she could have at least asked me what I wanted to do before committing us to 2 days with her family. It's not like I had a lot of time to spend there. I would have prefered to have spent that time alone with her.
This was our first fight.
But, of course, I was wrong and Cécile was right. Je suis égoïste. Her family was great and we had so much fun with them.
Stupid me. After having made such a fuss, I was so sad to leave them. But I learned something very valuable. Trust Cécile's judgement. As it turns out, she's always right. (No...seriously...she is. It's the strangest thing. Since I've known her, she's been right about everything. Not necessarily about what's the best train to take or what metro exit to get out at but that's another story. About anything that really matters, she just seems to know.)
Once again, time was running out on this trip and we made our way back to Paris. To avoid the traffic, we decided to stop in Chartres for the evening. (Here's a travel tip. If you're going to Chartres, try to go when they're ordaining a new bishop. It's really a lot of fun.)
We had dinner at a creperie. It was the only place open.
Let me back track a little. Before I left on this trip, I was hanging out one night at the Pit and talking with my friend Grant. He was in town, back from the Czech Republic, thinking about asking some girl to marry him. I never thought Grant was the marrying type. Over the course of our discussion, he planted a question in my head that I found was impossible to answer any other way. When I asked him why he wanted to do this 'thing,' he said "I asked myself, and maybe you should ask yourself, 'am I ever going to meet somebody better than her?'"
No. I'm not that lucky.
There's never been anyone that has made me feel the way I feel when I'm with Cécile.
This is what I was thinking about when we were sitting at the creperie. I was looking across the table at the most wonderful woman I had ever met. I wanted to bring up something with her and I was so nervous about it. "Hey Baby (I call her "Baby." I'm the only one that's ever been allowed to call her "Baby."), would you ever consider maybe moving to Phoenix and living with me?"
Could I be anymore lame?
She paused..."Barry, are you asking me to marry you?"
Until she said that, I wasn't sure what I was asking. I stuttered..."Yeah, I guess I am."
She said yes. She wondered why I waited so long to ask. I wondered the same thing.
Walking back to our hotel, through the medieval cobblestone streets of Chartres, three words ran through my mind. She...said...yes. I thought about that...that and how strange it was that my feet couldn't feel the ground. She said yes.
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