all the eggs on the table...

Cancelled egg hunts, a positive test and new life in the meadow...

floating in gold a little…

Friday departs with perfectly fluffy golden clouds scudding across an azure blue sky into Easter weekend. Three days off, no classes, no noise, no-one to see except a friend from England and her son who would be arriving Saturday morning for a weeks stay in her beloved little French home across the hill. I am looking forward to seeing her, hearing news that isn’t entirely about reforms to government decisions and strikes as is the case, in perpetuity it seems, here in France and, the reason my so missed daughter is still unable to visit.

I planned to do nothing more arduous than an Easter egg hunt, a little baking of course, maybe a lot; I have 15 kilos of walnut flour to use in a short amount of time because it doesn’t keep well and honestly would Easter be Easter without a cake? For the past few days I’ve been looking longingly at all the wild flowers just asking to be gathered in armfuls to fill the house with floral delights, I planned to fling open the doors and windows to let in the fresh and warm spring air, breathe in huge lungfuls. Listen to the birdsong. Phone old friends and my sisters, finish a few garden chores… and during every other free moment, I had routes plotted for long slow ambles on my hill, check the state of play so to speak. It was to be a weekend as delightful and unstressed as it could be minus my daughter.

I wake on Saturday morning feeling irritable and achy, not quite right. I ignore it. It will pass, I must have slept in an odd position.

Every other weekend I visit an old neighbour. His wife passed away six years ago and he, now 87 years of age, lives alone in the tiny hamlet where we first lived when we moved to France. Twenty years ago there was only him and us, the rest of the properties were holiday homes or had long since been abandoned. This is not the case now though, over the years young families bought and renovated the empty buildings and while the hamlet is buzzing with life again it has lost some of its charm, too many cars, too many people who pay little or no attention to the wellbeing of the either him or the hamlet. It was one of the reasons he sold the home where he had lived with his wife for the last thirty years. That and the memories… He moved into our tiny cottage which is less than a 20 metre stroll from his front door, it was only to be a temporary lodging while he mourned his loss and made the difficult decision on where to live; somewhere he could live alone but without feeling lonely. He never found that place and has now lived there for over six years.

I am enormously fond of him. We all are.

He is not at home when I arrive, as is often the case he drives to the next village for his morning coffee and the company of his old chums. I know he will not be long and let myself in. If I’m quick I can carry in the heavy bags of nuts I know he struggles with but needs for his stove (thankfully a far better behaved monster than my own) and tidy his kitchen, clear his breakfast dishes. I prepare the coffee we will drink together and put away the laundry while I’m waiting.

The aching in my bones feels worse with every small task and my throat begins to burn too.

I have just put fresh flowers, bright magenta flowering Ribus from the garden on the table when I hear him ring the the door bell — a hideous modern contraption installed by him as a joke which sounds like a cow bellowing — the pain in my joints has spread to my head and the sharp shrill of his arrival not only makes me jump (it never fails, that’s the whole point of it) but nearly knocks me sideways too. He is as happy as always to see me, berates me comme d’habitude for carrying up the bags of stove nuts. I laugh at him as I take his heavy shopping bag filled with tins of cat food — for the numerous wild feline that roam the hamlet — and we sit at his tiny kitchen table for coffee.

During the next hour I listen as attentively as I can to stories of his difficult childhood; of his having to rise at 4 am every morning to light the stove and prepare chicory coffee, of his time served as a radio operator during the war with Algeria and his days of living rough in the streets of Paris when he had finally decided that he would no longer tolerate the daily viciousness of a strict father. Every word of which I’ve heard countless times before but I never interrupt unless interruption is demanded, these moments of his life obviously being those that hold the most prominent place in his memory — they are important to him — they deserve my attention because he needs them to be told. As I leave, I hug him tightly and promise to pop back in the week, if not me then hubby. We don’t exactly feel responsible for him but he has nobody else and his huge, warm heart deserves friendship and a modicum of care in his old age. Plus neither of us can bare to think of him feeling lonely.

I stagger home after buying some groceries feeling as if I’d been fighting in that Algerian war myself. I want to cry in frustration and shout at my family, I want to blame someone or something for the injustice of being ill on days off. I feel ghastly.

I don’t even think of taking a Covid test until my friend arrives. It’s the first thing she says though and as soon as she does I remember feeling exactly the same last year in April. When I check back in my diaries, I see not only was it the same month but the same day too… a coincidence beyond thinking about. I should have known!

For 24 hours I am sloth like, moving and thinking in slow motion.

All the eggs on the table….

Sunday afternoon, the sun is still shining, the birds are singing, easter has been tipped into a bowl and left on the kitchen table for anyone who can be bothered to wrestle with the always too difficult to peal off silver paper each tiny egg is wrapped in. I still don’t feel one hundred percent but miraculously, the feeling of utter uselessness is passing. I wander over to the field to check my seedlings, as suspected, there’s not much happening, although I notice a line of minuscule leeks have germinated which has to be worth a pat on the back. I collect the eggs from the chicken house, make a mental note to add to my list for the next holidays, muck out coop and carry the six eggs back to the house, I leave them on the table.

I return to the field to check the sheep, something didn’t feel quite right.

It isn’t — Mimi is yelling and agitated, turning in circles and hoofing up the ground. Her waters have broken and the lamb is showing but she looks very tired already. I sit down on the bank and watch her for a while. Ordinarily, this breed of sheep are very robust, they need little care other than a cursory check over twice a day, it’s why we chose them and so far they have been the perfect little flock. Right now, something is very wrong though.

My husband wanders over too on hearing the noise, watches with me for a while. We both ask the question at the same moment “another ten minutes?” She appears to be too exhausted to make even the slightest effort and so far we see nothing more than the two front feet and tiny nose that haven’t moved since I arrived, worse still the contractions are showing signs of slowing down.

We whisper words of encouragement to her. She looks up at us with her sheepy brown eyes as if to say, never mind the sweet talk, do something! Hubby and I pass a silent sign, the time to intervene is now, so on the next contraction he gently grabs the two very slippery tiny feet and pulls firmly and again on the next. On the third contraction a huge boy lamb is born. Mimi looks around at him, makes a sound that can only be translated as delighted relief and begins doing what all mums do so naturally on the birth of their baby and begins to care for him.

The Easter gift…

He is healthy and strong, a wonderfully timed Easter gift.

I return to the house and notice two things, firstly I feel completely cured of the covid aches and general disgruntledness which means Monday will be spent catching up on lost time and secondly, only four eggs of the six I placed on the table are left….

So the holiday weekend wasn’t a complete disaster after all and… the sun is still shining and I have two less eggs to decide what to do with because honestly, one can become utterly sick of fresh eggs after a while!

I hope your Easter days were filled with joy and if not, chocolate eggs without silver foil wrappers!