Train Transitions

I thought she was my age with her smooth skin and beautiful hair, but she confessed to being 84, and she was on the way to visit an old friend from Montpellier, where they had grown up. She was worried she would miss her stop, because she had trouble hearing the announcements. “I’m not used to riding trains,” she confessed. I promised to tell her when we pulled into her station.

“I made confiture (jams and jellies), but not the type that were sold in the grands surfaces (big groceries). Mine were for deluxe specialty shops.”

If only I had a tape recorder to take down her descriptions of her confitures: the marrons glacé suspended in a Grand Marnier jelly, the whole strawberries (“so sweet, that I barely needed sugar I left many berries whole.”).

“And I played with colours. Imagine the green of kiwi layered with a yellow citron confiture, one very sweet, one tart. They sparkled. Each year I created a new product.”

Her pots (jars) were special too, searched out in Italy with special shapes. Some were cut glass.
Her daughter had taken over the business, and she was pleased the business continued, although she was equally pleased to be doing less. “I’m too old to work that hard, now.”
Suddenly her blue eyes opened wide as she peered over my shoulder and out the window. “Look, there’s the château, and the cemetery. We are coming into Montpellier.”

I offered to help her with her luggage, but she said she could manage.

For the rest of the ride to Argelès I imagined those confitures on a piece of bread for breakfast.
This morning, I woke. I had some pain berger, stocked by my friend and neighbour so I could eat without having to go out. I had some excellent confiture made by another neighbour. It was good, but I still wished, I could have tasted the woman's who didn’t look 84 and had a passion for her work.

I almost think I could do a whole book of fascinating people I have met mainly travelling between Geneva and Argeles, although there's been a couple on the Paris, Zurich, Frankfort and Italian trips. It's like putting myself into this silver cylinder that will be hurled through the country side and in some of the seats is a treasure waiting to be found.