The Magical Visit

I expected three days with an American couple showing them the sites of the Argelès area to be fun. I wasn’t prepared for the magic.

The man is the son of a friend who died too soon. When I first heard about the son he was in his teens. He is now in his forties. His wife and I met a few years back at dinners when I was in Boston catching up with old friends. I found both a delight to be with. They are intelligent, creative, insightful, kind, funny and courageous in their life choices.

Thus I offered them my studio for a week, but moved to a friend’s place for part of that time so I could share some of the things I love in the area with them before going home to Geneva.

Reality exceeded expectations. I have never grown tired of the street dances, the fireworks shot off the hotel, the crêperie up in the mountains with its tables on different level terraces shaded by cork and olive trees, the café-sits, the friendly people. They took to them as fast as I had.

A trip to Collioure was a second visit for the man. He had been there in another lifetime. He wanted to show his wife the site, where under an upturned boat on the beach he had found the cat they now have, one he saved from a life as a wild cat. Sauvage is that black cat’s name and in the bar a few steps from the location of the saving a woman had on a T-shirt with a black cat and the word Sauvage.

When it was time to leave for Geneva, they walked me to the train. Considering Argelès is my place, it is an amusing role reversal that the non-residents saw the resident off. Once on the train I tried to figure out why the visit seemed so magical to me.

It was only as I rode the bus between Geneva and Corsier where I live did I figure it out. I passed a field of sunflowers, destined to become oil. The field runs as far as the eye can see. The flowers faced the bus and in the early morning sun the brightness made me wish I owned a pair of sunglasses. Later in the day going the opposite way, instead of the flowers facing me, their backs were to me, once again facing the sun. I understand why the French call them tournesols which means turning toward the sun.

The flowers follow the warmth, the light, the nourishment. It was then that I realised why the three days had been so magic, although we did nothing out of the ordinary. The couple was light, warm, nourishing of each other and also nourishing to me. There is something ordinary that a sunflower turns to the sun. There is something ordinary about sitting in a café sharing ideas. But sometimes the ordinary carries the magic of the extraordinary when there is so much warmth, light and nourishment.