I once owned a share in this 18th century house and am only sorry that I couldn’t afford to buy it, but not enough to need counselling over. Because it is now owned by a favourite Dane who rents to other favourite Danes, I am often a visitor so I haven’t lost it at all. It is still there.

One of the renters invited Barbara, another Danish neighbour and me to dinner plus their daughter. The hosts filled two bowls full of shrimp. They added a tomato salad drizzled with oil and coated with finely chopped fresh basil.
What was really nice was the kitchen table where we were eating had been in the house when we bought it. The new owner keeps it, along with the pig head sculpture holding up a beam on the first floor.

You can probably measure the table’s age by its need for refinishing, but I measure it by memories: Playing cards, eating, snapping beans, my mom sitting with a bowl of hot herbs inhaling to open her cold-congested sinuses, reading, talking, holding hands, brushing out my daughter’s wet hair, looking at photos, doing puzzles, etc.

And a couple of new memories were added with the varied conversation that night. We ended the meal by ambling over to La Place de la Republique for coffee (and a tisane for me).
The grandson of the host had not been interested in sitting and eating. He rode his bike throughout the evening, stopping to peek in the window in the photo while we on the other side talked boring (in his point of view) adult stuff.

Adding memories to memories...