The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted

It was strange how loud the world was when you weren't filling it up with your own noise.

This mountain, the arched back of the earth risen before us, it made me feel humble, like a beggar, just lucky to be here at all, even briefly.

And there are certain moments in your life when something becomes clear, and other things in the past - things that your mind, unbeknownst to you, had earmarked because they didn't quite add up - suddenly all click into place, like small gears in a watch.

I love the way the French shove chocolate into everything. It's, like, the best nervous tic ever.

This was how the world persisted. The heaviness of despair - how could it exist in the midst of mascara, zippers, brunches ? It marched forward even when I was barely able to stand....It had been hard on all of us - not only missing Henry, but facing the idea that your whole world can change, suddenly irreversibly. We were reminded how flimsy everything is, as frail as the airmail envelopes my mother had sent us the summer she disappeared. This is the life you have and then it's gone. I felt sorry for my mother, I knew what it was like not to be able to help your child, to change the incomprehensible randomness of life, to reverse a loss.

We were new then, our lives stretched out before us. Our families had let us go. Abbott had yet to find us. For this very short time, it would be just the two of us - just two kids.

Children. For all of the times that you miss out on things you'd like to do because of them, there are an equal number of excuses they offer to get out of things you'd like to miss.

To him food was identity, culture, family, how you define home and love and who you are - all of it at once....It's not just the pie. It's the chemistry and physics. It's place and time and history and religion and music...I felt blurred by his presence, overwhelmed with double vision - the world as I was seeing it and the world as Henry would have.

In America when someone asks me my nationality, I can't just say American. I have to go back generations, elaborate on there in Europe my ancestors were from. But here, I can just say it, Je suis Americaine. It feels good.

I missed my mother and Elysius. It wasn't that I wanted them with me at that very moment. I wanted them in the past. I wanted to have back just one sunny afternoon together.

Me encanta que los franceses le echen chocolate a todo. Es como si tuvieran el mejor tic nervioso del mundo

If fact, she mothers with such patience and grace that she's elegant, timelessly elegant. Ironically enough, one might even say that she has become forever elegant after all.

The swallow's wings popped open, but they flapped awkwardly at the sides of its body like wild oars. And then, as the bird fell with skittering wings, it gave one solid thrum. This slowed its descent, momentarily. It gave another thrum, and another, and then, as if its body remembered what it was supposed to do, the bird began to beat its wings rhythmically. The muscle memory was still within it. It was still losing ground, but it was flapping at least.

I'm the kind of Flying Wallenda who prays for a good net. That's all. Just a good net.

I'd heard about the traffic accidnet on the radio after I'd dropped Abbot off at school. I heard about the accident, that there were mutiple fatalities, an oil tanker ablaze, and the backed-up traffic on the interstate, and I had one simple though : I would take an alternate route. That was it, I would take an alternate route. Worse, I felt lucky - not because I was alive and others were dead but because I'd caught the update in time to avoid the exit ramp that would have landed me in he thick of it.

...almost like they had sucked up all the air in the room, and I was left oxygen-deprived. But with Henry, I had air again, I could breathe. He thought I was funny, and so I got funnier. He thought I was beautiful, and so I felt more beautiful. He thought I was experimental in the kitchen, and so I experimented more brilliantly. We had our problems, yes, but even our problems bound us closer. And now I knew what it was like to be only half of a pair and less of myself.

Everyone thinks that it is a gift to have someone love you, but they’re wrong. The best gift is that you can love someone—like he loved you

I couldn’t remember what I’d once prayed for or how. It was as if prayer were a foreign language that I’d once known but could no longer remember even in the most pidgin way. I remembered the idea of prayer, the feeling of calm that I’d had even as a child, but it seemed very distant now.

It’s more of you that I want—one more angle, one more topic of conversation, one more knowing glance we give each other in the day before we both fall asleep. That’s what children offer, isn’t it?

hildren. For all of the times that you miss out on things you’d like to do because of them, there are an equal number of excuses they offer to get out of things you’d like to miss.

I felt the smallest inkling of desire—the step before wanting to create, the want to want to create.

PROVENÇAL CHICKEN Cut an organic fresh chicken in eight pieces. (You can also buy these already cut.) Sauté the pieces in olive oil over medium heat until they are lightly browned all around. Salt and pepper to taste. Add two diced green peppers and one diced fennel bulb. Sauté until the vegetables are semi-soft. Add six whole garlic cloves, fresh thyme, and the zest of two oranges. Dice ten tomatoes and add them to the pot. Let simmer on low heat for one hour, until the chicken is cooked through. At the end, add one glass of red wine. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then cover and let it set until serving.