Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

by Claire Fontaine

  I watched my mother get wheeled away on a cart by two strangers and, amazingly, it started to rain. A hummingbird flew to me from the window of her bedroom, in the rain, and swept back and forth in front of me. It then flew up to a window she loved with stained glass in the form of edelweiss. It flew back and forth in front of the window and came right back to me again, so close I could hear its wings flapping. The hummingbird went back and forth and back and forth right in front of my eyes, and then flew off to whatever heaven might be. She still sends me signs, in the form of hummingbirds. I only wish she and I had the chance in life.

  It was heartbreaking to hear her story; her pain was so deep. And it made me realize how lucky I was. That my mother is still alive; and that she never resented our youth or our accomplishments—she wanted our success, however we defined it. My friend made me see yet one more thing I never appreciated about my mother, something I have never thanked her for.

  I promise Chrystelle, and Mia, that I will reach out to my mom again, though I don’t promise how. On the one hand, even after two years, I’m afraid a live rejection will devastate me. On the other, I’m not made of sugar, after all.

  Mother.” It’s the Voice again. “That is a definite no, trust me.”

  We’re in the jam-packed outdoor market in Gordes, the premier hilltop village in the Lubéron. I’m holding a long, heavy strand of one-inch oval alabaster beads from a table of necklaces made in Africa.

  “What do you mean? It’s so elegant, and white goes with everything.”

  “Mother, it looks exactly like a tapeworm!” she whispers.

  I drop it immediately. “Thank you, great, now I can’t look at it.” I smile at the tall, turbaned woman, hoping she didn’t hear or understand. “Merci, au revoir,” I say politely before moving off.

  Mia follows on my heels. “I saved you from yourself, trust me.”

  “You’ve saved me from everything I’ve picked up. How am I going to get any souvenirs?”

  I’ve been to this market many times over the last decade; nothing has changed. The same chicken truck, buckets of olives and mounds of brilliant spices, the same tourist-priced Provençal linens and local-priced produce. Nadine still owns the tiny tabac with the giant American flag over the register (“J’adore les Américains!”), and Olivier’s little olive oil shop is still there, where we stock up on the gel douche (shower gel) that smells exactly like the fields here. We buy our favorite Gordes treat, a croissant stuffed with almond paste, honey, and dark chocolate.

  Mia stops at a huge stall in the middle, where stacks of pale, waxy soaps in every shade of pastel are piled up, emitting a choky smell.

  “Why don’t you bring some soap home? It comes in a dozen scents.”

  “No, this soap goes mushy and the scent doesn’t last. I want to look for the family I always buy from.”

  We wiggle through the crowd to a little opening in a wall leading to a lot behind the square where a young father and his shy little daughter always sold fragrant, crescent-shaped bars of soap. She’d pack them up with a handful of dried rose petals and tiny silk flowers, tied with a ribbon. But they’re nowhere to be found today.

  “How sad! They were so special,” I say. From the moment we reached Gordes, something in me knew this would likely be the last time I come here. I wanted to buy them one last time.

  It feels strange to realize that you’re getting old enough to sense that something you’re doing or saying or someone you’re seeing may be for the last time. We pick up water at a little grocery where the woman who owns it remembers me, which also feels bittersweet. I look at the buzzing crowd behind us in the square we have to go through to get to the car. It’s not how I want to remember Gordes. Beyond the lot is a narrow rocky road cut into the hillside.

  “Why don’t we go the long way, Mia? Have I ever shown you this road? Hardly anyone uses it.”

  Soon the entire Lubéron valley is stretching out for miles far below us as we walk, with its checkerboard of farms and hilltop villages.

  “This was the back road I’d take into the village from Fontainille,” I tell her. Fontainille was the mas (farmhouse) that our friends Cristina and Jordana would have every August. It was where I was staying just after Mia went to Morava and I would sing lullabies out the window, wishing them all the way across the ocean to her.

  We stop to peek into the town’s little cemetery in the hillside, with its old tombs and war monuments.

  “There’s a really neat place where we can eat these before they melt,” I tell Mia.

  “Too bad the girls don’t have the house anymore. It would be nice to go back.”

  “I don’t know, it wouldn’t feel the same,” I reply. “Maybe you’re too young for this, but you know how memories can go from the active file to the ‘that part of your life is over’ file? Where you can’t feel the weight and sound and feeling of the moments in your body anymore, and the events finally die and become like an old black-and-white photo?”

  “I do. Certain places in L.A. felt like that the last time I was there. The park where I played soccer. It made me smile to drive by it, but I didn’t feel a connection to the park, I felt connected to the memory of it.”

  “Here we are.” I stop at a little gap in the cypress and pines and turn in. “Come on.”

  We push through bushes and overgrowth to where jutting out from the trees is a wide, flat stone completely hidden from the road. It seems to float over the valley. We sit cross-legged, very far from the edge, and take out the croissants, which are gooey by now. The honey oozes out at first bite.

  “Mmmm,” Mia sighs. “Just as good as I remember.”

  “We’re going to be a mess—I forgot napkins.”

  “What, you, forget something?! You have to walk home!”

  “Fair enough,” I laugh, licking the honey running between my fingers.

  “My goodness, now you’re licking your fingers. Before you know it, you’ll be talking too loud and burping with your mouth open.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, missy. By the way, do you know where we are?”

  “No, should I?”

  “This is where Cristina scattered some of her dad’s ashes.”

  “What?” She stops eating. “And we’re sitting here eating pastries?!”

  “Why not? Bob would have loved that we’re enjoying ourselves here. This was one of his favorite places in the world. I never saw him happier than when he was in Gordes.”

  She thinks a moment, then resumes eating. “Well, I suppose that’s a nice way to think about it. Kind of like Pashupatinath, death is just part of everyday life. Probably a healthier attitude.” She pauses. “Hey, Mom, not to be morbid or anything, but, well, aging eventually leads to death—”

  “And I am aging, right, yes, go on . . .”

  “Well, I’ve never told you this, but one thing I want you to do before you die is make me a CD of the songs you sang to me when I was a kid.”

  “Awww, that’s so sweet! Of course I will!”

  “Not just the lullabies, but Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, stuff you sang around the house.”

  “Any other requests? I mean, what with my practically decomposing by the minute and all.”

  “Well,” she says, hesitantly, “actually, yes. We’ve never talked about what you want me to do when you die, if you want to be buried or cremated or whatever.”

  Whatever?

  “If you want to be cremated,” she continues, “please don’t ask me to keep your ashes. I love you to pieces but I refuse to put you in a decorative urn on my mantel.”

  I laugh. “Me, queen of wanting as few things to dust as possible? Never!”

  “I don’t want you in a box in my closet, either,” she adds warily.

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll come up with something very creative and fun by the time I kick the bucket. I don’t want to spend eternity next to your flip-flops, I assure you.”

  This kid.

  Avignon’s newest arrival is Sa
rah, a family friend of ours whom my mom and I have missed sorely since leaving L.A. The first time I met Sarah I was seven years old and panicked about having been assigned to her second-grade class. I’d just seen Roald Dahl’s The Witches and was positive that this tall lady with long hair, fair skin, black boots, and a black outfit was a witch. Witch or no witch, however, she won me—and the whole class—over in no time, thanks to teaching math in a Dolly Parton accent, turning forest clearings into outdoor classrooms, and singing history lessons on her guitar.

  My mom was the second-grade art docent that year (budget cuts laid off art, music, and P.E. teachers, so parents stepped in lest we become overweight and uncultured), and she befriended Sarah, who quickly became part of the family. Today, Sarah’s a mélange of sister, second mother, and mentor.

  My mom and I have enjoyed acting like old-hand tour guides to a city we knew nothing of three months ago, taking Sarah to the bluff at sunset, shopping at the Villeneuve farmers’ market, introducing her to Chrystelle and the Bar les Célestins gang.

  Sarah and I took a walk down Rue des Teinturiers the other day, and she said how appreciative she’s always been that my mom shared me with her. “She never tried to get in the way, or was jealous of how close we became. I’m not sure if you realize how unusual that is—she was even thrilled that you sent me a Mother’s Day card one year!”

  I’d never thought much about it, but my mom did always let me form bonds with her friends and encouraged me to find female mentors. I think she felt that people have different life experiences, different dreams, different talents and interests, and the more exposure a child has to these, the richer their childhood may be, the broader their horizons.

  Having Sarah in my life nurtured and developed parts of me that my mom didn’t understand or relate to. As a talented painter and artist, Sarah identified with my love of sculpting and using pastels. She loved horses and riding just as much as I did, and has the same spontaneous-borderline-reckless streak that would have had her swimming with elephants, too. During the years that my mom was depressed, it helped to have Sarah take me on adventures, tramping through the woods in Topanga Canyon, swimming in the ocean at Paradise Cove, swinging from rope swings over waterfalls at Will Rogers State Park. She’s also très pas comme il faut, and couldn’t have cared less if she’d seen me sleeping in a hotel lobby clad in sweatpants and flip-flops.

  Today, the three of us are at Kristin’s house, talking and cooking in her kitchen, which overlooks a valley floor filled with the even rows of bright green grapevines.

  “Let’s go outside for a bit, get some fresh air,” Kristin suggests, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “It’ll be hot, but I’ll get us hats. We can walk to the river.”

  The elements hit us the moment the door opens: the pulsing hum of cicadas, the dry wind and beating sun. By the time we reach the river, the ice-cold stream is a sweet relief and we splash around for a while before heading back to eat the meal we prepared earlier. While waiting for Jean-Marc to finish his work in the distillery, Kristin lays out a large sheet for us in the shade of a giant tree in her yard.

  Sarah’s soon catnapping, and while my mom and Kristin talk quietly, I pull out my camera and scroll through today’s photos. On the walk, Sarah had pointed out how crisp and sharp the afternoon sun had made our silhouettes, and we clowned around with different poses and formations. It’s impossible to tell who’s who from the silhouettes; the photos just show curving female forms with arms extended upward, outward, one looking like an upright snow angel, another striking a yoga Warrior pose. There’s an ageless quality to them, a snapshot taken at just the right moment of four women at play, a capturing of laughter and wonderful female energy.

  Growing up, all I wanted was to be a boy, and I still envy certain things about them. They can pee standing up; they don’t have to deal with periods, labor pains, having men talk to your chest, or failing to attain the promotion or salary you deserve because of your sex. They don’t have the same fears of rape, of not feeling safe when traveling alone.

  But they’ll never know how uniquely powerful female kinship can be, it’s less permissible for them to express emotion or cry. They’ll never experience how amazing it is to know that your body can nourish and sustain human life. One time, when I mentioned to Chrystelle that childbirth sounded perfectly awful, she just smiled and said, “Yes, eet’s painful, but you weel not care. With Antoine, when the nurse first put ’eem to my breast, I know that I am never alone again een all my life.”

  I’m thinking of one thing after another that I absolutely love about being female and feeling better and better about myself after each one. I know what it’s like to reach a place within where I truly love and appreciate the unique qualities that make me me, but I’ve never felt a general gratitude and appreciation for my gender. It’s not about pitting one sex against the other, or deciding who has it better or worse—it’s just fuller and greater appreciation of femininity and womanhood.

  Womanhood. There, I said it.

  I say it to myself a few more times.

  I am a woman. I am a woman.

  It feels right this time; I’m pretty sure I could say it to someone else without rolling my eyes or wincing in embarrassment. Maybe in part because I’ve just spent an entire summer with women from all different age groups, something that isn’t always encouraged, or easy to do.

  Magazine spreads frequently advise us how to dress or take care of our skin based on what decade of your life you’re in (this usually spans from your twenties to your sixties, although I once saw a spread including the seventies; I guess they think we’re just beyond help at eighty). Nor do we tend to have close friends running the gamut in age; my friends in their twenties are almost exclusively close friends with other twentysomethings.

  I look at my mom and Kristin laughing, at Sarah stretched out in the afternoon sun, at a group of women in our twenties, forties, fifties, and sixties, women who are constantly evolving as we figure out who we are and what we want. Things that I’ve been grappling with, yet assumed were unique to my age and having just started out in life (conveniently, I also assumed they’d magically disappear as I matured).

  I think when I go home, I’ll see female colleagues less in terms of our age differences and more in terms of the shared experiences of our gender. I think I’m comfortable calling myself a woman because I understand that adulthood isn’t a destination, it’s a process, and, as women, we are always coming of age.

  It’s ironic that a religion that so deified Mary for her ability to do what God denied man the ability to do,” Mia says as she trudges along behind me in Avignon, “went on to so totally disempower women.”

  I love the way Mia’s mind works, how ideas are more important than things for her. We’re on one of our daily meanderings and, for a change, she’s deigned to let me lead in weaving through the spaghetti of passages and streets.

  “It’s because men don’t have the ability that they did,” I answer. “I think it terrified them and left them feeling utterly inferior. Someone pulling a live human out of their very person? It’s the ultimate thing to be jealous of and want to control.”

  I lead her to an unassuming archway in one of the endless stone walls behind the palace. I can tell she’s never seen it before, not that she’d admit it, Miss I-know-every-corner-of-the-city. We slip through it into a long, cool rectangle of sandy gray pebbles enclosed in ancient walls that are lined with huge sycamores. A hidden courtyard, another little gem I already know I shall miss come September. There’s a row of fifteenth-century windows with taupe-colored shutters overlooking the far wall; beyond the wall on our left rises one of the massive rear walls of the palace, blocking the lowering sun.

  We’re directly behind one of the biggest tourist draws in Europe, and somehow, miraculously, it’s absolutely silent here. It’s empty but for some pigeons and a couple sharing a book on a bench beneath a tree, holding it close between them to read. Mia’s as surprised as I was when
I stumbled in accidentally last week.

  “Here’s the best part,” I whisper, pulling her along to a spot between the trees on the right. She gasps when she sees it: a brilliant gold life-size statue of a man with his head thrown back laughing. Not a saint or a revolutionary hero. A regular modern-day Joe (I’m sorry, but he looks more Connecticut than French) in a short-sleeve shirt and khakis, barefoot, holding a book. Like your handsome English Lit teacher at a barbecue. It’s a perfect metaphor for a city that’s both a seat of learning and power as well as gritty and working-class, old money alongside North African immigrants, with a big gay community thrown in.

  A ray of sunlight blazes on Joe’s wavy gold hair. It would be a traffic-stopper in Manhattan or London. In this forgotten courtyard in Avignon, it’s astonishing, genius really.

  I cock my eyebrow and look at Mia. There are some advantages to stumbling around lost for a while. It allows for discovery.

  Call me a cheap date, but this simple little studio has pleased me more than any five-star hotel. Other than the floor, there’s almost nothing to clean or dust, which is freeing. There’s nothing in it that reminds me of anything, anyone, or anyplace I know, which is a kind of mental and emotional freedom.

  Most of us aren’t aware of how much of ourselves is bound up in our visual landscape—the chairs, dishes, clothes, the “stuff” that makes up a woman’s life—until we leave it. And while it may be true that you don’t always know what you’ve got till it’s gone, it’s also true that you don’t know if what you’ve got really matters till you realize you don’t miss it. Other than people, I don’t much miss my life back home.

  As I rise to have breakfast while Mia sleeps another hour, I suddenly realize what my crazy urge to take everything out of the studio was about. I want to wake up Mia and say Hey, Mia, it’s the room in Sister Act! I know she’ll remember.