I am more used to one-week vacations, or a week plus a weekend. The kind where, to maximize the value of your trip, you pack things in one after another, and you may come home mentally refreshed (because you did things that are different from the usual) but physically tired.
But when there is a long vacation—even a vacation broken up by some work days, as this one is—you get down time. Days where you don’t plan much at all.
Tuesday was like that. I barely even took any pictures.
The weather has taken a turn for the dreary; snow fell the night before, up high. We are thinking of bailing from Chamonix and heading for Italy sooner than we thought we might. Mark was worried I would not be happy about changing plans, but I told him, look, we’ll be in France for a while, then Italy for a while, then France again; I don’t need to know how long each part will last.
Anyway: we mostly stayed around the apartment. In the very early morning Mark took some of the children to the crag to climb. I had yogurt for breakfast, with cereal stirred in, and some green plums, and then for lunch I boiled pasta and mixed it with sauce and cheese and baked it, and set out a fruit plate, for the hungry climbers. And then I rested some more.
A friend (expat met on a previous trip) came by with one of her sons, the same age as our second-oldest; and he stayed to hang out with our kids while Mark and I and she went out for coffee.
Two coffees, actually: the first café allongé in a bar, seated at a too-high table (my feet dangled from the banquette) that had its own beer taps in the center of the table, with a sort of digital flow meter to know how much you should pay. The second in a very American-feeling coffeehouse, with comfy modern low chairs, people using laptops, and bagels for sale instead of croissants.
By now my caffeine buzz had grown formidable, so I went with the decaf americano.
We chatted about homeschooling and living in the valley. After our friend took her leave, Mark and I stopped at the grocery store and bought pain complet and pain de mie, grated gruyère, vacuum-packed steamed diced potatoes, salad vegetables, local jambon cru, plain yogurt and little flavored yogurt, pasta, wine, and melon.
We went back to the apartment and I rested (apparently I need a lot of resting) while Mark did some work on his laptop at the long table and the kids took turns going out to spend money in the town. Then I stumbled out and made dinner: green salad with thin-sliced raw turnip and red pepper, in a dressing of lemon and pepper and olive oil. And an omelette savoyarde.
The omelette was very basic, like a Spanish tortilla in style. The potatoes already having been diced and steamed, it was also quite fast. I melted a chunk of butter, maybe 2.5 tablespoons, in a nonstick pan, and cooked 250 g of potatoes until they were a bit brown and with some crispiness to them, but still soft, turning a couple of times. Then I beat 8 eggs and mixed in about 100 g shredded gruyère from a bag. Emmenthal would also have worked. I added a dollop of liquid cream and then dumped the potatoes and butter into the egg, mixing well, and seasoned with salt and pepper.
It all went back into the hot pan. I stirred and cooked gently for a while, lifting up the cooked egg to let the uncooked egg run down underneath, until it began to firm up; then I turned the heat down and put a lid on the pan until it had mostly cooked through. I inverted it onto a plate and cut it into wedges.
I think a bit of onion and parsley would have improved it, but it was quite good as is. Mark and I ate about half of it with salad and a bit of jambon cru and white wine. The kids were skeptical and ate leftover pasta. More omelette for me for lunch tomorrow!
After supper I rested (again) while the kids cleaned up the dinner. I was keeping tabs on an Internet friend who was in the midst of having a baby back in the states. As for Mark, he planned to meet our expat friend’s expat husband for a beer, and so after a while he put on a coat and set out. The kids finished dinner and settled themselves in front of computers to watch the Apple keynote and later some weird Spanish-language sitcom dubbed in French.
Mark came back late at night and settled down with me, gave me a kiss and reminded me how very lucky we are, lucky to have work that supports our family without ceasing to serve it, lucky to have shared values, something outside ourselves to believe in, and well-worn language for working out our differences; lucky to have each one of our five children, lucky to be raising them surrounded by other like-minded families, lucky to believe in each other, to believe in taking what we have and always looking for the way to make it work even better. Lucky to be acutely aware how lucky we are. It is impossible not to be grateful for everything, our material success obviously that lets us be here and having this time together, but most of all for the strength of these relationships laid down over years and years, days, mornings and afternoons and evenings, glasses of beer after dinner and cups of coffee before work.
Some time on vacation is worth spending doing nothing at all, nothing visible on the outside anyway.
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