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will ross home page > paris > meeting margueritte's cousins |
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[ 7 ] meeting margueritte's cousins margueritte's distant french cousin christian meneclier, with his mother denise, met us at our apartment on rue duvivier at ten o'clock saturday morning. christian had a late model mini van. i sat up front in the passenger seat, and margueritte sat in the middle seat with denise. margueritte and i spoke poor french, while christian and denise spoke a little english, so we had funny half-conversations. i pointed to a pair of runners. christian said, "jogguers." i said, "je suis un jogguer." the drive to christian's brother's home was beautiful. first we crawled through a maze of narrow, crowded streets to get out of paris. then we travelled northwest on a freeway across the seine towards normandy. i saw the skyscrapers of la defense. the road was full of cars going in both directions. the french countryside was open. there were wide swaths of forest and rolling grain fields right at the edge of paris. houses clustered in dense villages. large multistory apartment buildings were common. there were no "farms" as we know them, just fields planted in grain. the forests were entirely deciduous, straight trunked trees bare of leaves in the cool early spring weather of march. we pulled off the freeway and tore down a narrow two lane road with no shoulder. wheat was planted within two feet of the pavement. the road was barely wide enough for two cars to pass. intersections were traffic circles with yield signs in all directions. we slowed coming into a small village and turned down a one lane street hemmed in by buildings and walls flush against the gutter. we parked by a pile of rubble, appearing to be remnants of a stone foundation of unknown age. phillipe and christine's home was the next building. welcomed inside their home, we got our first air "kiss-kiss" greeting. family members did four kisses with each other. we did only two clumsy air kisses on the cheeks because we didn't know any better. we met christian's two brothers phillippe and yves, and their wives christine and vera. we stood in the kitchen, drinking champagne and snacking on olives, pistachios and cheese. vera and christine spoke halting english, as did phillippe. we met the dog and cat. margueritte brought out her gift box and gave it to christine. it was a beautiful shaker box she had made years earlier with her children. inside was a bottle of california wine (silver oak cabernet sauvignon), california raisins, pistachios and other items.
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