Christmas 2014

What could be more pleasant than this moment?  Yes, this was happiness, there was no other word for it.  To be walking through a beautiful valley on Christmas Day with the laughing children of an old friend who used to kick your ass at tennis and had just kicked it again at Ping-Pong, this was the thing itself, and Steiner, for once, seemed to actually know it.

-Christmas in Paris 2002, Ronald K. Fried

The above doesn't really describe my experience this year, but close enough.  It's from a novel, someone else's imagined experience of visiting France and staying with his college friend from years ago.  

Maxine and I are in Mondonville, a suburb of Toulouse.  In the South of France.  With my college roommate from 35 years ago.  We've just been playing with his daughters.  Bill has never beaten me at tennis or Ping-Pong -- we don't do that.  But, we do sit and talk for hours, which is its own form of recreation.  Also, another form of the word recreation, we're recreating what we used to do all those years ago.  Just talking.  Exploring our differences.  Enjoying the time together.

So, while it's difficult at times (at least for me) to really understand happiness, I'm going to echo the author and call today by that name.  We, Maxine and I, are extremely lucky to live the life we do, and especially  to be here living our own version of what the paragraph above describes.

(Written and posted from Paris before we made the drive south.)

Merry Christmas to all!

Tom & Maxine

Mondonville, France