Nice, France

February 25th, 2012

The year was 1940.  He was coming home from an extended business trip and although it was only four or five days it seemed like months to her. Patrick stepped down the two stairs off of the train, looking left and then right, but going straight through the exit, to meet Annette. Both were equally as anxious.  He had been imagining what she was doing.  Knowing she spent the morning at the market, choosing the freshest bouquet of yellow roses, which sat on their tiny kitchen table, waiting for him as she had. 
In 1940, Meaghan and I would have been the two outside the balcony looking up into their kitchen asking one another about the few petals we could see.  “Who do you think those are for?”  “Don’t you just love the way those sea green shutters look against the burnt red backdrop?” Annette didn’t notice us, because after the market she strolled down the beach, even took her shoes off for a while.  Had Annette been a part of this decade, she would have pulled down the sunglasses off her nose to look at the two of us.  Two friends taking pictures of each other with their feet in the sea, fresh bread in their hands, breaking off pieces for one another.  She would have smiled remembering a time when she did that.  She had forgotten her watch at home, but knew that at the third staircase she would begin her return.  Patrick would arrive at 6:15 in the evening and she was at least 15 strides behind in her schedule.  She spent too much time arranging the flowers, putting the vegetables away. But she didn’t put too much rush into her step for she knew she would arrive on time.  Her confidence is almost sickening.  But the way she carries herself is the opposite of pretentious; never bragging nor boasting.  She takes each day as it comes, because she is sure of herself. 
Her tiny heels clicked against the pavement as she skipped up two steps from the sidewalk to the entrance outside the station. As her second step hit the cement she lifted her head, out walking Patrick from the Gare de Nice Ville (Nice Railway Station). He squinted, lifting his ticket to block the setting sun. She had contemplated skipping the red lipstick and arriving a few minutes early, but Annette knew he would like it.  He set his square trunk-like suitcase onto the ground.  They hugged as if it had been months; he could barely, but would wait till after to give her a kiss.  He knew there were flowers waiting in kitchen but couldn’t resist. Annette isn’t surprised, yet eternally grateful, when she sees the bouquet of daisies in his left hand. How he managed the suitcase, the umbrella, and the flowers, while maintaining such a stride still amazes her.  They would turn, him on the left, she on the right.  Umbrella and suitcase in his left hand, the daises in her right, they would walk home; the setting sun on their backs with Nice, France in front of them.

I poked my head out of our own shuttered bedroom on Friday morning to find the rising sun outlining the shutters.  If Nice is a shutter, I’d die to be its window.  I’d be a fly sitting on the shutter soaking in the sun, watching Patrick and Annette pass. We strolled to the Basilica of Notre Dame, with light passing through the stained glass, as if in heaven.  Stopping to have croissants and coffee at Lou’s we were magnetically drawn to the end of the long avenue.  Our heads rolled on our necks, staring to the blue sky, eyes glittering.  When the force was too strong we knew we were near.  A narrow archway ahead we could hear the waves, see the sailboat.  Throwing of the arms out it was a, “here we are” moment.  Annette would have stood there watching us anxiously throwing off our boots, then our socks.  We would run over the rocks (for the beaches aren’t sandy in Nice).  Made of little pebbles, they barely irritated the soles of our feet because our souls were too warm.  Annette stopped (she was almost to the second staircase at this point) to look back at our feet in the water, listening the sounds of the cameras clicking, the giggles ensuing.  Even the businessmen took a break from work at 10:30 am to roll up their pants and have a taste of salt.  Annette would never laugh because she knew too well, as she did with the daisies, always be grateful for the feeling of a warm day.

We passed through the Cours Saleya Flower Market where Annette bought those flowers on the table.  Yellow roses, Provence soaps, and lavender from the summer before filled the air. Some were purely browsing, a few tasting, others buying.  We did all three.  Delicious olives, sun dried tomatoes for your bread, cheese on top, fresh raspberries in a basket.
We exhaled the old while inhaling the salty air as we walked with the curves with of the coast.  We picked our favorite contrasting shutter to wall color combination. We ascended up to Castle Hill along the cascading waterfall, to find a view of what we had spent the day exploring. What we hadn’t realized was this was only the beginning. The famous stretch of Promenade des Anglais was our foreground and the setting sun, our backdrop.  When the sun sets on Nice it reflects on the water, and in turn on your day.  It says, “look at me”, then “look at your day”, then “look at yourself”.  Look at all you did today, the beauty you were part of.  The beauty you are part of.
Everywhere I go is beautiful.  Is that to say that when I travel I expect to see beautiful things? Well now, everything can be beautiful if you really look at it.  But unimaginable, like Nice…I’m grateful for the beauty of Nice because, like Annette, you can expect something to be beautiful, but it’s the recognition of its beauty that makes it special.