A Golden Pause - A Life-Changing Two Weeks
- By: Samantha Falewee
- Created on: 09/20/2009
- Rated By 1 Users
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Everything was so bare.
Cap Benat, a remote community in the south of France, is perched on a rocky ledge over the Mediterranean Sea. It was none of the things I expected it to be. I was still reeling with jetlag when I found myself under the blinding sun, climbing rocks with little 8 year old Mathilde. When we reached the top, the scene took my breath away, it was beautiful, yes, but everything was so bare – gold sand, a stretch of blue water, an enormous canvas of sky – and littered here and there on the beach were small clusters of families, just dots amid the brilliant colors.
This simplicity was the strongest characteristic of this unassuming place, and the reason why I fell in love with it. Everything you saw, everything you did, was essential, basic, the simplest and purest form, just like the landscape that ran for hundreds of miles around you. The family that I stayed with ate the same, simple food every week, not because they had to, but because that was what you did in the South. You never wasted anything. You always ate this pasta, this rice, these tomatoes with that white cheese. And the family – I had never seen such a strong bond. The house had several empty rooms but the children and cousins always stayed together, I watched a young girl and her father spend hours circling and splashing in the tiny pool.
Every day was the same; after breakfast the family immediately packed lunch in the cooler (held shut by a tied string), drove the boat to a beach where other families and friends were waiting, and we spent all day there, eating cold rice and mixed salads, climbing rocks and swimming in cerulean water. I fell asleep under the white sun – the sun here was never yellow, always white, a burning, blinding white – to the lull of the adults' foreign conversation in rolling notes of French. The afternoons were always centered around what was for dinner – even though it was never a surprise – and the table always stretched to accommodate 12 to 18 people, from ages 8 to 65. Everyone always had their same napkin; everyone generally sat in the same place. In the evenings the large group of cousins slowly meandered down to the empty beach, where we would tell stories, look at the stars, and loll about doing nothing in particular.
I loved this new, ageless family. I loved the little girl Mathilde who taught me how to make friendship bracelets, I loved the adults as they sat at their end of the table, sipping red rosé and leaning back in their chairs. I loved especially the cousins, even when they laughed uproariously at my large “American” suitcase the day I arrived. I loved the feel of the soft tile swishing under my feet as I walked down the hallway in the early mornings, always the first one up. Sometimes I grew frustrated with certain things. They have been coming here every summer for years now, why don't they just buy a new cooler that closes properly? But, as I learned, this wasn't done. Things stayed the same here, things did not change; superficial things I had thought were important lost all meaning. I learned to love these strangers, to look at life in the most basic way. I became a stronger person. My last day there, I wrote in my journal, "How can a person not feel strong here? I am golden. I am alive. I am a wave. I am invincible."
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