My own Joyeux anniversaire

Today is my first birthday since Olivier died and I have been dreading it.  Usually Olivier would greet me with “Joyeux anniversaire cherie’’ and hand me his gift while I was still in bed.  I would kiss him ardently and unwrap his offering in great excitement. It took a good three years for him to learn that it pleased me if he would buy a birthday card, too, and these were so touching I could never throw them out. It was worth the cajoling, because he would always write his birthday message to me in French.

Today I awake in a dull consuming ache of aloneness.  I never laze in bed, but today, bed seems the best option and I stay there propped up with pillows and do what Oli would do in bed every night of our married life. Read his latest book. I begin to read  13, rue Therese, by Elena Mauli Shapiro, one of the latest batch of Francophilia publications.  I received it last night as a gift from my darling neighbour Chris, who is aware of my thirst for any such literary offering.  I read that Elena grew up at that address and also that it is pure fiction. Nevertheless, I plough into it, oblivious to the dog scratching at the laundry door. He will be perplexed why I do not relent as I always do and let him into the living room. Not today.

I eventually do rise to pick up my mobile in the kitchen to take birthday calls, but scuttle back to my warm bedroom haven with a glass of water.  Puppy Oscar is in frisky pursuit because I have relented and opened the laundry door.   Daughters do telephone and so do a handful of friends. I brighten in their attentiveness and weep a little.

Today is the first birthday in my life when I have woken up alone.  There has been always someone else there under roof – my parents as a child, my husbands and the adult children.  Until today.   However, I do reflect.  I never really celebrate my birthday alone, because my only sister, Anne, was born on my 16th birthday, which is why I pick up the telephone and invite myself to her home for dinner tonight.

Not that I need to eat anything, much less more birthday cake, because son Tyson  and pregnant daughter-in-law Vanessa, are taking me to lunch at the Sheoak Café, now run by my stepson Xavier.

However, there are pedestrian things to do and by 11am, I am at the car wash.  It is here in this most unlikely, unromantic place, that the tears begin to flood my face. That poor café girl merely asks “How is your day?’’ and I see no reason to lie. I tell her it isn’t the best so far because it is my first birthday since my husband died two months ago.

“Oh dear,’’ she exclaims clutching her heart. “I am so sorry to hear that. If you take a seat over here it is nice and quiet.’’  Sympathy is the trigger for tears.

I am all mopped up and made up once more when the children take me to the Sheoak Café. It has a special place in my life long before I met Olivier and 20 years before my stepson bought it two months ago. It was where I picked up my children from the school bus. It was the corner store on the same road where I lived for 16 years of my life with my former husband and then as a single mother. It was a delicatessen back then and did school lunches. Here, too, former owners looked after my puppy Codger, a mischievous collie, and I would pick him up at the end of a working day.

Now, however, Xavier has acquired a spacious café recycled in a unique Australian manner with galvanised iron internal feature walls and a big pot belly stove in one corner. A French  lunch menu is offered today because last night the Café held a Bastille Day dinner. It is a wonderful surprise for this birthday girl. So, I order mushroom soup with truffle oil.  Its a chunky dish thick with juicy chopped mushroom pieces and it is full of flavour.   It reminds me of every lush mushroom dish I ever devoured in France with Olivier, although most of the Gallic soups we savoured were vitamised.  I remember the fields of mushrooms as big as cow pads we found in the Cantal, that first mushroom main course in Paris in 2004 and another year where Odile, awarded a Grandmother of France,  cooked an entrée of cepes picked from the fields that day and placed in a tureen on a long table where we sat on benches in Bienvenue, her restaurant in The Lot. It is remarkable how the French can wind a meal around mushrooms.  Vanessa has French onion soup and Tyson smacks his chops on each mouthful of Boeuf Bourgignon.  The very French lunch triggers happy hormones even though I know Olivier is not at the head of the table anymore.  Xavier’s partner Patricia joins us and presents their birthday gift – delightful Francophilia – a big Paris clock. Their quirky card follows  the French theme – with a photograph of the Mona Lisa in Le Louvre, Paris, with an old French museum guard propped up in the right hand lower corner. It is a reproduced gelatin-silver photograph entitled In The Louvre, Paris, taken in 1976 by John Williams.  I am thrilled with their thoughtfulness.

Gift-giving is important in our family life and Tyson and Vanessa gave me an extraordinary treat – a night at the opera to see La Boheme on Thursday.  Vanessa’s parents accompanied me and as we took our places in the dress circle I knew that I was loved and nurtured and that my life would continue to have joyful experiences even though Olivier was gone.  Olivier and I had never been to the opera together so this was something new to enjoy.  Vanessa has made me a birthday card too with the words “With Love’’ centred  in a medallion. My eyes are misty because I feel loved and here it is written in 3-D.  I actually feel a little like myself again.

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