Roommates
Today I woke up to the smell of one of Ruey’s amazing Saturday breakfast feasts. On random Tuesdays and Saturdays we have an open-air market down the street. Ruey ventured out while I was still sleeping and purchased all the fixings for a great breakfast.
In the time I had showered, dressed and wiped the sleep from my eyes, Ruey had transformed our dining room table to a breakfast banquet. Everything was under cover waiting to be discovered and there was a mysterious box on the far end of the table. Breakfast was revealed to be eggs over easy, sausage, sweet bread, 8 day old goat cheese (you can pick the age of these things apparently), and cereal. I always layer my cereal with some sort of granola/healthy type cereal on the bottom and sweet cereal on the top. Ruey always laughs at me, but there stood my cereal perfectly layered with granola, chocolate frosted flakes and golden grahms. Nice!
Ruey blessed the food and we had a lovely meal. Ruey made mention of the mystery box, but wouldn’t allow me to look until after I had finished my breakfast. Knowing my sweet tooth, he mentioned something about me never eating my breakfast if he showed me. So I ate my eggs like a good little girl. The box contained two slices of homemade pie from the market.
Nick came over shortly for a late breakfast and to do laundry. Homework dominated the better part of the afternoon until we simply couldn’t care anymore about space debris or the committee dedicated to defining it. It was time to venture out to the Monoprix to pick up some butter for cookies, but not before we recruited CanadaUpstairs to come with us.
It was decided in the grocery store that we should have alfredo for dinner, although we had to call it white macaroni and cheese for Nick’s sake. Dinner was yummy despite the fact that 1) none of us had ever made it before and 2) the little initial mishap where we put the cheese in too soon and made a giant cheese pancake instead of a homogenous sauce. Oh well, we figured it out. Made peanut butter blossoms with peanut butter shipped with love from the States.
So it was a fairly mellow day, but wait, it gets better. Ruey and I decorated for Christmas!!! With The Chipmunks rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” blaring in the background we began phase 1 of my ‘vision.’ Ruey was a good sport even if he didn’t know who the Chipmunks were right off the bat. Where do they raise kids these days? Honestly!
With our four strands of garland — two blue and two silver and a small bag of silver blue stars from Auchan; 3 strands of white lights imported from a fair in Amsterdam; and our Christmas tree hand-picked in the Norwegian Fjords we set to work.
Twisting blue and silver garland together with a silver star in the middle proved the mode for decorating both the hutch and the huge picture on the wall. The Norwegian Christmas Tree is pretty tiny so we only graced its beautiful boughs with a solitary star. Simple elegance. Standing and slipping simultaneously on the table and the window ledge, I traced the window with white lights while Ruey provided adhesive assistance and John Farrow-like nervousness for my well-being.
Now came the moment of truth: bringing the lights to life. We killed the overhead lights and while the video camera watched on, ignited the Christmas Spirit in our home with the illumination of the beautiful window with the white lace curtains and the condensation running down the panes like some scene from a movie. Merry Christmas!!!
We decided that even though France doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, hence justifying our early holiday décor, we should save the rest of the lights and future decorating for the day after Thanksgiving (but I'm not sure if we'll make it)!
The best is yet to come…
I was beaming. If I could only just get Maria (one of my best friends and former roommates) on the phone then this would have to go into the ‘best day of my life’ category. I called, she picked up. It’s impossible to communicate my joy at hearing the sound of her voice, we used to talk daily; it had been nearly a month. My mind flooded with memories of her friendship, tears came, words did not, just knowing she was there, knowing she knew was all I needed to know. Words finally came as did laughter, stories and heart. “Lichtenstein is my favorite country,” said I. “You’re my favorite country,” said she, “my favorite place to be.” Oh man, how crazy a conundrum this is: to have such precious friends that it kills you that they’re so close to your heart and yet so far from your physical location. But then again, the alternative, that of not having close friends, kindred spirits or friends worth missing is a different kind of pain, a tragedy I am not willing to endure.
Turning to Ruey before disappearing for the night, I said “it was a good day today, Ruey.” But then he already knew that…
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