The summer I was 19, I spent four months as a waitress on Long Island.
It really wasn’t a bad situation. I had my parents’ entire Hampton’s house to myself for the first two months while everyone else finished up school in the city and a brand-new driver’s license. I would get up early and drive into town before my 10 a.m. shift, get an iced coffee at the town bakery, sit in one of the comfy chairs by the window, and read travel memoirs. There was something, that summer, that appealed to me about the escapism of it all, an escapism founded, not in fiction, as I so often prefer, but in reality – in the true adventures of other people.
Perhaps it’s telling that six months later, I had moved to France.
One of the books I read at this time was a classic of the genre, Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, a self-deprecating, wholly English look at what it is to move to the country that has become my home, overcoming the hurdles, cultural differences, and linguistic barriers and, of course, learning to fall in love with it: its unique rhythms and customs and its overwhelming love of the culinary arts, from wine to restaurant dining to home-cooked meals.
I think what I loved the most about A Year in Provence was how Mayle retains his Britishness while also slowly but surely becoming a local of the little town in the Lubéron where he and his wife have purchased a home. In retrospect, it’s everything that I have wanted for my own transition to expat life: firm roots, but an ability to embrace the new.
My dog-eared copy has since come everywhere with me. While the book, as its title suggests, takes place over the course of an entire year (and actually begins in January), it has always struck me as a summer read, the perfect book to enjoy with a glass of rosé – especially on Bastille Day (or as the French would prefer we call it, fête de la fédération).
Happy 14th, and santé!