But why, mama?

The circus came to town. Helen was in town and she and I took the kids. We opted to spend the few extra euros for ring-side seats. Sounded worth it just to avoid the discomfort of the bleachers. It was a very cute mom-and-pop kind of an organization. It featured a goat. Only in the south of France would a goat be considered a legitimate act for a circus. It was pretty cute and did some very goat-like balancing. In addition to the goat there were a number of other barnyard animals plus a few exotics like horses, llamas, an anaconda. You know, the usual. There were 4 human performers: a clown (who was introduced as an American. Ha ha), two women both of whom did acrobatics of sorts, and another guy who was the master of ceremonies/jugglar/animal trainer. The whole thing was surprisingly entertaining. The kids loved it, of course. But I think if you asked them they would say their favourite thing was the caramel-corn (popcorn sucre, en français).

We celebrated Easter here in our usual way. We had our annual egg-hunt. Can it still be annual if the location has changed so entirely and none of our usual neighborhood children were here? I don’t know. But, I still like to think of it as our annual event, no matter where we are. Jasper, for some reason did NOT want to invite any of her friends to it. I think she might be embarrassed at our French, but that is just my guess. It worked out okay though. We had plenty of people. Some friends from Switzerland were here for the weekend, and they have 9 year-old twins who joined in the activities. And we invited a couple of Maddox’s friends: Hannah (of course!), & Amalie and her sister Ellie. We did it in the later afternoon, which meant the adults were standing around drinking wine rather than coffee, which was a decided improvement. As usual we had lots of little chocolate eggs, plus the “grand prize” (a giant egg filled with Easter bunny snacks – carrots etc). Maddox wants me to tell you that he found the giant egg.

We just got back from a 3-day trip to Cathar country, also known as the “country of countries” because the south of France in the middle ages was a bunch of independent city-states. There are many cool castle-like sights to see, from crumbling ruins (Peyrepertuse) to still-lived-in cities (Carcasonne). Mark will be blogging about this too. I mostly want to say that I loved this trip. My favorite day was the day we drove to Peyrepertuse and back. We (accidentally) had no paper map with us at all and were relying entirely on our GPS (have I mentioned how much I loooove my GPS?). it was really kind of fun to have no idea where we were, where we were going, or how we were going to get there, but still being totally relaxed about it. I realized it was like having a local in the car telling us which way to go. We were on lots of tiny roads and the country was varied and gorgeous. For her own mysterious reasons, Madamoiselle TomTom (what we call our GPS) took us on one route on the way there and a different route on the way home. It was great. It was like we toggled a “take us on a scenic round trip” button on accident.

It was amusing to me, some of the discussion we got into with Jasper and Maddox on this trip. Some of them I could have predicted (who were the Cathar’s?, what is religious persecution? why?) others were a bit of a surprise (what is a dungeon?, what is torture? why?). It is always interesting to me how hard it is to explain some of these things to kids. Especially the why questions. As we sat at the top of Peyrepertuse, I explained to Maddox why it was a good strategic place for a castle. It was built at the top of a steep hill, to keep invading armies out, etc. But I was hard-pressed to explain they why of it. Why did armies come along and try to invade a castle? The answer to, ‘to take it over’, was of course immediately followed by another (and really unanswerable) ‘why?’. Why, indeed? Just like the why’s about religious persecution. Why did the medieval catholic church feel the need to engage in crusades against the Cathar’s? The sorts of answers I could come up with that might satisfy an adult (political power, greed etc) just don’t cut it with a kid. Being unable to answer these questions satisfactorily for the kids ended up making the experience of being in these places that much more powerful for me. It forced me to just sit with it: Why?