Or: My Friend Jean! (And one of my sons, rather jealous of the attention, the mask, and the drinks that MFJ was receiving - heh! heh!)So. I've been trying for ages and by all means possible (including, of course, friendly but unrelenting harrassment) to get My Friend Jean to get herself (and her boys) over here. And then, one fine day not long ago, it all began pulling itself together! (The boys couldn't come this time, but as you may well imagine, we're already working on that for the next time...)
And it was one helluva big, long, too-short, joyful, teary, catch-up, moutarde, sleep-over, sally forth, eat up, drink down, silly willy, tongue twisting time all the way from the first to the last of the hugs and a sad sayonara. The only thing that made her leaving again bearable was knowing that we'd be saying "Hiya!" to her and her boys in just a few days, on the other side of the Big Pond.
Here are a few pics from the five-and-a-half days we all spent together, starting with some from the huge "do" that Jean-Philippe organised at Arte for the end of the "school year". It was a fantastic party, made all the more so by the artistic intervention that (he and) a group of eight artists - otherwise known as Interim - put on during the week that preceded the party, and which culminated on that night. As you can probably tell from the images below, we had a great night. And the artists' work was truly spectacular. So, for that matter, was the musical intervention of our favourite DJ-ing duo. And the food. And the drink. And the... You get the picture.
1) Jean-Philippe being interviewed 2) the hellivator 3) two women in the talking toilets
1) artist-cum-tour-guide 2) way-swank work 3) artist-cum-interventionist
1) I want that little orange television set! 2) the coolest sortie ever 3) My Friend Soapy (don't be fooled: behind all that fur is a heart of gold!)
1) Dirty DJs 2) Dirty Dancing vol. i 3) Dirty Dancing vol. ii 4) Dirty... oops! Sorry.
1) a strange little sign on the door of a strange little craft store in Barr 2) four strangers in the doorway of a dilapidated church 3) three of the four strangers looking at a strange beetle, about equidistant from the strange sign and the dilapidated doorway
1) Tomi's first attempts at self-portraits (and when he was looking through the pics with me later, he saw the belly shot and said, "Oh! Je l'ai raté, cette photo de moi (Oh! I screwed up that photo of me)!" just as I was saying, "Oh! Great shot of dolphins jumping!" He looked at me sideways and smiled, knowingly, but not without a bit of extra pride, anyway... sigh... My little bunny...) 2) a work of art co-authored by Jean and Tomi (who had seen Jean working on the side panels of a paper airplane Leo had made for her, and was so impatient for her to do the side panels on HIS plane, that he hijacked her job of writing the plane's name, before pleading with her to draw a caterpillar (to start with)
1) Phone Tag 2) Name Tag (ah! Serendipity!) 3) À la carte : Canard à la Jean's last meal in Alsace, accompanied by an array of assays and one sure thing: good aulde Alsatian Pinot Noir. Mmmm...
1) snif! 2) What we both saw when we returned home that day (me from dropping Jean off at the train station and Jean when she landed in CR/IC airport and drove through the saturated lands surrounding our home town... yikes). Just a couple of minutes after dropping Jean off, I walked in the front door to see JPhi and the boys sitting down to breakfast in the kitchen. Tomi asked where Jean was, and I explained. A very-VERY sad look came over both boys, and Leo made a cry of pathetic indignation. Tomi told me that made him very sad, and that that was why he was so sad the night before (when I went in to kiss them good-night, after she'd read to them and they understood that she was leaving in the morning). We talked about this, and about the fact that we were going to see her in a couple of weeks, and the excitement that this idea instilled helped a bit. And then, all day, there were these funny coincidences. For instance: I showed them a few movies from when they were smaller (which even I hadn't seen since they'd been taken), and at the end of one, someone behind the camera yelled "JEA--!" just as the film was cut. The boys both screamed with delight, "JEAN! JEAN!" then looked to see where she was on the screen, and were confused at first that she wasn't there - and then kind of pissed off. We had to have the conversation about seeing Jean in a couple of weeks again... And again...
In other words, and if it weren't already patently obvious:
We all miss Jean.
* Don't you just hate inside jokes?
