Dear friend,

These are precious days.

Tomorrow, Viola will be married. And these days, as a dear friend once said at a similar occasion, one is “un sac à larmes.” Larmes, from the Latin lacrima, are tears. A profound and wordless emotion, neither sorrow nor joy, something more intense, more alarming, and more powerful, traverses one’s being – et on fonde! One dissolves, melts, and is shaken to one’s core.

Our daughter is being married from a place where she was brought as a baby. Here, in her first summer, I watched her sleep on our bed on a warm afternoon. She opened round blue eyes, stared unseeingly at the ceiling, and shut them again in deep and untroubled sleep. A miracle become flesh: that is a baby.

Here in this place, she smiled for the first time, learned to sit up, rolled off the sofa, took first steps, tumbled down the stairs, and learned to speak and to run.

She was my tiny companion. I had decided to keep bees. Twice a week, I carried little Viola down to the hive, laid her in the grass, and fed the bees their glucose water. Perhaps the bees cleverly worked out the subterfuge – that we would eat the honey they were laying up so carefully, while they must be satisfied with sugar water laced with antibiotics. One day, enraged, they surged out of their hive and one of them stung me on the thigh.

Viola! She lay peacefully looking up at the sky, unaware of the flying demons just a few feet away.

I gave up bee-keeping.

One of the older children gave me a puppy he had found hiding in the woods, abandoned. My mother thought it a risky enterprise with a newborn in the house. But the little dog took a great liking to Viola. He delicately chewed her toes while she lay on my lap, as if she were another puppy. They took une sieste together, entwined on a blanket while I weeded my garden.

Viola played the part of the baby in a play created by the older children for Monsieur’s birthday. They heroically saved her from a wicked witch, played by your correspondent. Monsieur was greatly amused, and so was Viola. She gurgled happily, oblivious to the peril that hovered so near.

Once when Viola was two, she pinched her finger while playing with a. clothespin. She gave an outraged shriek and then cried.

“Ah!” said her grandmother. “Viola has learned that not all surprises are good ones.”

She stroked her head fondly. There was a hint of melancholy in her gentle voice. Viola sniffed and allowed herself to be comforted.
I could continue for pages…but I must turn my attention to the events of today…to little details like a missing violin, 16 people arriving for lunch, someone’s untethered dog, and the ministrations of le coiffeur, who is helping Viola and me prepare for the rehearsal dinner.

Above all, I turn my attention with all my heart to my Viola, at this delicate and momentous tournure of her life.

A la semaine prochaine, and to precious days…and to happy times to come au Château de Courtomer !