The benefit of this sleeplessness, I suppose, is that I'm getting more reading done here than I tend to do at home. I've nearly finished the Harry Potter series Finn and I began together this spring (I stopped reading them to him following book IV, as the tone of the books got too dark for his four-year-old imagination, but I was already hooked at that point and have kept reading). The drawback is that my patience in the morning is thin, something Nathan and the kids have noticed. On just five short hours of sleep, Finn's voice seems somehow incredibly magnified. Vivi's whining seems constant. I'm feeling a bit guilty about my lack of patience with them and have already vowed this morning to "recalibrate" my attitude for the rest of the day.
Today we're headed out on our first beach excursion. We'll take a bus from Hyeres out to the coast. The beach isn't far, but it's a little farther than we'd want to walk. We're all looking forward to dipping our toes into the water of a new sea, and I'll post photos of the day later.
This morning, our task was to do a bit of grocery shopping. I have to admit, while I don't mind shopping at home, I'm getting a bit tired of doing it with such frequency here. We can only buy as much as we can carry, as we have to walk to the store, which means we shop every three or four days. We buy bread daily (this I don't mind, as it's sheer pleasure walking to the boulangerie each morning, then carrying home a lovely, golden, freshly baked baguette for the day's meals), and every other day or so we stop and buy fresh fruit and vegetables at one of the streetside markets.
As we walked to the store, we talked about the need to shop so frequently here, versus our usual once-a-week grocery trip at home. We talked about the expense of food here--which to us seems quite high--and about how locals must eat conservatively in order to afford the cost of living here. In fact, they seem to do most of their living conservatively. I mentioned the other day the lack of clothes driers here, and the habit of instead drying clothes on the line in the (free) breeze. The toilets have very little water in their bowls, and many of them have two flushing options--"big flush" and "little flush" (I'll let you interpret when each of these would be useful)--as a way to save water. There is no dishwasher in our apartment, and the landlady left us a note when we first arrived urging us to remember that water is "precious and rare" and requesting that we consider this when washing dishes and taking showers. I've also noticed the price of clothing (extraordinary), the small size of closets (meaning one owns fewer things), the tiny proportions of cars and other automobiles, the lack of air conditioners in a place as warm as the south of France. The French are conservative with their resources -- very conservative, when compared to Americans, and I'm seeing (as I was told I would before coming here) that many of the daily habits we take for granted at home are in fact luxuries.
I know none of these thoughts are new; most of the world has recognized American luxury for decades (and, I think, even if we don't spend a lot of time dwelling on it, we Americans are aware of it too). I also realize that, as critics of American culture have been saying for years now, our standard of living is not sustainable. I'm not saying here that we need to drive smaller cars, walk more, recycle, etc. (though, of course, we do need to do all of those things). I'm saying I can't imagine we in the States are far off from being forced into the same kind of conservation I'm seeing here. Especially given our current economic conditions.
Again, this is not news to anyone, but, being immersed in the reality of a more conservative way of living here, I'm recognizing more fully than I did at home what a challenge this shift will pose for us. I miss not worrying about how long or how hot my shower is. I miss not counting toilet paper squares! And, though I really do love all the walking we're doing here, I am rather tired of spending so much of my time at the grocery store.
In addition to that, one of my major frustrations with living in New York has been the cost of housing. Our rent is, in comparison to rents we've paid on the west coast and the midwest, astronomical for the amount of space it buys us; and forget about owning a home (or, gasp!, a yard) on a teacher's salary in the metro-New York City area. It seems the situation here in France is not all that different. There are a few single-family homes on the fringes of Hyeres, but they seem to belong to the upper middle-class and wealthy (and, honestly, even the biggest of these I've seen is not all that big by American standards); the majority of the population here seems to live in apartments. Ross mentioned at one point that many of those single-family homes are also multi-generational--a way to both afford more space and, I would guess, more easily accommodate elder- and child-care. I know this is the way much of the world lives, and we in the U.S. are the anomaly. But I wonder how long it is before we have to adopt a similar standard of living, and how difficult it will be for us to adjust.
I feel a bit ridiculous posting all of these truly obvious thoughts. It isn't that I didn't intellectually understand all of this before coming to France (I might live in a small space in NY, but it's not beneath a rock). I'm simply understanding more personally what the reality of our changing economy will mean, and, to be honest, the recognition is a little bit uncomfortable.
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