The Answer is Yes

So the answer is yes, I miss Nice.

I’m back in the States, and my troisième étage apartment on avenue Auber seems very far away. The butch-blond florist running the shop downstairs, and her constant cigarettes, and the Arab woman and her husband who run the Italian café on my block, who would smile and say Bonjour or Bon Soir to me as I headed in and out of my building, are fading in memory.

My stomach muscles are losing their tightness; the Abdos Fessiers (abs and gluts) and Stretching classes I took at FitnessLand from the high energy young man and the slight, but equally energetic, woman in her thirties seem long, long ago.

I am still swimming, most recently at the Lexington Square pool in Arlington and Puffer’s Pond in Amherst, but the ease of swimming and the beauty of being able to float endlessly in the salty Mediterranean are now memories to be brought up from the recesses of my mind.

I am looking for Provençal rosé wine and white Burgundies, but the prices in the local wine store here are shocking. I miss the wonderful 3 and 4 euro bottles I could find so easily at Cocci Market around the corner in the Quartier Musicien.

But oh, I love having my big Maine blueberries again. I missed them.