Tension and trauma

From then on, the car ride, the interlude in Monaco, the arrival in Marseille, we had both been calm. Except I noticed Nando had been acting more harshly to me, more critical, more impatient than he had been for several months. I asked him if he had been advised not to take his anti-depressant these final pre-op days. Oh no, he had continued to take them, he said.

So I figured this hostility was his way of releasing his tension. "Why do the traumas of the people nearest you always bring out the worst in you? It’s supposed to be the opposite: when the worst happens, it often brings out the best in people. Not you though."

In or out?

What to do about dinner? Were we supposed to go out to eat? Eat by a certain hour? Not eat? What were our options? For dinner, we were told, it was best to order something from outside and eat in our room. The gates of Chateaux Sylvaine close at 8:30 pm and no decent French restaurant would open its doors before 8:00 pm. So what should we do? Nando was inclined to go out. He gets claustrophobic in enclosed spaces. And we both knew we’d wind up becoming very acquainted with this room over the next 36 hours.

Shorthair disappeared for a few moments, then announced that Dr. Delos said it would be okay if we wanted to go out for dinner. Just be back by 10:30 pm. They would delay locking the gate and activating the downstairs alarm system on our behalf. We weren’t excited about that prospect either. Nando was tired and neither of us knows Marseille. The two nurses hadn’t been able to suggest any decent nearby restaurants. So we opted for "dining at home". Shorthair brought a little booklet of the kind distributed in hotels and tourist offices with takeout menus from a variety of Marseille restaurants.

Comparison shopping

"I can see why Nicole prefers to have her interventions done in Paris," Nando said dryly.

"I can see why too, but I don’t think it's the room. The one night most people are here, they are recovering from surgery and I don’t think they are much concerned with what the room looks like. It’s afterwards, when you are hanging around in between the medical checks. You can’t compare shopping in Marseille to shopping in Paris."

The staff this night consisted of the young overweight stupid nurse (or attendant) and a young, short-haired nurse who spoke some English. Their standard answer to every question I fired at them was "You have to ask Dr. Delos." Great. "And when do I see Dr. Delos?"

"Tomorrow, before and after the intervention."

Cutting through the fog

We stopped at a roadside Autogrill just after Savona, and Nando had a light lunch. Another brief stop to see friends in Monte Carlo. Then on and on and on to Marseille. At least there was no fog once we hit the coast. Many tunnels, twists and turns, and, as we approached Marseille proper, the clog of holiday shopper traffic clocked in late-afternoon dusk.

However, there was no other car in sight when we pulled up in front of Chateau Sylvaine at 5:30 pm. "Maybe we should be at the Institut du Santè?”, wondered my husband. I wondered the same. There were lights on in two of the five upstairs windows at the Chateau, though, so he rang the bell to ask, disappeared behind the thick wooden double doors, and was gone for several minutes.

Twists and turns

Dr. Mariani, who owns the kennel where Homer will be staying, is a veterinarian by profession. He was in a white surgeon's jacket when we arrived. A coincidence or an omen? He was "attending to" a dog, he said. An autopsy, Nando guessed. As usual Homer got the pole position box, the one with greatest visibility to humans who might be on the grounds. It's small consolation but it's something. As we drove away, he had realized what was happening and was throwing himself against the wire bars, crying plaintively.

It's a long drive from Busto to Marseille, and it feels longer in fog. A thick winter fog covered most of the autostrada from Milan to Genova, and I did something that never happened to me before in YEARS of driving from Milan to the South of France. I -- unbelievably! -- missed the turnoff after Tortona for Alessandria-Ventimiglia. We wound up obliged to traverse the Milan-Genova route: fewer tunnels but narrower with many twists and turns. Not pleasant for me, with a headache descending and me driving at that point, to endure an extra half hour of road time.

Pain . . . in the neck

Medicine is not recommended while driving. Well, that’s cute. How are we supposed to get from Busto to Marseille? Okay, there will be two of us in the car, we can pinch each other awake. Among the goodies prescribed for me is a box of suppositories for "doleur". Oh the French, they do love anal ingestion! The good thing is that this stuff has codeine, meaning they are serious about the prospect of pain. I woke up today wondering what I would do if I got a headache, and sure enough I got a headache. It's worsened over the course of the day but "rien a faire" I don't know if I can take my beloved Prontalgin today. So I’ll have to suffer with it. Maybe Nando will take pity and rub my neck. But he has been in an unpleasant mood all day. Perhaps he is nervous too?

Learner and lower

Yesterday afternoon when I was ironing, the song "I've grown accustomed to her face" popped into my head. Not by chance, since we leave for Marseille tomorrow.
I've grown accustomed to my face.
It always makes my day begin.
I've grown accustomed to each line,
Each wrinkle, thick or fine,
The sagging cheek,
The jawline weak.
They’re second nature to me now,
Like breathing out or breathing in.
I'm disadvantaged as a woman
If I don’t rejuvenate,
But the thing that most concerns me
Is if what I buy I’ll hate.
I've grown accustomed to the me that I am used to see,
Accustomed to my face.

Any room at the auberge?

My big regret, comme d’habitude, is having to leave Homer in a kennel. He HATES staying in a kennel. For me, that's the worst part about traveling.

I called a couple of auberges in Provence today and there is no problem for space. Americans are staying away from Europe in droves, and other international travelers aren’t any more enthusiastic about flying. So I won't reserve till we get to Marseille. We are in the clinic Monday and Tuesday nights anyway, and Wednesday night the clinic has booked a nearby hotel for us, nothing fancy or charming but convenient for my Thursday am visit. We can walk from one to the other if we feel ambitious. After Thursday morning we are free till the following Wednesday.

My charm quotient for hotels is limited by Nando's lack of interest in enriching the coffers of Relais et Chateaux, Chateaux et Hotels Independents and Relais du Silence. We'll have to play it by ear.

Petit tour de Provence

We'll stop off in Monte Carlo to see friends and stretch our legs, then drive on to Marseille. Two days later, bandaged and blue, we will set out for a petit tour de Provence, visiting, not necessarily in this order, Aix-en-Provence, Arles,  Nimes, and Orange. Unless we or the weather is not up to it, we’ll conclude by driving from Aigues Mortes to St. Maries de la Mer, the two cities book-ending the Camargue. The winter is the only time to visit the Camargue because otherwise it is knee-deep in mosquitoes. Then we'll stop again in Marseille for my final check and to remove the stitches (arggh), and then in Monaco or a Carrefours (my favorite French superkmarket chain) somewhere to buy bread, smoked salmon, creme fraiche, Dijon mustard, Armagnac and champagne before heading back to Busto. So much for the weight loss dimension of the trip.

Pros, cons and calories

It’s true, there are plenty of lovely places to visit in Provence, but it's hard to make a decision:
1. We haven’t nailed down a budget so I am uncertain where to book price-wise. Hotels in France are generally less expensive than their counterparts in Italy, so one is tempted to trade up to a nicer place: flowers on a sunny balcony, fluttering lace curtains in the room, fresh croissants and steaming cafe au lait served in a breakfast garden. That is the image the tourist board wants to promulgate anyway.
2. But I don't know how I will feel. What's the point of an inn near the Camargue if I don't feel like walking? What's the point of an in-town relais if I look gasp-awful and don't want to be seen?
3. I don't know about the driving. Since my eyes are part of my intervention and ALL of Nando’s, we may not want to drive at all, and that would mean staying in Marseille the whole time.
4. I don't know about the eating. Nando is trying to lose weight (he needs to, for the diabetes) and me, well, the aftermath of an operation, ANY operation, is an ideal time to take off a few pounds. So is the hiatus before the holidays. Therefore, why pick a place known for divine food if we won't want to be tempted?

Considering the falloff in tourism just now, with everyone traumatized in the wake of 9/11, and given that early December is low season anyway, I may just bring a guidebook or two and wait till we get there -- then decide day by day.

Through glasses darkly

I picked up my glasses today; the first glasses (other than reading glasses and sunglasses) I have owned in 38 (ouch) years. Among the instructions from Marseille was the admonition that contact-lens wearers should expect to wear glasses for the first week or so after the operation. Because I didn't own a pair of glasses I had to find a local optician who would make me a pair quickly. I figured I’d better get used to them BEFORE the surgery, because I didn't know how long it would be before my eyes could wear them afterward.

Oh the first time I put on the glasses, they felt so STRONG. Blinding, almost. Could the fact that I haven’t owned a pair of prescription glasses since the age of 16 have something to do with vanity? I had stubbornly refused to buy them all these years because it seemed like a betrayal of my faith in contacts, but now I wonder if egotism also had something to do with it.

Cann-es-thesiologist

I had stumbled over the mention of "removing staples" and was circling round that phrase in my mind, not paying a lot of attention to the rest. But Nando DID want to go ahead. He was chafing at the bit. He couldn't wait. "This anesthesiologist -- can we choose someone in Milan? Do you work with someone in Northern Italy?"

Dr. Delos shook his head. "No. My anesthesiologist is here in Marseille, and accepts appointments only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays."

Today was Wednesday. We would be driving back to Cannes after our appointment, and I was tied up there the rest of the week, after which we'd be driving back to Milan. I wanted to arrive early enough Friday evening to pick up Homer from the kennel.

But Nando wasn't one to give up easily. "Do you work with any other anesthesiologists? In Cannes, perhaps? Nice? Monte Carlo?"

Corniche

Nando and I passed part of that impressive project as we searched for Corniche Kennedy, found after a couple of wrong turns. Just as I had imagined, the Corniche is a wide boulevard overlooking the sea. When we had lived in the South of France, we traveled a corniche every time we got in the car; the Basse, Moyenne, and Grande Corniches are the connecting wires of the Côte d’Azur, and they all overlook the Mediterranean. The French word "corniche" comes from the Italian "cornice", or frame, and the three corniches brilliantly frame the splendid sea view beneath them.

An "S" in Marseille?

Another dimension of Marseille is flagged by the fact that Anglo-Saxons spell it with an "s" -- Marseilles. According to a local businessman I had once interviewed, the reason is because there are so many aspects to Marseille(s). It is a port city, a city of history and culture, an industrial power, and its port area and surroundings encompass the largest urban redevelopment project in Europe.

About Marseille

Marseille is a two-hour drive from Cannes under normal circumstances. Our appointment at Chateau Sylvaine was set for 12:30 pm. but because we didn’t know exactly WHERE in Marseille it was, we left our hotel at 9:30 am. The autoroute is not twisty and turny because it doesn’t follow the coastline, as does much of the autostrada from Genoa to the Italian-French border, so we arrived in Marseille more than an hour early.

We had both visited Marseille before. It is the second largest city in France, boasts the country’s largest port, and celebrated 2,600 years of history in 2000. An American consulate used to be located here and it was the nearest place to notarize documents and the fastest place to renew passports. The classic joke about Marseille is, "What is the second language spoken in Marseille?" The answer: "French", in recognition of the large Arab-speaking population of the city.

Tunneling through

It is a four-hour drive from Busto to Cannes, driving aggressively on the autostrada, the toll highway that runs from the Swiss border down to Genoa, then twists and winds through 115 tunnels between Genoa and the French border. Speed limits may exist but they are rarely controlled, unless you are in a Ferrari or Porsche going 120 miles or more an hour. Nando doesn’t drive THAT fast, but he is, shall we say, an assertive driver. So we shared the driving responsibility.

We didn’t talk much about the pending medical appointment en route. I was thinking about the trade show and the many appointments that awaited me Monday and Tuesday. Nando was planning to visit friends on those days, since the trade show itself was no longer of interest to him. We would worry about Chateau Sylvaine (the name of Dr. Delos’ facility in Marseille) and whatever decisions might have to be made there when the time came and not before.

The full monty

The rest of the evening, while my husband and John talked puts and calls in the forex market, Nicole described in detail every cosmetic intervention she has had in the last eight years. Dr. Delos’ artistry had been such a success, it seems, that she had gone on for breast reduction surgery, a tummy tuck, blepharoplasty on her eyelids, further work on her forehead, liposuction on her hips, and within the next year or so, bien sûr, she would be doing another full facelift.

Marseille wasn’t the most exciting place in the world for Nicole, so she had opted to do most of these successive operations in Paris. The shopping is better, there is more nightlife, restaurants are top-notch, and Paris is unquestionably one of the most beautiful cities in the world. "But I think I will go back to Dr. Delos for my next face leaf-t," Nicole concluded. "Perhaps John comes also to do surgery for the bags under his eyes."

Was this an omen?

By a nose

When we met in the lobby of Milan’s swankiest hotel, Nicole eyed me up and down and said in her clear but rapid French, "But ClauDEEa, have you had a LEAF-T?"

She’s not used to seeing me with makeup, I thought. Thank goodness for the discreet lighting of expensive hotels, I thought. What I said was, "Funny you should mention that. I haven’t, but I have an appointment later this month with someone about that very subject. Dr. Delos in Marseille. Joan K, who lives in Monaco, had recommended him."

"Mais Dr. Delos,” gasped Nicole. "He is the one who did my nose and my first leaf-t. I was the one who recommended him to Joan."

It was my turn to be surprised. "Then you think he is good? That’s a relief. He did a wonderful job with your, um, nose. But tell me . . . does it hurt?"

Cancellation

Because of the unexpected US trip, I called today to cancel my appointment in Marseille, explaining that I didn’t know exactly when I would be back but would call "soon" to reschedule. Annick seemed to be very understanding about this, not haughty or indignant. I’ve hardly accomplished a thing today but time raced by. The software to connect to the Internet bombed so I have that to contend with. Fortunately I have no pressing assignments so the lack of communication isn’t driving me completely beserk, only moderately so. I could pick up some pocket change by writing some stories for an occasional client, but if the Mac has to go into the shop, and then I have to leave for the States, don’t see how I can pull that off.

Emergency

An emergency family situation, a complication resulting from my mother’s death,  necessitates my presence in the U.S. next week. I won’t be attending the business conference in Monaco so I called today to cancel my appointment in Marseille, explaining that I didn’t know exactly when I would be back but would call "soon" to reschedule. Annick seemed to be very understanding about this, not haughty or indignant as I might have expected from a Frenchie.