Home sweet home

I’m home. Seeing everyone I’ve missed is lovely, and the unusual heat and spring beauty of the garden makes it easier not to pine for Corsica. I like knowing the names of plants here: lacking vocabulary stunts my speech and thoughts in French and it soothes me to name things again: the acid yellow of laburnums, the same yellow as Corsican mimosa, waxy deep pink peonies shedding their petals already, fragile scarlet poppies, forget-me-nots taking over the whole herb garden, the last of the lilac, indigo tulips shrivelled into themselves in dry black curls, clouds of irises in violet and pale chalky blue.

Being away is strange: nothing seems to have changed without me, but it all seems foreign. The French don’t really have a phrase for ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, but characteristically they have something more elegant and complex: if love is a flame then absence, like the wind, fans great fires but snuffs out candles.

‘L'absence est à l'amour ce qu'est au feu le vent;
Il éteint le petit, il allume le grand.’

Bussy-Rabutin