Today my mom would have turned 100...

My mom wasn't the most diplomatic person on earth but she had a huge heart and her love for her family never faltered. I miss her sorely. Everyday and especially today. 

Happy Mother's Day!

For Mother's Day, I wish I had a big bread story to tell you about my mom but I don't, not really. She loved bread, yes, especially the crusty ones, but she wasn't overly picky about it. Her favorite was the baguette, which she liked bien cuite (baked to a deep gold brown) and the part she liked best of all was le quignon (the heel). Towards the end of her life, when we took her out to lunch to her favorite restaurant near her nursing home in Paris, the owner always brought a basketful of quignons to the table together with the menus. Since most people didn't care for them, they usually didn't serve them but when they saw my mom coming, they sliced off the ends of a bunch of baguettes just for her.
During her last few months, quignons and dessert were pretty much what she lived on: she had lost her appetite for everything else. But from the way her eyes lit up when the basket was set in front of her, we could see that the very frail person sitting among us was the same mother who, in her youth, had presided over the dinner table, slicing up the baguette on the same board and with the same knife I now use myself, distributing slices to children and keeping the heels for herself and for my Dad (also a huge fan of crunchiness). Of course as we grew up, some of us developed a taste for quignons as well (probably, a genetic trait!) and the mathematics of baguette dividing became a little more complex...
This Mother's Day, I wish I could bake her a bouquet of baguettes and make her a dark chocolate mousse (her mousses au chocolat were the stuff of legend). But she passed away four years ago in March. For the life of me I couldn't tell you the exact date. I go back to the calendar to be reminded but the information never sticks as if part of me didn't want to acknowledge the fact that on a specific day, she indeed ceased to be.
It could be because, in fact, she never did. Not for me. I can't bake for her, that's true, but she is still very much alive. She can still make me laugh, albeit sometimes unwittingly (as she used to), and I can still see her shaking her head at me and wondering how on earth she could have had such a daughter...
Moms are forever. Happy Mother's Day!

My deep-felt thanks...

... to all of you for your thoughtful comments and messages. Now, more than ever, I feel I am actually talking to friends when I blog...
As some of you already know from experience, losing a mother is heart-breaking even if the mom has already had a long life (mine was almost 96) and ready to go (she had been waiting since my Dad passed away in 2005). But I am happy that we were with her for her last few days and glad that she went away peacefully.
I talked to her on her last morning. We were alone in the room. Her eyes were closed and she gave no sign of hearing or even feeling that I was there. But I kept talking. I told her that we would be fine and that she had earned the right to rest. I also told her that she would soon be reunited with loved ones who had left before her and I went down the list of names. Still no response.
However, when I mentioned her first-born, a beautiful little boy who inexplicably lived only for 36 hours, she gave a start (the only sign of life she gave that day besides breathing). 
My Mom has grieved for this child every day of her life. Close to 70 years after the event, she still had tears in her eyes when she spoke of him. I don't think it is a coincidence that she started when I said his name. I think that she heard me. If she heard that, she heard everything else. But even more importantly, I think that by telling her she was on her way to him, I inadvertently made it a bit easier for her to leave us. I will cherish this thought forever.
Now we are back home. Spring has arrived. We must hide eggs for the grandchildren to hunt for tomorrow. I am reactivating my starter and planning the Easter brunch menu. My Mom loved flowers (especially very pink ones) and good food (especially dessert). Before she grew really old, she also loved life. From wherever she is today (if only in my heart), I know she's happy to see us go on.

My mother...

...passed away last Wednesday, peacefully and surrounded by much love. Now she's both acutely absent and intensely present...

Thank you for your words of comfort during this difficult time. They meant a lot to me.

The well

We had driven down from Belgium to Italy and were south of Genoa when the call came. My Mom was in the hospital with a stomach flu and a lung infection. So we drove back up to Paris and saw her yesterday. Her cheeks were pink, probably from a slight fever and from the oxygen. She was in a deep slumber.
We managed to wake her up a few times so that she could swallow a spoonful of jellied water (she rips out the iv’s). She opened her eyes, saw us, closed them again, dutifully swallowed. When asked if she wanted more, she mouthed "non". I asked her if she was really sleeping and she mouthed "oui". I asked if she was having pleasant dreams and she mouthed "oui" again, with the faintest shadow of a smile, a smile tenuous enough to be just a memory.
I reminded her of the time I had surgery, many years ago when I was a young mother with three kids. She came to the recovery room and sat by my bed holding my hand, just as I did yesterday. She was urging me to wake up, over and over. I remember hearing her voice from the bottom of a very deep and narrow well and I wanted to reply but I couldn’t because I was so far down and my voice wouldn’t carry. She kept calling and I kept answering in the silence of the well but I must have moved my lips as the tone of her voice lost its urgency.
She said “She’s waking up, I think” and indeed a few minutes later I was back in the world of the living. Yesterday, I remembered the well. So I talked to her. I told her about our drive to Italy, about how close we had been to Sestri Levante when the call came and we turned back.
She once spent a few days there with my Dad. He took a picture of her in a white peignoir sitting under the arch of an antique window overlooking the sea. I don’t know where the picture is today, maybe in the boxes we haven’t gone through yet.
Even as a little girl, I knew that this portrait of my mother was about love and passion and youth and that it was timeless, that a part of her would always be sitting there in a chaste garment under the old curved stone and that my Dad had captured with his lens something essential and eternal.
I recognize this young woman in my sleeping mother. Already elfin, she has lost some weight and the structure of her face is more visible. She looks beautiful. Her skin is very soft, almost transparent on her hands where the thin veins create a delicate estuary. She is tottering on the edge of time and we don't know yet whether or not she will pull back. But I whisper into the well and I know she hears me.

A Parisian Bakery: Le Quartier du pain

Here I am back in Paris visiting with my Mom. The wind is icy under a limpid sky and as I wrap her in soft woolens before stepping out (shawl, blanket, scarf, hat, gloves and mittens), I remember snowy winters long ago when she helped me bundle up my toddlers, neither of us suspecting that one day I'd be doing the same for her.
Growing older makes it much easier to distinguish patterns and cycles and I like to think this increased awareness imparts greater wisdom but I find it bittersweet too: my Mom no longer remembers helping me with the kids...

She likes to go check on the Eiffel Tower - which was built in 1889, the year her father was born. So that's what we do: we start our tour by paying our respect to the Iron Lady (the Awful Tower as one of my grandsons, then 5, thought it was called) and then we patrol the streets. I hunt for bakeries. She doesn't mind: as often as not she likes what she sees in the window display and we decide to go in and buy a tart or an éclair for her afternoon snack. Even though she is less and less interested in the actual act of eating, she enjoys holding on to the delicate paper dome that houses her pastry and actually looks forward to having a bite later.

Today our walk takes us to Le Quartier du pain, 74, rue Saint-Charles in the 15th arrondissement. The bakery is owned by Frédéric Lalos, a master baker who won the title of Meilleur ouvrier de France, aka MOF (Best Artisan in France) in the bakery category at age 26. I own his book, Le Pain, l'envers du décor (a French-English edition) (although I haven't baked from it yet).

I had been curious to taste Lalos' bread ever since I heard a friend of mine, who is passionate about baking (she is in her second year of baking school in Paris), rave about it. So we went in. I bought a pavé au levain and a longuet as well as two small tarts: pistacchio-cherry and chocolate.

The longuet (currently the bread of the month) is fermented with a wheat- and dried buckwheat (sarrasin séché)- levain. It is crisp, airy, fragrant and rustic, utterly delicious, a true "signature bread".

By contrast, the pavé au levain is a bit bland for my taste. Delicate and unassuming with no hint of acidity, probably the perfect foil to a subtle dish, it wouldn't be my first choice but then, you know me, I don't really look for shy in a bread...

Many more breads are on display and I would love to take a picture of them all but only one photograph is allowed inside. We will have to come back...

It will be a pleasure. Le Quartier du pain is one of these blessed bakeries where the customer peeking beyond the shelves can actually see the mixing, the shaping and the baking. Also it features something which is a first for me, i.e. a machine with a big slot into which the customer inserts coins for payment. Change is automatically dispensed. Since most people use coins to pay for their baguettes, I suspect that, hygiene-wise, this is a big step-up and I like the fact that it matters so much to Lalos that he went to the trouble.

If this is December, it must be Paris...

A former bakery, now a bistro

I am in Paris visiting my Mom. It's freezing out but dry. My mother, who is 95 and frail and -save for dessert- eats less than a sparrow, wants me to take her to a crêperie tomorrow for lunch. I suspect she wants to go because in the little restaurant next to her retirement home, she'd feel bad having "mousse au chocolat" as an entree and "tarte aux pommes" for dessert (she has taken to eating only the apples, not the crust). In a crêperie, no one cares what you order. The nearest one is a long walk away (she'll be in her wheelchair and all bundled up, so she'll be fine) and I enjoy pushing her around. She is interested in everything she sees and keeps asking whether I am still okay or not. Sometimes I say "I am getting tired, let's switch". She laughs. The Paris sidewalks actually give you a good workout , especially when illegally parked cars block the wheelchair/stroller ramp at pedestrian crossings. One of the great mysteries in life is how come traffic cops are never around when you need them but appear magically when you fervently wish them to be somewhere else...