We left Honfleur this morning. Honfleur was beautiful and a wonderful opportunity to see a village that was created a thousand or more years ago.
We decided to play some golf at Normandy on the way to Caen. We played at a course in Deauville (Saint-Gatien). It was lush with greens and yellows and playing in the beautiful rolling hills was an exceptional opportunity to see port of Deauville in the distance, while agonizing over my lack of skill for the game. My father once tried to convince me to practice golf by putting a plastic golf ball on a weed . . then try and hit the ball. It was inventive and fun to think about. But, I wasn’t able to hit the balls often enough to discourage the weeds in the back yard. Unfortunately, the weeds eventually overtook the back yard and my game.
It was a cool Autumn day befitting the storied, rural Norman countryside. Then the clouds moved off into the distance and the sun bathed the course in the most beautiful day of golf that I can remember. Not another person intruded in the picturesque hills. The twelfth hole was memorable. You hit the ball into a vast expanse of grass into a valley from an elevation of perhaps a hundred feet. A lake on the right. Your second shot, at about 225 yards went to a green down another valley. The green, surrounded by trees, was a dark green color, littered with small yellow and brown leaves. I never know what to do to remember the feeling at those moments.
I remember having that feeling the first time I came to Paris. I was on my way to French class at Place D’Italie. I had just boarded the metro at Dupliex. I looked up and saw the building for newspaper Le Monde. At that moment I looked around the train, full of students and people going to work. Active and excited about beginning a new day, full of energy. And, there I was an interloper injected into the life of another culture . . full of excitement myself. I felt, at that moment, this feeling of happiness! I tried to find some way to do to remember it. What does one do to remember it? What can one do to remember it?
Maybe all you can do is enjoy the moment and be happy to have had an opportunity that only comes rarely.