The Difference Between Choosing Your Life and Accepting It
Does a woman ever make the choice to embrace domesticity over freedom, or is it something else entirely?
Marie was the matriarch of the farm. François, her husband, managed the vineyards, the almond fields, and the animals. The farmhouse was Marie’s dominion. It was a traditional arrangement, one with which she seemed perfectly content.
Her eyes were set deep, as if her creator had pushed a little too hard when placing them. She always wore her pale blond hair pulled into a sensible low ponytail at the nape of her neck. There was a wispy quality to her. Not a fragility — I’d seen her bleed out a freshly beheaded rooster and remove its bowels in five seconds flat — but a sort of slow exhalation of spirit. I couldn’t help attributing it to a physical manifestation of prolonged empty nest syndrome. A devout Catholic, Marie had raised nine children. It was her greatest sorrow that all of them, save one, a son, had abandoned her and the farm for the big city of Paris. (“Abandoned” is how she put it.) The fact that the farm had a regular rotation of live-in volunteer workers suited her just fine; she liked the feeling of a full house.
Marie was unfailingly patient. During the first few weeks when my head throbbed from the mental…
