Like a bear in a cave, but with sun

I moved to Paris in August, four summers ago, when everything in the city was closed.


Those impressionable weeks were spent shopping at Ed* and wondering what treasures lay behind the metal gates pulled over every window. I scanned the empty sidewalks and began to worry that Paris really was, as certain friends had warned me, a dead town.

And then a few weeks later, everything changed. The shops on my street reopened revealing cheese and baguette where before there were none. Paris wasn't dead, it had simply been sleeping.

I am currently bracing myself for the city's annual coma, and knowing the drill doesn't make it any easier. My butcher called it quits on Saturday, and today my favorite market vendor said goodbye.

I find the latter departure the most difficult to accept - there's something cruel about a farm stand closing during the most plentiful season. "But what will happen to all the basil?!" I cried to my usual vegetable lady. She stared at me blankly and backed slowly away.

Having cleaned them out of fresh herbs, I am now cooking and freezing as if for a war and padding my shelves for the enforced hibernation.

My only consolation is that, like a bear, I can anticipate burning through several layers of fat during this time of nothing-to-eat. September will find me slimmer and crankier - ever nearer to my goal of integration.
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*Ed stands for Épicerie Discount and serves as the French version of ALDI. After three misspent years I learned the correct pronunciation (euh-day), but it will always be Eddie to me.