Descending onto Carrer dels Flassaders with a pack on my back and Violet by my side, we traipsed through the now-familiar warrens of the El Born neighborhood, sleepy-eyed at what amounted to an ungodly hour, at least for our new Barcelona routines. We passed Mercat de Santa Caterina and minutes later were privy to the excited countenances of our traveling companions, who happened to be two of my best friends. A quick taxi ride to Sants and then soon we were all on the TGV, sitting facing each other in our foursome, bound for Perpignan and Alex’s parent’s house.
Disembarking, hearing the station’s announcements in French, that familiar feeling of returning home to a place that isn’t actually my residence, I exhaled a contented sigh. Welcomed warmly and enthusiastically, we sat languidly in the mid-day heat, caffeinating and conversing, anticipating the grand lunch ahead of us. That excellent repast surpassed even lofty expectations. The meal’s perfect mixture of staple dishes, beautiful ingredients, and flawless execution was made all the more memorable by the company. Feeling the bonhomie in my core, with a belly full of rich food and delicate rosé, I looked around the table and felt intense gratitude and not a little sleepy.
After a suitably leisurely afternoon and a chill evening, we went to bed with plans for an excursion down the coast the next day. In the morning, after the pleasingly obligatory pastries and café cremes, we set off, Alex driving and Gracie in the front, Violet and I in back, a return to my usual spot on childhood road trips and a generational intermixing that defined our time together. The Vermilion Coast, that incredible stretch of French Catalonia that extends up from Spain’s Costa Brava, was theretofore unknown to me, but as we spied the beach of Collioure, the sheer beauty of the region revealed itself magnificently.
Exploration and discovery are not merely of tangible objects. This trip was also a return to Alex’s childhood, time spent on this coast as a schoolkid that partially defined the man that he had become, worldly and curious and sensitive and now showing this part of himself to his girlfriend and to me and to Violet, people who love him and are thrilled to more deeply understand him. Pulling into Banyuls-sur-Mer, a little jewelbox of a seaside village ringed by jutting rocks and surrounded by the active and dormant vineyard terraces that blanket the whole area, I was imbued with a serenity that can be elusive.
We let the sea breeze blow through our hair, felt the spray of the waves crashing on the rocks as we ambled out along the jetty. Then we ascended the vertiginous streets leading up to a house where Alex used to live, oleander perfuming the air, and in one of those encounters that leaves you in gooseflesh, met the woman now living there, who had just lost her husband and was utterly bereft, the pain of loss so apparent that it stole our breath. Shellshocked, we descended back into town and took refuge from those moments of grief by plunging headfirst into living.
Surrounded by an embarrassment of gustatory riches – we were in France after all — we stocked up on pâte de campagne, fresh bread, anchovies, l’eau gazeuse, cheese, and made our way to Plage des Elmes, a sheltered cove fronted by Mediterranean water of an ideal temperature. Setting out our blankets and provisions, lounging and laughing together in the sand as we gorged on these delicacies, it was hard to imagine being happier than in that moment. But, satiated for the moment and beginning to broil in the afternoon sun, we plunged into the water and made our way to the swimming dock.
Sunning ourselves, gently rocked by the waves, discussing things of grand and no importance, the transportive bliss was complete. Those beautiful moments, Gracie and Violet further bonding, Alex soaking in his past, me chatting amiably with some kids from Paris, all of us reuniting to eat more, to laugh at each other (mostly at me), will forever be imprinted on me.
Even when some fatherly anxiety threatened to overtake me in Collioure, fear that what we were chasing might hurt us, I was able to transcend that darkening of mood and return again to the joy of sitting at table. We were dumbstruck by the falling light on the beautiful fishing village, which in a few weeks hence I would have the benefit of understanding had been a muse for Matisse, my favorite artist.
As elder statesman of this crew, I had the additional benefit of immediately recognizing that this was not just a fleeting day among many, but a historic one, where Violet grew up further, treated as an equal by all, Alex and Gracie grew closer as they shared deeper parts of themselves, and I attained a measure of peace that has proved lasting, reinforced by simple pleasures on La Côte Vermeille.