The monks recommended that I stay the night at the convent where the Benedictine sisters had a guest house.
An exquisitely dear nun greeted me with playful laughter, it was as if she had been waiting years for me and finally I had arrived. Although all the rooms were full she insisted that I stay and that she would find me somewhere to sleep. We wandered down the hallway and up and down the stairs and as we passed each door she would point and smile and announce the nationality of the guests inside. After the room with the Portuguese, we arrived at a cupboard where she dragged out a camp bed which we screeched along the tiles past the room where the Italians were staying to a small conference room. "This will do? Yes?"
My bed.
It was was phenomenally uncomfortable, but a snug nest compared
to a night on the plastic chairs at Athens airport.
People come and stay here for all sorts of reasons. There was the
group of Italian girls spending a week working with the nuns in the
garden. A Belgian woman who smiled a lot came to walk in the hills. There was the family of a
young monk who was taking his vows the next day.
Now, I
have always had a fantasy to join a monastery and live in a peaceful community praying, working and studying. It
doesn't seem a million miles away from what I already do alone. (apart from the freedom to take off on a motorbike and a general lack of obedience)
So when I looked dreamily into a
rose-tinted future of prayer and simplicity they corrected me with
tremendous gravity. "C'est une
vie très difficile". And as a mother of a young man, I could feel their
worry, their sense of loss as well as their respect for a son who
had consciously made an all encompassing commitment.
Ringing bells for 10 o'clock Mass.
The church and convent were built 1986-2005
a half hour walk from the monastery.
The nuns live a cloistered life so when their work demands contact with the public they are separated by a grille. In the convent shop, a nun sat by the till behind bars chatting with a customer. I presented her with my purchase, a cd of traditional French children's songs. For some reason I needed to explain that the cd was a gift for my great nephew in Las Vegas and that as children we sang of these songs. Such as Frere Jacques and Alouette.
And much to my surprise, for I am not one to burst into song, I began to sing. After one line of missed notes and mispronounced words, she came to the rescue and joined in. Life could not get any more delightfully ironic than this: two women of a certain age, one in her religious habit and the other in her motorcycle leathers singing nursery songs together.
After we exhausted my repertoire I explained how I had met the monks at the fountain the day before. I showed her their photos on my Ipad. I told her about the water fight and she squealed with delight as she called out their names.
An Italian girl helping to cut the lavender by the car park.
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