Fun Monday - Final Citron Presse, A Love Story

Our host for this month's Fun Mondays, Ari at Prawn of Fate , has thrown out a rather unusual, but appealing, topic for January 31:

Your first novel is published to wide acclaim. What's the title and what is it about?

Any novel that I write would be based on travels to a foreign country--a particular location, experience, or person whom I had met while seeing the world. Many months ago another Fun Monday host asked us to write the beginnings of an unusual love story. I set my story in France. Here's a first attempt at writing a tale of love. One as bittersweet as the citron presse shared by the lovers on their last morning together.

Final Citron Presse, A Love Story

Eduard left his apartment just off the Place Stanislas in Nancy, France. His route through the town was a familiar one. Four days a week Eduard met groups of tourists and students in the square and led them on explorations of Nancy's world famous Art Nouveau architecture. Today would be different though. He was meeting only one person, Madeleine.
Eduard was pleased that the blue doors of Madame Perrin's flower shop were open. He carefully selected a small bunch of lavender for Madeleine. The fragrance would remind her of the warm afternoons they spent together on day trips through the French countryside. Madeleine sat on the steps of King Stanislas' statue in the square, waiting for Eduard. Without saying a word, she held out her hand. Eduard gave her the lavender and picked up her suitcase with his free hand.


They walked silently to the cafe across from the train station. Eduard stopped at the ticket window to buy Madeleine's ticket back to Paris. She went on in the cafe. He found her at their special table. Two citron presses were already on the table. By his drink, Madeline had carefully placed four packets of sugar.Tears stung Eduard's eyes. On their first meeting many months ago, they had shared a citron presse. Madeline had given him her sugar that day. Today, however, Eduard knew that no amount of sugar would ease the bitterness of saying "Goodbye."

Thanks Ari, for hosting January Fun Mondays. This host for a month seems to work out well as there's always someone willing to take on hosting duties for the entire month. Ari passes the baton to Molly at Return of the White Robin for February, the month of love. Perhaps I should have saved this story for then! No worries, as I'm sure Molly will have many interesting post ideas for us to tackle.

Listography Q & A

This week's Fun Monday assignment is all about questions and answers. Our host, the lovely butterfly Mariposa gives us the opportunity to reveal a bit more about ourselves to our friends in the blogosphere, something we haven't shared before. Then in the second part of the assignment, she asks us to come up with three questions for our readers. Finally, we're to go to each Fun Monday participant's post and answer the questions posed. I've peeked at a couple of your posts and this is going to be an amusing and revealing exercise. I decided to borrow from Lisa Nola's Listography, a do it yourself autobiography in lists, for my questions.

I've been interested in memoir for many years, filling journals with daily writings about whatever was on my mind at the time. I've also created lifelines where you record significant events in your life as either positive(above the base line--1951 started school) or negative(below the base line--1968 not accepted in graduate school at first). I wish I could show you what this looks like, but it's a bit too personal. It does, however, give a very graphic picture of a life--both the highs and lows. Another interesting memoir exercise that I've worked on is to make a photo timeline. By now you're probably thinking, "Come on! Just how self absorbed can you be? But, when you study photos of one person at different stages of life you get the whole picture. And, if it's your own photos, you remember what was happening in your life when that photo was taken and what you were feeling.

Nola's Listography is a really fun way to capture some of the details and experiences of your life that you'd like to remember, from the mundane to sublime: List your favorite teachers. List the best days of your life. List your favorite childhood toys. List your biggest regrets. Put all these lists together and you have a life.

So now to Mariposa's assignment:

1. Share something you wish your readers would know about you. I am film fanatic. First run films showing about town, TV, and Netflix. I especially love independent films, British period drama, foreign films (especially Czech), intelligent crime dramas. I've seen 25 first run movies since January. In October alone I watched several full series on Netflix: Islands at War, Lilies, Almost Strangers, Wire in the Blood, Michael Collins, The Interpreter, Zelary and The Country Teacher(two good Czech films). After looking at this list would you be surprised to know that there are leaves that need raking, and a house that needs de-cluttering and cleaning? :-)

Three questions for you to answer in my "Comments":

1. List past jobs you've had.
--babysitter, house cleaner, caterer, reading/English teacher, education consultant, trainer

2. List things you love and despise.
--love dogs, friends, travel, books, films, kindness
--despise intolerance, things that don't work, obnoxious behavior, cruelty

3. List things you like to do on your day off.
-- stay home, drink coffee and read the paper, walk Willie, watch movies on Netflix, read

So, there you have it--what this inquiring mind wants to know about her blog friends. I'll be around shortly to answer all your questions.