the simple life in sainte-maxime
Paris was a great adventure, but we needed a minute to recover. Luckily we have friends in some beautiful places. Sainte-Maxime is on the French Riviera, in between more famous Marseilles to the west and Nice to the east. My dear old friend’s family has a house here. After a five-hour train ride and another hour in a rental car, it was a sight for eight sore eyes. We slept at an Airbnb a few minutes away but they graciously welcomed us into their home — and their daily rhythms and routines — during the days and evenings.
The view from the back of the house. In the foreground, the a pétanque court that’s more often used as a kids’ play area. Then the pool and beyond it, the sea.
It was here that it dawned on me: When’s the last time I had nothing to do? I’ve always worked many hours a week; deadlines and pressure became as natural to me as water to a fish. But, also like a fish in water, I became consumed, surrounded. Stress became my oxygen. I was so busy all the time, between doing my job and being a mom and wife, that weekends actually used to fill me with dread. Two whole days free … I should get fresh air! Do laundry! Exercise! Play with my kids, who I’ve seen only mornings and nights all week! Attend to my nails! Go to a museum — we live in NYC, for God’s sake! Do yoga! Breathe! See my friends! Read a book! Relax! ENJOY MYSELF!!!
In Sainte-Maxime, we rested for almost a week with no museums to visit or playgrounds to seek out. No to-do list. We spent our days doing what my friend and her family did: moving between the beach and the house, the pool and the table. Life was both relaxed and structured: Mornings are for exercise, rest, reading, swimming. Lunch is served — at tables, on plates — every day. (This may not seem remarkable, but when traveling I often grab food on the go and have been known to eat it sitting anywhere from a park bench to the curb of a major thoroughfare.) Then there are naps, more swims and dinner — cooked at home, a cheese plate and fresh fruit afterward — with a view.
The kids’ table.
The grownups’ table.
Some crazy things happened here. For the first time on this trip, my kids didn’t try turning on the TV to see if they could find something in English (or Looney Tunes, for which you only need to speak the language of mice with hammers and cats getting thwacked, flattened and electrified). Tablets sat unused in a drawer. Instead, Lulu and Max swam. They played with their friends in the dirt. They played with dirt. They pushed each other around in a toy car, played Chinese Checkers, pretended to run a shop and charged grown-ups for air freshener (aka freshly fallen, sap-filled pine cones), gems (aka sea glass) and the letters of our names made out of old pool tiles they taped together. They did a brisk business.
The Cote d’Azur brings out Lulu’s entrepreneurial spirit.
Inventory and accounts payable: no rest for the weary.
Max playing with ants and (right) Chinese checkers. He preferred the ants.
Another big headline for our family from Sainte-Maxime: Max finally took to the water. He’s been super active and sporty since he could walk — give him a ball of any shape and he’ll hit it, kick it, catch it. But splash in the kiddie pool or go for a dip with Mom and Dad? Nope. We’d visit a community pool and he’d toddle off in search of the adult basketball court or nearest playground. Here in the south of France, for whatever reason — extreme heat, positive peer pressure, the pool’s preternaturally inviting turquoise color — he wanted in. We got him those little arm floaties, and away he went.
Within a day he was moving forward instead of treading water vertically, and by day 3 he was kicking, paddling and having to be cajoled out when it was time to eat. For us, but especially for his former competitive swimmer-and-swim teacher father, this was a huge milestone. I think Matthew’s sigh of relief may have been audible all the way in North Carolina, where he took part in his first swim meet before the age of 4.
Max with all he needs in the water: his floaties & his
big sister.
My little mermaid. Her swimming skills & confidence also began to transform.
Proud swimmer, happy Dad.
When my friend suggested a day trip to St. Tropez, the old to-do-lister in me shot both hands up. We went with some of her relatives, including a teenager and a college student, aka idols to my kids, aka built-in babysitters. We walked the narrow streets, hiked up a hill to see the Citadel, a 17th-century fortress that now houses a Maritime Museum, ate crepes, took the ferry back to Sainte-Maxime. It was just the right amount of adventure for the week.
On the ferry to St. Tropez, I sang, “Bain de Soleil, for the St. Tropez tan…” My kids thought I was insane, but props to whoever wrote that jingle — it holds up!
A neon-colored granita takes the edge off the extreme heat.
St. Tropez and a teen bestie … L & M living their best life.
Maybe most surprising of all about our week, for me and anyone who knows me: I relaxed. There was something about this place, and the friends who absorbed us here as if we belonged, that allowed me to exhale for the first time in a very long while. No laundry was done. I didn’t exercise. My biggest worries were whether I could finish my hardcover book before we left so that I could leave it (I didn’t) and when we ran out of milk after the market had closed (we survived).
No down-dog needed! With views like this, it was easy to breathe … deeply.