The other day, I paid the most money I ever have in my life for a round of cheese. I don’t say this proudly, because it was kind of by mistake.
It was two weeks ago, the first Saturday after Lilly’s cross-country season ended. Matt had worked twelve days straight. I was feeling grumpy and stir-crazy, desperate to go somewhere–Burg Eltz, maybe, a castle about two hours away, or Heidelberg because we haven’t made it there yet. But the kids were tired.
“Do we have to?” they asked, sighing.
“Do you ‘have to’ go see a castle?” I asked, incredulous. “A year ago, you’d have begged for this opportunity!”
There was another round of sighs and nods, admitting it was true. But that wasn’t enough to motivate them.
“Maybe you could go with Dad?” Lilly suggested. “I’ll stay and baby-sit. I’m just really tired, and I have lots of homework.”
So Matt and I had a glorious day, remembering how easy conversations are between us when we aren’t breaking up arguments or recalling trivia because of random questions or taking song requests in the car.
We ended up in Metz, France, where we’ve been a few times already, because it’s just over an hour away, we know our way around, and it was getting late for a drive to Burg Eltz. After lunch in a cozy, crowded creperie, we walked around the cathedral and a city. There was a misty rain falling, so we decided to check out the covered market near the cathedral. It was kind of a smaller version of Pike Place, full of little artisan fromageries, charcuteries and wine shops. It was fun to peruse the options though I wasn’t planning to buy anything because I typically shop where prices are much lower. But when I saw the round of Tomme Truffle, I stopped in my tracks.
“I bet that’s so good!” I said to Matt, pointing to where it lay behind the glass.
“Buy it!” he replied. “Let’s find out!”
“It says 10,95 euro, though. I’ve never spent that much on such a tiny amount of cheese. Never in my life! What if it’s terrible?” I’ve made it my mission to try lots of cheese (and pastries) since our arrival in Europe last May. There have been hits but also plenty of misses.
Matt shrugged. “It’d cost more in the States.”
“True.”
The girl behind the counter looked to be in her early twenties. She had sleeve tattoos and a nose ring, and blue hair tumbled down under her cap. Her smile was warm and patient as I searched the case, trying to decide if there was anything else I wanted. Then she told me the total for my one small cheese: 17,95 euro.
How?
My eyes probably popped out of my head a little. In the States, I would have asked to make sure she was right. I might have backed out of the purchase, scrunched my nose and said, “Um, actually, I changed my mind. No thanks.” But my mind just blanked, so I nodded and paid, trying to act calm, like it was a regular thing for me to put down roughly twenty dollars for cheese that could fit in my palm.
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the city and along the river, and all the while I guarded the cheese with my life. Then we drove home.
It was a perfect day. I was scared to try the cheese, though. It felt like “special occasion” cheese, something I needed to wear a cocktail dress and heels to eat. It stayed wrapped tightly and tucked away in the cheese drawer of our refrigerator.
“Guess what I learned today?” Matt asked at dinner a few days later.
“What?” I asked.
“The 90th infantry division was part of the siege that liberated Metz!”
“Your grandpa’s division? The Tough Ombres?” I asked, and Matt nodded.
*
One of Matt’s favorite people in the world when I started dating him was his grandpa, Sam, and when I met him I understood why. Behind his glasses, he had blue eyes like my someday-husband, and his smile could warm an entire room.
“So, Joy, how are you today?” he’d ask every time I saw him.
“Pretty good,” I’d answer.
And then Sam would say, “I know about the ‘pretty’ part, but I’m not sure about the ‘good’.” He was one of those golden people that made everyone around him feel better about themselves.
Besides the blue eyes and the smile and a crown of white hair, Sam had a thin white scar on his cheek where a Nazi had plunged a bayonet into his face. Sam bit down on the blade and held it there with his teeth long enough for someone in his platoon to run up and shoot the Nazi.
*
In June, we took a trip to Utah Beach in Normandy and saw where Sam came ashore as part of the third wave of the D-Day invasion. The day we were there was gorgeous–sunny and warm with blue skies and puffy white clouds, as if a postcard came to life. We visited the memorials and the museum, and Annalee was as patient as an eight-year-old can be until she finally asked, “Can we PLEEEEAAASE go to the beach now?”
Annalee loves beaches. In an orange swimsuit with white polka dots, she dashed in and out of the waves. A big group of people were having a party a couple hundred yards away. There was loud music and a game of volleyball and shouts and laughter. Matt and I just looked at each other, our arms linked behind the other’s back. We took pictures, and as I told everyone to smile, I thought of how none of them would be there if things had gone differently on that day seventy-nine years ago.
Last weekend, we drove to Pachten, Germany, a small town less than an hour from our house with an amazing amount of history. There are Roman ruins, and a legend about Pontius Pilate committing suicide. It’s also where Sam, with the other Tough Ombres, crossed the Saar River into Germany on a pontoon bridge, carrying a bazooka. He was filled with shrapnel from a bomb and carried back across the river on a stretcher, patched up, and sent back to fight more before being shot in the lung and sent home a few months later.
It was rainy and windy when we visited, like it was when Sam was there, according to things he told us. As we walked along a sidewalk that followed the swollen river’s edge, we talked about what it must have been like for him. We were bundled up and mostly warm, except that our umbrellas kept turning inside out in the wind.
Matt told us stories of trips he took with his grandpa in his motorhome, the best moments of his childhood. He told us about a time he was staying at his grandparents’ house, and Sam made him eggs for breakfast. He cooked them a little too long, burning the edges
“I don’t want to eat those, Grandpa!” Matt had said. “They’re burned!”
“Burned?!” Sam repeated. “They’re not burned! This is the way we ate them in the Army!” Matt’s eyes grew wide, and he promptly cleaned his plate. From then on, he asked for “Army Eggs” every time he stayed there.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Sam would tell him.
I’ve been grateful to Sam for almost three decades, since I first knew him. He taught my husband about hard work and discipline and demonstrated how to love his family–everyone around him–generously while being the best mix of humble and warm and kind. I’m sure he wished for a world without wars where boys, barely eighteen, went off to fight. I often wonder what he saw when he closed his eyes, all the things he never told us.
But being here and seeing these places that were battlegrounds for him turned into playgrounds for us, and knowing how much he would have loved to see that himself, adds to my appreciation and awe.
In the museum at Utah Beach, there was a display that shows the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, in his “Letter to an American.”
“And what were they told that could motivate them to sacrifice their lives?...They were told not about themselves, but of others. That gave them a sense of solidarity with all mankind.The fifty thousand soldiers in my convoy went to war not to save American citizens, but rather for Man himself, respect for Mankind, liberty for all men, the greatness of Man…”
*
Today we went to Dunkirk. Knowing we planned to go there, we watched the movie last night.
“I feel bad,” Lilly said, as we sat on the couch talking, after the others had gone to bed. “These people did such great things, and... I don’t know. What have I done? How do I deserve so much good?”
I told her I knew what she meant.
*
“Have you tried your fancy cheese yet?” Matt asked me last week in a teasing tone. I said I couldn’t. It was too precious—expensive, but most of all, now I knew it was from a place where his grandpa fought. It felt like something too good to enjoy as a fruit and cheese plate I made myself for lunch. “Oh, please,” he told me. “You have to! Cheese doesn’t last forever!”
He was right.
So remembering the waves at Utah Beach with warm sunshine on our backs and music in the distance, remembering the Saar river at Pachten with the cold rain blowing sideways as we laughed and wrestled our umbrellas, remembering the creperie in Metz where I ate chevre chaud with my husband, I took the Tomme Truffle out of its drawer in the refrigerator. I removed the wrapper and sliced into it, seeing the creamy cheese inside the rind with a ribbon of black truffle running through it.
I don’t deserve any of this, I told myself. But I’m so grateful.
Love this!
Just wow. So good, Joy. You are a master story weaver.