Butter and Coffee

In which Matt finally eats a good croissant and we check out the neighborhood church

“Can’t we have butter?” Matt whispered over his croissant and cafe au lait this morning wedged in between a perishingly small number of tourists here in Saint Germain. He had woken up at what felt like noon, but was something like 6 am, and downed a vat of instant Folgers which, I am humiliated to say, he lugged all the way here in his carry-on bagages, disbelieving me that coffee would, in fact, be as ubiquitous as air or wine. I, on the other hand, staggered forth into the wide streets of the chilly morning caffeine-impoverished, having thought it extremely lame to drag a teapot and the daily measure of oolong with me across the ocean.

File:Manet, Edouard - At the Café, 1878.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

“You don’t need butter,” I said, “just taste it.” In fact, you shouldn’t lather a croissant in butter unless you bought it at Aldi or it’s two days old. The butter’s inside, as it were, baked in. The hungry and exhausted can gently pry the buttery layers off one by one and gain strength. Don’t worry about the jam or an egg or anything. One single mouthful and I observed my dear husband gain respect and appreciation for my opinion on a whole range of contentious subjects we make a practice of arguing over, as a spiritual discipline for the sake of sanity.

Anyway, we are so tired. We tried to leave Binghamton on Monday night at 10:30 by bus, hugging the children goodbye and reminding them to water the plants and be good.