Glory Days in Nîmes (and the Journey Getting Here)!

Viva La France 🇫🇷!

The South of France is showing off already. It’s beautiful weather and excitement in the air! I’m here for a little R&R until the Cevennes writers retreat next week. So here’s a go at my first day here, and the wild travel journey. My posts may be longer than usual, so I’m thanking you for reading to the end if you do! 🩷

OK, here it goes- I wrote this yesterday due to travel on 5/20-5/21.

Perfect weather. Café tables spilling into the streets, which I love. Flowers! The Féria de Nîmes is beginning to hum with energy. And today, wandering through the beautiful Jardins de la Fontaine with friends Katy Dalgleish and Wendy Coad felt like stepping back into a favorite chapter of a book I didn’t realize I’d missed so much.

We found our little café tucked deep in the gardens once again — surrounded by statues, fountains, fish-filled canals, and giant trees dropping spring leaves into the water. This time, the kitchen was closed, so we only managed drinks. Also, our waiter, Nathan, had the bluest eyes imaginable, which somehow became part of the conversation since all three of us have blue eyes too…though admittedly not quite like Nathan’s.

It was exactly the kind of slow, peaceful day I needed after the whirlwind trip to get here.

But before this adventure speeds too far ahead, I have to share something extraordinary about the journey itself.

Travel has a funny way of placing people in our path.

First, there was Elias, a young man in the nearly empty New Carrollton Metro station who helped me figure out my SmartCard for the ride to Dulles. He even handed me his old card with one dollar left on it and helped me load more money onto it. Kindness from a stranger before the trip had barely even begun.

Then came Carolyn.

We happened to sit near each other at Dulles Airport while eating salads before our flights. She is Mennonite, who was traveling from Washington state with her husband and son to visit her 92-year-old father in Roanoke, Virginia. One simple conversation about travel slowly unfolded into something much deeper.

She shared that her teenage daughter had died from Hodgkin lymphoma after a devastating misdiagnosis. Suddenly, two strangers in an airport, eating similar salads (I brought mine from home) were talking about childhood cancer, grief, survival, quilts, and the invisible language shared between families who have lived through impossible things.

When I told her about Ryan and The Focused Fight, her eyes widened and she immediately got a pen and a torn envelope from her purse as wrote the title down and my contact information.

But before she rushed off to deal with a canceled flight, she quietly thanked me for listening — truly listening — because so few people fully understood what her family endured.

And then, unbelievably, it happened again.

Hours later, after landing in France and boarding the train from Marseille to Nîmes, I met Zakia. We wrestled our luggage onto the train together, and before long we were deep in conversation for the entire ride through the countryside (one solid hour).

She had recently married, was finishing nursing school, and hoped to work in pediatric oncology because she wants to help cure cancer.

Again, what are the odds?

Two completely different women. Two completely different journeys. Yet somehow, both conversations circled back to childhood cancer and the invisible threads that connect people when they least expect it, or at least it was for me.

Sometimes travel is about the destination.

And sometimes it’s about the people waiting along the way.

You know what? I can’t believe I crossed the Atlantic Ocean to get to France, yet somehow the universe kept circling back to the same conversation of community, connection, courage, survival, loss, hope, and last but not least, humanity and how we are all living our best lives despite our circumstances.

I’m still shaking my head!

bSoleille!

Terri

Photos: they are having a hard time loading: 1) on my way, 2) Zakia and me on train from Marseille to Nimes, 3) Katy, Wendy, and me