Noon to two

I'm late with this journal entry, and I'm blaming France for it.

Everything is slow here. In the countryside, even more so. There is no rush. There is no time. Lunch happens, and it takes two hours, and nobody apologizes.

I let myself go with it. That's the honest part. I didn't fight it. The plates were cleared, replaced, then cleared again. Nobody checked a phone. The afternoon could wait.

I lived here. I knew this. Then I left, moved back to the States, and it all slipped out of me. I didn't notice it go.

That's what I keep turning over. Not that France is slow. Everybody knows France is slow. It's that three years was enough to forget it completely. I found out this week, elbows on a table at two in the afternoon.

In LA, lunch was at my desk. Every day. The container next to the keyboard, one hand eating, the other still working. Twelve minutes. Crumbs in the keys. My little lunch from home, packed the night before like a responsible adult.

Who am I kidding? I never brought lunch. Not once. It was the place next door or an Uber Eats bag waiting at reception, one sad bowl at a time, with fees I refused to look at. I probably spent the price of a small car on those bowls. I should have brought lunch. I also never said, "Let's go eat." Never took an hour. Never sat down with anyone. It didn't feel like a sacrifice. It was just the shape of the day.

I didn't choose it. That's the thing. Nobody asked me. It just closed in on me.

Here, the shops close at noon. Doors shut, and everybody goes home. The kids get time to eat. The whole country stops at the same hour, so nobody has to defend it. Nobody has to be the one to leave the office. The break is built in. You don't have to be brave to take it.

That's the difference. It's not that people here love food more, or family more, or any of the things people say. The time is protected. Someone decided long ago that lunch is yours, and everyone still honors that.

We never decided on that. So the hour shrank. Then the half hour. Then it was a bag at reception and crumbs in the keys.

I don't have a plan to keep this. I lost it once without noticing, but this time, I'm writing it down. Something to check against later, when I'm somewhere fast again.

Do you take the time?