100 Commentaires and Merci Beaucoups

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This entry marks my one-hundredth post. 100. I remember when my great-grandmother turned one-hundred and the family had a grand celebration that brought relatives to Rhode Island from across the country and down from the Province of Quebec, including Grand-mama's sister's family. I was fifteen at the time, and Grand-mama's birthday marked not only a century of living, but for me, a certain fin-de-siècle: the end of life as I knew it in my backyard, and the beginning of a life-long friendship with relatives in Quebec. It marked the first time I traveled by air with my same-aged cousin Pascale (Grand-mama's sister's granddaughter), whom I thought so glamorous—she still is—returning home from Montreal. Just the two of us.

It was a certain coming-of-age.

There was timorous footing on water skis. The long, measured drag of a cigarette. Sweet, raw honey scraped from its cut comb. Singing all things Supertramp. Driving a car. The taste of hashish. And beer. French television. A Grateful Dead concert. Dining on frog's legs. Summoning the spirit of Little Rose—a Francophone mystic-stigmatic—in her garden, by the statue of St. Francis cloaked in brown garb, his cupped hands doubling as a bird feeder. Spinning of the bottle. Learning every word to Bob Dylan's Hurricane. The dissection of a heavily formaldehyde-scented frog. And a first kiss. Ribbit.
  
Not to say I was corrupted by my French relations, or that any of these scenes were set in Canada, or with my cousin. Non, non. It was all so many years ago, and the haze hanging over those years is grey and dense, and who remembers when anything so long ago really happened, or precisely what happened. It could have been a hundred years ago. It might as well have been!

But it was not. It was most certainly when I was fifteen.

I have another special affair to acknowledge in this one-hundredth post. Though it didn't occur when I was fifteen. The matter being my recent receipt of an award—the Memetastic Award—from Caterpillar, a sweet blogger friend. Go see her. Darling and sparkly, she is.

Many thanks to Caterpillar for recognizing my blog, and passing this award along to me. And many thanks to all of you who've come along for the blog ride.

I'm not sure of the award's origins, but as with many blog awards, it's delivered with some rules, which in this case are as I like them—simple: a) Tell four lies and one truth and let your readers decide which one's the truth; and, b) keep the award rolling.

Well, there are fictional and non-fictional illustrations in the third paragraph of this post. I think. So, have at it.*wink, wink* 

To keep it moving forward, I shall lavish the lovely Kate—a stupendous sonneteer—at Suppertime Sonnets—with the Memetastic Award. Congratulations Kate! 

One last rumination: mememtastic—is that a word? Not in my dictionary, but it did remind me of the French term for grandmother: Grand-mère, or Meme for short. Which reminded me of Grand-mama (and her 100th birthday), who wouldn't permit me to speak in any language except French. En Francais!

Comme ce:



Bon soir mes amis. C'est tout!