action de grâce

We set the table with mismatched silver, my grandmother's second-best china, and the etched wine glasses that we bought, years ago, at a store in Normandy with a hand-lettered sign out front reading brocante, a word that we later learned was most accurately translated as junk. L took care of almost all of the shopping and cooking, while I made a cranberry kuchen (which is, I'm fairly sure, the tastiest dessert ever) and whipped a half pint of cream in an enormous bowl.

We had invited some French people and spent lots of time talking about where to get the best ice cream in Paris and how French students tend to cheat on their exams and whether the new French law banning smoking in public places would ever actually go into effect. I did think, fleetingly, about the rest of my family, sitting in my mother's living room, setting the traditional apple brandy punch on fire and admiring the traditional blue flame. But, on the whole, everything worked out far better than I had any right to expect it possibly would.