Andy Smallman

Romain left this afternoon and we are all a little sad. Melinda took him to the airport after some staggered goodbyes this morning. Not only do we absolutely love Romain, we like what he brought to our lives in Seattle. He’s fun, funny, thoughtful and kind. He left us a touching goodbye note that included this line, “Thank you for the place you gave me in your family.”

And with Romain’s departure, we feel a little farther away from France…

To feel a little closer to being fully back home, Melinda & I hooked up tonight with our longtime friends Kevin & Lynn (that’s the 4 of us in today’s picture). We credit Kevin (and another friend named Bruce) for Melinda and me meeting. He & I went to high school together. And Lynn has known Melinda and Brenda from single digit grade school.

Lynn is a filmmaker gaining serious attention in the world. She told us her most well-known film, Humpday, is being re-made in France with a bigger budget and famous French actors and everything. That’s exciting, to say the least.

As if reconnecting with Romain and everyone else in France wasn’t enough reason to go back…

So at the end of our fancy Italian meal last night, the one we were treated to by Romain, we asked him what he’d like to tonight, his final evening in Seattle. Without hesitation he said he wanted to return to the Mexican restaurant in Ballard where we went on August 5th.

For the sake of accuracy, I made a point to get the name of the restaurant this time. Just don’t ask me to pronounce it… It’s spelled “La Carta de Oaxaca,” and I think the X sounds like a W or something. And I thought the French R was difficult. Whew. Anyway, you can learn more about the restaurant at its website.

I caught Romain in mid-bite of his Lamb Birria with this photo. He wanted to make sure he ate something that came with the restaurant’s delicious homemade corn tortillas. I think he was quite satisfied with this choice. When I asked him what he thought of the meal he said, “I love.”

I asked him if he would miss Mexican food once he was back home and he said yes, but that he would miss other things more. I think he was referring to us. It was such a sweet thing to say.

We will certainly be missing him, too.

Romain took this picture just as we were heading out this evening for dinner. After nearly 4 weeks with us in Seattle, he insisted that he treat us to a dinner out and suggested Mamma Melina, an Italian restaurant, as the locale. He has heard us talk repeatedly of it, and specifically for two reasons.

One, just as we were leaving for France last July the restaurant was moving from its longtime spot in the University District, not far from Melinda’s parents’ house. The new location is close to our house, on the corner of 25th & Blakely near University Village. They have a swanky new outdoor eating area that has been beckoning us since our return.

Two, every time Melinda sees the restaurant she tells us she is going to drop the “D” from her name and go by “Melina.” In fact, when the girls were younger and we’d drive by the old location, I would start calling her “Mamma Melina.” It just has never stuck.

Regarding that outdoor eating experience we were hoping to have, it was a no-go tonight. It’s been raining on and off all afternoon and evening. Go figure. Rain in Seattle. Still, the meal was excellent and the company divine. Romain was the perfect host, insisting on everyone having whatever they wanted and having us practice how to say thank you in Italian before we left home.

Dwight & Michele, Melinda’s parents, invited us all over for an incredible dinner tonight. This, of course, included Melinda’s sister’s family, Brenda & Greg and their daughter, Perrin, as well as the five of us (I count Romain as part of our family unit). I’ve mentioned before that the initial connection between the Shaws and the Boudeaus was through Dwight & Michele having hosted Frédérique (Romain’s mom) years and years ago, before she married Laurent and before she had kids. As you might imagine, it was important to Dwight & Michele to have Romain and the rest of us over for dinner before he leaves on Wednesday.

I got this picture off of Romain’s camera. You may have guessed that that’s Romain with Perrin, as sweet of a picture as you’re going to see. Perrin was very cute with him. When we arrived she was too shy to bisous, but she was willing to do so by the time we left. In fact, she even gave me a bisous as we were leaving!

With Melinda’s and my work responsibilities increasing this week, Dwight & Michele and Brenda & Greg are going to take some time tomorrow and Tuesday to give Romain the last of his Seattle tours. He’s going to have lunch at/on the Space Needle tomorrow with D&M and then B&G are taking him out on Tuesday. Tomorrow afternoon I’ve set him up to visit Amazon.com. And after that, he’s taking our gang out to dinner as a thank you for hosting him.

Here’s another picture from last night’s trip to Emerald Downs, this one taken from our table in the dining room. Not only did we get this choice view of Mt. Rainier, we were situated at a table right on the finish line. Not bad.

I can’t quite explain it, but using this picture of Mt. Rainier is given me a sense of déjà vu, like I posted about it and other Seattle area landmarks before. For instance, Romain still really wants to go up in the Space Needle, perhaps THE most touristy/landmarky thing related to Seattle. Doing so is kind of expensive and, to me, not that significant. I’ve done it three times in my life. The first time was soon after my family moved to the area in 1974. And the other two were on Chloe’s and Ella’s 13th birthdays, occasions on which we even had dinner in the overpriced restaurant. So I can certainly understand Romain’s interest. But this déjà vu feeling is about not being overly excited about doing the stereotypical touristy things.

Still, look at Mt. Rainier. Pretty spectacular, isn’t it? Is just looking at it a stereotypical touristy thing?

So tonight we took Romain to Emerald Downs, the horse race track located about 45 minutes south of Seattle. And by “we” I technically mean my parents, and by “my parents” I technically mean my dad. You see, my dad, as you may know, has all kinds of connections at the local track, having worked in some capacity in the horse racing industry since the 1960’s. The other “we” involved was Chloe and Ella. All the “we’s” had a great time.

Of the many photos I could have used tonight, I chose this one that I admit to having staged a bit. I’m not sure Romain fully grasps the significance of the newspaper he is reading, the Daily Racing Form. But let it be known that I worked as a statistician for the “Form” for several years, even being responsible for some of the “expert” selections back in the late 1980’s. Talk about a time warp. Posing Romain in front of the “tote” board just adds to the “feel” of the photo.

Since my dad treated us to an incredibly fancy dinner in the Turf Club, I could have used photos of Ella with her prime rib dinner or Romain with his banana split dessert. I could have used a shot of Romain & Chloe in the announcer booth during a race with track announcer Robert Geller. Then there is the shot of a giddy Ella counting her pennies after her selected horse once again beat Romain’s and Chloe’s (I think Ella won 4 of 5 races and made 62 American cents and 5 French cents).

Like I said, we had a great time.

Oh, if the subject of horse race announcing interests you, Robert Geller was featured in a book on the subject called “They Call the Horses.”

So it’s just about 10pm and I just got back from facilitating a meeting at PSCS (Puget Sound Community School, where I am the school director) for about 30 prospective volunteers. That’s me explaining how we track attendance in school classes.

About leading the meeting, it was another one of those strange experiences after having been gone a year, like how I reported last night about feeling like we were gone for only a week or slept through an entire year. Aspects of facilitating the meeting rolled from me automatically. Other things, specifically those related to people present tonight who volunteered last year (and I therefore do not know) or procedures put in place last year that are new to me, required a more concentrated effort.

I remember thinking about these kinds of meetings, what it would be like to facilitate them after being gone for a year, before we left. I knew it would be odd but I didn’t give it much attention since it was so far in the future. Besides, there wasn’t really anything to do about it and I trust my ability to both facilitate and to adapt. But it’s just different when for 16 years I was present for everything and always the “go-to” guy.

Say, to learn more about the school’s volunteer program, take a look here.

I play a lot of mind games with time. For instance, I pinpointed the time tonight that made it exactly 3 weeks ago to the minute from when we got up at the Boudeaus on the day with left Nantes. Then I thought about what I’ll be doing exactly 3 weeks from that moment in the future. It will be 7pm on September 7th. I’ll have returned from the PSCS orientation week retreat, likely tired and ready for a night’s rest.

Earlier today I was writing an email to a friend about aspects of our transition back to Seattle. While writing, I paused and had a bit of a descriptive epiphany. Continuing, I wrote, “Some aspects of this are surprisingly easy, making it feel like we were never gone (or just returned from a week’s vacation). Other aspects are kind of Rip Van Winkle-like, as if we’ve awoken from a year-long sleep and certain things have passed us by. Those are harder, of course.”

As I finished writing that it really hit home how accurate this is for me. I mean I can go outside on our street and everything looks pretty much the same. I can fool myself into thinking that the whole French thing was just a dream, or the creation of my imagination. Then I’ll see one of the young kids in the neighborhood, one for whom a year has meant a tremendous amount of physical growth. That’s when I feel like Rip Van Winkle.

A year ago today we ate hamburgers at Quick in Nantes (today’s picture is actually from that day). Seeing the picture, it doesn’t seem that long ago.

I wonder what I’ll be doing a year from now…

A 10 minute walk from our house in Seattle is Frank’s Oyster House & Champagne Bar, a favorite destination of Melinda’s and mine. And with Melinda’s mom, Michele, taking Chloe, Ella and Romain out tonight, we took it upon ourselves to pay a little visit to our favorite neighborhood oyster house. We were not disappointed.

For a little more context on our interest in oysters, I direct you to this post from July 26 of last year when we were in Pornichet.

In that post from last year you will read that we ordered 6 oysters. Tonight at Frank’s we ordered 8, 4 of each variety they had. All were delicious but two, the Kusshi and the Deer Creek, were beyond outstanding. As you can see in today’s photo, the presentation was lovely and we complemented the oysters with a cocktail. What you see in my hand is called a Deshler, made of Rye, Dubonnet, Cointreau, Peychaud’s bitters, lemon & orange peel.

You see, I’m partial to Cointreau, and was before we lived in France. While there we discovered that it is produced in Angers, a scant 30 minutes by train from Nantes.

I’m excited to say that my brother Steve, his wife Deb, and their son Nick, were all able to spend some time with us this evening. They live in Nevada and came into town for an extended weekend. As you might well imagine, before seeing them on Friday night we hadn’t seen them in well over a year. Steve and I used to be quite close. We are 15 months apart in age and I was the best man at his wedding.

We went out for dinner and beer at the Third Place Pub, right here in our neighborhood. Today’s photo, as you can see, is actually of just Romain and me inside the pub. I didn’t have my camera so had to rely on this picture taken from Melinda’s cell phone. One thing that makes tonight’s locale hugely significant for this blog is that it was at this very location, in fact at the very table that we were sitting at, that Melinda and I outlined our wishes for the sabbatical with representatives of the PSCS board.

Taking this further, it was here at the Third Place Pub that most of the sabbatical planning meetings took place, also in most cases at this very table. It was Melinda’s and my first time there since returning to Seattle, and having Romain with us seemed quite apt. I figure this is one of those deeply meaningful posts personally, the kind that the significance doesn’t quite carry in text.

But believe me, it was a big deal tonight for Melinda and me. And fun to be there with members of my family I rarely see.