LOVE & TRAVEL - SUMMER

Travelling in a wheelchair, author Jarred McGinnis makes the most of a chance solo parenting trip

- Jarred McGinnis

Some of my happiest memories are from my wife's first maternity leave, when we spent the summer in Volonne, north of Marseille, where we now live, beside the Durance, a languid tributary of the Rhône. In Volonne, a grand allée of plane trees leads to a square littered with tables next to an ancient fountain. Here, my wife and I, a new family with our baby.

Poe, drank rosé wine à la piscine under the screech and dart of martins and swallows.

We rented a small apartment nestled among apricot orchards that thickened the air with their scent each evening. In the mornings, we pulled Poe's crib into the shade of a wrought-iron pergola wrapped with vines that swayed in the river's breeze. As she gnawed on her rubber giraffe, watching the property owner's naked two-year-old chase chickens, we breakfasted on toast and lavender honey while working our way through baskets of freshly picked fruit and vegetables left for us. When we drove through hills of lavender, each blast of purple flowers buzzing with a honey bee, each field humming to itself like a contented old woman. One night, we followed a truck overflowing with lavender, a snow of perfumed purple swirling in our headlights.