POSTCARD FROM PROVENCE

When her daughter's semester abroad was cut short by the pandemic, Jamie Quatro promised they would go back together. Their return to this sunbaked, agriculturally rich slice of southern France offered a chance to reconnect with each other and with friends made along the way

- Jamie Quatro

ON THE EVENING OF March 11, 2020, I called my daughter Hallie, who was studying in Aix-en-Provence, in southern France. I told her we'd booked her a flight home; she'd have to be on the 7 a.m. bus to the Marseille airport the next morning.

"What?" she kept asking. It was 2 a.m. in France. "What's happening?" Just two weeks earlier I'd been with her in Aix. On February 29-Leap Year Day-we went to Paris. Ste.-Chapelle, the Musée d'Orsay, cafés, the Métro: all packed. I'd known things were bad in China and Italy; now, in hindsight, my wishful thinking seemed reckless.

Later I learned that Hallie's host mother, Marie-Paule, woke on the morning of March 12 to discover that her American students had all fled overnight. On our daughter's bed she found a pile of clothing and souvenirs-things Hallie thought she'd have time to ship home and a note scrawled in haste: Chère Marie-Paule, S'il vous plaît, donnez ou recyclez tout ce que vous pouvez. Merci pour tout. J'espère vous revoir bientôt. (Please donate or recycle whatever you can. Thank you for everything. I hope to see you again soon.)

Then came long months of isolation at home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Masking, testing, disinfecting groceries. Our neighbors, Amy and Jon, invited us to sit on their deck and sample wines from Domaine Montrose, in the French Languedoc region. Their son Geoffrey works at the vineyard. Hallie and I drank rosés with Jon and Amy, listening to them describe the life Geoffrey has in the south of France. Or used to have, before COVID. From this distance, sipping this wine, it was easier to imagine France in the present tense.