France has lived in my imagination for as long as I can remember.
Provence, especially.
In my dreams, it is always afternoon there.
The sun hangs warm and golden over rolling hills, and rows of lavender disappear toward the horizon in hazy shades of violet. Somewhere nearby, an old stone farmhouse sits beneath faded shutters, its windows thrown open to let in the breeze.
There is a table outside.
Nothing elaborate. A linen cloth softened by years of washing. A bottle of sparkling rosé resting in a silver bucket. A small plate of almond macarons, their delicate shells cracking softly with the first bite.
Maybe there are bees humming lazily among the lavender. Maybe you can hear glasses clinking from another table somewhere down the hill. The air smells floral and sun-warmed, with that particular sweetness I imagine belongs only to the French countryside in summer.
And no one is in a hurry.
That's perhaps the part I've romanticized most.
The idea of an afternoon with nowhere else to be. Of sitting at a table long after everything has been eaten, pouring the last little bit from the bottle and watching shadows slowly stretch across the countryside.
I know the Provence in my imagination may not be exactly like this.
Real places rarely resemble the versions we create before we arrive. They're messier and louder and more complicated—and usually more interesting.
But I think there is something beautiful about dreaming of a place before you know it.
For now, Provence exists for me somewhere between lavender and rosé, almond and linens softened with time—
an afternoon I've been imagining for years.
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