Parapluies, Parasols, and Umbrellas
Rain is a frequent part of life in the port city of Cherbourg in Normandy, northwestern France.Known as the Town of Umbrellas, tourists from cruise ships that stop there learn that parapluies have been manufactured by the same family since the 1800s. In 1963 during my first year of college, I enrolled in a French class and dreamed of someday traveling to France in the hopes that this beautiful language might magically role off my tongue, like rain from an umbrella. That year, Jacques Demy’s award-winning film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was filmed in Cherbourg and went on to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1964. The film is entirely sung, not spoken, in French, and to this day, the lyrical word parapluie resurfaces in my memory whenever it rains.
This dry summer however, rain has been scant in Europe and Asia, as in regions America. On the streets of French cities where temperatures are well into the triple digits, tourists and locals alike carry umbrellas of all sizes and designs and seek relief in fountains and canals. The same is true in regions of Asia. In Tokyo and South Korea where the heat is stifling, parasols that have traditionally be a part of weddings and ceremonial costumes now fashionably shade pedestrians from the sun along densely populated streets. Not only are they practical, parasols can be fashioned into works of art covered with pink flowers that mirror panes of stained glass.
In my August garden in the Sierra Foothills, temperatures reached 99 last week, and I can’t remember when we last had rain. When dry heat sucked the moisture out of potted plants on our deck, a gift inherited from my mother Alice (happy August 21 birthday, Mom) provided a solution. Alice loved estate sales and amassed a fine collection of vintage parasols and designer umbrellas over the years. I usually store them in her teal green ceramic umbrella stand that I also inherited. But since there’s been no rain and the hot midday sun has been unrelenting, they’ve been repurposed and now provide shade for my strawberries, tomatoes, and pots of flowers and trailing nasturtiums.
For all these reasons, I look at umbrellas more and more as small acts of kindness. A moment when someone shelters a friend or stranger surprised by a sudden rain shower. A constant gardener who takes time to provide shade for flowers in need of relief from the sun. Towns that hang a parade of brightly colored, upside down umbrellas overhead along aging pedestrian malls, creating fanciful street art in an effort to revitalize neighborhoods where new shops and cafes have emerged.
And on days when Kit and I sit at a patio table in the garden at the Lodge where he resides, a large red umbrella offers shade and shelter. Rain or shine, its red glow allows us time together, in silence or in quiet moments of conversation. There, sheltered from life’s detours that come with age, we travel wherever our minds take us.
When a soft delta breeze whispers through the garden, time disappears. Once again, I hear the musical sounds of a conversation in French being sung, not spoken. As it rains, two young lovers are standing under an umbrella on a street in Cherbourg, seeking shelter from an uncertain future. Like us, not wanting the moment to end.