My Scholarship Entry: A Local Encounter that Changed my Perspective

I walk past wooden tables draped with hand-woven rugs where a skinny man in a green knit hat is selling them for the cheap price of €300. Beneath the clock tower, around the man with a face full of hair playing the guitar and harmonica, I ignore the sweet smell of lavender creamed honey and walk inside a dark shop.

A white bearded man works in the back molding clay on a pottery wheel. “Bonjour,” he greets me and then returns to his clay. I greet him back with less of the ease it took him. I am still learning the smoothness of the French language.

Shelves border the walls, stacked with plates painted in bright yellow, blue and red. Little heart –shaped dishes that fit in the palm of my hand sit on a table in the middle. Without even a name to identify it, the shop is hidden on a side road of the bustling Saturday market in Apt, France.

He begins to speak French, a fast mixture of swishing whispers. I catch only the end, “Where are you from?”

États-Unis, I tell him, but I am staying in Lacoste for a few months. He seems to understand my mixture of French and English. He nods and gestures for me to come over. The clay smooth’s out in his hands slowly forming into a jar.

The clay spins around. . I have so many questions but my limited French and his lack of English leaves us speechless. Only the sound of the pottery wheel buzzes between us. I watch his motions, the way his hands mold the clay, this is our language.
A bowl of painted cicadas sits on the table beside his desk. The buzzing of the cicada, a popular insect in France, rings through my head. I sort through the colorful bowl of bugs until I find a blue one speckled with white.

I reach out to pay him, but he stands up shaking his head and closing my hand over the clay cicada and €2 coin. I feel the drying clay spotting his hands. “Merci,” is all I can think to say and even then it sounds more like mercy. The man smiles and the lines around his blue eyes crinkle.