6/4/2003. Summer in a skillet

It's suddenly hot and muggy in Paris, rain having alternated with brief periods of hot sun all day long. Almost no residential buildings in Paris are air conditioned, and as I was cooking a late dinner last night, I had all the windows open. Nevertheless, my hair was clinging damply to my neck, helped along by the steam that was rising from a pan of girolles (chanterelles) that I was sautéing.

All it took was a whiff of the aroma rising out of the skillet for summer to hit me full force. Even though just a few days ago, Paris was so chilly that people were in sweaters, it was the perfume of wild mushrooms more than the heat that made me realize that the long, sensuous days of summer had arrived.

That smell--the elusive whiff of ripe apricots that fresh chanterelles exude--instantly evoked what was for me one of the archetypal summer experiences when I lived back in Indiana. In late June, we usually had a dry spell. Then, around the first week in July, thunderstorms))or chanterelle rains, as I called them--would begin, raising the humidity to a fever pitch. About 10 days after the onslaught of rain, in the gloomy depths of certain southern Indiana forests, the luminous, apricot-orange funnel-shaped heads of chanterelles would start popping up through the forest litter.

And I was always there looking for them, sweating like crazy in the heat and humidity, stinging from the nettles that inevitably grow in the damp bottomlands favored by the mushrooms, and spitting out sticky strands from parachuting spiders that inevitably hang from the trees at that particular time of year.

But if I was finding those rivers of gold, I was happy. I remember one record-breaking year when I carried out 22 pounds of chanterelles. From mushroom patch back to the car was a few kilometers, and I emerged literally by the light of the moon. The whole way I was enveloped in an intoxicating cloud of apricot mushroom perfume. What a wonder that the delectable chanterelle is colored exactly like an apricot--and smells like one too!

It's amazing how a sensory impression--especially a fragrance--can bring back a vivid memory, or a sort of gestalt of sensory impressions--in this case, my personal version of the very essence of summer. As I sautéed my pan of golden French chanterelles, I was transported back to other summer evenings, when I stood over a similar steaming skillet, perspiring and listening to the crack of a summer thunderstorm and the sudden rush of rain outside.

It's true that summer unfurls differently in Paris than in Indiana. Instead of the smell of neighbors' barbecues, I catch enticing whiffs of lunches being prepared in other apartments as the children come home from school (as many do) for their midday meal. Everyone's windows are open, including mine, which is why my nose can become a sort of stealthy peeping Tom in other people's kitchens. When I inhale these enticing aromas, I inevitably wonder why other people's lunches always smell better than my own.

And instead of the distant growl of lawnmowers making their endless turns around infinite lawns, I hear the sounds of intoxicatingly human lives all around me, in a disembodied and often poignant sort of way, like snatches of scenes from a film. A child pleads to stay outside with her friends just a little bit later. An infant wails and is quickly comforted. A dog yips in excitement. A couple of stylish women, arm in arm, discuss their boyfriends as their high-heels rat-tat-tat down the sidewalk 6 floors below me. And at night, an occasional exclamation floats through the open bedroom window from the street, seeming as close as the terrace just outside the door.

Instead of shorts, Parisian girls are breaking out all their sexy summer dresses, tiny skirts, and clinging, skimming tops that reveal tempting bits of under-lace. They loiter luxuriously at sidewalk tables with their boyfriends, stretching their slim legs into view, wiggling a sexy mule on an arched foot, keenly aware of how the slight sheen of perspiration on their sun-flushed faces is driving those very boyfriends mad...with desire. Yes, Paris in summer abandons itself wholeheartedly to sensuality. Billboards, magazines, conversation--everything is geared to the art of living the season to its fullest. Even more in Paris than back in Indiana, I revel in the onslaught of summer.

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