The Bell Curve:

I just watched my dear French friends, Howard and Françoise Appel, drive off on the next leg of their visit to a wet California in order to escape the frigid winter of Provence and create new memories with old friends. They stayed in my home for 18 days, and I will miss them sorely in the mix of sadness and momentary relief that always follows a visit from those you love.

I’m not completely out of company. I’m in my office with two dogs, my Gia and my daughter’s Rainn, a boarder while the head of her household spends several days in Las Vegas. The dogs, sprawled out quietly around my desk chair, seem to sense my mood, revisiting the past weeks and savoring the one essential quality beside love that made it work. That quality was pervasive humor that introduced peanut butter into their lives and where opinions cast in concrete were balanced by the art of listening.

When local friends were surprised that we weren’t at each other, after the first weekend morphed into the next week, we explained that the first few days were a pilot program, after which we just applied what we had learned. One of the first lessons was allowing space, when it was needed, to read or nap or just breathe our damp air. Not everything had to be a group activity. Early morning walks, for example. Or watching football on TV. Whatever the daytime activity, we could count irrevocably on convening at the cocktail hour for a fixed menu of martinis, gin-and-tonics and multicolored wines. And good talk that had no visible boundaries except a failure to show respect for differing opinions no matter how incredulous.

The guest status was changed to family after the first weekend, when we began to take turns in preparing meals and picking up checks. When the weather drove us indoors, we saw a passel of movies, but very little TV — except for the speech of our president, which took on an extra element when seen through French eyes. Our visitors were distressed to see firsthand the depth of anger directed at Obama and the deepening divisions within this country.

The respect and support for Obama is much greater, they said, in the nations of western Europe than in his own country.