The Name I Walk Around With
is French and comes to me by way of Canadians who got it from the actual French who may have, some suggest, picked it up in Spain. I have been to all three places and never met anyone named LaChance that I know of, though it's a common name, I'm told, and means "luck"in English. What kind, bon or mal, is uncertain. Also, it is a name assigned to or adopted by gamblers, and deep down, aren't we all? So, with such a name, I am inclined to think everything that happens to me is destiny derived from chance. Once, in Auvillar, France, I found iodine tablets in the guest house, which were to be taken, I assumed, in case the nearby nuclear plant chanced to melt down, which luckily, it did not while I was there, nor has it yet. Auvillar is a pretty village, even if one can see the steam rising up from the reactor's cooling towers in the distance, the view framed by the centuries-old buildings near the village center. Such roses and such wine! Rabbit and duck, cheeses and fresh asparagus! The eight kinds of strawberries, and the lucky St. Jacque's pilgrims making their cheerful, holy way past gardens in the rain, no one dying, just then.
