The End of the Odyssey

December 2008

The last few days in Seix were a flurry of packing, cleaning, throwing out unwanted stuff and saying goodbye. It’s not often in life that one leaves a place for good, that one gathers up everything one has and moves on. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever live in this small corner of the world again, a fact that made our departure all the more poignant. Many of our friends, and even some people we only knew by association, made the effort to come to us and say goodbye, to say that they and their children would really miss our family. It was touching to feel their regard.

On our last day in the village, Thursday, there were many tears flowing into the Salat. Mahalia and Maylis were distraught, Agnes and Orissia found the parting very hard, and Myriam and I had moist eyes. Mireille regretted the things we didn’t do together, and Bitte spoke aloud the words that had been waltzing around in my mind, that it was awful for us to be leaving when we felt so happy in each other’s company: her and Olivier and Ludo and me. We had passed a wonderful evening in their company only a week before, in their stone grange on the mountain above Aleu, a house that could only be theirs, done up by them alone with beautiful wood, white plaster, lace, and not a straight line anywhere. It was the first time we had been invited to dinner by local people. Ludo and I have learned over the years, from living in different countries, that it takes a year to form firm friendships and two years to start to feel at home. We are blessed to have formed a few special friendships here, each one of us.

To leave the house in Seix is not an easy thing. Because of the extreme cold the water needs to be bled from all the pipes, removed from all the toilets and emptied from the hot water tanks. The sheets and towels also needed to be washed and well dried before being put away so they wouldn’t become mouldy in the long period of the house’s dormancy. The linen sheets take an age to dry so this was no easy task. We slept without sheets and pillowcases on our last night in the house, and left in the dark early on Friday morning, packing the Renault Espace with 5 suitcases, two large backpacks, 6 small backpacks and 2 bags full of shoes. It sounds as impossible as it seemed to be, but the car had elastic sides. Au revoir, Seix!

La Fete de la Lumiere, Lyon

Felix with Mael; Mahalia and Agnes with Johanna

Our exodus from the Pyrenees took us along the Mediterranean and up the Rhone Valley to Lyon, where we stopped for the night. We were there to visit a friend I made in New York 20 years ago, Pierre, his wife Sylvie and their two children. We’ve seen them on and off over the years and it’s one of those friendships that doesn’t drift with time; they are constants in our address book. We were very lucky to be in Lyon on the night of its famous Fete de la Lumiere, and event that draws visitors from all over Europe (which presented serious accommodation problems). This celebration started as a religious festival where lights were lit for Mary and carried through the streets. It has transformed into a full on spectacle of light, with buildings lit up, lamps hung in the streets and an artist’s competition (along the lines of ‘Sculpture by the Sea’) for works based on light. It was beautiful, especially a video work for children that was projected onto the huge old buildings along two sides of the town hall square.

Sylvie and Pierre

We had dinner with Pierre and Sylvie at their flat, and pored over photos of our children taken nine years ago, and marvelled at how much of their childhood we forget. It made me realise anew how fortunate we’ve been to slow down this year and watch the four of them grow without our own busy-ness clouding our eyes.

On Saturday we squashed into the car again and climbed up into the Alps, to Switzerland. It was very strange to be back in this country again, a place that I found beautiful, but in which I didn’t ever feel comfortable. It is also the place where I met Ludo, where our story started. We saved each other from the alienation that foreigners can feel here.

Our Chalet; the Festive Streets

It was a long drive along the northern edge of Lac Leman, and a treacherous drive up the valley to the village below Zermatt with no snow tyres or chains. We parked the car there and took the train the rest of the way. Cars are not allowed in Zermatt, and this makes it more beautiful than it already is. Nestling below the Matterhorn, it’s a fairy village covered in snow and tasteful Christmas decorations. In fact, they don’t need Christmas decorations here. There’s no need to evoke festive feelings with artificial Christmas trees and baubles. Every tree is a Christmas tree and every shaft of light illuminates a shower of falling snowflakes. Finally, a white Christmas! All my life I’ve wanted to experience Christmas in the snow, and here we are (at least for the pre Christmas festivities).


Sunday dawned clear and blue with a clarity to the air that took our breath away. After spending more in the hire shop than we did on accommodation (and more on lift tickets than we did on accommodation too) we were ready to ski. The ski equipment logistics for a family of six are cumbersome and not funny, especially when two of the six can’t manage their own gear. The walk from the apartment to the ski lifts was challenging, but reaching the top made it all worthwhile. We set out together on our first run and it was beautiful. The snow was soft, the slopes well groomed, no ice and hardly any skiers. Paradise. We headed further up the mountain, keeping the mighty Matterhorn in our sights all the time, and started down the next slope. Then, oh no, I felt something really not right happen in my knee. Torn ligaments. Not great timing. The only good thing about the whole experience was the fun ride down in the first aid sled. It was such a weird way to see the mountain (upside down) that I laughed all the way. $1,500 and a few torn ligaments later I’m back at the apartment, and here I will stay for most of the week I imagine, and I’m not laughing any more!

Skiing in Zermatt

Wednesday
Today it’s snowing. The emaciated winter trees become fleshed out with snow, and the firs become Christmas tree clichés. The snow accumulates on the fences, the garbage tins, the bicycles, rising like dough, a gentle and inevitable growth, the soft contours becoming softer and less contoured and eventually disappearing altogether like limbs under a thick quilt. Snow is so far from my ordinary life that every aspect of snow seems like a miracle. Seeing it in such quantities is like a gift. It’s the gift of being able to look with new eyes. We were so excited when it snowed in Seix, but now that seems like amateur excitement compared to the euphoria we feel here, where the snow is a metre deep and powdery fluffy.

Our chalet is fantastic. Central to everything, not too expensive, well equipped and tastefully decorated with carving everywhere done by the owners’ grandfather.

Friday
Stupendous weather. I had to go out and enjoy it, so I hobbled out with the troops and we took the train up and up and up to over 3000m. The views of the Alps and the Matterhorn from the top were panoramic, the sky blue, the snow deep and white and icing-like. Below us, a long cloud lay like froth, extending from the foot of the Matterhorn right to the end of the valley at Visp. There was one lonely cloud, and I could actually see its shadow slanting through the atmosphere and onto one of the distant slopes. I have never seen a shadow on the sky before. There was also a tiny fragment of rainbow hovering above the ski slope in front of the station that was like the special effect in a movie. Strange meteorological events abounding.
I took a video of the kids and Ludo skiing away from me down their first slope of the day and felt like crying as they slid away, very sad that I couldn’t be with them in such a beautiful place on such a beautiful day. All that was left to do was walk around and take in the scenery, take a few photos, and buy several Swiss army knives for Christmas gifts in the highest shopping area in Europe.

As I limped home I passed a restaurant that had a menu translated into English next to the Swiss German and French ones. One yummy dish had ‘chicken fillets with mushroom scum’ (not a good translation from filet de poulet a la mousse aux champignons).

Sunday
We left Zermatt, really happy with our week there. The kids made enormous progress with their skiing, to the point where Ludo was able to ditch his skis for the snowboard and enjoy some more challenging runs. He and Emile had a few board runs by themselves when the others had had enough.


Nicholas and Christophe; Justine and Veronique

Now we’re in the country-side near Sancerre, staying with Ludo’s cousins and it’s a weekend of feasting and family. They’re very good at feasting here. We had 26 last night at the table and 24 today for lunch. Crazy!

Cave a Vins; Le Cirque d'Hiver

Paris by Night

Paris. A reprise of our visit here last year. Francois was once again incredibly generous in hosting the six of us in his 30 square metre studio on the 5th floor (with no lift, which was challenging for this hobbler). Christmas Eve dinner at Ludo’s Mum’s and Christmas day in Versailles, though this year we chose to go to a restaurant in the gardens of the chateau, which was easier organization for 17 people.

Au Bord de la Seine

Ludo and the children spent a day at Eurodisney (which Mahalia says was awesome) and I went to the Musee Picasso. We went back to the Cirque d’Hiver, once again on the Bateaubus, to a wonderful Dufy exhibition (with 7 children – not recommended) and to the Comedie Francaise to see Cyrano de Bergerac. We caught up with friends for lunch and dinner and saw old movies in the old cinemas of the 5th arrondisement. We burned the candle at both ends and were rather weary when the time came to leave. On our last afternoon we ate the best crepe of the whole year under the Eiffel Tower, with our Paris cousins and Francoise. It was very hard to say farewell, especially for Ludo. Goodbye to his Mum and his sisters and his language and his culture, and not least important, his food and wine.

Virginie and Lucas; Emile and Jane

Our Last Day

We arrived at the airport with 160 kg of luggage (we were allowed 120kg) and managed to avoid the excess baggage charge of $60 per kilogram. And then we flew home.


And that was our year in France. The children are returning fluent in French, they’ve learned to cope with the frustration of a foreign environment and to persist in the face of adversity. They have made fast friends in the village, whose lives are far removed from their normal pampered existence in Sydney, and with their new lingual skills they have become closer to their French family, which was the primary motivation for this year away. We are all six of us closer to each other, as we’ve had to support each other through periods of homesickness, sickness and challenges. We spent more time together than we ever have before – walking in the mountains, travelling in the car, sitting around the fire at night.

This is the end of an amazing adventure that led us to many wonderful places in Europe, in France, in the Pyrenees, within our family, and in our hearts.

Our Last Month in Seix

NOVEMBER

One child can make a big difference in a small village. Agnes, as always, has made oodles of friends and her departure will create a little vacuum in their lives, according to their mothers. The same is true of Emile and his friend Bruno, Felix and Jolan, and Mahalia has spent almost every hour that she’s not with us, with her friend Mayliss. They will miss each other a lot. Our house is in the centre of the village, a village that is quickly aging, and it is always full of children, our children and everyone else’s. Mireille, our old friend and neighbour, has said “when you go there will be a big hole in the life of the village.” We don’t know everyone in the village but everyone knows us, whether because we’re ‘the Australians’ or because they know one or more of the four children. It’s a small pond and we provide quite a few fish.

The Kids Friends; Jolan and Lucas

Emile, Agnes and Felix all spend a lot of time at Jean-Claude’s house. Jean Claude is a small, old man with few teeth and hands that have become claw-like with arthritis. He loves to have all the village children around playing in his steep, huge yard, and he also houses every stray cat in the village, and their myriad kittens. They make bows and arrows there (the children, not the cats) and swing on a 5 metre high rope swing on the tree at the top of the hill into the void over the village and then back again to the precipitous slope. Emile fell of last week at full swing and hurt his back. Emile has spent hours at Jean Claude’s recently with all his tools, carving wooden knives and arrows.

It's Really Cold

N is 9 years old and has brought himself up. He has a brother who will end up gaol, a mother who is a drug addict and is now pregnant with her fourth child. N has been known to sleep on the street because his Mum hasn’t answered the door. At Halloween, he came to the front door at 10pm, by himself, to collect lollies. A week before that he and his brother and some friends went around the village spraying graffiti on walls and cars. He has already been up at the police station. Life here is certainly beautiful, but there is a dark side too.

A Medieval Toilet; A Medieval Mahalia

Mum arrived today. We picked her up at the dinky little airport in Carcassonne and brought her back to ‘the fridge’. We’ve made the lounge/dining area really cosy with a fire and a warm red rug, but to leave this sanctuary of warmth we risk frostbite.

The stone of the buildings in Perigord is the colour of butter and not-too-cooked caramel, so different from the rough grey we have in Ariege. We’ve come here to show Mum the beauty of the Dordogne and the Perigord cuisine (don’t come here if you don’t like duck and goose products). We’re staying in a little golden hotel in Coux, where we have been given a warm welcome by the couple who run it. They have even provided 11 and 7 year old boys and a 9 year old girl to play with our children! How thoughtful!

The Golden Stone of Sarlat

Our first stop was Lascaux, where a complete and exact replica of the most celebrated cavern has been made for tourists. The caves were discovered by 4 teenagers and their dog, Robot, in the 1940’s and they were very soon overrun with thousands of tourists each day. The opening to the cave was enlarged, stairs and ventilation were installed, and soon enough the 16,000 year old paintings were being destroyed by bacteria, mould and carbon dioxide, so they were closed in 1963. The paintings are amazing for their sophistication and for the incorporation of the relief of the cave wall in the shapes of the animals.






The valley of the Dordogne is littered with fabulous castles so we saw a few of these: Castelnaud, Beynac (where the film Chocolat was made), Marqueyssac, and a spooky chateau fort that was built into the side of a cliff.

Felix Falls in Blackberry Bush; The Dordogne

It’s amazing how your body changes in one year (read: ages). I’m sure that when we left Australia I could do without my glasses. Close work was easier with them but I could still get by without them. Now I’m in a panic if I leave them on the second floor and I have to look up a telephone number, or even dial the telephone number. Forget about reading without them: I’d have to hold the book with my feet to decipher anything. I even need them to eat my dinner for goodness sake. I can’t see what I’m eating otherwise. I understand so very clearly now why old people (a term which theoretically could also apply to me???) wear their glasses on a string around their neck. They may as well walk around without eyes as without their glasses.

Yesterday we took Mum to the Col de la Crouzette. It seems to be a place we take our parents, having already been there with Dad and Cheryl, and with Francoise. It’s on top of a ridge that lines up to the south of the steepest mountains that form the frontier with Spain, and it’s so high (1,400m) that that the view is uninterrupted and extraordinary. Yesterday was so very beautiful because the air was crystal clear and there was a 20cm quilt of fresh snow all around us. Mum was transported, and it was a real joy to see her joy at being in such a special place. Although she’s seen snow several times before, and even started her limited skiing career at the ripe age of 61, she’d never seen it so fresh and thick and luscious and people free. There was nobody around for miles.

Mum on Top of the World

November 25, 2008
It’s snowing in the village! Today we’ll go tobogganing. Last night was absolutely freezing, but it’s OK because it’s all so beautiful today. Snowflakes fall so delicately, it’s a miracle something so airy and pure can make the journey from a heavy grey cloud to earth without being obliterated. Instead, those trillions of tiny white water sculptures congregate together clearly believing strongly that there is strength in numbers, and indeed there is: massed together, these subtle forms subdue all noise and cow all bad behaviour so that a village like ours is transformed, and everyone is smiling and contours are soft and the world is transformed into something completely different, clothed in the pureness of white.

The kids were eager to leave for school, scooping up the snow from the tops of the cars and battling each other all the way to school. They sat in their classrooms transfixed by another snowfall with huge flakes flurrying outside. And this afternoon they came in, grabbed the toboggans and plastic bags and raced out to find a steep snow covered slope. We went to Toulouse today to buy Christmas presents for the children, and what has become a ho hum drive was today so beautiful, it seemed like a completely different route. It’s really cold though.

Tunisian Patisserie in Toulouse

November 27
Last night Ludo and I went to the theatre in Foix. It’s very hard to motivate yourself when it’s -2 degrees outside and you’re siting beside the fire, the theatre is an hour’s drive away, and to step beyond the lounge-room door and out into the fridge (aka the corridor) involves scarves, coats and beanies. We did motivate ourselves however, and it was a wonderful play. The play, “Biography Without Antoinette”, was written by the Swiss playwright, Max Frisch, and it had five fine actors including Thierry L’Hermitte and Sylvie Testud, both pillars of the French film industry. This is the first play I’ve seen in French, and it was a revelation to me. I understood it! Even if my speech has barely improved, at least I have progressed with my comprehension. A week ago we went to the same theatre to see a performance of Ushu by a Japanese choreographer. Half of the programme was fabulous, but the other half was snoring boring, which was a real shame because we had Mum, Mahalia and Agnes with us.

Last bike ride today. Ludo and I donned scarves, gloves, beanies and layers of clothes and rode up to the Col de Catchaudegue for the last time, in the snow. It was cold, cold, cold, and involved some slick and serious manoeuvres around patches of ice and snow. It was a little dangerous, I guess you could say, but it was magnificent at the top looking out on the landscape we normally see covered in green, blanketed in white from the village on the valley floor to peaks on the horizon. The seasons change and so does our appreciation of the passage of time. It’s like a helix, going around and around but never to the same point at which it began, each turn of the helix representing four seasons. Maybe that’s why DNA is in the form of a helix: the blueprint of life reflecting the passage of time. And now that I think upon it, there are four bases that make up DNA, the sequence of which determines the genetic code. That’s a fine metaphor. I digress. We’re nearly packed.

Hay Bales in the Snow: Our Last Ride

Saturday morning. It’s cold and the sky is flat and grey. It looks two-dimensional. I’m sure it’s going to snow. Agnes and I walked up to the village’s new library to borrow some books and see Felix, who goes there to play computer games. It’s a great library for a village this size. On the way there we pass the old 16th century chapel that is now getting a new roof. Adjacent to the chapel is the old cure’s residence and garden. The Historical Society here has spent the last few years doing up this building, and replanting the garden as it would have looked a few hundred years ago, now it’s the chapel’s turn. When we went to visit the newly opened garden we saw photos of the interior of the chapel and it was a revelation. It is do beautiful inside. The ceiling is covered in clue with gold stars, and all the walls are painted with fabulous images. A few weeks ago the workmen were there and the ancient front door was open and the key was in the door, and that was a wonderful sight. The key was a venerable one, as old as the door itself, bronze, twisted, huge. I love to see a key of that beauty used for the purpose for which it was made.

So, we went to the library, and I found a book on Picasso’s Guernica to borrow. I saw Maica, so we kissed on both cheeks and talked about the party, and then I saw Aisha from the Tourist Office, so we kissed on both cheeks, and I told her we were leaving next week, then we left the library and walked back through the centre of the village and saw Noe on his bike and he asked if Emile was at home and he said he’d be by later, and then I saw the florist, and we kissed on both cheeks and we talked about her son’s birthday party tomorrow and I asked whether she’d left a coat at our place and we discussed her purchase of our clothes dryer, and then we went to the hairdresser to make an appointment and we kissed on both cheeks and discussed the cold and then we walked towards Orissia’s house and passed Arlette on the way but we didn’t kiss because she has a cold and we discussed her health and then we continued on to Orissia’s house and Alain came to the door and we kissed on both cheeks and he invited us for a pizza night and we discussed Yolan’s birthday party which is tomorrow, and then Myriam drove up and we kissed on both cheeks and discussed again the pizzas and the party, and then I left Agnes to play with Orissia and I walked home and came across Janine (who used to clean our house when Ludo’s grandparents were here) and we kissed on both cheeks and discussed our imminent departure and the even more imminent snow, and Pascale walked by and we kissed on both cheeks and they kissed on both cheeks and I asked whether Ludo had payed her for the babysitting and she confirmed that it would snow, and then I was in front of the front door, and I slid inside, one hour after I’d left for a quick visit to the library!



Yesterday I was finishing up the packing, trying to squeeze a year into a few suitcases, and I came across a firework. The deeper I delved into the suitcase I was repacking, the more fireworks I came across. Emile. Emile loves fireworks. They are not, apparently, illegal in France. The fellow at the tabac sells them to the children in the village and it makes me mad. Emile thinks this is the most fabulous thing ever sold in a shop and it’s been really hard to impress on him how dangerous they can be. He’s been forbidden to use them, but all his friends do so the danger is still there. They hold the small bungers in their hands and light the fuse and then throw them. Emile desperately wants to show them to his friend Jamie so he had the fine idea of smuggling them into Australia in our suitcases. He used amazing cunning in sequestering them in the pockets of trousers and under the fabric flap that covers the suitcase hinges, and wrapped up in jumpers…. When ordered to surrender them all it took him half an hour to find them all.

It’s time to say goodbye, so we have a weekend of parties, Mahalia has 6 friends for a sleepover on Friday night, Emile has friends for pizza and a cinema trip. We have 15 adults and 15 children coming on Saturday night, then Agnes and Felix have their little friends around on Sunday. Help!

Virginie and Aurore; Bitte, Laurent, Manoy and Giulia

Laurent and Mireille

Virginie; Mario and Olivier