I have left home twice before, once to go away to college and once, shortly thereafter, for a year`s grand tour of Europe. Leaving home at 35 is different. Moving a woman, a man, a baby and a dog across the Atlantic is not a job for a backpack and a Eurailpass. Leon and I chose to run away from home for a year because we were living too ordered a life; the thought of waking up 30 years hence, at 65, having lived nowhere but Toronto and in a predictable and unchanging manner, filled me with horror. I wanted to throw some pepper into the pot.
Mara (the baby) was 10 weeks old the day we left for the south of France for the year. Merlin (the dog) was 10 years old. Everyone had the requisite papers, the bags were packed, the moment came to consign our beloved house to its tenants–and I burst into tears.
Ten hours later, we are picking up our new car in Frankfurt (that`s the other difference between Europe at 18 and at 35) and driving south. Our little family becomes a mobile unit, man and woman in the front seat, baby and dog in back, with all our gear for a year in the trunk and stuffed in among us. For the first time in my life, it is important to personalize a car by giving it a name and gender. She is Cerise the Saab, for her color, and she is beginning to represent home.
Traveling light is the delightful art we are learning. We can get in and out of a hotel (adults, baby and dog, with all associated paraphernalia) in one trip. Portable property is a good idea. Somehow there is less
psychological dead weight to drag around when the only space you own moves on four wheels and can be unpacked in half an hour. The absence of my own house, friends, family and job was daunting; but it`s easy now. Never since becoming an adult have I ever been so carefree.
`C`est comme ca`
Somewhere south of Geneva we start trying to telephone the real estate agent who has rented us a house in Tourrette-sur-Loup, north of Nice. I want to use my telephone credit card. ”Oui, Madame,” says the operator, ”but I`ll have to pass you to another operator.” ”What`s that?” says the second operator. After five minutes on seemingly terminal hold and two more operators, I am finally told, ”Madame, I don`t care if they told you in Canada you could use that card. You can`t use it from a telephone in a bar.” Why? ”C`est comme ca.” It`s like that. My frustration is at the boil. But wait. There is humor in this. I didn`t come to France for sameness: I came for difference, and here it is: There are two German shepherd dogs curled on the bench just inside the bar. The french fries are hand-cut. Vive la difference. We settle into our rented house in Tourrette. From our terrace (on which we are still eating in late November), you can see the Mediterranean and from the kitchen window you see mountains. On a clear morning there is the humpbacked outline of Corsica on the horizon; I begin to understand why Matisse, Picasso, Graham Greene, James Baldwin and legions of other artists and writers fell in love with the south of France.
Living in French is a struggle. One day I am standing in a parking lot in nearby Venice with baby and dog. A middle-aged woman walking nearby ignores the baby (as is their wont in France) and says something in fast French. I don`t understand a word of it but I know she`s admiring the dog, because she`s smiling and gesturing in her direction. Beyond that I have no idea what she`s saying. I smile graciously and murmur ”Ah, oui” once in a while.
My normal North American middle-class dependence on words, my insistence on understanding everything literally, on having meaning nailed down firmly, is jettisoned in this foreign country.
Ill-chosen words
We stumble along, embarrassing ourselves regularly. At a dinner party, when asked about his educaton, Leon says he took a maitresse (a mistress, not a master`s) after college. We travel westward to Provence, where goats graze on lavender and thyme and white cliffs shear down to turquoise sea. One evening we go up into Provencal mountains (with Mara and Merlin) to a three-star restaurant, Oustau de la Baumaniere. This is a major splurge. Mara (who is by now 4 months old and ought to know better) celebrates our arrival by throwing up on my blouse. Leon heads for the car, telling the starched maitre d`hotel he`s going to get the poussiere, which is a dust ball. A poussette is a stroller.
We are strangers in a strange land, rarely invited out, pathetically grateful for any attention from a local. I have never before suffered bores so happily. A French bore is less boring than a Canadian bore, because with the French bore at least one is practicing one`s French. The challenge of unscrambling their code, of getting French nouns and verbs to behave, makes talking about the weather interesting. Almost.
We are not making friends here in France. We are making acquaintances. It takes years (some say decades) to make friends in France. It would be nice to have real friends here, not to be so unknown, but there is also pleasure in this anonymity. You can be anyone you want with new people. It is the social self as tabula rasa.
Cyclamen and snow
I never stop being dazzled by the road from Tourrette to the Italian border, 40 minutes away. We pass houses with red tile roofs, palm trees in every backyard, almond trees blooming day-glow pink in March and then suddenly, around a corner, snow-capped mountains. We often ski at Greolieres- les-Neiges, 45 minutes from home. We leave Tourrette, where anemones and cyclamen are blooming in our yard, and after half an hour we`re in snow-covered mountains. At the top of the chairlift, looking down the backside of the ski hill, is the Mediterranean.
Halfway through our time in France, Leon gets sick. I`m sure he has a dire disease, and the thought of losing him is too much to bear. Had we been at home I would have kept too busy to think those thoughts. There would have been family to call, appointments to rearrange, people to talk to. But being alone in France makes it awesomely clear how crucial he is to me. It turns out to be only a rebellious gallbladder, but my psyche feels burned.
Things like that are normally papered over, even in a crisis. Everyone has inner voices, but it`s hard to hear them over the din of normal life. Being away for a long time, I begin to listen to my inner voices more, simply because there isn`t as much other noise that I understand, and because life here is so undemanding. Every afternoon is punctuated by a stroll into the village for pastis or hot chocolate on the cafe terrace. Dogs sit under the tables; children careen around the medieval square on their bikes; the florist next door sets out spice-scented violets grown in the nearby hills. Somehow this slowing down and the absence of distractions boils life down to its essence. What`s really important becomes visible. I begin to wonder if I can stand to go back to my old life.
Six months in France. Less time remains than has been spent. Finding a way to stay forever suddenly seems urgent. A professor in Nice says she`s sure there would be work for both of us teaching English at the university there. One day on our walk to the cafe, Leon and I do the figures. Let`s see: With the rent from the Toronto house and the royalties from a book, some teaching and some belt-tightening . . . we can do it! We can stay here!
The next morning we both wake up inexplicably blue. We sleepwalk for almost a week, miss our friends, own up to homesickness for the first time. All week it rains. The Promenade des Anglais, normally my dream walk, is gray. And one day the clouds lift. I tell Leon the truth: I don`t want to stay in France next year, though I love it dearly. Home is a wonderful place to run away from–as long as you know you can go back. —
