Because things like this just seem to happen sometimes, I found myself in France to celebrate the dawn of 2013. My aunt and uncle and grandpa are enormously lucky enough to have a house in the rural village of Dampierre-sur-Avre, close to the larger village of Nonancourt, in Normandy. It’s an adorable (read: small and creaky but delightful) cottage that dates to the 1600s--hooray for buildings I wish could talk and tell me their stories! I’ve been to France three times. Last time I was there, it was a coastal day trip from England. The time before that, I was at this house, I was eleven years old, and I didn’t speak any French. It’s amazing what eight years of age and a few foreign language skills can contribute to your enjoyment of a foreign country. My French is far (really far) from perfect, but it felt quite nice to be able to understand people on the whole, to be able to place an order, and to translate for my grandmother (since she’ll be doing Turkish for me for several weeks). Studying French in an academic setting is one thing, but being plopped down in rural France is probably a better test of actual language skills. My primary surface joy in France was my gladness that after six years of study I could apologize to a lady at the grocery store for blocking the onions, and she would respond that it was quite alright and explain to me her onion-choice debacle instead of scoffing at my American-ness.
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| Gratuitous selfie because I love this river |
But there’s a more abstract joy I've only ever found in France and a few reaaalllly rural areas of the US that creeps under your skin and stays there. I like Paris (who doesn’t like Paris?), but the French countryside is something else. The final day of 2012, I took a long solo ramble along the same route the entire family had taken the day before, and apart from a small persistent fear that I was going to get shot (despite the many signposts forbidding la chasse, many a conversation was punctuated by a loud nearby gunshot) being outside, in fresh air, in quiet Dampierre, allowed such peace. In Psych 100 this past semester, we were always having to answer these survey questions about oneness with nature in different situations and that sort of thing, and when you're sitting on a computer it always seems laughable. After tromping through the muddy fields with only the occasional cow for company and reaching the single-lane and empty road, I sat down on a rock and had many minutes of oneness alone with the quiet and the birds on the side of the road (which probably would have looked pretty sketchy to passersby, so luckily there weren’t any). You can’t find silence like that at home, or vast landscapes uninterrupted by smokestacks or lightposts--probably available here because agriculture is still such an important part of this part of France. At nighttime, too, the dark is complete. The only light pollution comes from the fireplace, the only noise is crackling logs. I’m never going to live in the French or any countryside—I’m a city kid at heart, born and raised in an urban area—but I think it can teach us all a lesson about slowing down to enjoy what the earth has to offer.
Though I will confess to listening to music and occasionally having a gander at some French television (and Downton Abbey...), for the most part as I’m writing this I’ve been unplugged for four days. No working cell phone and no internet access. It has been many many years since I’ve gone without the web for more than 48 hours, and for the most part it felt delightfully detoxifying. Days without worrying about email or Facebook or tumblr or the news or blogs. Days just to sit and read, take long walks, do crossword puzzles, play with the two-year-old, and watch the fire.
As could be expected, then, New Year's Eve was not too much a production. However, there’s an apocryphal story in my family about how, at the age of five or so upon returning from living among diplomats in India, my uncle requested a caviar sandwich at a friend’s house. The people in my family love good food, and we love pretty elaborate good food when we can get it or make it. I’m fairly certain all I ate for my four days in France was bread and jam and cheese—but of course, none of these things are a joking matter. Crusty baguettes and delicate croissants are two of my favorite things, and if there’s one thing I definitively prefer about Europe as a continent than North America, it’s the widespread availability of beautiful, tasty, magnificent cheese. Also, the widespread availability of socialized medicine.
If I love England for the traditions even in modernity, I love Normandy for its timelessness. I wasn't stepping back into 1600 in our cottage--just 1995. Outside, though, were it not for the telephone poles, I could be anytime. So here I am, glorifying the wonders of no internet and preparing to scrupulously blog the details of my life for the next month. Tomorrow I leave for Turkey, and a whole new adventure!
*[O. the two-year-old is at the present moment ordering me to draw a picture to add to this post, because “Claire’s doing working” and I guess that's what working consists of in his mind. I hope the phone photographs will suffice for the rest of you.]
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