A Year In France

by Christine Sanders

My 10-year-old son was sitting at the kitchen table struggling over his math homework while I sat tapping at the computer in the next room. Suddenly, he slammed his book shut in frustration. “Putain!” he cried. I stopped typing and sat in thrilled contemplation for a moment. He was swearing in French! It was working!

Nine years have passed since that scene in the kitchen of our rented house in south-west France. After years of dreaming, planning and saving, we had brought our two young children to live in France for a year. My husband and I had both taken a leave of absence from our work, we had rented out our Victoria home and off we’d gone. Our new home was a renovated stone house on a vineyard near the edge of a mid-sized village. Our French landlords, Marie-Jo and Pierre, couldn’t have been kinder, introducing us to their family and friends and including us in many of their activities. We settled into this simple life as if we’d been born to it.

The children loved country living and thrived at their new school. In Canada, they had both been in French immersion, but they were far from fluent in the language when we arrived. Seven-year-old Anna complained a little the first week that she didn’t understand her teacher, but she was always happy to head to school in the morning. Within a few months, French seemed to come almost as easily to them as English. They were invited to birthday parties and sleepovers. They jumped rope outside to French skipping songs; they snacked on Nutella spread on baguette and drank orangina; they learned to sleep in the pitch blackness of a shuttered bedroom. They rode borrowed bikes along the narrow roads near our vineyard home, and fished for carp in the little pond below our house. They tossed the kitchen scraps into the chickens’ pen and in the evenings, they sat patiently waiting for some hedgehogs to appear on the low stone wall.

As in many European cultures, the French are very family oriented, and children are often included in social gatherings. A dinner invitation normally called for arrival after 7 p.m. and often the meal wasn’t served until several hours later. Initially, I gave the children a big snack before we went out, and I worried that staying up past midnight would make them sleep deprived, but they were remarkably resilient. My French friends assured me that they would sleep in the next morning, and although my children had always been early birds, they soon adapted, and eventually, I did too. In fact, having children did much to hasten our integration into village society. Waiting for them at the gates of the school at the end of the day, I soon struck up acquaintances with the other parents. Seeing the same faces at the bakery, the café and the grocery store, the village soon seemed familiar and comfortable.

Though the routine of school kept us close to home during the week, there were opportunities to explore the country on the weekends and on the many long school vacations. On a warm weekend in late September, we drove to Arcachon on the Atlantic coast, checked into a hotel and climbed the 174-metre Dune de Pyla, the largest sand dune in Europe. We swam in the warm waters of the Arcachon basin and dined on local seafood on the terrace of the hotel restaurant. Swarming with visitors in the summer months, the crowds had packed up and gone home at the “rentree” (back to school time).

In early November, we headed to Paris and explored the capital. We took the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower, cruised down the Seine in a bateau Mouche, ate Steak-frites at a sidewalk bistro, dragged the children through the halls of Impressionist paintings in the Musée d’Orsay and even spent a day at Euro-Disney (a rash promise we’d made to the children before we left Canada, when we were still trying to sell them on our plan).

On other holidays, we discovered Roman ruins in Provence, explored medieval chateaux and centuries old churches, gazed in wonder at the 2000-year-old Roman Pont du Gard. We straddled the Franco-Spanish border on a hiking excursion in the Pyrenees in late spring. We stood in awe in front of cave paintings dating from the Magdalenian period.

As for me, released from the obligations of work, and with the children at school from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., I couldn’t remember a time when I had been so free: without a job to worry about, with my children at school, I was living a life in which every day brought something new and delightful. I had escaped, at least temporarily, the weary tedium of daily routine and the frantic pace of a working mother’s life. Most days, I walked along the quiet roads or footpaths, never in a hurry in this life without deadlines. I joined a choir that met every Monday night in the Salle des Fetes, and periodically, we put on concerts in one of the ancient churches in the area. My landlord, Pierre, invited me to join his drama group, and I had so much fun that those Wednesday evening sessions became the highlight of my week.

My husband Jim was discovering a new life, too. He is an artist, but in Canada he also worked full-time at a Municipal office. Now he had all day to paint, and his surroundings were inspiring him to experiment with new mediums and new techniques. Every Monday afternoon, he drove with a neighbour, a retired art teacher, to a live model drawing class in Bordeaux. As Jim’s French was very basic, and Agathe’s English was equally limited, it was a wonder to me that they could carry on any kind of conversation at all on the commute to the city, but this odd couple struck up a friendship based on mutual respect for each other’s work.

That year changed us all. It enriched our lives and broadened our horizons. It was the perfect time to go; the children were old enough to experience the year fully, but still young enough to contemplate a year away from friends without hysteria. Jim and I are looking towards retirement with a view to spending half the time in Canada and half the time in France. The children wonder about the possibilities of living and working in France. Our French friends wait for our arrival there, and we have welcomed many of them to our home in Canada.

From the time the children were babies, the years have slipped by seamlessly and although they’ve been pleasant enough, there is very little to distinguish one from the other. They were gone in a flash. Just one year stands out in technicolour from the sameness of that time continuum—that wonderful, magical year where we managed to stir things up.

Christine Sanders teaches French in Saanich, where she lives with her husband and teenaged children. Originally from Ontario, she loves the West Coast, but still dreams of her other life in France.