Travel with Conscience

Life ought to be entertaining. You shouldn’t have a boring life and seek entertainment in other things…you should live that entertainment every day.
John

Living in Provence - The Ultimate Entertainment
Lydia Dean

The groups of Americans arriving at our vacation villa Mas de Gancel all ask the very same questions within minutes of arriving. “So what is it like to live here?” they beam, exhilarated yet exhausted from the trip. Their heads take wild spins from left to right as the take in their new surroundings, the house, the lavender, the vineyard, their home for a week or two as they explore the area. The questions continue rapid-fire. “What is it like to live in Provence? Are you accepted? Are these your children?” they ask pointing to a framed photo of Emma and Nicholas on the mantle. “Do they speak French?” “When will you go home?”

Noting how young we are, most then probe further, some discreetly and others not so not discreetly, as to how it is we came here to renovate this big farmhouse in France. Somewhere along the line, moving to Provence was packaged as something one does after you have finished your professional life, when you have retired and are ready to sit back with a nice glass of wine and enjoy the beauty in things. You don’t do it in your youth, with toddlers running around your legs, schools to consider and 401k to think about. I reflect on the energy, both physical and mental, it has taken to settle in France and wonder why any retired person would want to put themselves through so much. The heroics it requirs to register a car or get health insurance are enough to send you packing for home. It is wonderful here but it hasn’t been easy.

In all honesty, I don’t put too much thought into responding to these questions. I am asked so often that I have my answers memorized and it now rolls off my tongue without any thought whatsoever. “Life is great here” I say. “It’s what you would imagine… the markets are wonderful, the countryside is beautiful, we enjoy good cheese, wine and great weather. The children go to the local village schools and are bilingual. Life is simple and pure. In sum, it’s a great place to raise a family.” I am happy with this answer, it’s all true and the guests seem content with it. But one morning as I gaze at fields of poppies whizzing by on the train to Paris, I recognized that I treat the questions rather flippantly. They are important questions, ones that get at the heart of why it was we came here in the first place and why we have continued to stay. They are questions to which I should give proper thought not only for my own sake but for those who are curious enough to ask what it is like for a young American family to live, work and raise a family in Provence. And so, I gave it some thought.

It has been 5 years since we left our crazy normal American lives in the US--five years since we closed the door to our Executive Search business, five years since we left our friends and family our language, culture, Target and take-out food. We left everything and started new. What’s it like to live in Provence? It’s rich, like the cheese and each day brings a new flavor, sometimes smooth and creamy and other days bitter and sharp. Either way, not a day goes by that we don’t remark on what is around us, the splendor of growth and color in the fields, the sky, the villages and fantastic old ruins of chateaux left in heaps on the hilltops. Not a day, I assure you.

We came to get out of our worlds, to feel our difference and to stretch ourselves personally. This began with physically coming and then we found ourselves quickly confronted with the real hard part, getting involved. Truly living here meant getting beyond the role of being on vacation, getting beyond that initial honeymoon where everything is just wonderful. I think back on our very first steps in making a go of it here in Provence, those days that were both magical and incredibly frustrating. Simple tasks were enormous. Setting up an internet connection, opening a bank account, and getting in and out of the city of Aix without getting lost were all major undertakings that consumed us for several weeks. Accomplished business people, we felt reduced to a childlike state where basic communication was an insurmountable chore. We were fortunate however, to meet a vibrant and varied crew of friends early on with whom we still continue to idle away long summer evenings on someone’s terrace or damp winter nights around a fire. We owe much of our sanity during those days to them.

The beginning of our social life began at the village school where we met other young couples dropping their little ones off in the morning. Folks were intrigued by our English and eager to learn about why we were there. If there were other English speakers in the region we were not aware of them and thus we dove head first into a foreign world that would both envelop us, intimidate us and support us. It has been among this group of amis that John and I have painstakingly eeked our way into having a normal life, learning the very insides of existence in the midi, its political and social struggles, its norms and tradition, its joy and limitations. My close copines have taught me the delicate subtleties of entertaining, comme une bonne francaise, along with a lifetime’s worth of French recipes—succulent confit de canard, tartes au fenouil with honey lavender, the list is endless. In our early days these friends were patient, encouraging and forgiving with our language mistakes and other assorted faux pas yet they didn’t treat us as special cases and never slowed down to make sure we understood. It was hard, hard work some days, and on many an evenings we would come home exhausted at the effort of just keeping up with the topic of conversation let alone contribute to it. But somehow over time we learned the lingo, followed the gist of jokes, and eventually were able enough to offer comforting words in times their of need. Are we accepted? Sure. True to French form though, they demanded we make the effort.

As important as it has been for John and I to immerse ourselves in a French social world, it has been equally important to have a circle of close English speaking families who share similar challenges. These friends take the place of family and without them life would feel out of balance. On weekends and holidays there is comfort in shared tradition and laughs over daily mishaps in a foreign land. We can serve ketchup without shame and have cheese before dinner. We chat about how our children are adjusting at school, the strictness of the academic system, the lack of peanut butter, the harshness of the tax administration and above all, the beauty of the experience. But the key has been to not lean on these relationships for survival. Managing this delicate balance between immersion and familiarity has been critical to our experience here and if tipped too far towards the familiar we become at risk of insulating ourselves, a horrible scary concept that drove us abroad in the first place. We have had to constantly remind ourselves we are here to move beyond our comfort zones.

Our children have now spent more of their lives here in France than they have in the US. They are as comfortable speaking French as they are in English and luckily this happened without much effort at all. They learned their French on the playground and while I am sure they must have had their moments of frustration as we did, it appeared rather painless. When they walk out of the house each day they enter their French world and anything English ceases to exist until they come home. Their closest friends, their activities, and their education are all French. But on the outside you couldn’t tell our children were anything other than normal American kids. Nicholas loves NBA and Star Wars and Emma loves her Polly Pockets and Kraft Mac and Cheese (when she can get her hands on it). Any length of time with them however would quickly reveal a patchwork of cultures at work with huge gaps missing from what they would know of an American life had they been raised there. When we go home to visit they are oddly out of sync with things, unaware of current lingo and latest fads. Their sentences are sometimes constructed in strangely translated ways and I sense an awkwardness of sorts in the first days. Raising the kids in Provence has forced them to lead duo-cultural lives, requiring them to switch from one to the other as the context requires. They have been obliged to adapt and I can only hope that this will be a useful tool for them later in their lives.

Daily life for us has been split between 2 places – Mas de Gancel our rental villa business/home and our village house in Alleins where we live when the Mas is rented through the tourist season. As a result we have had the unique opportunity to experience both village life in Provence and country life. When we first bought Gancel we were so focused on renovating it and creating a comfortable holiday experience for our guests we neglected to think about where we would go, where we would live, where home would be for us while guests were in it. And I don’t think we ever imagined that it would be as popular as it is, naturally forcing us out of it for 6 months of the year. The original intent was to rent it out for the summer weeks and move back in for the fall. For the first few years we floated here and there during the summers the house was full, we traveled and played. Home life was rather fluid and free with all of our moving around and at the beginning this seemed to suit us nicely. Sometimes we visited the US, at times Costa Rica, or beyond. Another summer we rented a tiny crumbling cottage in a hamlet tucked into the vineyards only minutes from Gancel. Overall we felt as though we were on an adventure and we just went with the flow. But after a few years I tired of not having a real home. I tired of the suitcases and of the packing and unpacking. I needed a place that I didn’t need to move out of and that wasn’t shared with the tourists. A longing to regain a normal stable life had emerged and thus a search for home continued. In 2004 we made the commitment to buy and renovate a separate house for ourselves in the small village of Alleins only a few kms from Gancel. This would serve as a home base, a “pied a terre” as the French would call it, during the months Gancel was rented.

Everyone thought we were crazy to buy it. It was a ruin, 400 years old and had not been inhabited for 40 years. In addition, it was a village house, meaning it was a section in a row of houses along a street with no outdoor space for the children, no pool or terrace during the hot summer months. Not uncommon for us we saw things from a different perspective and welcomed the chance to experience Provence from a village perspective. Admittedly though, I harbored slight fears of being pent up in a house sandwiched between other houses and I worried that our privacy would be compromised living in the center of the town.

The house sits on the main street that runs through the heart of the village. It faces the post office and is directly next to the Tabac/Grocery store where everyone comes for their daily packs of cigarettes. It’s two doors down from the hairdressers and around the corner from 3 bread shops a butcher and a café/bar that gets very rowdy on Friday nights. We can smell pizza every night as “House Pizza” (pronounced oose pizza )only a few doors down fires up its stone oven for the evening. But as with every other experience we have had here living in France, it has been so rich and so different that there has been no time to wonder about what is missing or what could be better. Sure a garden or terrace would be nice but somehow the bustling world outdoors manages to seep into our home whether we ask it to or not.

And it seeps in literally all through the night and early in the morning. Village life was a shocking change from our serene country living at Mas de Gancel. On our first night we went to sleep with peaceful trickling water noises from the fountain. Not long after we are startled out of our beds with the clanging of church bells. How was it that we never noticed this during the day? They proceeded to ring on the hour and half hour multiple times because there are multiple clocks in the village. Just as sleep finally arrived in the wee hours of the morning the delivery men for the Tabac/Grocery store next door started to arrive, honking their horns, unloading their goods, chatting away loudly about the last evenings events. We thought this could not be possible, that it would never be possible to sleep through a night. But we did and do. We got used to these sounds and rythms of village life, just as we got used to living in a really old home, where plaster from the traditional ceilings crumbles down like rain on a spring morning.

View from our Kitchen window

There are benefits to village life. I can go to the post office, get groceries, and get my hair cut all within 3 footsteps of my house. The kids love to grab money out of a pot we keep in the kitchen to get fresh baguettes and pastries on their own. Instead of letting the dog out as he pleases to take care of his business as we do at Gancel, the children take him a few steps up the hill to the old ruined chateau that offers sweeping views of cypress lined trees and fields of local crops. They spend their free time playing in the street with the other village children where they have learned how to steer clear of cars and we have learned to trust them. For a bit of space they rollerblade or skateboard slightly out of town to a small concrete area reserved for the young and equipped with roller and skate ramps, and a basketball court. Here all of the town’s youth, small to adolescent play together in one whizzing, intertwined mess of boards and balls.

I spend my days marketing the villa rental business as John works away renovating the house. While he works the villagers stop by for a chat, especially the older ones. With baguettes tucked tightly under their arms they marvel at the sight of a young foreigner dusty in work clothes, oozing the energy they once had. While they like to know what it was that brought us here to this relatively unknown village in Provence, they love to share their own life stories. A precious old man who walks almost folded over with age and has no more than two teeth remaining always stops to recount magnificent stories of his days as a Shepard herding sheep from the ports of Marseille to the peaks of the Alps. Then there is Madame Chaix, proud and always put together who will extend her shaky pointed finger and nostalgically tell us of her days living in what is now our house. Everyone on the street had to comment on our choice of colors for the shutters. “C’est trop claire (too light)!” they cry, “oo la la, trop fonce (too dark).” “un peu sombre n’est- ce pas (a little somber, no?” After four tries and several hundred euros later in wrong paint, we settled on one that everyone seemed to be happy with.

When the days get shorter and the fall weather brings a nip to the air, the American tourists at Mas de Gancel go home and so do we. Slowly we reconnect with another way of life, one that is more tranquil and private than life in the village. The house that is for months filled with strangers on holiday becomes once again our intimate hideaway and we wrap ourselves up in the comfort of country life. Emma wanders in the vineyard picking wildflowers and Nicholas takes off on his bike. We potter around the house and garden and enjoy the last warm days on the terrace. The grapes in the vineyard are handpicked and shuttled to the coop with hopes and wishes for a good production. The leaves then turn golden and drop, the pool is closed and padlocked, and garden chairs put away truly marking the end of the season. We light roaring fires every night in the king size fireplace and eat huddled around our coffee table by candlelight. Winter months in Provence can be long, cold and wet. Meals are sumptuous hot, earthy slow cooked stews--rabbit, lamb, beef, or lamb with garlic and herbs, potato gratins, pears poached in red wine. Folks retreat to the warmth of their hearths during the week and look forward to hitting the Alps on the weekend for skiing.

Nick stomps grapes with his shcool class

We have learned more in the past 5 years than any other period in our lives, from the most mundane of lessons to larger shifts in priorities. We are forever changed. All four of us have become totally fluent in French. I can spot herbs from a mile away. I know a good foie gras from a bad one and can even make a decent one myself. I have perfected a sanglier daube (wild boar stew) along with a million other regional recipes. Emma and John can pluck a pheasant fresh after being shot. We pick olives in the fall, cherries in the spring and forage for wild asparagus, mushrooms and truffles. John gained endless skills working with ancient stones and renovation. He also knows what not to do in making one’s own wine. He knows how to tend a vineyard and how to trim a cypress tree. Nature has taken a center stage in our theater. The outdoors are cherished and the seasons treated like ripe fruit needing to be gently held. Also, being so far from home we have learned to do things ourselves, to rely on our own strength and to be comfortable being the ones who are different.

Most importantly though, our priorities have changed and living has become more important than succeeding. We let go of the importance of image and where we ought to be in life. Provence put this all back into perspective for us. We shed the lifestyle we had been taught to abide by and simply live accordingly to our inner clocks. In sum I suppose, Provence has taught us a lifetime of lessons.

Settled. A word I avoid using has now crept into my life and taken a comfortable seat on the terrace overlooking the vineyard. I am not sure yet whether I will ask it to leave…

Will we go home? We are asked this question daily, by the man who sells the newspaper to the visiting guests at Mas de Gancel. It’s an obvious question to one on the outside but to us it hints that we are not where we ought to be. There is an assumption that at some point you must go, that we are not at Home. As foreigners we are uniquely on the fringe because we aren’t French, yet we are a center of attention because we are an anomaly. It makes for an interesting combination yet either way you don’t really fall into the fold.

When the time to go is right I am sure it will present itself. The days continue to be a thrilling rollercoaster ride that have us continuously lining up for another go. For the time being, living in Provence is the ultimate entertainment.