Coming home...

It is always a surprise to return home, à la maison, from the busy streets of London, travelling from Britain on buses, tubes and then on ferries, or by plane, or train to get to France. It takes a while to reach this house, at the end of a drive, through a battered gate that is rarely closed. In the garden, a maritime pine tree stands guard over the granite bâtisse, draped with a vine. In summer, the leaves are a vivid green, and scarlet shines through the autumn months. There are two doors to enter, as our home is really two houses sandwiched into one. Once, it was the village boulangerie, perched on a cliff, overlooking an estuary where for centuries shoemakers sold fur-lined boots for sailors heading across the Atlantic to fish cod in Canada. A deadly activity, requiring many prayers to Mary.

But in the house, we are neither boot-makers nor fishermen, we are not local, or Breton, or perhaps we are? What we are doing here always astonishes me, how life took us to this country of philosophers and fashion, this curve in the river, to this house and the franglais of our lives. We have lived in this country for thirty years, in this house for a decade, yet originally came for nine months. Inside the hexagon of France’s frontiers, we have fought, loved, lost and won, grieved, written books, put on plays, and had babies in a foreign tongue. We have filled out as many forms as there are stars in the sky, produced stamped documents and sworn by flags to become self-employed. We are decidedly not French -because crisps and Marmite must be eaten- and yet so French, for wine can only fill half the glass and the word Foucault trips off our tongues.

Our house is the home to three daughters, born between languages and cultures. They arrived, with each contraction, and I swore at the pain “Fuck” in English, followed with a polite British apology, “Excusez-moi.” In the French hospital room, where I spent four days (as is the custom), I breastfed, listened to punk and opera, writing while wearing the lacy lingerie I had learnt to love. But we will get to all of that, to this life in France, in Brittany, a land stuck like a the point of a star to the hexagon’s edge, a place once inhabited by druids and now filled with healers, who can whisper to a stone to heal your warts but cannot ask for payment. In a region where galettes are flipped, the sea guides each inhabitant, which has led many revolutions: the French Revolution,  the Gilet jaunes, protest against Macron, and where my daughters now march in demonstrations. To enter our house,  you can go right or left, through la porte or the door. Two houses are stuck together, connected with an internal door. Bienvenue. Welcome. We live here.