15 July 2002

The Gite

On January 23 of this year my life changed forever.  I found myself on a plane to England when in fact I had packed a bag to spend the weekend in Orlando.  The reason I am telling you this is I want to make a point about being home sick for a place.

After three weeks in England I ended up in a hotel in Senlis (pronounced sone lease), France.  My eight year old granddaughter and I moved into the hotel after a week in Creil (pronounced cry ee), which was really miserable.  By the time we found the Hotel de Bellon we were desperate for some place that didn’t feel like a closet.  In most hotels in Europe you have to move the bed to open the bathroom door. 

The room in the Hotel de Bellon was wonderful.  It was spacious and had open beams in the ceiling.  The building was 400 years old and we were greatly relieved to have the room.  By the end of ten days I was ready to go crazy.  Admittedly I was feeling miserable.  It was rainy and cold outside.  My heart was breaking from everything I had left behind, and I had no warm clothes.  To top it off we couldn’t figure out the laundry mat because the machines didn’t take coins.  There was a massive machine hanging on the wall that announced in French that you must put in francs.  Since France didn’t use Francs any more and I didn’t understand hardly any French I gave up.  Each night we washed things out in the sink, and were grateful for the cast iron radiators that served as our clothesline.

My one luxury during these endless days in the hotel was to walk to the magazine shop and purchase an English paper.  Once a week I would read about all of the far off places one could go to for a vacation and, as luck would have it I noticed an ad for “gites”.  Apparently these were vacation houses you could rent in remote places in France.   In a rare moment of rational thinking I called my husband in the US to investigate the possibility of a gite for us while we waited on the papers for our rented house to be processed.

When my husband arrived in France we packed up everything in the hotel and drove to Rossiere, about a 15 minute ride from the hotel.  There is no way to describe how I felt when I took one look at the gite.

The two story stone house had a cozy living room with a fire place.  Best of all there was a washing machine and a real kitchen with pots and pans.  The owners lived across the road in an old French manor house which was part of an enormous farm.

The first thing I noticed were the chickens running around trying to dig up the newly planted pansies.  They cackled and carried on with one another.  For the first time since I had left Florida I took a breath.  That afternoon I traipsed out into the farmer’s garden to pick some brussel sprouts and I felt like I had come home.

The smell of the land as it was being plowed, the noises of the chickens and the crackle of the fire all reminded me of southeast Ohio.  I hadn’t understood much about France up until that point, but sitting there looking out of the window at the pond next to the house I began to understand.  

I understood that I didn’t have to be homesick.  There was plenty here to relish in.  I had been afraid that I would have to live up to the Paris French, but when I came to the farm I could see that their values and cares matched the ones I had been raised with.  It was clear that everything was going to be alright.

There are still moments in any given day when I have a pang of homesickness.  It does seem that I’ve gotten through the mourning of leaving behind my home and dog…and my clothes.  There is a lot to learn here.  The best part is I didn’t have to start from scratch.  All I had to do was travel to a farm in Rossiere, France to learn that the things I love about Ohio can be found in far off places.