In nine more sleeps I will set foot on that land that I have called home twice in this lifetime...the two of us, France and little
I am writing this to find that mysterious connection.
But can it EVER be found?
And is it even necessary to look for it?
Once upon another lifetime I met a man.
He was my next-door neighbour.
He seemed so foreign.
Tall, dark, handsome. Truly.
He walked off down the street every morning wearing black pants, a white shirt and black shoes. Often smoking a cigarette. Black hair, black beard and moustache, intriguingly pale skin.
In time I discovered that he came from that other place. He had been a dancer in Paris.
His wife and child became my friends.
In time, my world turned upside-down.
We married in a Scottish church to the music composed by his grandfather...
Our first daughter was given the name of my grandmother, Claire.
Our first home in France was on a boat, not a wise-eyed boat on the Yangtze river, like the story I read to my children, but a green and white boat on the Seine.
We sat on the deck of the boat in the summer eating 'salade verte' and 'blanquette de veau' cooked by Gilka, my mother-in-law. I looked across the waters of the river, busy with boats of all kinds, to the statues and trees of the Parc de St Cloud on the other side.
Once I walked over the bridge that crossed the river and up the pretty, winding, cobbled streets of St Cloud pushing Claire in the stroller. I loved the name...St Cloud'.
A saint called after a cloud? What must he have looked like?
Outside a florist shop I stopped to look at the flowers. I saw a tray of green grass for sale. Looking at the sign on it and doing a slow translation into English I discovered that it was 'cat grass' specially grown and sold for all those french pussycats who spend their lives living in apartments looking longingly out the window at....grass.
Jacques, my father-in-law, an immaculate man who always smelt so clean and fresh, worked for a company called Banania, who made tinned desserts.
Gilka kept a cupboard in the small downstairs kitchen of the boat full of tins of creamed rice and chocolate pudding 'in case of emergencies'.
Once I went with Gilka and Mido, her mother, to a concert of Cesar Geoffray's music sung by an all-female accapella choir in the church of St-Germain-Des-Pres in Paris.
Cesar was Gilka's father, Mido's husband, grandfather of Joel, my husband and gt-grandfather of my daughter Claire.
I sat in the front row listening to the first song. My mother-in-law, Gilka, leaned over and asked me if I was enjoying the music...
'Mais, ma cherie, quest-ce qui ce passe?' she said, seeing her Australian daughter silently weeping, tears sliding down her face.
I smiled
'It is just TOO beautiful!'
New family... new country... new life.
