(New) Home for the Holidays

We didn’t intend for four months to pass since our last blog post in September, but we’ve been busy! In October we met up with dear friend Betsey Beckman from Seattle, at the megalithic site of Carnac, and then flew to the Netherlands for a delightful visit with our long-time friends, Jim and Nancy Forest. But it feels like most of the September and October were filled with meeting the labyrinthine and Catch-22 requirements to obtain our Carte de Séjour, the residency permit required to live in France longer than three months. While John needed this, Kathleen with her Irish/EU passport did not— except that it eased the way for the next administrative hurdle, signing up for the French healthcare system. We successfully traded reams of translated documents for the Carte de Séjour, the small plastic ID card which we must always have in our possession.

More Catch-22 requirements, not unexpected, had to be met before our household goods could be shipped from Seattle and cleared by French customs. Arriving at our door on the 30th of November, this past month has felt like Christmas every day, opening boxes we’d packed 6 or 8 months ago, rediscovering the treasures we’d sent along to join us in our new life.

Our town of Quimper is small. With 65,000 people, that’s less than show up for a Seahawks game in Seattle. And the hypercentre where we live—the city centre within the remains of the mediaeval walls—is but a small fraction of that. But Quimper is the cultural as well as political capital of Finistère (the westernmost department of Bretagne and thus of France), and there is always something going on. We’re now members of both the art museum and extraordinary Breton cultural museum.  They sit on either side of our church, the mediaeval cathedral of Saint Corentin, eighty steps from our front door. The covered market, the weekly farmers market, and a wooded walk along the river are all but several minutes walk away.

It’s lively here! and if something is happening, it’s probably coming down our cobbled street, whether it’s the protestors called the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) bringing attention to the financial squeeze on the working class, a quartet of jazz-playing Santas, one of many other holiday spectacles, or a religious feast-day procession. We have a front-row seat from our apartment windows. Take a look yourself at this video sampling of December’s street scenes.

Here’s a slice of our life here from a day last week: The morning began with a scheduled visit from our plumber to fix un petit problème. Then our downstairs neighbors invited us to meet their friend, Alain Bodivit, a now 92-year-old remembering his days in the French Resistance during la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (World War 2).

Monsieur Bodivit spent an hour answering our questions and sharing his stories. He was only 17 when he joined a resistance cell to sabotage the German forces here in south Finistère. One story: They used to short-circuit telephone lines by wiring on the A string of banjos! With phone lines down and while figuring out what the problem was, the German occupiers were forced to communicate by telegraph, which was easily intercepted by allied forces. Their cell was sworn never to confront the occupiers directly since that would have resulted in fifty-fold reprisals. The cells were limited to ten members each to thwart infiltration.  Nevertheless, three of Monsieur Bodivit’s ten comrades were captured and tortured. They never revealed the other seven and died in concentration camps. We’ve included a short video where he talks about his surprise learning after the war of the participation in a different resistance cell of other young men he’d played soccer with. We were sobered and thrilled with the chance to meet one of those who, in a time of so much collaboration, stood up to Nazism and thus helped save the honor of France.

In the afternoon we headed out for our nearby walk along the river Steir, when we ran into a street theatre troupe working its way down our rue Kéréon, setting up a mock-boxing ring, smashing plates, pouring wine for the crowd that followed (yeah, of course us…we support live theatre…) singing rounds of the Italian anti-fascist resistance song Bella Ciao (go ahead, look it up) and just instigating rousing great fun.

While we were preparing dinner, Tarte à l’Oignon, the door buzzer sounded with some friends dropping by on their way to a show. We spent the next hour over apéro, wine and nibbles, talking about the subject that always interests our French friends, as well as ourselves: more food and wine! In particular, the upcoming house-warming party January 5th we’re throwing for over two-dozen of our new Breton friends.

What show were those friends headed to? We’ve been able to watch it out our window these past two weeks: a sound-and-light show on the façade of St. Corentin, narrating in French and in Breton the legends surrounding the Cathedral, the story of its construction, and celebrating the land & sea and cultural traditions of this area. Big crowds have come every night for the spectacle which continues through January 6th—you, too, can watch it via the video we took (give it a few seconds to begin and don’t worry, it will play in portrait mode):

We’ll spend this New Year’s Eve with Gwenael, whom we call our Breton godfather. It was Gwenael’s home exchange offer two summers ago that first brought us to Bretagne and changed our lives. (Note: If it hadn’t been for that second bottle of Champagne, you could have read this post on New Year’s Eve, as we intended…)

A dear friend wrote the other day sharing her happiness that we are “living our dream.” But, to be honest, this is so much more than we dreamed. There’s an obscure line in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that we used on our wedding invitation nearly thirty years ago and still always seems apt: “They were all intending to be surprised, but their astonishment was beyond their expectations.”

We’re having a ball and wish you could join us. Some of you have threatened to visit us next year or so, a thought that delights us. (July is already looking pretty booked up….) In the coming month, Kathleen promises another post—this time a tour of our new little home, just to further entice you. 

Last New Year’s Day, our resolution was to move to France…that worked out pretty well (better than resolving to floss more often). We are enormously grateful for all that 2018 brought us.  Our prayer for 2019 is this: That peace will grow in small and in large ways, all throughout the world.  And that you, too, may dare to take steps to realize the dream or dreams you have held!

We end with a few pics of some of our experiences this autumn…