The Stories of our Lives

It took very little effort to imagine a pack of children scampering off in the yard, as I pulled up the car to a large white house just before lunch on Saturday. The house sits at the heart of the village, a few yards from a great ornate church; various extensions on sloped ground overlook the spot where the big garden used to grow. All over the walls, fish scales of wood dress the house with ancestral charm, and green trim complements it, though I remember it being painted burgundy – I have an old blurry picture somewhere, that I took with my first camera back in the nineties.

It became my private game for that day: conjuring up visions of cousins crouching behind beds playing hide-and-seek, aunts calling up children from the bottom of the twisted carpeted staircase, or uncles sleeping off hangovers on the couch after New Year’s celebrations. We’re all grown up now; some of us have children of our own. Yet, still, my grandmother’s house remained the carefour of an extended family scattered throughout the province; it remained, despite the loss of my grandfather over a decade ago and, more recently, my grandmother herself moving out to lodgings better suited to her failing health. It served through the years as gathering place, shelter and rallying point. The house was permeated with family.

It’s odd that it will not be our first stop on trips to my parents’ neighboring hometowns anymore. My other grandfather’s house – on my father’s side of the family – was sold last year as well, so I am not sure where visits will land us or how often we will make the trip in the years to come. Times are changing.

I took a picture of Xavier in front of the house, to try and hold my past and future in the same image. The little bugger will just NOT stand still!

And Orléane got to meet her great-grandmother for the second time, so we snatched a pic of the 4 generations of women.