A Cariad Life

As we settle into our fourth week in France (my goodness, time flies!), I’ve been reflecting on what makes a new place a home–when does a place move from new, exotic, strange, and exciting to familiar, comfortable, and accessible? I’ve come to realize for myself, being here and really any new place we have moved, that what I would call “homesickness” is just the grieving of the loss of familiar rituals and traditions. Often these are daily tasks or ways of approaching people and surroundings that we don’t even think of in the moment–said another way, we know the “rules” of where we live and we have developed familiar habits.

Things like grabbing your favorite coffee cup in the morning and pouring coffee (the only brand you will buy), reading your favorite news publication or watching your favorite morning tv show…knowing exactly where to find items in a grocery store (even knowing what days/times to avoid the store because it is super busy or which checkout line to avoid because that one clerk is extra talkative–Bainbridge Island people you know what I am talking about!)…all of these things make place home. There are also ways of doing things that are characteristic of the culture of a place–in the South, I know that if I walk up to a house and the front door is open, and the storm door is closed, the homeowners are up and fine with me knocking. In the Pacific Northwest, I know that I should always ask before entering a home, “shoes on or off?” By the way, I would never do that in the South–it would be considered being “too familiar.” In Maryland, I learned how to have direct conversations and ask for exactly what I needed. Learning these things in each place we have lived helped to make those places home.

In France, I am also beginning to learn the rituals and traditions of my new French home. We go to the boulangerie almost every morning for fresh bread (Ok, Darrell goes now, but I will soon) and I’ve learned to heat some milk for my coffee in a saucepan before pouring into my coffee (seriously, this is the best ever and not sure why I never did it before.) I know that oysters are the thing to eat at the holidays, along with champagne. I know that you always greet someone with Bonjour, Madam or Monsieur–or say, bonsoir (good evening). I don’t really know when in the day one goes from bonjour to bonsoir though. I know that you never have coffee with dessert–always after and that when you are ready to pay for your check (in our area of France) you go to the counter–they will not bring you the check to your table.

One of my favorite rituals and traditions here in France is the daily opening and closing of les volets–French shutters. Ours are wood and we have 14 of them on the front of our house and one set for our side door. Every night we close the volets and open them every morning. It sounds pretty simple and mundane, but there is something symbolic in the morning about turning the knob on the long, rectangular windows, opening them toward you and then unlatching the volets and pushing them out toward the world and against the exterior of the house. The simple act requires me to push my head and upper body out into the outside. Then again, in the evening to reach out into the world and pull the volets back in, secure them and close the windows. Every day has a concrete opening and a closing. The whole process is quite fascinating and once I showed our kids how to do it–they volunteered to keep doing it while they were here. I’ve added some pictures below to show the process I used this morning to open the volets on this last day of 2022.

As we all embark on this new year, we often talk about new things–new goals, new plans, a fresh start. I always love to think about new and fresh beginnings–a clean slate, if you will. This year, I am considering how our rituals and traditions are interwoven in new beginnings. The daily opening and closing of the volets is the perfect analogy–what can seem mundane and routine can actually be an important part of seeing every day as a clean slate, a new opportunity to interact with the world around me. Every time I open the volet, the scene outside is just a little different,–I just have to look for it. The scene outside is also becoming more familiar and there is comfort in that. I want to hold both of these things in my hands as I enter into the new year–in one hand an appreciation and love for ritual and tradition and in the other the openness and curiosity to look for the new, unexpected, and unfamiliar.

I hope your New Year is filled with both!