Le Pere Jordan

It's been a "Journey" since I've felt I had the freedom of time, or the mental bandwidth to write anything. The fact that two years have passed since our last trip to France, that ended in a Medical Evacuation back to the US, is hard to fathom.

I now feel slightly guilty saying that there are some positive aspects to our life, in view of everyone else's  struggles.

My husband will always be "The Artistic One".

When friends ask him what he's up to, he  speaks about painting and possible upcoming art shows. His easel, paints and a fresh canvas are still where they were in our family room/Art Studio, although I have moved things over a bit to facilitate the passage of TAO with his walker frame.

He no longer paints or reads. He sleeps a lot and then sits and watches TV from the kitchen table. When it's not too hot we sit on the covered patio and watch the wind move the tree tops and the dogs run the fence to bark at delivery drivers and people walking by.

As I sit with him, I share videos, from my Facebook feed, of silly cats, redneck creative transportation solutions and familiar regions of France.

The image above is a stained glass window he designed and had made for our French house. The character "Old Mr Jordan" gave TAO hell seventy-plus years ago when he let the cows wander into the wrong field. He also sat in the barn with him in winter and carved wooden clogs, while telling stories about the village. I've heard more stories about him than of TAO's father.

TAO had sketched this image, which we still have,in pencil, long ago. You can see the rolling hills in the distance. The fence line takes your eye where the Artist intended.

When discussing subject matter for this tall bathroom window, I thought this image would honor a World that meant so much to TAO and be relevant to the surroundings.

The house is under offer. It's unlikely we'll ever go there again.

TAO's eldest daughter has been fantastic, shouldering the responsibilities of finding and making arrangements with an Agent, a Notaire and even going to the Department of Construction Permits to have them give the final signature on a project that was completed a decade ago.

She's had all of our paintings moved safely into storage for us. I told her to let her siblings choose any that they might like for themselves and to give away any furniture and household stuff that the potential new owners didn't want.

The one thing I wanted to remove and keep was this window. Unfortunately, the craftsman that came to try to extract it found it was installed in a way that can't be undone.

We now have a small chip of blue glass as a souvenir and these beautiful photos, taken by she who would be my Step-Daughter, if she were younger and I were older.

 

Burnished Copper Horses & Grey Stone Houses

Our house: a renovated stone barn in Lozere, South East France, but nowhere near beaches or tourists. The Artistic One had spent two summers here, in his early teens. Apparently, the French version of Apres-Guerre sleep-away camp was to find farmers who would share the work of herding livestock and harvesting, in exchange for fresh air, hearty food and a bed to sleep on. TAO loved it so much that he begged to be allowed to stay on through the winter months and not return to school until the following spring.
This is not where he was born, nor where he spent the majority of his life, but it is his Heart-Home and they still know him there.

 

The small building on the right is the communal bread baking oven. Once a month, wood-fires were set in the oven and maintained by all until the temperature was right for the baking to begin. Huge rustic loaves with thick brown crusts had to last until the next time. 

When we first purchased our barn, in 1999, the roof sagged and the rain was pouring in in several places. There were a dozen resident bovines in the lower level stable and the little boy from across the way came to ask what we were doing with his Dad's cows.

The old bread-oven had also been allowed to founder and so we proposed to restore it, as part of our project. We were later told that someone stood up at the community meeting and expressed concern that "The Americans" would be taking over. The Mayor's office was shamed into taking care of the needed restorations. The picture below shows the local roofing material, called Lozes, on the oven roof.

 

Below is a picture of where the cows used to live.We pulled out the foot-thick granite slabs that were the stable floor and raised the ceiling into the space above, to give ourselves some head-room. It's a great kitchen, if you don't mind having your stove and sink 50 ft away from one another. 

The articulated pot-filler, over the stove top, was unheard of by local plumbers. We went online from California and had one shipped to us, from Italy, then we packed it in a suitcase bound for France.

The upper level didn't have any head-room problems. This living space and Art Studio has the original beams from the days when it was storage for hay and straw. We put in skylights rather than change the character of the building by opening big windows in the sides. The whole place is heated by decorative cast iron radiators that we bought from a demo sale of an old Parisian hotel.

This high plateau is made up of volcanic hills, rocky promontories and rivers. It's the least populated region of France.Cows greatly outnumber humans hereabouts. Chestnuts, hazelnuts, blueberries and wild mushrooms are collected when in season. Goose, duck, wild boar and venison are on most restaurant menus. I had a creme-brule perfumed with pine liqueur. I loved the flavor, but it is green and does smell like a household cleaning product. Mind over matter, I enjoyed it.

Sturdy, burnished copper horses with ombre charcoal legs and milky mane and tail, punctuate the emerald landscape.
Conte draft horses; locally bred to work the fields and forests; low center of gravity; soup-plate hooves; stocky build; kind and willing disposition. The epitome of  a work-horse.

The warm weather was an unexpected bonus in early October. The clouds were beginning to edge out the blue skies, darkening to imitate the fir forests in the distance. I went for a walk down the grass track that arabesques toward the low lying lake, the unsettled air moistly slapping my cheeks in futile protest, as thunderclouds moved in. Splashes of crickets surged ahead of every step I took, chirping final au-revoirs to Indian Summer days. Curious caramel cows reposing in the field, by the track, lowing and chewing. By the time I came back up the path they were up and watching for me. I said "Moo" and "Hello Cows". (I haven't yet stooped to speaking French to cows, for all the difference it might make). They didn't respond so I walked on, turning several times to catch them playing Cow Statues, feigning disinterest. Despite their innocent eyes, the large bells clanging from wide leather collars on their velvet necks gave them away each time.