15 April 2010
Finding my way home to a dream
It is difficult to chose a point in one’s life where you are stopped long enough to say you have found perfection in your self. Each tick of the clock gives me another chance to find that perfect moment. So while it is obvious that I am an imperfect man and human, I can actually say I have reached a particular point in time, on this day, at this moment, when I have achieved my dream.
Fifteen years ago to this very day, I arrived in Sarlat, 15 miles from where I sit in my office, on our first vacation to France from the US. I had planned a month long grand tour, starting in Paris to Provence and then across the South edge and then up to the region of the Perigord on our way back North to Paris and Normandy, where my Mother had been born. Paula and I had been In France over two weeks when our route serendipitously brought us to the region because of wine. Not Bordeaux, but Cahors. It was a wine I had found in the US and I wanted to see where it came from. After an Easter weekend at a ferme auberge outside Cahor, we changed our route north to come through Sarlat. I had read, as all tourists have, about the wonderful 15th Century look and feel of the town and thought since this close, why not.
We ended ;the day at a B and B and I journaled about that day, 15 April, 1995. I noted how much I loved this particular area of all the French countryside we had seen to date. I loved the towns and the hills and valleys. And of course, the wonderful style and color of the indigenous stone houses of the Department of Dordogne, a honey warm color offset by the tile roofs in their particular style. I remarked that Paula and I had, for the first time on our trip, talked about perhaps having a small cottage in this area or maybe even retiring here, someday,. The point is, for the first time, we projected ourselves actually living in France, here. And from that day, my dream began to grow and who knew, would be fulfilled far beyond a dream, on this very day 15 April 2010.
Everyone here knows my French background and my upbringing in the US. It was always filled with my being part French but never really understanding the concept. I had visited my grandparents in Cherberg when young but over 35 years had gone by. I had planned trips back to France to try and find my roots, but always matters more pressing came up. There was always a project at work, or a holiday at home or some other reason to keep France in the future. And maybe that is why it worked. It was always there, in my future more than my present as I plowed my way though US corporate and social life, first in Manhattan and then Atlanta.
I was fairly entrenched, or so I had thought, in the idea of finding a retirement place close to our friends on the east coast and spending our time on boats or in visits, with a bit of consulting work on the side. But we were never enamored with the US or any particular town. Politically, we were being edged out by the conservatives. We had no place really that was “home”. So while we had some general plans for our “golden years”, other than still have enough gold to enjoy them, we had nothing firm. That day in Sarlat, 15 April, 1995, changed that.
We began to see ourselves here and talked about it as the journey continued up to Normandy to visit my long lost cousins. Well, I was the long lost one. The Matriarch of the clan declared over dinner, “We thought you were gone. But now we have found family in America.” That began the process of finding my French self which came to fruition today, in a moment this morning.
After our return to the US, I then began to pursue our feelings for making a life here. Two years later, on my 50th birthday, Paula asked if I wanted a special party. I said yes, for the two of us in my favorite restaurant in Paris. And we did and went back to the US with even more comfort and enjoyment of the life options here in France, as well as in Europe over all. We always had difficulty with American yahooism and their sense of exceptionalism when only 12 percent (that was in 1995) have a passport to see someplace else.
I began serious planning for a month long return in 2000 with a full week in the Dordogne. After a search for a rental house, we arrived in Limeuil 20 miles from Sarlat. It was only a day or two here before we, for fun, began to look at houses for sale and then even visit one. While, again, we did a grand tour ending in Normandy, it was our feeling of this place, this small section of the Vezere/Dordogne valleys that called to us. My cousins had increasingly become a part of my life with visits on both sides of the ocean. But the attraction of my mother’s Normandy region and being near family, was not nearly as strong as this place of forests and hills and valley and history which we had found.
And the dream began to grow stronger the following year when we returned to the area for a week of house hunting that ultimately found us our house, though it would take a cancelled contract and another year for us to actually buy Chanteclair. And then after a year of renovation, while our life seemed to go on being the same old thing, doing the same old things in the US, we had a dream building here.
After my mother’s death in 1973, my dad kept a lot of her papers for many years. I moved around, got married, moved to NYC, then to a house in Atlanta. At some point along the way, Dad gave me a manilla envelope with all of mom’s passports and her livret de famille. I got the originals of her birth certificate, marriage license as well. That envelope survived being in files and closets and boxes and transportation and all that has been my life to here.
So I become the repository of family documents many years ago after the death of my mother. When young, I always thought it interesting that she had a “Livre de Famille” (Family Book) the family registration document issued to married couples by the prefecture in Normandy, and in hand written script was my name and date and place of birth. And there was a registration letter from the French Consulate in Chicago. I did not know it at the time, but it was that immediate declaration of my birth to the French government, that was a final gift from my mother.
Thus the strand of the web that got me to here go back to one document issued around 1920 to my grandfather listing my mothers birth, and the one from the marriage of my folks in France in ’46 with my birth listed in ’47. They are held together with ancient discolored scotch tape binding the frayed cardboard covers. The script inside is hand written and stamped with the dates of each addition to the family. It registers the child into the French system for showing up at school, the military and social services. It means you exist. And since I was registered, it means I existed in France.
It was not until I met my cousin, Sylvie, after we came to France the first time in 1995, that I was given my grandfather’s livret. After my mother’s death, my grandmother, Germaine (le Blond) Potaire, went further into the depression that started with the death of her son at the end of the war. She never recovered from that. Her elder daughter, Andree died in England of breast cancer in 71. My mom’s death in late 73 was the final blow and she committed suicide in early 74. Sylvie and her sister, Chantal, spent a significant amount of time with Germaine when they were young girls. Their mother, Odette, was Germaine’s niece on the le Blond side. Germaine had carefully organized what she wanted done and instructed Odette to destroy all her documents. She herself got rid of a lot. Thankfully, Odette, who was called to take care of things when Germaine was found (I know not how and perhaps I should ask Sylvie), kept everything. About ten years later, Odette had a severe stroke and never came out of an institution again though lived another 25 years.
When I came on our trip in 2000, I had been in contact with Sylvie by then and we spent a day/night at their place. She brought out a sack with all the things retained by Odette from my grandmother, including the Potaire Livret de Famille. I carried it back to the states and moved twice more before landing here.
Having those document though did not get me to actually apply for citizenship because of the process ahead – especially when I lived in the states. And also, I wanted to get established here, see if it was going to work out. There was the economic crash of 2008, time passes until last spring. For whatever reason I decided to go forward with the naturalization process.
And then of course, there was becoming a local here and meeting Claudie our local maire. I have accomplished things for the community and she in turn has been very helpful in my managing the French government bureaucracy. In France, the maire is the national government’s local extension. Dealing with her is the same as with Paris in one sense. She is the government official who certifies that the copy being sent, is coming from her and she has seen the original. Therefore I never had to give up my documents….again.
I just flashed back to remembering that when I first started the process of gathering documents for visas and moving here, I somehow found I needed a letter from the French consulate in Chicago, where my mom’s Livret de famille had been sent for my birth to be recorded, stamped and registered with the French government. When I contacted them, they said I needed to send them my original documents which would then be forwarded to some records bureau in France who would then verify their letter that I was born of a French citizen in the US. I was very skeptical and afraid of the documents being lost, stolen or strayed but complied with registered mail. They were returned about 6 months later to the Consulate in Atlanta where the application had been made along with the letter stating my birth had been registered officially. Another link in the long process of my being certifiably French.
Our visits to Journiac (our village) and Chanteclair came with increasing frequency. Paula began to take unpaid leave in order to give us an additional month here each year. It was while sitting on our front porch in August 2005, that Paula declared. “We live in France. We just work in the US.” And the more we lived in France the more we wanted to live just in France. And the dream began to solidify as I began to research the rules of being able to live here half of the year. Then it became clear that the documents for half a year were the same for the full year so why not begin the process. I wanted to be here.
And luckily, my work and personal situations came to the point where we could retire here, while young enough to have a long life here. But if I was to live here, I wanted to be of, and from, here. Yes I will always be an ex pat from the US, but half of me is coming home to France, and I needed to pursue that half. And the longer I was here, the more important that became. But I wanted to make my way slowly. We joined groups, we went to community events, we got engaged in our community and with our neighbors. And to a great degree, I have found a small niche that is comfortable. It is impossible to be bored here unless you, yourself, are boring. And the physical beauty of the countryside is brought right to my face each time I go for a walk. It has been a long winter, the country is coming alive. How lucky I am to be here, now, at this moment.
But there was always a piece missing, more in my mind than in reality. I firmly believe I will never again live in the US. I will visit as long as my father is alive. He is my main connection to the US. After him, my connection is here and the world of Europe would be open to me were I to be a citizen. So I began to pursue my formal citizenship in France.
I discussed my situation with an expert in France’s emigration rules who told me that why was I bothering to apply to be a citizen, I was, and still am, a citizen. All I needed was for the government to actually agree that I was already a citizen. She refused to help me saying only, “Just send them your mother’s documents (or official copies) and write a letter asking for your nationalitie Francaise “d’etre reconnu” – be recognized. Yeah right I thought, just that simple.
What else to do but pursue that effort. And with the guidance of my local Maire, Claudie, and the wonderful assistance of her secretary, Michelle, I found the “functioneaire” to whom my documents should be sent, at the prefecture in Perigueux. I did send the documents, but only after I thought I would just drive up there and see the guy and move it along. Once there I was told firmly to go home to my Maire. Oh, still trying to be the pushy American when I have to learn that things work out over time here.
In handling over the documents to the Maire, I looked at the envelope containing my Mom’s Livret de Famille. It is in a brown official envelope from the Consulate de France in Chicago. There is an orange, regular 6 cent stamp with a bust of John Quincy Adams plus a 20 cent Special Delivery stamp that is a marvel of an engraving in black and white, showing a postal truck making a delivery. The date stamped on the cancellation is Sept 10, 1952. This is obviously the envelope that returned Mom’s Livret when she asked for the recording of my sister Mary Anne’s birth in late March of 52. Mom’s passport was amended in July of 52 with the addition of Mary Anne’s name, and thus both done at the same time. It was not cheap either. There are $50 dollars worth of French tax stamps pasted on the page. So keeping the document up to date was a big chunk of money to my folks back then. My dad had just got out from engineering tech type school which he put himself through while working as a mechanic, and how he is listed in our Livret, “machiniste”. To keep it updated was both important and prescient of my mother. I would imagine that most emigrants come to the US and leave the family and the old world behind. They were more excited about having the US birth certificate for their child than of the old country.
But not my mom. She was proud of her French heritage and did not leave France because she had to or wanted to, but because her life brought her here. When Americans would ask her why she had not become a US citizen, which happened all the time, she would say, “France is my country? If you moved to France, would you no longer want to be a US citizen? My family is here. But I am French.” And while she would always get the better of the argument, the American’s would always go away wondering why she would not jump at the chance to be part of the US of A.
The document package was sent off last July. I know it was received because, they demanded a copy of my electric bill for proof that I live here, as it said in the instructions, not the telephone bill I had provided. I sent that back in September with my groveling thanks and appreciation. And heard nothing. As I found out later, the time was spent by the french bureaucracy trying to ascertain if my mother had ever renounced her french citizenship to become a US citizen. If she had, my petition would have been denied.
I heard nothing until yesterday when Claudie came by my house and said to come to the Marie this morning, on the 15th of April, exactly15 years to the day that I first passed through this area and wrote in my journal that this is where I wanted to live. My long journey to my dream has come true. My papers declaring my Nationalitie Francaise have arrived. It says, literally after citing all my documents and the legal precedents that “Gerald M…… Etait Francais.” I am, and always have been, French. My mother’s foresight and accumulated documents worked. I am now home. It is exactly where I want to be at this moment. And to where, now, I officially belong.
And maybe that is the distinction I have. My mother was French, start and finish. Me, I am both. I cannot deny being both. Why would I want to? That is the same context as my Mom. The difference is I started being both but my French part was invisible in the US. I was sometimes accused of being a snob because I was (half) French and so I became one. I became my imagined view of a French person in the US. I was liberal and bohemian and worldly and a bon vivant, well as much as one can be in Evansville Indiana, or even in Indianapolis or Atlanta. But even then, I would tell people as we got to know each other, that I was half French. How fun, now I get to say, “I’m half American”… but only if asked. I am French.