Life In France: Through A Child’s Story
Traveling to France with our young children has given them the opportunity to experience a different culture, cuisine and meet people who have shaped the way they see the world.
I share this short story about John Baptist (the neighbour of our French friend Helen) and his enduring love for his departed parents written by Emily (when 13 years old) for a school English assignment on returning from France.
The respect and unswerving determination of John Baptist to remember his parents had a strong impact on us all and I think you’ll agree that Emily has captured this beautifully…
John Baptist
The window glowed with the low winter sun; eight wavy panes of glass individualised by hand beaten wrought iron. The empty photo frame, propped at an angle and coated in dust, sat in the deep recess of the window sill. There was movement in the corner of the frame. Jolted into action a fly began to buzz, snagged in a dusty cobweb. Beside the silver embossed frame, a sprig of rosemary poked out of a blue stained jar.
John Baptist stared out at the rising, falling, bobbing flakes of ice, gruff and raspy breath misting out in front of his face. It was January. The first Sunday of January. He lifted himself off of his mattress that doubled as a couch and dining table. There was a draft. It sucked snowflakes under the door where they settled on the stone flooring, some making it all the way to the threadbare rug. The rug had been a gift.
A soft murmur came from the closed jaws of the Burmese cat. Its hungry gaze solemnly intent on the gap under the door. Shuffling over to the entranceway John Baptist took his coat off its wooden peg and opened the door with a creak on its ancient hinges. The Burmese was swift to the call and slipped past his ankles. Stepping out into the snow without so much as a glance about him (for he knew no one was looking) John Baptist’s ripped and torn boots crunched on the gravel drive.
Weeds rivalling the beauty of the Grand Southern Sunflower Fields drove up through the grey gravel: rich dark leaves (the sort of green only found in northern Bretagne) with delicate white blossoms. At the end of the drive he turned right onto a single lane country road. After a few minutes a tractor raced past; having come and gone with the thick stench of manure. John Baptist kept on walking.
It was not long before he came to the clearing and bitumen turned to gravel once more. Tall gates rose from the gravel. Sandstone walls guarded the perimeter of the Saint-Mayeux graveyard. Through the iron gates the silhouette of the Romanesque chapel jabbed at the sky, itching to reach higher, tease the dull day. The steeple’s bells (Antoinette and Genevieve) silent till à dix-neuf heurs.
Drawing a solid brass key from his breast pocket John Baptist unlocked the gates. Weaving through the shrines, headstones and monuments, his boots experienced a ceremonial rallandanto as he approached his family. His parents, grandparents and great grandparents. On the first Sunday of every month he came to perform the house keeping of their graves. Taking a dirt caked horse-hair brush from inside his coat, John Baptist began to sweep snow off the knobbly stone crosses. With gentle strokes he removed all the snow, mindful that by the time he returned home it would be in the same condition as when he’d arrived. To John Baptist it didn’t matter.
Thanks to Emily for letting us share this piece of writing from when she was younger. And to read another heartwarming story about Helen’s neighbour, John Baptist, see her article What Living In France Means To An English Expat.
