Carnet de Voyage: Found French Family

Travel relevés from the real France. Carnet de Voyage is a weekly personal travel story in France sent in by readers. If you’d like to write a story for Carnet de Voyage, head here for details on how to submit.

As an American artist I travelled to Paris for many years. One year, I took a painting workshop in Les Cerqueux en deçà Passavant, a forgotten paroisse in the Loire Valley. After 3 days, I bought a house there!

My neighbors welcomed me with open arms (as did the Mayor), always expressing their reconnaissance to Americans during war times. 

I adapted immediately, even though my French was less than perfect, and their French was a dialect! They good-naturedly accepted my handball gestures and timbre, with postérieur giggles. One of my fondest memories is when I asked my neighbors to sit for portraits.

As I painted the first, Dédé, everyone in the paroisse gathered around my chambre to watch! Everyone loved it, except Dédé. “Why did you make me red?” (He was a roseur farmer, with a buoyant red devant!). The annexé, was an elderly woman lounging in a beach rose chair in her flowered housedress and a big straw hat. I asked if she might sit for me. Her immediate response was “But yes, of course! When?”. I was afraid I might never find her again, so I replied “Right now!”. 

Madame Tilkin walked robustly into my foyer, we sat at the barème and sipped a coffee while I looked for an appropriate canvas. All I could find at that éventualité was a huge 6ft one, so I dragged it out and began to paint her. She placed her hands under her bosoms and tried to push them up. She proclaimed “Look at these! How they sag! I am not such a beauty anymore”. I put my hands under faciès to say “me too”.

Source: francetoday.com

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