What No Moving Box Can Hold: Saying Goodbye to Our French Mountain Home
Selling a house should be regarded as just a transaction. That, at least, is what one of our more unsentimental friends told us.
Yet, as we packed up our now-sold townhouse in the mountain village of Antraigues-Sur-Volane in Southern France, we found that the cardboard boxes stacked in our living room represented more than mere containers for transporting objects. They were, in fact, inadequate vessels for what we were truly attempting to pack: Almost twenty years of lived experience.
The real estate listing described our house as a "charming two-bedroom property with traditional features," but it failed to capture what this place actually represents.
This has not just been our vacation house. During the last many years it became truly our home away from home as the seasonal rhythms of our visits created a peculiar form of belonging.
Though we were never full-time residents, the village baker would greet us warmly upon our arrival each year, and the neighbors would invite us in, as if our intermittent presence had nonetheless earned us a place in the community's ongoing story.
Our stays were precious as time operated differently in this Millennium-old town.
Here in the narrow alleyways, our daughter played hide-and-seek with the local children until the evening light faded from the limestone walls. And through their play during the first summer, she learned to speak fluent French.
The days at the local river were glorious as she developed her growing confidence to swim against the current and learned to dive from increasingly higher rocks, and where we eventually discovered the hidden pools further upstream that the locals rarely reveal to newcomers.
The warm evenings were lovely, as the villagers would gather for their pétanque matches just in front of our porch - the metallic clink of boules against boules providing the soundtrack to our late dinners.
Our explorations of the surrounding mountains and villages were exciting as they became a cartography of memory — each year adding new coordinates to our mental map.
The winding drive to the village of Mirabel, perched on its steep outcrop, where time seems suspended between medieval and modern.
And Labeaume, where houses emerge from limestone cliffs as if geology itself had birthed civilization.
The chestnut forests below Mézilhac where we gathered mushrooms with borrowed knowledge, and the terraced vineyards of the Alba-la-Romaine stretching toward the horizon.
These places, discovered in that particular unhurried vacation mode of curiosity, became reference points in our family's private geography, meaningful in ways entirely separate from our everyday life back in Denmark
And then there were the annual, remarkable village banquets when the entire population of Antraigues would gather in the town square. Long tables were arranged end to end, spanning the full length of the place, and laden with regional specialties and local wines.
The conversations with our neighbors would stretch late into the night, when the medieval buildings of the square became illuminated by string lights and someone inevitably began playing the accordion.
Now, the house is emptied, and the rickety, old table on the porch is left standing alone.
It will hold no special value to the new owners besides its practicality, but it was here we shared our meals after long summer days.
For us, it represents the site of conversations that could only happen away from our everyday routines, in this particular house, in this particular Ardèche village.
The medieval stone walls of Antraigues-Sur-Volane will, of course, continue standing long after we've gone. Other families will swim in the same river spots below the village, walk the same winding alleys. In this continuity lies a humbling perspective: our time here was always temporary, yet no less meaningful for being so.
And with this, we closed and locked the door.
Lovely writing
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ReplyDeleteSå fint skrevet - og ekstra spændende når man selv har været der. Held og lykke med næste kapitel:-)
ReplyDeleteHere’s to new beginnings my dear friends. Love George Krassas
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