TRAVEL SERIES

A “Short” Trip to France Became an Adventure Into Motherhood

But first, I had to learn the French word for ‘pregnancy’

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have been forced to learn to communicate in a foreign language fast?

This happened to me when I took a trip to France for a two-month break and my entire life changed.

It was February 2002 and I had just arrived back from spending a blissful ten days in rural central France with some friends.

At the time, I was temporarily shacking up in a village in Somerset with my…I don’t know what…had-been-boyfriend…

…now loosely hanging out together, living under the same roof, and finding ourselves in the same bed rather a lot, despite having one each.

It was all a bit messy. I wanted everything to be okay but he preferred to be officially separate.

Besides, he liked to spend time with other women — one in particular.

I was feeling like my head and heart were in a mess and the time spent away with close friends was medicine for my soul. I made the decision that I was going to return to that little corner of France for a couple of months in the Spring, and have a good amount of time, and distance, to return to my full emotional strength.

On arrival from this 10-day trip, my was-boyfriend-now-who-knows-what announced that he had been given notice by the landlord and that he was planning on renting a room in a shared house…and that it would be without me.

Okay, the message received was loud and clear. Got it.

One thing led to another. I bought a car, and then I bought a little touring caravan. I had a tow-bar fitted onto my car and the next thing I knew, I had made the decision to shoot off out of the grey, heartbreaking land of England and over to France for 2, maybe 3 months.

And then…

Not-quite-boyfriend-soon-to-be-ex decided to accompany me

The friends I was visiting were mutual and he fancied seeing this mysteriously magical place in France that I and they had spoken of. Plus, he didn’t really like missing out on an adventure.

Personally, having never before towed a caravan in my life, I quite welcomed the company.

So, on the Spring Equinox, we set off.

We arrived in the chestnut and oak-covered hills of Haute Vienne to welcome Spring sunshine. It was the most exquisitely beautiful place at that time of year, still holding onto a token of the bleak cold of winter while bathed in the glistening promise of Spring.

I met with many of the kind-hearted people I had encountered on my first visit. The ones who had made me feel like I could belong, even if only for a few weeks. They all pitched in to aid me in finding a place to stand my caravan and helped me to position it.

The people there were used to hardy-living, close to the land, flexing their muscles just to exist. Surrounding me was woodland with plenty of deadwood to chop and burn in the woodstove I had installed in my caravan, and, just at the bottom of the hill, was a beautifully clean spring from where I could collect my water.

Life was set to be perfect.

Feeling a tad rough and out of sorts

Following a tiring ten-hour drive, plus a few hours on the ferry, I struggled to feel refreshed again. I thought perhaps the change of scenery, the slower pace of life, and clean air were making me feel more tired than usual.

On the first few evenings, when we would gather for dinner with our friends, a bottle of wine was always doing the rounds, but I had no taste for it.

As time went on, I only felt more tired rather than less, and, one day, I decided I needed to spend the morning in bed, as I wasn’t feeling too well in the stomach. I had obviously eaten something that had disagreed with me, so I tried to rest it all off.

Still, even after resting and fasting, I felt even more tired than before and tried to just get on with my days.

Despite being in such a rural location, the community in the three hamlets surrounding the land where we were staying were a social bunch and loved a good get-together. In the three weeks that my not-quite-boyfriend stayed, we had quite a few outdoor parties with bonfires and lots of delicious food.

Our friends were semi-professional musicians and so music and dancing were regular additions to the partying. It was quite a high-energy time so I spent my days lounging in the sunshine and mustering up energy for the fun evening life.

My not-quite-boyfriend returned to England

After his three weeks were up, he took the train back to the UK and I stayed on to live out my French adventure. We’d had a lovely time but all good things must end, apparently.

I was happy to be creating this distance to live a life that was for me, and not in the shadow of him. I planned, while there, to earn my living by busking and just enjoy a quiet life, close to nature.

To say I was happy to be there was an understatement. At that moment, I was living the perfect existence.

Except for one thing…

I was still feeling pretty darned rough.

Now that I was solo, I chilled with my friend Sarah and we chatted about everything under the sun. While we were hanging out on the first afternoon after he had left, my recurring fatigue suddenly set in again, and I announced that I needed to go and lie down.

Sarah looked at me curiously.

“You don’t think you could be pregnant, do you?” She said

Impossible, I thought. We had been in a solid relationship, before everything went very un-solid, for several years and successfully avoided getting pregnant. Why on earth would it happen now?

I dismissed the idea, but Sarah didn’t.

“Perhaps it would be worth just getting a test.”

Sarah’s words prayed on my mind and so when we visited the local town the following market day, I stopped in at the pharmacy.

The test results looked clear, but I didn’t truly believe them. I told Sarah that I hadn’t done the test correctly.

“No worries,” she said. “I have one you can use.”

She gave me a test.

An hour later she popped by to see me.

“So?”

I didn’t have to say anything. She knew the answer.

I had to tell my now-distant-and-ex-boyfriend. I called him up.

I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps an emotional response notable for a soon-to-be-father would have been good. And an acknowledgment that talking about our future could be a useful thing to do.

But no…

“Congratulations! You’ll make a great mother.” He said.

No mention of “us”. Just a “have a great time being pregnant” vibe.

“Er…thanks,” I said, baffled. And put the phone down.

I made a firm decision

I had no idea what he wanted to do, nor any idea what his involvement was likely to be. He seemed to want space and distance and that was what we now had.

What I did know was that I was in a place in which I felt happy. I had close friends with me and the French community in the hamlets around were made up of many young families.

I didn’t need to go anywhere to feel supported and loved.

Within a month of arriving in France, I had decided that I was going to stay, find a midwife locally, and birth my baby there. Life was suddenly completely different.

I had barely any French and was extremely shy about trying to make conversation in French.

That all changed in a jiffy when I found myself sitting in the doctor’s office alone, getting my “Declaration de Grossesse” (declaration of pregnancy), and on my regular visits to my midwife’s clinic in the beautiful city of Perigueux, in the Dordogne.

Everyone wanted to ask me questions, offer me advise and baby clothes, and discuss the impending birth.

Following the birth of my baby, all of the local market stall holders would stop me to ask about her, and marveled as they watched her grow week-by-week.

That early Spring in 2002, when I set off from the UK for my “short” trip to France, I never imagined that it would be three years before I returned to the UK to live. Or that, in the meantime, I would become immersed in a new language, embracing a different culture and society.

This story is in response to the prompt by Sharing Randomly, to share a time when language was a barrier. I guess it was, but I soon got rid of that!

If you have experienced this, why not follow the prompt.

For something completely different, check out Gaurav Jain’s experience of traveling in his own country, only to be confronted with an impossible language to contend with:

And now for something a little lighter from yours truly:

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