Gabrielle Gassin

A mother’s musings on life

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  • “New Home”

    “New Home”

    Every Sunday for the last two point five months has been “moving day.” We have been shuffling around France in our little Berly Car (a Citroën Berlingo) with the majority of items belonging to Arlo (pram {do not travel with this one} bag of books, bag of toys, scooter, snow toboggan, etc) from Paris heading south namely, to try and find a place that was suitable for us to settle down for a while.

    Each and every place has had its ups and downs, its plusses and minuses, as does every other faculty of life. But if you read this post or even this one or god, even this one, you would already know that this journey has been more difficult than original anticipations had allowed. If there is one single lesson I have learnt over the last couple of months which was acquired solely on this voyage, it has been that perseverance pays. I have a newfound respect for people who do this – uprooting their perfectly good lives to do something really challenging. Because it’s actually not easy at all. And if you’re reading this and thinking, “hey, I did this. It was easy!” and you’re in the same situation as me, then please TEACH ME YOUR WAYS, O WISE AND WELL ORGANISED ONE.

    We have found our feet. They had disappeared, like I was in the final months of pregnancy again. We were swimming in the Atlantic ocean with no land in sight, trying to keep our two year old human child afloat, and dry. It was hard work. It wasn’t physically hard, except for lugging suitcases, shopping, and a tired boy up many flights of stairs, but it was psychologically exhausting. And there are certainly two ways to look at facing things each day:

    1. “Glorious! (smilingly) Where are we going to be living this time next week? What trials and tribulations and blockages by the French Government await us tomorrow? How thrilling and worldly!” OR
    2. “How do we create stability in such a capricious environment, for our child? How do we explain moving from one home to the next, when he’s just become comfortable? How do I find a job when we don’t even know where we will live? What does this French parking fine mean?” among others.

    Now, I can laugh at it (a little bit). But it reminds me of the aftermath of giving birth to my son, with no pain relief. I was adamant that I would be truthful to all my female friends who wanted to know about it…that it was f-ed. The pain is so extreme that you forget what you’re enduring it for. On a lesser scale, this has been that. And like that too, a marvellous gift was the result – Arlo. And now here we are, stationed in the south-west of France for the foreseeable future, with the French language at our fingertips, and the hospitality and generosity of the French-Basque people leaving us open-mouthed.

    We spent the last two weeks living in the granny flat of a typical Basque home in Anglet. And man, did we hit the jackpot with this one. Attached to their home, a couple in their mid 70s and early 80s have become Airbnb Superhosts, sharing their place with strangers every few weeks. Danielle became like a grandmother to Arlo and a mother to Shane and I, dispersing kisses and cuddles in her lovely, warm grandmotherly way at any moment. Willing and able to help with every request or enquiry, she’s a person that when you meet her, you can’t not immediately feel comfortable and welcome and taken care of. Remi, a little more reserved at first, drew Arlo’s attention as he tended his garden of lettuce and tomatoes and kept very active around the back yard and front yard, cutting branches, trimming the grass, cleaning out the garage and picking cherries from the tree. The moment Remi became less reserved may have been the time Arlo spat out a piece of potato and placed it into his hand, and he graciously ate it.

    Both Danielle and Remi have a siesta after lunch every single day which, in my opinion, is one of the reasons they are so fit and well in their seventh and eighth centuries of life. They host family and friends very regularly for dinner, coffee or afternoon tea, and they eat the food they grow in the garden every day. We developed a relationship with these people that we will maintain as long as is humanly possible, and we will be forever grateful for how they have aided our transition to life in France. Shane even got Remi doing morning meditation by the end of the two weeks; a certain achievement, especially with a strong language barrier (neither Remi nor Danielle speak any English). I knew we had found something special when we were welcomed into our accomodation with a beautiful traditional Basque cake – (see it here) big box tick for old sweet tooth over here!

    Breaking our fast at midday on moving day was something else, too. Danielle and Remi had us over for apéro, with a couple of petit glasses of Tawny Port alongside some biscuits and nuts being the prelude to Remi’s private trumpet performance; of which he had not played for 14 years. Arlo was on Remi’s level after he had poured him two small glasses of apple juice, despite my attempted protestations. Apparently, “un peu du sucre, ce n’est pas grave!”

    So this is just a little update for all who are interested in our well being. WE ARE GREAT. We have secured a home with a spacious garden, across the road from a running track and football field, 1.5km to the beach and in 10 minutes from the centre of Biarritz. In Anglet, which some would argue, is even better. I have never applied for so many jobs in my life, and I’ve learnt some valuable skills in writing cover letters and curriculum vitae in French. We have made friends who have all been so generous with their time and willingness to help us adjust, and Arlo already speaks more French than Shane (haha).

    More to come, sometime soon.

    Peace oXo

  • Plastic stupidity

    Plastic stupidity

    I began writing this post before Coles and Woolworths got with the times and deleted plastic bags from free supply at their stores, so the first part is from a few months back. Now, being in France and seeing what they’re doing here to minimise their global footprint, I feel more of a sense of judgement now than ever. We’re not doing enough in Australia. We could do more. Will post about France’s efforts at a later date, but for now:

    I often wonder if anyone else is as perplexed by the stupidity of the human race as I am. And, by absolutely no means am I out doing everything that I can to save the planet, however I do try to use the least amount of plastic I can, absolutely refusing to do the shopping with plastic bags. If I forget my reusables, I find a box or just use a trolley to transport to the car. Call me naïve, but I’ve come to believe this should be standard practise.

    Recently, however, I’ve been unable to contain myself, erupting in a fountain of verbal vomit whilst in the supermarket line. Call me pedantic, but watching other grown adults doing absurd things like putting ONE BOX OF CHOCOLATES in an environmentally unfriendly non-biodegradable plastic bag gets to me in a didactic sort of way. When we’re running out of renewable resources, when the beautiful world we’ve been granted use of continues to be diminished by us Homo sapiens, and then I witness that sort of lunacy as part of the reason WHY all of this is even happening, it really gets me down. So, I have been brazenly confronting the handful of people I’ve seen do such things, in an attempt to get them thinking more profoundly about their actions. People always make comments about not being able to make changes as one single person (particularly when it comes to “reasons for eating a vegetarian diet” i.e “yeah, but as if one person among the millions of people in the world can actually affect change” is what they say, but hello, think about figures like Nelson Mandela, who started small. So many great people have started small and made positive changes! It IS possible!) however, I just hope that maybe some day, one upfront comment from a stranger in the queue might actually work.

    Of course, since I started my rolling commentary of random people’s abuse of the environment happening in the shopping queue, some changes have actually occurred. Clap clap, Giant Cooperation! You made ONE SMALL CHANGE. And then. How horrible it was to witness the reaction of people that are older than me. I’m talking baby boomers and older. OUTRAGED, that free detrimental-for-the-earth plastic was no longer available. What the devil am I going to carry my shopping home in? HELLO!? Have the rest of us not already been using our own bags? Since when is this something new and disturbing and above all, NOT possible to do? I find this utterly perplexing.

    Anyway, I was involved in a conversation a few weeks ago (just after the ban was employed) between myself and two middle aged women, which only perpetuated my antipathy. The general atmosphere of this chat was pierced with sentiment about the revolutionary idea that we should bring our own bags shopping. HAVE THESE PEOPLE BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK FOR THE LAST FIVE PLUS YEARS? No, because they’d be dead, from not having done the shopping.

    From where has this notion come, that using our reusable bags is a radically new and innovative idea? These women’s sensibility was ever so politely rocked in a mostly upper middle class sort of way upon the realisation of this small change. One of the women even boasted about how economical she now is, saving paper bags that come with items like bread in them. She animatedly described the way she folds the bag and “pops it in a drawer to use at a later date.” I was bewildered, to say the least.

    I also shudder with disgust when I see someone who has fallen victim to the homewares shops who now sell compartmentalising shopping bags; the ones which can be set neatly within the trolley. The last person I saw pushing a trolley containing these was literally strutting, her sense of pride beaming the pathway to her car.

    Am I unnecessarily shocked? Maybe it’s my millennial attitude that’s causing such distaste. But it’s not a personal thing, I just want us all to do good for the earth. Banning the bags is a start, it’s a small change that will hopefully eventually lead to bigger ones. But let’s champion it, let’s make sure we’re part of the change we want to see in the world. And don’t be afraid to speak up about such things. It’s starts with you!

    The end.

  • Those California Smiles

    It’s funny, thinking back to when we were kids. Unconsciously taking each moment as it came, not worried that standing in the rain would make our clothes wet and we’d be cold later, or that too many cupcakes would head straight to our thighs, and never second guessing that the people around us had anything but unqualified love for us. It’s only when we grew a little more, when our brains were roused from childhood slumber, that our thoughts became a little more conscious, and we learned to worry about more superficial things. Once innocent thoughts became tainted with the mundane realities of “life.” And of course, maturation continued and the thoughts evolved into grown-up beliefs and realisations.

    One of these realisations for me was the recognition of old people’s teeth. I believe that many people would agree with me when I say that old people have a special sense about them. It’s funny to look at one (old person) and note that they too, were once a baby, once a child, and lived out their whole adult life as well. And upon passing the threshold into becoming “elderly,” came a certain essence that reverberates in the people around them. I think children, especially, unconsciously summon this innate feeling in the presence of elderly people. Perhaps it’s something to do with being at paradoxical ends of the life-spectrum, or something. It comes in the form of an unabashed love; it lives in their hearts because they’ve not yet grown into that state of self-awareness that is cultivated with age.

    I used to believe that all elderly people had nice teeth. I remember feeling perceived confusion, however slight, at why people got old and ended up with nice teeth. If I was lucky enough to have seen a photo from their youth, why had their teeth changed so much? Is that what happened to adults? Why did I notice “my-parents-age” adults with seemingly normal teeth, and then old people, older than The Adults, with perfectly aligned pearly whites, all the same size and without blemish? These thoughts developed into a reasonably solid belief inside my young, impressionable and ever-expanding brain…that all old people had nice teeth.

    The realisation did too, undertake the process of change. It wasn’t till much later that I learned about the existence of dentures. From that point, the light bulb flickered on and the door to curiosity was closed. No longer did I need to endlessly wonder why this phenomenon remained a “thing” for those in the later stages of life. My marvelling mind ceased its justifying and reasoning, and the transient question that I’d never actually asked was answered.

    This piece was published in Bella Rae in the second half of 2019.

  • Flour Fiend

    Can you get fat from broccoli? A seemingly ridiculous question to ask the universe, but relevant (to me) as I approach my seventh week of living in France. Ahh, France. The country of passion. Of cheese, of wine. Of sleeping in, of late evening dinner bookings and overdressing when it’s not that cold. Of nothing happening before midday, of no breakfast, of espressos first thing in the morning, at midday and mid-afternoon, and certainly after dinner. Of well behaved children and people who smoke as if it’s good for their health. Of fabulous art, wonderful poetry, and a language of devine melody. Of dessert at any time of the day, pastry, and lastly (for now; this list is not exhaustive) but certainly and absolutely not least… the country of bread.

    If there’s anything I haven’t missed out on thus far (Here are other things I have whinged about in the past, and here too), it is DU PAIN. God, they really do it good. The bread supplied to the French people on an hourly basis really puts the rest of the world to shame. Australia, with its neatly stacked supermarket shelves, and even bakeries, cannot be compared. Yes, we have choice down under, and more now than ever before. Behold, the rise of the artisanal bakery! But I would personally exchange our aisles, lined row after row with sliced white bits of western-ness, with one local boulangerie. I would vote for all bread to be eliminated from said shelves, if it meant access to ONE single shop which supplied freshly baked bread regularly, The French Way, so that even on a Sunday evening at 5pm, you could wait five minutes for a fresh baguette. That is how much the French love their bread. And I don’t blame them.

    I have mentioned le pain in other posts, namely here and probably again here, and that’s because of the exquisite nature of the stuff. They don’t just make it once in the early hours of the morning, they keep it coming fresh over the course of the day.

    Enter a boulangerie, and you will see: wooden box-like structures to hold baguettes (of which there are myriad kinds – ha! And we all thought a baguette was one single long “breadstick,” oh, the shame) and glass cabinets full with bread-related delicacies; croissants, croissants with jambon and fromage (not close in comparison to what we have down under) croque monsieur, croque madame, croque chèvre. They do things with that involve sausages, cheese and pastry that you never thought possible. The selection of quiche is like nothing you’ve seen before and will tempt even those who usually refrain.

    You will have never seen so much melted cheese in one location, and you will salivate involuntarily when you observe such a place of flour filled dreams. I often wonder what their weekly demand for butter is. The smaller baguettes (called sandwich) which are filled with things, are stacked all the way to the top of the cabinet, in anticipation of their daily consumers. Camembert, fromage de chèvre, jambon cru, salade. The choices are endless and exotic; yesterday I even saw one with framboise.

    La formule du midi entitles you to a savoury, a sweet and a drink, but you get stuck halfway on a dessert choice; there are no finger buns for you to frown upon so it’s much harder to refuse. Pain au chocolat? Croissant aux amandes? Flan? Paris Brest? Cheesecake? Mille feuille? The speciality of the region? Sugar receptors are on high alert as you question your nutritional values.

    The choice you’re faced with in a boulangerie is one of the better, luckier things you get to decide upon in your day. Pour moi, a fresh baguette (tradition française) with its tough, crunchy exterior cannot be beaten. The way the flour springs off the top and into the air, hovering, stationary, as you rip it apart, is a moment I regularly look forward to. How the butter melts just a little bit with the warmth of the soft interior; it’s like a tiny landscape of delicate peaks, which spring back up as the knife finishes its task.

    Can you get fat from broccoli? No. But exposure to the above can see a woman get a little curvy round the edges from just inhaling the air in a boulangerie, so it seems. Or perhaps it’s the daily addition of a baguette at lunch and dinner time, which means that even our normal standard of healthy meals are contradicted with carbohydrates.

    As if the zipper breaking on a pair of jeans wasn’t warning enough, alarm bells are humming steadily between my ears now. But how do I stop it? Just saying no is harder than it seems, the bread is just so darn delicious! Moving to a place of isolation looks like it might be the only way around this dough filled dilemma.

    PS For more information on French bread, read here. They have a Bread Decree, for god’s sake. I love them.

  • “organising your space” (a sample)

    The space in which you spend time is not just an area to stow your belongings; metaphysical or tangible, but a reflection of the fragments of your life. Just like the clothes you wear and the people you connect with, the spaces we occupy could be seen to represent more depth than first discerned. Why were our parents always telling us to “tidy up our rooms, we are having guests over”? Because who wants to be seen as too lazy to get organised? We care about how we manifest to others, and to maintain order indicates a person who is in control; who has their life sorted.

    Fast forward to now and many of us millennial carry that one close, attempting to assemble and systematise every segment of life itself. Even The Hipster, with his long, unruly hair and disheveled beard, with his oversized clothes and barefoot presence will surprise you with his diary, his personal and spiritual 12-week journey and the goal setting, oh the goal setting. And it’s not entirely unnecessary, in fact. Maybe if we have some control over where we want to go, we might eventually get there. Organising your space is not just actionable through the rearranging of objects in an environment, it’s the creation of a drive for more. The human lifespan is not that long, really, so if we can maintain some semblance of order during the time we have, maybe we can thank mum and dad for those early rules after all.

     

  • Are You Tired? Please read this (book).

    Are You Tired? Please read this (book).

    Coming to full consciousness and plagued by a wretched night’s sleep, a need to do some writing invades me. In fact I started writing this last night, under the very dim light of tiny lamp shaded by a towel, with my phone nowhere in sight and inside an otherwise very dark apartment, at around 9:30pm. Why the details, you may ask…well. I changed the tagline of this blog to “travelling France between day naps,” this being a direct reflection of what we’re doing, and founded on a topic that has peaked my interest over the last 6-9 months…SLEEP. (more…)

  • A “fear of death” experience (quick one)

    I used to think joggers and jeans were a hideous fashion faux pas, and those that indulged in such lamentable fancies were obviously extremely unfashionably inclined. LOOK AT ME NOW. LOOK AT ME NOW. Quite literally, I wear shoes that double as runners everywhere I go. I brought two pairs with me and they’re not going to last me the year, that’s for sure. Anyway it’s probably something to do with parenting, again.

    Moving on and the photo below was taken onboard as we traversed the treacherous Mediterranean seas to peruse Les Calanques, a national park full of breathtaking, vast rocky outcrops and gorgeous little coves with turquoise coloured water. In this picture, I look happy, and that’s because I was. I was, because that moment was captured right before my denial about not being sea sick went overboard. Along with the sense that I was going to be able to get off that boat safely, with my family intact. I.E, not in a rescue situation. To be fair, the man we bought tickets off warned us, asking if we still wanted to go because the wind was really up and the swell was huge. Shane looked sideways at me when he asked, and I said “YES! We will still go. I don’t get sea sick.” Meanwhile, we had just bought a lot of lunch to eat in the form of “sandwich” (baguettes) and dessert – pain au chocolat aux amandes – none of which you would be interested in eating, if the possibility of becoming sea sick was within your realm of being. On the way out of the port, I was focusing on the horizon (thanks Jojo), and was doing really well. At this point, I was only worried about the boat capsizing in the enormous waves, and not vomiting up my lunch. I’m not joking. I consulted Shane after reflective thought about what exactly we would do when the boat flipped. Just to assure you that I’m not overreacting, Shane’s response was, “I have already planned it out.” Here is where you picture me having a silent fit. My fear consumed me as I established a firm grip on Shane’s thigh. On we went, through to the national park where the ocean was more reasonable, and I reflected jubilantly on living another day.

    The way back had me full of anguish again. I had to go and sit out the back, get sprayed in the face with ocean water and whipped with icy wind because my stomach was churning. Again, questioning whether or not we would survive to tell the tale of this perilous adventure. I sat out the back of the boat, trying to talk myself out of the urge to vomit and looking slowly at the people around me, wondering if these were the people I would die alongside. It sounds morbid I know, but when the captain decelerates and the engine goes off so that the boat can drift over the waves (I use drift, but that word connotes a sense of calm and tranquility, of which this voyage was anything but) you really seriously question the need to go sight seeing. Stupid tourists. Arlo learnt a new French word on this trip, “mouillé,” which means wet. Shane has informed me that whilst I was out the back, a wave hit the front of the boat where they were sitting, before they were forced inside (so they weren’t thrown into the water.) Now, we all know that events which inspire heavy emotional ties, whether negative or positive, make a sturdy imprint in the hippocampus. My child is scarred from this trip. He’s also one step closer to becoming bilingual. JOY.

    I just wanted to share the novel experience that could be called a “close encounter” whilst still fresh in my mind. Now I’ve also shared my biggest fear! Calm ocean = yes, King tide = no.

    This photo below is my all time favourite of these two males. There can’t be a better one!Deceitfully calm, non?This last photo looks like I am going to give that lucky lady a little kiss on the temple. Arlo not so happy about it?

     

     

  • some Favourite Foreign moments

    Some of my favourite moments from France thus far, that I have remembered on the spot. There are surely more, which from now on I will jot down so that I can re-tell. There are also some photos down the bottom, of various things both pertaining to this post and also unrelated.

    1. Shane, wanting to keep up his fitness, spent the first two weeks in Paris assaulting anything he could with exercise. The exposed beam holding up the building in our apartment was a chin up bar, the Nike shop floor was a push up arena whilst we awaited service – can you please take a moment to imagine this: me, being normal, in a store. I turn to say something to my husband and he’s banging out 30 pushups AT SPEED, whilst people continue their shopping around us. This happened again on the outdoor basketball court at Jardin de Luxembourg, where a group of teenage boys were shooting hoops. Suddenly, there’s this Australian weirdo doing pushups just off to the right whilst his wife pretends not to know him.
    2. Obviously, the duck incident in Paris.
    3. Shane holding Arlo over the toilet to do a pipi (boy style) and Arlo not telling him he actually needed to do a number 2 – so that ended up on the bathroom floor mat.
    4. Drinking a coffee at La Dolce Italia, speaking to the owner Karine, who called her Australian friend on the spot and with whom I spoke with and then met the following day. Eve introduced me to her two American friends, Audrey and Daria, and they were both a wealth of information and friendliness; I felt like I’d known them for yonks. Arlo and I ran into the latter two later that afternoon and he loved them both instantly, asking them if they were coming to the park with us and giving them each a “yuddle” before storming purposefully off up the street, stopping 15 metres away and calling out “au revoir” and “ByyyyyyE” multiple times as they both waved and did the same. Upon walking a little further, Arlo stopped, looked up at me and said, “friends gone,” whilst shrugging his shoulders, palms facing upwards. I’ll look for a photo of him doing this to add so you can see it in action.
    5. Having any sort of interaction with a French person who naturally assumes you know what they’re saying, until you actually don’t, and you give an unexpected response. You receive a priceless look of “…huh?” on the face which cannot be rectified, instead you cover the errors up with “bonne journée!” or “bon weekend” and “au revoir” and quickly scuttle away.
    6. Spending the extremely valuable afternoon time (after Arlo wakes up) looking for a circus for which Shane had spotted signs around town several days beforehand. With Shane and I being natural performers (lol) and each coming from families filled with talent, we feel a certain connection with such events and love attending them. We searched for this circus for what seemed like hours (it was definitely over one hour and under 1.5), asking for directions and driving through unknown villages and tiny streets, we saw the big top (medium sized). The gate was shut and there were llamas grazing about the place; it looked like nothing was happening. Then, Shane somehow summons a lady (from where she came, no idea) and she opens the gate and ushers us in, saying the show is about to finish. Instead of 5 euros each, she tells us we can pay 5 in total. We go through the flap and there are quite literally FOUR PEOPLE in the audience, seated on fold up chairs, dirt floor. The performer? A woman in her sixties all dolled up, upside down and balancing and throwing balls and cylindrical shaped thingies on her feet. It was absolutely very impressive! And she was in great shape! Her performance smile never faltered, despite there being almost nobody watching the show. Bittersweet – these people spend their lives practicing and performing, and even on a day when there are less than 10 in the audience, the show must go on. Kudos to them. Shane ends up paying the 10 euros after all, and Arlo gets his hands sniffed and snuffled by some very cute ponies (see previous post for photos).
    7. Walking through le marché and seeing that Shane had been granted the honour of a ginormous bird poo on the front of his black shirt. I have thought in depth about the size of that poo, and I honestly can’t think of what bird would have ejected it. A pigeon is only a small bird (although they are very puffy here, is it the winter feathers or are they overweight?) and the size of the poo is evidence of a larger type of flying species. This question of whodunit still plagues me today.
    8. Asking Arlo if he knows what my name is and him replying with “GABBY-GOO!!!” I die.
    9. Arlo walking past (any, random) children on the street and saying “friend?” As it would for most, this also breaks my heart and prompts me to reflect on the importance of children being around other children for healthy social and emotional development.
    10. Attempting to purchase a baguette (“tradition,” of course) and two croissants, but realising too late that I only had enough change for the baguette. I said I would gladly come back later for the croissants, but was urged to take the croissants, and bring the money back another day. What a gem of a woman!
    11. A lot of children (and adults, actually) ride scooters around cities here. In fact Arlo received one from the Easter Bunny, who found us in Chamonix this year. What luck! On occasion, we have walked and not scooted to the park, which means that obviously Arlo’s scooter hasn’t come with us. Arlo does this quite hilarious thing where he will be playing in the playground when a child with a scooter OR a bike enters and drops it, deserting it to scale the ladder instead. Arlo spots the abandoned two wheeler, renouncing his upward assault on the slide. He runs (fast) until he is close, then within a metre and half of the trotinette or velo, he moves more slowly, steadily breaching the periphery of safety and stepping inside the circle of another child’s possession. Then, he’ll do one of two things. Either he will patiently wait for one parent to notice him, whereby he will point at the object and say “this Arlo’s.” OR, he will go straight in for the kill and take it. Both are hilarious and test my skill as a parent in giving reason for why it’s not okay to take someone else’s belongings without asking. Once he rode another child’s little bike for 20 minutes straight before saying “I park it,” and backing away from it, eyes fixed incase of other predacious children. Photo attached of this in action.

    These are certainly not all of the moments, and there will be more; of this I am sure. Feel free to share your comments and thoughts : )