In 2007 a colleague asked me to write my name on a popsicle stick. “I’ll explain later,” she said. It was a gesture that would ultimately change the course of my life. She gave the stick to another colleague, who carried it on his journey as a pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a place I had never heard of.
At the time, I had been suffering from a sleep disorder. I felt terrible most of the time and it took all my energy to travel the 1.5 hours to my job in New York City and focus on my work. The days were blurring together and I was looking for something. I didn’t believe in coincidences at that time, but eight months later, my sleep disorder was gone and I was dating someone from Santiago de Compostela. It felt like something big was about to happen.
My boyfriend’s grandmother soon passed away and I found myself in Spain. While visiting the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, and the place where my colleague had left the stick with my name, I felt an intense connection. When I first saw the pilgrims there I knew I needed to walk and experience this, too. In some strange way, it felt like my colleague leaving my name here had brought me to this place.
I had a tumultuous relationship with the Spaniard and shortly after our trip to Spain we were no longer speaking. I brooded over why I had gone through such a painful relationship. What was I supposed to learn? I kept thinking about the pilgrimage and how it was all connected. Before long, I was obsessed with the idea of walking to Santiago but hesitant to go because of the memories it might stir up.
My mom suggested I walk to Lourdes in France. It’s on the route to Santiago de Compostela (called the Chemin de Saint Jacques in French) and it’s close to the area where my grandmother grew up. She had passed away several years before and I had been very close to her. Walking to Lourdes sounded perfect except that I didn’t speak French. It didn’t matter, because I needed to do this. I felt possessed. I booked my tickets and spent the next 6 months trying to learn some French and obsessing about the equipment I’d need for the pilgrimage. I would need to carry everything necessary for a two-week trip on my back. My plan was to take a plane to Toulouse and then walk to Lourdes, in the 14 or so days I had for vacation. I had little survival skills when it comes to nature. I haven’t encountered too many snakes, mountains, or sanglier (wild French boars). Even as I’m writing this now, I know that it doesn’t sound like a good idea, and knowing what I know now, it was downright crazy, but this trip was the best experience I had ever had at this point. Up until my daughter was born, it was also the hardest, most painful thing I’d ever done.
In September of 2008 I gave up my lipstick and heels for hiking boots and a compass, and walked over 175 miles on the Chemin de Saint Jacques, from Toulouse to Lourdes in 12 days. Even though I walked alone, I had much help on the way from other pilgrims and many kind French people (although there were many mean French people, too). I’d never felt so out of place, but exactly where I should be, all at the same time. I was alone, scared, vulnerable, totally opposite from how I felt every day in NYC. I didn’t speak French and had to ask for help all the time. I was constantly anxious I wouldn’t make it to my next destination, and would have to sleep outside with the giant French slugs and wild boar. I also found myself in severe pain. Along with pain in my legs, I lost toenails. It felt like I was bruised on every part of my body, but it was so worth it. I knew from the first step that my life would never be the same.
I could go on and on about this experience but, the real story here is how I met Romain Ferran, my grandmother’s nephew and my father’s first cousin. But before I met Romain, I encountered a different Frenchman, who also changed my life. When I got back from France I was completely changed. I felt stronger and healthier than I ever had before. It was like my body had been reset and I could sleep all night and stay awake all day. One evening, back home in New York, shortly after my return, I knocked into my grandmother’s nightstand and a piece of the trim fell off. I tried to put it in the top drawer so I could glue it on another day but the drawer was stuck and I just couldn’t open it. So, I took out the bottom drawer to see if I could release the top one and, much to my surprise, there were three handwritten letters addressed to my grandmother stuck behind the drawer.
I was so excited! I started daydreaming about the people in the letters, and I became obsessed with this particular part of France and my family tree. My grandmother never spoke about her family or her experiences in France, so it felt like I had uncovered a secret. I really wanted to read these letters so I could visit this area and see where my grandma was from, but they were in French. I looked on Craigslist for a French tutor and saw a fun ad that said “Want Learning French? Let’s Make it Fun!” I thought to myself, maybe I can help this guy with his English in exchange for French lessons and he sounds more interesting than all the ads for learning French from a Parisian.
I met Thierry for our first lesson in the spring of 2009 in Bryant Park. We would talk for an hour or so and go through exercises where he would ask me questions regarding situations he thought I might encounter on my next trip to France. I think he was scared for me, walking alone in a country where I can’t speak the language. “Where can I find a drinkable wolf”? I spouted in a mumble of timid French, hoping I was asking for drinking water. “No,” Thierry warned me kindly, “it’s l’eau potable, not le loup potable.”
It wasn’t long before Thierry became intrigued by my quest and began helping me research my family. He began taking trips out to see me on Long Island and to visit the area. He adored New York and had sold everything he had in France two years prior to our meeting, to move here and start a new life. He was working with some friends who had a catering business here, and he taught French on the side. Although my French was not getting better (not having anything to do with my teacher), Thierry’s English was greatly improving, and he persuaded me to meet him in France at the end of the summer of 2009. We would travel to the Pyrénées and he would help me research my family using the letters I had found.
We made the journey to Ercé, a village known for bear trainers, where Thierry pored over old record books in the mayor’s office to find marriage and birth certificates from my grandfather’s side. Next we were off to Prat Bonrepeaux to see if we could find the pharmacist, Jacqueline Couzinet, who had written to my grandmother. Thierry asked the current pharmacist, who gave us her address, but she wasn’t home, so we went on to Chein Dessus.
Thierry stopped at the first house in Chein Dessus. It was the same house from my photos. He checked the mailbox and the name Ferran was on it. The same name from my grandmother’s letters. I waited while he checked to see if anyone was home. While standing there alone, I started hearing a familiar tune, and several villagers appeared on a hayride wagon pulled by a tractor. Someone was playing “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” on a trumpet. Two children jumped off to hand me a rose, and to offer me some candy or cigarettes. What probably should have been a warm welcome was overshadowed by intense fear that these folks were gypsies and were going to rob me. I tried to give the boy a Euro, which probably offended him, but he politely told me that the flower was for me to keep. What a welcome!!! I later learned they were part of a parade for Saint Jacques, the village’s patron saint. It’s believed Chein Dessus was at one time part of the Chemin de Saint Jacques route to Santiago de Compostela, and so every year the village has a parade in honor of Saint Jacques. I was quite embarrassed by my fear, but it was just the first in a long list of misunderstandings as I learned about this new culture and language.
We went to the only store in the village, a small epicerie, or deli. Thierry took out my photographs to ask the storekeeper about the people in them, and about Romain Ferran, a name written on one of the letters. The man took a brief look at them and went inside, telling us to wait. A few moments later he came out with a magazine called Memoire de L’Arbas. Inside was an article on Jacques Escaig and my grandmother’s family, the Giscards. It had been published that summer.
After a few words, we were in our car following the man to the home of Denis Cucuron, the village historian and the author of the article. He knew more about my family than I ever did. He told us the story of how my family moved from Chein Dessus to San Francisco, and how they moved back after losing everything in the great earthquake and fire of 1906. Before long, I met my 80-year-old cousin, Romain Ferran. He showed us around his home. It’s the same house that his mother had lived in when she returned to France after the earthquake in San Francisco. It’s also the same house that my grandmother had been born in - and it had been in our family for over 200 years. Even the same oven where my grandmother and her three sisters once baked bread was still there. Meeting Romain was like seeing my grandmother again. He reminded me of something I had been missing, even though up until this time, I’d had no idea that Romain Ferran was alive, let alone a relative of mine.
Romain was very kind and generous. He treated me like family from the first moment we met. We couldn’t communicate verbally (without Thierry’s help translating) because, of course, he spoke French - and he was also hard of hearing, and had probably never heard French coming from someone with a strange American accent. He had raised cows until about 30 years earlier, when he became ill and was forced to retire. However, he remained active with his garden, and with all of his friends. He was married to a woman named Yvette, who had died a few years before I met him. My godfather, his children and I are his only direct family from the side of his mother, Emily. My grandmother and sister left when they were young, and Romain never thought he would meet anyone from the American side of the family. He was really happy.
We also met my grandmother’s cousins Jacqueline and François Couzinet. Jacqueline was in her late eighties, but very lively, and very kind. She was a lovely woman who knew a lot about my grandmother. I was sad to leave her. As we drove away I watched her waving from behind her big fig tree until we turned the corner and I could no longer see her. For a few minutes I imagined she was still standing under the fig tree by herself. It hurt to leave her, but then I turned to look at Thierry, and was eternally grateful for the opportunity he had so selflessly granted me. After all, he had just spent almost all of the time he had to visit his friends and family, seeking out and speaking with the estranged family of someone else. And I knew he held all of my family’s stories that were told by Romain, Denis, Francois, and Jacqueline, because I couldn’t understand them. Thierry was the keeper of these treasures and I knew they would be safe with him.
I promised Romain and Jacqueline I would come back to France, and in the interim we had several guests from Chein-Dessus visit us in NY: Viviane Jullien-Palletier and her husband Jacques, both neighbors of Romain and Gérard Pradère, the publisher of the Memoire de L’Arbas magazine. It was surreal, but I felt really close to them all. I was especially glad they would bring news back to Romain and Jacqueline.
Every six months Thierry had to go back to France for his visa. One time, upon returning to the US, he was denied permission to stay in the country. He was given 15 days to get his things and leave the US for at least a year, without guarantee that he would ever be allowed to return. Thinking about being apart for at least a year made us realize what we meant to each other, and we decided to marry four days later at City Hall in Manhattan.
Our marriage started out with lawyers and endless forms, but we were very happy. We waited for Thierry’s official travel documents, as we had planned to return to France in September for a small party so I could meet Thierry’s entire family, and for us to see Romain, Denis, Jacqueline and Francois again. It was almost one year exactly to the date I had first met them.
We made our way back to Chein-Dessus, as promised, and were received with open arms. The whole town seemed to know who we were. We stayed at Romain’s house and experienced the village life. We walked in the woods and collected mushrooms, had a private historical tour of the church, visited a cow farm, and had countless amazing meals with extremely generous villagers, including Romain’s friend Jeannette. Jeannette had been married to Romain’s best friend who passed away, and she had also been Yvette’s best friend.
The last Saturday of our trip was a perfect day. We went to the market in Saint-Girons, a large town about half an hour away from Chein. By early afternoon, Thierry was hurrying me to get back to Romain’s. He had a surprise for me. We made our way back to the house where he pulled my wedding dress from his suitcase. “You have 10 minutes to get ready! No peeking out the window.”
About half an hour later I opened the door to find my mother, Theirry’s parents, Pascal (his best friend from Paris) and all his best friends from Montpellier, as well as Viviane, Gérard, and all of the neighbors. Romain walked me to the town hall to meet the mayor. He seemed very proud. Jacqueline and Francois were there, and what seemed like the entire town. Thierry and I were married in the city hall in Chein-Dessus in the exact room where my grandmother had once learned to read and write. I was given a certificate of honorary citizenship. It was magical!
Thierry and I were married for six years. We came back every year to visit my new family and friends in Chein-Dessus and the surrounding villages. I was so grateful to him for finding them. l had been taking photographs of everyone. It started out as a desire to document my experiences there, but it soon became a way of communication.
Romain loved that I took photos of him. He would pause when he was about to flip a crepe and tell me to take a photo. Jeannette would take me into the kitchen and show me what she was cooking. She would tell me to take a picture, holding out her dish with pride. I didn’t speak their language, but they were soon learning mine: I could communicate with my photographs in a way I never could using words.
After Thierry and I divorced, I continued to visit. The photographs seemed even more important because I couldn’t hide behind Thierry’s translations. I did eventually learn basic French, but it was still hard for us to communicate. The day after Romain and I had a successful seven minute phone call, I finally realized that I didn’t need Thierry’s help anymore, and that Romain and I had our own relationship - even though it was there all along.
Jeannette and Jacqueline passed away a few years ago. I was devastated as my relationships with them seemed to end so soon after they had started. It made me wonder why my grandmother had not told me about these wonderful people. Was she sad to have left them? Did she want to be American so much that she had to leave her French self? I’ll never know, but I feel very lucky to have had this time with them.
I continued to visit Romain. It had almost been 10 years since I’d first met him. He was turning 90, and with our friends, Claude, Alain, Denis, Romain’s niece, Virginie, his cousin Christian and his wife Denise, along with my boyfriend, Carl, we helped to plan a surprise party for him. The whole village was invited. Over 120 people attended. We wanted to make Romain feel as special as he made us feel over the years. I’m pretty certain it was a great day for him.
Romain passed away last year, just 9 months after his 90th birthday party. I was devastated, as were all of his friends and family. Although he was 90, he had been in good shape. I thought we would have had more time together. I thought he would meet my daughter, who had arrived just a month before he passed away. I’m sad that she won’t know him, but this is part of her story, too, and through the photos she will know a bit more about our beloved Romain.
I only knew Romain for ten years, but he had an enormous impact on me. Even though it’s hard to look at the photos, when I do, Romain is alive, even if it’s only for a brief second. Even if it is only in my heart.
