I slept in until almost 10 AM today. We all did – and this was something of dreams. For me at least, it was the culmination of many nights of absolutely no sleep over the past week. We suffered through the heat wave in much more mild ways than others (living in a large stone house first built in the 1400s keeps things cool), yet we inevitably had some baked, still nights where it felt I was trapped in one large exhalation of someone else’s hot air. Toss and turn and sigh. I put the better of the two fans that we have in Nina’s room because that’s what mom’s do, so in the end for us, it was a choice between listening to the horrid mechanical whirl of a near-death mini machine – or putting it and ourselves out of its misery by leaving it off. We chose the latter.
Then there’s the subject of trying to find a place to live. Lots of driving to see towns and villages and visualize ourselves in them. Many pros and cons to this – I can give you a verbal highlight reel of everything along the coast between Concarneau and Guerande (it’s beautiful and includes visits to over 12+ different beaches), but it has come with the price of my time (and I’m talking about the ability to dedicate my focused attention how I choose: on my child, on my husband, on myself, on fun) and sanity. And since where you live is a big decision, renting something seemed like the most logical option to begin with when you think about finding the “right” spot in a country where you’ve never permanently lived: near the water, in a house with enough space to feel cozy and a yard (I need to be outside and want to raise our child with bare feet in open air), near a large enough town, in the country versus in the city versus the country versus the city (I torment myself with romanticized notions of what city living could be like), not too far from family, not too dead in the winter, near trails, good for raising a child, etc. So after countless hours – many of these in bed at 3 AM when I could not sleep – of searching leboncoin.fr and compiling lists of numbers for Romain to call and investigate, we saw our first three houses. One was beautiful and modern and within walking distance of everything in a small town, yet it was in the middle of a massive lotissement: an area of residential plots kind of jammed into each other. Once I stepped outside of the house, I felt like I was on some odd television show where everyone lived in the exact same house and had a window to peek into the yards and houses and lives of everyone else. It was claustrophobic and to me – someone who grew up in the country and spent the last few years living in the country again – it felt artificial. I just wasn’t for me or for us. The second house was on a small space right where two roads converged, so I could hear cars from every side of the house when outside. The kitchen was tiny, and the bathrooms were old in style. The current long-time tenants were former owners of a chateau, so they had rented this house to use for guests (or so the story goes). It was decorated with giant vases and elaborate tables and all the things a toddler really can’t touch. I felt like we were in a museum, and even though the furniture would be gone, the space never quite sat right with me because of it. X. Finally, we arrived in Gestel to visit what appeared to be the perfect house. It was located on a small dead-end street and within walking distance of two very important things: a maternelle where Nina could go to school and a trailhead into a nice wooded area. The house had a gated yard, a garden, and a trail behind it. I was thinking YES YES YES….until we got inside. It smelled like the duo of pugs who were racing around my feet, and it was small and dark and not well maintained. As I walked into another room, I kept hoping things would improve, but they only got worse. It would make no sense to rent a house where you had no desire to be inside your space – and to put money into remodeling a house that is ultimately not your own. The disappointment was excruciating.
There are more tales to recount: the cute Herbignac house with apple trees in the middle of nowhere (and difficulty getting a good wi-fi signal), the amazing property in Landevant that left us speechless – and ultimately broke our hearts (because the owner selected someone else without explanation), the wooden house in Quimperle that we crossed our fingers for but realized it was just not for us, the tiny Vannes townhouse with a surfing theme whose small size made me physically feel disoriented. And these are only some of the houses that we were actually granted the right to see. When you contact a rental through an agency and even directly through an owner, sometimes they don’t want to know anything about you. They just want you to see the house first. Other times they want to know your life history before you even have the right to take a viewing appointment. We encountered all variations of this – and sometimes it made us lose a lot of time. Sometimes it had us getting our hopes up. We quickly learned that we had a situation atypique: you can have all the money you want to show them in the bank, but if you haven’t lived in France recently – if you aren’t getting paid directly into a French bank account – if, say, you’re like us and have been following a strategic plan to move your family abroad that included downtime in Texas with family before moving to France, then forget it. People don’t want to hear about your amazing project management and plan creation skills. They just want what the country of France is demanding them to require. Renters have a lot of rights here as well, so I’m sure owners proceed with ALL the caution. It is what it is, and I get it if I were renting my home. But to be on the other end of it all right now, after all we’ve done to get here and to be REALLY ready to finally have our own place again has been feckin stressful to say the least.
We sign our lease for a dreamy house in the countryside tomorrow. True to my roots. I need space and an open kitchen. A yard and a trailhead and a goddamn shower. And on moving day, once we’ve arrived, I will hammer a stake into the ground with a poster board inviting all the neighbors over for tacos. They can love it or leave it, but one thing is for sure: if my toddler lets me sleep in again like this on a weekend, then our little Breton village better watch tf out. I’ll be whipping up tacos and guac and all the trimmings.
THE CACHETTE 