Easter activities

Our part-time neighbors, who officially live in Blois, are here for the weekend. They include the matriarch of the clan (M.), who will celebrate her 90th birthday this year. The patriarch, her husband (B.), died last year at the age of 94. Both M. and B. had seven siblings themselves, so they had always lived in big families. In turn, they had five children of their own, and they also adopted two children. They bought their country house here in Saint-Aignan back in 1970 (which is when I came to France for the first time, at the age of 20). When they bought it, the house had dirt floors and only half of the roof was tiled. It was basically a ruin.

Walt and I met M. and B. in 2003 we came to live here. They welcomed us with open arms, and adopted us in a way. They have included us in many of their huge family events over the years. They never seemed to mind that we were a same-sex couple. That said, one of their grandsons came out of the closet a few years ago. M. told me at the time that she would never have thought such a thing as same-sex marriage could exist if she hadn't met and befriended Walt and me 22 years ago.

M. and B.'s oldest child is now in her mid-60s. She and her husband have been given the responibility of maintaining the family's country house here in Saint-Aignan, across the street from our house. There has been some tension between her and her sisters, she's told me. Why was she chosen? Or burdened... there's an awful lot of work involved in maintaining a plot of land as big as theirs. The old house periodically needs repairs and improvements, and it's a 50-mile drive round trip from Blois to Saint-Aignan. The family seems to be making the best of it and they all of them still get along, as far as I know.

Sunset seen from our house in Saint-Aignan a few days ago

I can only wonder what will happen to M. and B.'s house in Blois and the house here in Saint-Aignan when M. passes on. Their children will have to work all that out when the time comes. If I understand correctly, in France parents can't disinherit their children, each of whom is entitled to an equal portion of the estate. Large families like M. and B.'s have to make arrangements among themselves as to who gets what when their parents leave this world. Do they buy each other out? Or do they just sell the property and divide up the proceeds?

It's all so different from what my family went through when my grandparents died. My mother and her sister were the only children of their parents, neither of whom I knew. My maternal grandfather died in 1939. I was born in 1949. My maternal grandmother died when I was still an infant. In 1939, an uncle and aunt of theirs, who had four children of their own, took my mother and her sister in. Their mother's health was bad. My mother was nine years old, and my aunt was only three years old. When the uncle who took them in died, I was 12 years old so I knew him. He left my mother and her sister the houses they lived in then and that each of them had been renting from him for several years.

As for my father's side of the family, my paternal grandfather died in 1969 and and my paternal grandmother died in 1977. I have no idea how their property was divided up, or if it was. My parents divorced in 1970, and my mother kept her house. After asking my sister and me if either one of one of us thought we might want to live there one day and we both said no, she decided to sell the place. That was in 2005. She was lonely there, as her neighbors gradually died off and new, younger people bought their houses. Anyway, she was sick and tired of maintaining the place. She sold it that year. She put the money she was paid for it in the bank and saved it until she died in 2018 at age 88, because she wanted my sister and me to have it for our old age.