Sweeties, please?

It was the night of Halloween. We were staying in a tiny village near Terrasson, in the Dordogne, France. ‘Tiny’ meant a scattering of houses only, with one of them built in 1786 going by the date scratched above the front door. Halloween is not something I really care for as I didn’t grow up with the tradition, but my daughter loves the makeup and the dressing up so I agreed to take her around the small neighbourhood to scare the bejesus out of the neighbours. We interrupted four elderly folk from their dinnertime preps (closing the shutters, arranging furniture for the evening’s TV viewing, chopping the carrots, checking the chickens were back in their coup for the night, etc).

My beautiful ghoulish daughter

Couple no. 1 took it gamely in their stride when my daughter asked in her most polite French for des bonbons, s’il vous plait? They found a few wrapped sweets and we chatted for a while at the door as the temperatures quickly dropped with the setting sun. Madame was wearing one of those housecoats that you see a lot of old women in France wearing, as if they are endlessly tackling housework. Monsieur was very elderly, fine-looking and tall, but clearly shrinking.

We moved on to their elderly lady neighbour (no. 2) who maintains the most amazing vegetable/flower garden from her enormous four-storied home. I just love old people, and I love seeing the way they live and the treasures they choose to surround themselves with. This 79-year-old (she told us) lady lived alone as her husband had died some years ago, with her two grownup children now living as her neighbours and running four farming properties. She rattled a few jars (really) and presented my daughter with a pile of sweets that smelt suspiciously like mothballs, but that we later realised were cough lollies mixed in with the good stuff. Having been invited into her home, we also chatted a while, as I’ve found that you can’t just dash out the door to the next house when you are begging for bonbons. Eventually, she stepped outside with us, and then burst into tears.

Not expecting this, we stayed a little longer, offering the warmth and support of human company. I guessed that she was missing her husband and she explained that everyone else had died; she was all alone… Thankfully my French is now adequate enough to manage a few commiserating sounding words, and we talked about the village, her farm, her family, thanked her again. My ghoulish daughter wanted to give the old lady a hug but she said later that she didn't want to frighten her any more. After watching Madame finish checking on the chickens, we moved on to frighten our (no. 3) immediate gite-owning neighbours.

Madame was suitably horrified-but-delighted, and showered my daughter with all the treats in her cupboard that her own grandchildren usually help themselves to. We were again invited to come out of the cold and we chatted a while inside her beautiful, centuries-old stone and slate-tiled home. Madame kissed my daughter warmly on her ugly, blackened cheeks before we left, and she said how beautiful she looked, even so. She asked if we were visiting other houses in the tiny village, and I said that we would probably go home now because darkness had fallen fast. She agreed, saying that we were very prudent. (I love that word in French and they use it a lot.)

We got home, divvied up the loot with the boys (separating out the foul-smelling, probably past their due date cough lollies) and settled in for an evening of gorging. The kids, that is. I had a cup of camomile tea to calm myself down after the shock of making a lonely old lady cry.

p.s. I don’t usually try to change the world with these blog posts but for this one I just must say: Visit or hug an old person today!