Is this a vacation? Depends on your definition. Many of our trips are family visits, so we try to combine the two as best we can. We returned from Belle-Ile-en-Mer last night and awoke to darker skies this morning.
Today is the designated jailbreak day for Mam Goz and Tad Coz from the nursing home. They are allowed a bittersweet visit to their home, 200 meters from here, for the third time since being pried from it nearly a year ago.
Le quatre heure (four o’clock). We share coffee and croissants before they have to go back. I do my best to distract the kids while Tad Coz trembles and chokes; Parkinson’s.
As my Mother in law speaks with her parents in the obscure and fading Breton language, for a moment the pressure is off to follow the conversation. Then talk drifts back to French and, as it always does in a small village, to the neighbors. Mam Goz and Tad Coz know all the families in the neighboring villages and how they are interconnected, going back a century. They are amazed when we admit to not knowing many of our neighbors.
Hard working farmers, I ask if they have ever left Brittany, and discover that Tad Coz served his military duty near Paris and together they have made a total of two other journeys about three hours away, in their lifetime.
By day six in France, I push myself beyond small talk. My French flows a bit easier and I stop caring as much that my grammar has already been surpassed by my 6 year old son.
Dinner conversation turns somehow from family and my cousin’s upcoming graduation to politics and war. My father in law speaks of his brother Michel who was sent to fight in the Algerian War and came back a paraplegic at age twenty one. They were very close and sadly he died a few years ago. Uncle Michel was quite a conversationalist and it was at his home in Quiberon that we set a record (for us, not for him, I’m sure) for the longest lunch ever, a record-breaking five hours.
My own Uncle Ron was sent to Vietnam and came back broken at approximately the same age. My husband tells his parents about my Uncle Ron’s interest in foreign affairs and how much they enjoyed discussing current affairs during our visits to the U.S. Uncle Ron disappeared a few years ago, following some years of homelessness and intermittent contact. I start to wonder how I could find my Uncle Ron using social media and then what if I did? I excuse myself from the table, pretend to check on the kids and go to dry my eyes. Have you seen my Uncle Ron?
Suzy Ogé is an American born business woman living in The Hague, The Netherlands. 
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I can’t believe that I only today finally read to the end of this post. Amazing how families always seem to crumble and get stuck. I hope that you do find Uncle Ron, I know that it would do him good and put a smile on his face to know that you often think of him.