Saint Mâlo July 27-29, 2007

Perhaps the charm of St. Mâlo lies in its stone bulwarks facing down the ever-present threat of the sea. The winding streets, lined with attractive boutiques, the lace and ceramics, crêperies and seafood restaurants, certainly draw me in. The appeal is like that of the Mont Saint Michel, I think, all stone and sea and sky. There is a strength to this place whose history stretches back far beyond Jacques Cartier and encompasses the literary giant of Chateaubriand.

Yet for all its feel of invulnerability, Saint Mâlo was heavily damaged in the War of 1939-45, bombed into an unrecognizable rubble. From the debris rose a rebuilt city, carefully put back and replaced so that the original style was carefully maintained. A close look at the buildings shows where the rebuilding meets the original structures. In a culture that respects and values its past, monuments, literature, music, does the culture also value the people of the past? Certainly not to the extent that I experienced the reverence of the Korean culture for the senior generation, but more than our culture of newest always wins. Valuing endurance rather than the sprint is perhaps the vision of an older culture that is simply not possible in a young country. A Frenchman once said that to me this summer, that the US, not its citizens, but the country, was an adolescent. I agreed, and silently willed my land of the free to grow up.



In a public plaza I came across these 3 generations at play. Papa tosses his boule under the watchful eye of Grandpa on the bench. There is a moment when I see my Grammie and Grandpa Hyde’s shady back yard and the croquet field. Jimmy, Carol, and Nancy, uncle Jerry, my Grampie are all there. What an important part of shaping who I am! I am comforted to see these children benefiting from that family strength.

Chateaubriand asked to be buried out here on the little island that at low tide only is accessible to pedestrians. He wanted to lie where he would hear only the sea and the wind. It is the sound of the sea and the power of the wind that call me back to Brittany as if I had a place in it. For a Midwest girl grown in the cornfields, that seems inexplicable, but the ancestral line of women takes me directly back to the sea captains' wives and daughters and the seamen themselves. The voices of the past are not only around us, they are within us.