This smile. I know I’ve shared this image before, but I still love this man. The twinkle in the eye, the ruddy cheeks. The man had been sitting out the front of his home, too lovely to ignore. I normally take sneaky shots of people, I’m ashamed to say, but this time it was different, too obvious and plus he’d already seen me and was smiling. I approached his group and asked if I could take their photo. The women laughed, rolling their eyes at each other. He was delighted. I’d been so nervous asking, but his grin reassured me.
My friends know I have a thing for older souls – our elders who have lived long and seen things. Seen what we haven’t seen, had experiences we haven’t yet had. They are people rich with memories yet they’re often not heard and have stories we don’t hear. When I think about it, these older souls are not unlike another my obsession, old tractors: for me there’s a beauty in well-worn legs or wheels travelling at their slow and steady pace, their minds and motors brimming from countless miles covered on this earth. Like this man.
The day I saw him, I’d been walking around a small French town I didn’t know, Burlats, some hours’ drive from us. We’d just arrived, a few parents accompanying teachers and their 30 young élèves, aged 4-10 years, for my daughter’s school music trip. The kids were excited and running in all directions, happy to have arrived (ie VERY happy – please picture 30 hyper, chatty children in a large bus slowly winding its way through the Montagnes Noires – a long and wonky journey resulting in 28 small unwell stomachs emptying in unison, forcing an overwhelmed driver of a stinking bus to pull over. The trip itself had been something to remember, a total barforama).
I’d been marvelling at the ancient monuments and the beauty of its rural setting, perched high in hills above the Agout river…
Wandering behind some kids, I spied a group of locals set up on plastic chairs in the full afternoon light. The beret caught my attention, and I made a beeline in their direction. I said bonjour, explained we were visiting on a school trip and, for once, asked permission to take their photo.
For a while, this man’s photo hung on the walls of our village cafe, Grand Café Occitan. The Frenchman with no name. I’d printed it with a few others and they were for sale. The man watched over diners but no-one took him home. I was quite happy actually – because he’s been leaning on a wall in our house ever since, and each time I see him I smile. It might be his cheeky smile reminds me of my dad? My dad’s far from me, living in Australia and I miss him. What I would give to get him out here with a bunch of his mates and see them sitting on the public bench alongside the older folk of our village – chatting, watching the world go by. Dad and his mates might even introduce a bottle or two of red for the occasion – unheard of in these parts.
But I’m rambling. Why am I talking about older folk and this particular photo? Because I have something new to add to this story, my Frenchman with no name now has a name.
We were having dinner, Benji and me with friends of ours on holiday at the Cafe Occitan. There’s not many of us left – our table of 4 and a large, festive table of people from out of town celebrating a birthday. I head to the loo as we’re about to go, and as I’m walking back to our table, I hear the music has upped a few notches and see the birthday party has revved up with all the guests on their feet and dancing. A man from the group motions over to me and I plan a polite merci, non merci for an offer to dance. A second later he’s standing before me trying to explain over the noise that someone in his group wants to meet me, would this be ok. He brings over a lady whose face is beaming who tells me she wanted to meet the person whose photos had hung on the walls of this cafe, and had found out it was me. It’s been years since the photos came down, but she had remembered one in particular, the one of her father, sitting in his village in front of his home, with a beret on his head.
This smiling woman wanted to tell me how happy it had made her, the surprise all those years ago, of seeing her father on the wall in a cafe so far from their home. She told me her father’s name was André. We hugged and I melted. I couldn’t thank this woman enough for introducing herself and sharing this. I explained which year I’d taken his photo and why I had been in their town, and we laughed as I described my meeting with her father and his warm, jovial manner with me. That sounds like him she said, and told me that he had passed one year after the photo was taken. We hugged again and exchanged our numbers so I could send her all the photos I had of André.
What were the chances. It was one of those moments, a seemingly inconsequential encounter in a day, but one that suddenly lights your heart and opens you up wide to all the wonderful possibilities in the world. All over again I was reminded there can be fortune in these beautiful random experiences – and it comforts me.
The Vigneron's Wife 