COVER STORY The “Brunelle” family tree, dating back to the late 1700s
French, Friendship, and Family Ties By Stacie Charbonneau Hess
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ecently, I rediscovered my great-grandmother’s family tree. It’s a coneshaped collection of names that ends with my great-grandmother, Jean Blanche Brunelle, born in the late 1890s. My family and I estimate, by the number of rows in the cone, that her lineage is traced back to the late 1700s. The research required to produce this kind of document is a baffling endeavor someone must have taken on with gusto (a forward-thinking relative of my mother’s) with the gumption and commitment to write it all down. Since COVID, I have taken to sorting through old pictures and artwork that encapsulate my life and my family’s memories. Life seems more tenuous now, begging us to slow down and take stock of our everyday blessings. Studying the cone again, I noticed something I didn’t when my mother first gave me this image. Among the names are, not surprisingly, Françoise and Marie Therese, but also Charlotte and Madeleine. My own daughters’ names are Charlotte and Madeleine, spelled just that way. I named them long before I saw this cone-shaped image. I suppose it could be a coincidence, but I
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like to think that somewhere there is, and always has been, ancestral knowledge guiding me. I could have named my kids Ashley or Jennifer, but somehow these names, French in origin and traditional, felt right, even though my own name is decidedly American and (I think) even a little boring. Sorry mom, but I used to long to be Anastasia or Mariel or Penelope.
When I talk to someone who is fluent, who has full command of a language of which I only possess a rudimentary command, I am humbled Speaking of ancestral guides, last year a friend of mine called me out of the blue and mentioned that she found a place for her and her daughter to take French
December 2020 | The South Coast Insider
classes. Would I also be interested in coming on Saturdays with Charlotte? I immediately agreed, and signed us up for a ten-week session. Then another. Every Saturday for six months, Charlotte and I headed to Providence to Alliance Française. It’s a local chapter of a national organization, a nonprofit that exists to carry out cultural activities. The school is situated in a modest house in a residential neighborhood of Providence, with a garage that is affectionately called “la maison” where Carrie and I took classes. Our kids headed upstairs to draw, listen, and learn in French. For ninety minutes each week, Carrie and I fumbled through our French conversations, our entire class consisting of six people at different levels of beginner. One of our classmates was Canadian and pronounced everything “wrong” according to our Parisian teacher, who had a sweet way of correcting our (nearly) every word. Like most people, I took a language in middle and high school. When we began taking classes last year, I had a couple years of Latin and six years of French under my belt, but let’s be honest, decades have gone by. I have always loved listening to French music and singing
