Middlefield Post
By Patrick Blau
A
It's Your Post'WPlus ellBeing'
June 10, 2015
Small Town Life
s someone who had grown up and lived in Ohio, mostly northeast Ohio, for his whole life, I came to appreciate the turn of the seasons. Springtime usually comes reluctantly, because winter won’t make up its mind as to when it’s really the moment to let go. There are days of warm weather in February or March, glimpses of what is to come, when 40 degrees feels like a day borrowed from July. You can tell who has lived in northeast Ohio from birth on those days, because they are the ones wearing shorts, tossing baseballs or footballs or frisbees back and forth in the sunshine with a fellow Ohioan. Gradually spring blazes into full strength, and that is when things get comfortable. Summer usually takes over quickly from spring, releasing hordes of mosquitoes that have spent the cold months studying at Vampire University. When summer fades into autumn there is the crispness of the evening air to offset the still-warmth of the day, and always the tinge of burning leaves in the breezes. Autumn turns to winter, sometimes slow and easy, sometimes with a quick and violent decisiveness. The first snow of the season is, to me, a peaceful and welcome event. Then comes the second snow. Then the third. Then the eighteenth, and by this time we are all cursing the gods of cold and ice who don’t even exist, but we know would be evil deities if they did. With this crazy, wonderful, frustrating, exciting parade of weather patterns, some of us dream of more friendly and predictable climates. Some of us visit these sorts of places, returning for a time every year to escape the volatility of northeast Ohio seasons. And some of us, dreamers and realists alike, make a more permanent move.
I left Burton for Septfonds, France, on Dec. 19, 2014. It wasn’t just a yearning for a more temperate climate that brought me here, because I really had grown to enjoy the
(inset) Patrick Blau, Burton native, and his wife, Sarah, were married here in the 'Hotel de Ville', or 'City Hall' of Septfonds, France. differences of the seasons in northeast Ohio; it was a calling that I felt in my innermost being. In the early summer of 2013, I first boarded a plane to Perpignan, geographically and truly the southernmost city in France. There I stayed with friends for two weeks, and began to feel the draw and hear the small whisper from my Maker suggesting to
me that I should let myself consider what experiences and adventures a life outside of Ohio and America could hold. The following summer, I returned to France for another vacation, and before I even boarded the plane to return to Burton, I knew; I just knew that my life, my journey, and my love - I met my future wife while on vacation in France - were meant to be expressed in that country. My life in northeast Ohio had been mostly wonderful, more recently peaceful and quiet, and during it all truly blessed, but I knew and felt inside of myself that in France my wife and I could find the spaciousness and peace that Burton and Geauga County had given me, if we looked hard enough. Let me begin by making an introduction between you and the ‘county’ that I live in here in France, named ‘Tarn-et-Garonne’. There is a rich, deep and ancient history to this area. Septfonds, the village where my wife and I live, is one of the villages in Tarn-et-Garonne, and was founded in 1250 A.D., before Geauga County was ever held and roamed by the Erie or Iroquois tribes. There are some surprising similarities between it and Geauga County, such as wide open spaces, a historic feel of those who have gone before, and the prevalence of greenery and trees. People here close their shutters (yes, most everyone here does use real shutters) usually no later than 9 p.m., and the village becomes quiet and peaceful like a warm and starry Geauga county night. If you were to take a walk with my wife and I at this time, you would recognize the feel, the country confidence, of being small town. It’s at these times that I can close my eyes and imagine myself sitting on my front porch in Burton, as I hear the song of a light evening breeze in the tree tops, the call and answer of the night toads, the soft silent sounds from the old-stone houses that speak of life and the lives inside.