The Mother of All Rainbows
By Suzanne Gillis
Over a century ago, my great-grandparents packed up their six children, got in their wagon, and then took a train from Belfort to Havre, France where they boarded a ship for America. One hundred years later to the month, after a difficult and emotional search, I stood on the very ground they gardened, admired the same chestnut trees they enjoyed, smelled the same rich, damp earth they tilled, and touched the cornerstone of the home they built as newlyweds - the same home that my grandmother would be born in. I was the only descendant to return in 100 years.
My journey began with a scrap of paper on which my frail grandmother had drawn a map to where she was born. With a trembling hand she drew a shaky line from Paris to Belfort to Hericourt to Courmont. Then, as an afterthought, she added the words Cote de Chenes. That piece of paper is all I had when I decided several years later to travel to France in search of my ancestors and my family history.
One day, I showed this paper to a new friend who had recently emigrated from France to Burlington. She immediately started talking in fast forward French, her voice pitching higher and higher: in an extraordinary coincidence, it turns out she was born and raised in the next village, Lure, where her mother still lived. Soon she arranged for me to stay for a week with her family, who offered to assist me with my search.
The following year, after spending two weeks in Provence, I then traveled nine hours north by train to the village of Lure. I did not speak French and no one spoke English. Yet, somehow we communicated with dictionaries, body language and a lot of pointing and gesturing.
Early one morning we were off in the car with my friend's uncle, speeding through the French countryside, singing and chatting with little understanding of what the other was actually saying, yet knowing that we were on a mission to find my relatives.
We stopped by many homes as we visited each village and were graciously greeted and offered a glass of pastis. It appeared that everyone we met had been alerted earlier that l'Américaine was coming in search of her family. Relatives were coming out of every farmhouse in every village along the way but so far none were in the direct line of my family tree.
Finally, we arrived in the tiny village of Courmont, where a fine war monument was centered on the rotary green. My family name was inscribed all over it and I grew very excited with the anticipation of what was yet to come.
I was invited into a very old, beautiful stone farmhouse with nearly twenty men and women of all ages, all talking at once - my cousins. The eldest dramatically unrolled a 10' x 4' genealogy chart which fully opened onto a Parsons table. In large letters at the top, was my family name. I shouted my great-grandfathers name, Constant Eugene Hennequin! My grandmother, Elise Bejean! With my forefinger I scaled down beneath his name recognizing those of my great uncles and aunt: Lydia, Flavian, Stephan, Alfred, Abraham. Suddenly there it was… Maria Anise, my grandmother. This was a rare moment when time of long ago merges with time of the present, a full circle that you alone know absolutely to be complete.
Quickly we were directed to follow with our car. We chased my cousins two miles into the countryside over hills and through farmland.
Abruptly, we turned right onto a very steep road. It was just at that moment I spotted a sign in the tall grass pointing up the hill. "Stop! Stop!" I jumped out to get a better look. The sign said Cote de Chenes, my grandmother's afterthought which I knew nothing about until that moment. Cote de Chenes turned out to be the name of the road and the family home.
As we drove up the hill, I could see the house in the distance. Nestled into the emerald green hills with views of mountains afar and meadows below was the house my great-grandmother and great-grandfather built; their initials carved in stone over the doorway CH + EBH 1879; where they began married life and bore six children including my grandmother, before emigrating to America.
This connection spanning the past to the present was so powerful that I expect it to resonate until the end of my life. And as if to make sure I really felt that power to the core of my being, a rainbow appeared… and not just any rainbow. Both ends were vividly clear; one at the far end of the meadow, the other, it seemed, directly on my great-grandparents house… and on us. Speechless, we stood there on what to me was hallowed ground, bathed in rainbow and awed by this odd yet timely phenomena. Never before or since have I experienced actually being within the end of a rainbow.
I dug into my pocket and held the scrap of paper with my grandmother's map, closed my eyes and dreamily surrendered into the wonder of seamless time.
Sue Gillis is publisher of Vermont Woman.
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