Words are so powerful. No sooner had I published my lament about our lonely return to our home country that Thomas’s sister offered to visit us in Marseille, volunteering her entire family for a 12-hour return trip from the Creuse, department right in the middle of France, for a short day and two nights together, just before resuming work the day after.

Papy’s 95th

Obelix was in Marseille’s Vieux-Port to afford easy access to my uncle Denis’ home, an hour-and-a-half train ride away, where my granddad’s 95^th birthday was held. A commitment I had made to him a couple of years back and that I was not a little proud to keep, despite a half-circumnavigation that threatened to throw us off schedule more than once. Including some last-minute issues finding a free berth in the port which involved changing spots twice the very morning we had a train to catch.

Although celebrated in a small committee under mixed weather conditions, it was a fitting end to our trip, a definite testimony of our desire to reconnect with family and be there for one another. I was moved to witness how solemnly touched my children were to “meet” their great-grandfather (they were too young last time they saw him to truly remember him), intuitively grasping the significance it had for me. We had a lovely lunch of home-made sausage Rougail (Reunion traditional dish requested by Papy) by the pool, in the shade of an old mulberry tree where both Zephyr and Azur had climbed as soon as we had arrived. It was hard to resist physically assisting Papy move around, as I found him quite diminished, but, to my relief, he hadn’t lost his appetite nor his sense of humour. We chatted, I treated him to some hand massage that “didn’t bother him” and he had a nap. Then Denis and I brought him back to the care and rehabilitation centre late afternoon and made him promise to work on his mobility, a sine qua non condition for his autonomy and return to his apartment.

Marseille marae-style

Obelix was then held hostage in Marseille for an additional week by a serious mistral blow (“coup de mistral”) that, with its 60-knot gusts (110km/h), probably topped any wind we had encountered in the entire trip. Boats were surfing in the port in impressive angles, and we would have crushed the small power boat on our left, weren’t it for additional lines Thomas had set up to secure us to the right-hand boat and complement the mooring lines which were poorly doing their job.

That didn’t put off Melissa’s family braving the long drive to spend time with us and suffer, with us, the storm and the howling winds whistling through masts and halyards, keeping us awake at night. Together, we gave thanks to Notre Dame de la Garde, guardian of sailors and fishermen, strolled the graffitied districts, took our share of family photos, posed, jumped, and action shots, dined at a classy Indian restaurant, and managed to fit all nine on board, with the five children occupying the saloon marae-style (three in the double-bed, one in the opposite berth, and one on the floor), and us parents enjoying some privacy in the aft cabin and v-berth, one of four configurations offered to our guests, which we had dubbed “kids’ party”. And though the winds soon got the better of them, we even lit up some fireworks!

Foggy arrival

After a speedy return train trip to Montpellier to handle a few formalities (cf. xxx), we set sail one last time for our home run to Carnon, our new port. To cover the 67 nautical miles and arrive by daytime, we rose at 5am, just when the wind had died down, and started motoring for half the trip, then carried on downwind, steady and dreamy, caught in heavy fog, all the way to our berth I was glad to have spotted beforehand during my visit the day before. At 7:30pm we were moored, and in my excitement to race the kids to tread the soil of our new territory, I nearly missed a call from Denis who wanted to finalise the plan for their visit with Papy the next day.

And so it was that this flurry of visits, made or received, were so many rays of sunshine that helped to make this comeback, which for a time we feared would be a little neglected, look rather dashing with a VIP treatment close to what we had imagined.