Letters to Audrine

2- He's Here With Me

When I got my grandpa's letters after his death, my plan was just to mail them to the French address on the envelopes. However, after I spent the last few months thinking it over, I didn't feel so confident in that plan. It's been decades since my grandpa was in France, so that address probably isn't right anymore. I went through a few ideas with myself, and I ended up deciding that I wanted to fly them to France myself and hand-deliver them.

My mom was beyond herself when I told her my plan, and it was hard to sell the plan to her, considering I didn't tell her about the letters. And the fact that I'm only eighteen, barely out of high school, and traveling across the world by myself is terrifying to her. Honestly, it's terrifying to me too, but I feel like I need to do this. For my grandpa, and for myself. I'm so curious to learn about what life he lived before he met my grandma and started his life with her here.

Now that he's gone, I feel like there are so many unanswered questions and so many things that I want to know about him that I never even thought of asking him. Maybe I can find some answers from this Audrine lady who apparently took his heart and never fully gave it back.

After hours of discussing, promising, and begging my parents to let me do this, they eventually agreed with the promise that I call them every day and that I'm back in the States in time for me to start college in the fall.

My grandpa left me a pretty large inheritance that I am dipping into to fund this trip, and I've done my research on the town of the address on the envelopes. Ladaux is a small town in the south of France with only a handful of nice hotels, but I was able to grab a room in one of them. I'm not sure how long I'll be in France, but I book the room for the entire summer. It's expensive, and when I book it, it makes my stomach drop as I realize everything that is at stake. But I really want this to work out. I want to meet this woman and get to know her, and get to know more about my grandpa through her. I have to keep reminding myself that it's very possible that this won't work out though.

She could have passed away, or moved away, or just not even want to talk to me at all. It's so much more likely that this won't work out than the chance that it will. But I know that I have to try.

It takes me an entire day of traveling through airports and sleeping through flights to get to France. I'm mostly worried about the language barrier here, because this is not a very touristy area and I don't expect a lot of people in Ladaux to speak English. I've been studying French for the past few months, but that's definitely not enough time to learn an entire language.

Using icons through the airport and some Google Translate, I'm able to find my way to my luggage and then out to where the taxis are lined up ready to take people to their destination.

Once in the taxi, I just show the driver the name of the hotel and try my best to get a few sentences of French out, trying to explain that I don't speak French well. Which leads to a very awkwardly quiet and lengthy car ride through the French countryside.

I take some pictures and send one of them to my mom, but other than that I just sit back and try to relax. All of this traveling has been very stressful, but I'm relieved that it's almost over. I can't wait to get to the hotel and take a nap.

I've never done anything crazy like this in my life, or ever have done anything that my parents didn't approve of. Although they've reluctantly let me do this, it was still the most convincing I've ever had to do with my parents. Of course, I am eighteen and the money I used was my own, so I could have done it without their blessing; I'm not sure I would have had it in me though. I can't even remember the last time that I did something without their permission.

The hotel is beautiful, built in cobblestone like most of the other buildings around it. There isn't a huge sign with the name of the hotel, and it takes me a minute to find the small brown sign in front of the porch that reads Hôtel Ensoleillé . That sign is really the only way that I could tell that this place is a hotel. It really just looks like a large house with a big garden in the back. I can hear the laughter of children behind the building as the taxi driver gets my luggage out of the trunk.