Before I was married, I visited French Husband family in Rennes. As French Husband Great Uncle had died months early his lovely home was going to be sold. His only daughter in her eighties called her six cousins (French Husband being one of them) and told them to come over and pick what they wanted from her Father's house that was stuffed silly with antiques.
The garage was not your typical garage, I knew that the moment I opened the door.
French Husband's Great Uncle had a wooden shoe manufacturing company which started in the late 1940s. I never asked but I wonder if the company was part of a long family tradition?
His garage was a museum, a homage to wooden shoes, or at least a collection of every type of wooden shoe he had ever made. Hanging neatly side by side from the rafters down to the ground were pairs of wooden shoes cozy close one pair after another. There were large men sizes, women sizes narrow to extra wide, children's wooden shoes down to out of the womb size… in other words it seemed in Brittany wooden shoes go hand in hand with crepes, galettes and Quimper plates.
The wooden shoes… oh such a variety of styles: Leather strapped bands over the toe, floral carved sides, floral painted whimsy, pointed and rounded toe in a variety of wood. In his garage he had a shoemaker's table with his tools hanging around the skirt. Years later I would see these sorts of "Shoemaker's Tables" with their various tools, and nail holders in antique shops selling for more than a pair Manolo Blahnik's. I regretted I didn't save French Husband's Great Uncle's garage museum.
I shut the door quietly, though nobody was around to hear. I felt like I had stepped into a private world, the pleasure of seeing someone I didn't know, to watch his craft in still life snapshots: A chuck of wood, sawdust floor, polished wooden tool handles from constant use , a paint brush harden in a can, a child's pair of painted red wooden shoes… I took them and walked towards the house.
French Husband was standing around with his sisters and cousins when I held up the wooden shoes like Cinderella's key to happiness, "You must go look in the garage, it is magical!" Though my words dropped at their feet, as if I had held up a rat from an old woman who lived in a shoe.
His cousin waved her hand in the air, saying something in sing song French, and then headed towards the kitchen. French Husband took me aside, and explained that the things in the garage were going to be thrown away, but his cousin was fetching a plastic bag, he said, "If you want the shoe's my cousin would like you to have them. Nobody has been in the garage for years."
With the shoes in a plastic bag, I felt like Dorothy of Oz, far far from home. Sad that the treasures in the garage where consider not of interest. How I wished I had taken a few more pairs.
Note:
I gave the red wooden shoes to my Godchild Michaela that Christmas, with a note that said, 'In France the children leave their shoes out for Santa Claus to fill instead of their stockings.'
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