A Quiet Place

I'm lying in bed listening to the sound of the wind through the trees with the faint smell of the sea on the air. The window is open and a cool breeze is the perfect compliment to the warm comforter I'm lying under. It is so quiet here.

We are in the small village of Grandcamp-Maisy in the Normandy region of France. Our VRBO is a stone cottage with 3 bedrooms and a small kitchen and living room and a great grassy backyard. It's the fist house (not apartment) we've stayed in outside a city and therefore the first place with a yard. When we arrived yesterday the kids (and me) immediately started doing cartwheels and handstands.

The space and the quiet are wonderful. The cool air coming off the English Channel is a bit of a surprise for August and we each put on a warmer layer as we walked to the waterfront for a dinner of crepes last night.

Today we will walk back through time to June 1944 and the history of D- Day. Given my dad’s time in the 82nd Airborne, we are going to start at the Airborne Museum, which tells the history of the 82nd and 101st paratroopers- some of the 1st to make landfall during Operation Overlord.

From there, we plan to head to Point In Hoc and the cliffs Allied soldiers had to scale while under fire from above. Tomorrow we plan to walk the beaches and pay our respects at the American Cemetery. I'm interested to see how the kids respond to the history here. We want them to understand just how incredible it is and what the world went through and did to prevent an evil regime from conquering Europe and spreading hate.

It can be a lot to take in. Especially for 8 and 11 year-olds. Still, we will be in Germany in November and plan to visit some of the concentration camps there, so we want them to really walk through and understand the significance of what happened here. This is clearly the world as a classroom.

Our quiet stone farm house is the perfect place to launch from and come back to over the next several days.