From Provins to their little village, we rode with Bruno and Titi through rolling wheat, corn, and rapeseed fields, dotted with groves of trees and stacks of wood left from the tempête, the driving gale-force winds that had ravaged France at the turn of the millennium more than a year before. Their farmhouse, stone in shades of browns and grays, was two thick stories high, with a roof of gray, round, mildewy tiles on one side and bright, square, new orange-red ones on the other. “La tempête,” Titi said, lips pressing together at the memory. “A few months after we bought it.”

The stone farmhouse had needed a complete overhaul even before the tempête hit, so it was still in major restoration, a project carried out by Jean-Charles, Bruno, and Titi. The first night I spent there with Sébastien was unusual in that we were the only overnight guests. We slept on the second floor, a three-year-long restoration project that served as a communal guest bedroom. It could be reached only from a door in the outside wall of the house that opened onto age-rounded, warped wooden stairs. Our bed formed an island of pink comforters amid thick black tentacles of electric cords, crumbling stone spackled with fresh gray concrete patches, lots of dust, and all kinds of work things, including a toilet and other equipment someday to be installed in an upstairs bathroom. An additional stack of ten mattresses against one wall showed how many guests Titi and Bruno were ready to receive at any given moment. In a pinch, they often fit two to a mattress, and teenagers slept on cushions. The old stone house was cold and humid, and the sheets clung a little to my skin whenever I moved. When I had to go to the bathroom late at night, I groped through dust for shoes and a flashlight and probed my way down slanting steps without a handrail. My feet crunched on gravel as I circled around the outside of the house, under the stars, and found my way through a kitchen crowded with excited dogs to the bathroom.

We spent that first weekend with them working on the unkempt two-acre garden. On weekends, holidays, and five weeks of vacation every year, Bruno and Titi battled to hold their own against new weeds, and attack years of neglect. As I helped them do this, I felt part of the family. It was wonderful to be away from the city. While Titi and Sébastien pulled up weeds and Bruno worked on the upstairs restoration, I rode the lawn mower under apple trees, around plum trees, and over dog droppings, feeling worthwhile again. Somehow, Sébastien’s family and the things we did with his family were becoming what I loved most about life in France. I had come a long way from the person who had once thought Paris would be a great place if it weren’t for the people.