The French Naná
She passed in the year 2020, still alone, her French quieted. Her story remained unbeknownst to her, maybe even to her mother, not knowing why they hid their language, not knowing why they carried layers of shame left undefined by acknowledgment.
There were seven grandchildren, of whom I was the youngest. I followed her around the home, watching her closely. Sometimes I heard her speaking French in quiet whispers. I asked why I couldn’t learn, but I was hushed away by my mother without an answer. I settled on calling her the French-Naná rather than the “American Nana” the others called out.
I asked endless questions about heritage and trinkets. Who is this? Where did they come from? What is this? What is it used for? She would entertain me for a few moments, then ask, “Why? Why do you want to know these things?” Until again, I was rushed away, hushed, or even yelled at for my inquiry.
The questions from childhood lingered in the background, never fading, but I grew comfortable not knowing, or knowing just enough.
Looking back, I see clearly now how I was reading the things left unsaid, the energy no one had words to articulate. I still can’t explain it thoroughly, the lingering internal sensation wordlessly whispering to look closer, that there was always more beneath the surface.
What she did not know, and what her mother could not tell her, was that the silence had been carried for centuries, across oceans and exiles.
It began in the green, windswept lands of Brittany and Normandy, where Celtic peoples once fled from Britain, carrying with them their language, their stories, and the rhythm of the sea.
From those shores, generations later, their descendants would sail again, this time to Acadia, at the edge of a new world. They built homes along the tidal marshes, spoke in soft French vowels, and lived in relative peace until the world turned against them once more.
The Expulsion of the Acadians scattered them, families torn apart, languages silenced, names altered to survive. Some were taken south to Louisiana. Others remained in the violent port towns of New England, later passing as French Canadian, their ancestry rewritten and buried beneath whispers.
My Naná was born from that lineage of quiet endurance. The hush around her language was not forgetfulness, it was protection. The layers of shame were not truly her own, but the echoes of a people taught to disappear for the sake of safety and survival.
And I listened through the silence. I felt what they could not say. The questions I carried, and still carry, are the memory of that lineage trying to find its way home.