A Long distance love affair

Meet Devi Meilland. Devi is married to Mathias Meilland the grandson of Francis Meilland.

An old fashioned long distance love affair before the days of Facebook Messenger and snap chat. Devi and Mathias met whilst studying in the US. When they both left the states Devi returned to Indonesia and Mathias to Cap d’Antibes. They continued a long distance relationship over 7 years before marrying in 2007. Devi now lives with her husband Mathias and their 2 children in one of the family homes in Cap d’Antibes.

Tell me a little about where you are from?

I was born in Indonesia, in Jakarta. I grew up there until I was 14 years old. At 14 I went to the US for a summer camp. I really enjoyed my time there so when the summer camp ended I thought that maybe the US would be a place I would enjoy. When my dad asked me if I wanted to  go back there to study I said yes,  why not.  So at 16 years old I had another chance to go back to the US, to California. I stayed there until I was 21.

I was an exchange student so when I graduated from the high school I re-applied for college too. To go to university in the States was really expensive so I was trying to get my two years at college first and then afterwards I would transfer to University. Doing it this way was quicker and also less expensive. It turned out however when I was about to transfer to the University  there was an economic crisis back home in Indonesia. This meant that suddenly our money wasn’t worth anything at all .That was in 1999. So in February 2000 I had to leave America and go back home to Indonesia.

How and when did you meet Mathias?

I met Mathias while I was at college in California. We were neighbours actually, he lived upstairs and I was downstairs but at the beginning that was all. We never really saw each other except to say Hi.

How did it go from “Hi” to dating?

We had a common friend called Dexter and he was my roommate at the time and he knew Matthias. Dexter was one of those people who talks to everyone, he is a very outgoing person whereas Mathias is completely the opposite.  So Dexter struck up a friendship with him and sometime after set Mathias up with a friend of his but it turned out the relationship didn’t work out. Then I guess it was kind of Dexter who brought us together, first we would just go for coffee or something or just hang out. I think at that time Mathias was heartbroken from his previous relationship so we just spent time together as friends.

What attracted you to him?

He is really smart as a person and I found him very interesting. You can ask him things, you can discuss things with him. I remember actually he used to be like my encyclopedia, whenever I wanted to discuss something I would go to him, he always seemed to know so much about everything. He was my google. Mathias and I used to spend a lot of time talking and exchanging stories and experiences.

We started dating in 1999 but unfortunately this was just 6 months before I was forced to go back to Indonesia. During the next 7 years Mathias and I kept up our long distance relationship.

Was it difficult going back to life in Indonesia?

In the beginning when I got back to Indonesia it was a struggle. There was the economic crisis and the long distance relationship was really hard too.  In Asia it isn’t very common to have a relationship with a foreigner so this made it a little difficult too. Our culture is different so things which seem perfectly normal for a European have to be done a little differently within my culture. An example is the time Matthias invited me to come France for a one month vacation. For me visiting him wasn’t that straightforward. In my culture it would be unheard of for me to go and visit him first so I told him “ I don’t think that would be ok for me to visit you first. It has to be you who comes to introduce yourself to my family before you can invite me to your country”.

So that’s exactly what he did. He came for a holiday and to introduce himself to my family. I told my parents that I had a ‘friend’ that wanted to visit. My dad said “Ok. Is it a guy or a girl”? I said “It’s a guy”. He said “Ok. Where’s he from”? I told them he was from France.  I hadn’t told them at this point that we were going out although they probably guessed.

Luckily when he came my parents thought he looked like he was a good man and they accepted him pretty much straight away.

The following year I went for one month to visit Mathias in France.

What were your first impressions when you came to Cap d’Antibes?

The first time I came here I thought it was very very nice. I didn’t know the family or the place at all. All I knew was that Mathias lived in a place called Antibes and that his family had lived there for a long time.

When I first saw this place I thought that everybody in France lived like this. But Mathias said no, it’s not really the same. It’s a little bit special this place and this family.

I remember him showing me a street sign during that trip and saying to me look at the name. That’s my grandfather Francis Meilland. It was then that he told me about the history of his family and the family business.

He told me that the Meilland family were a very famous Rose growing family and that they had lived in Cap d’Antibes for generations breeding, growing and selling roses. It was really interesting.  It was the first time I really found out about the history of the Meillands and how renowned they were in the Rose world.

Up until then It wasn’t something Mathais ever talked a lot about. I think in the past people had maybe taken advantage of him because of his family connections so he didn’t really talk about it. Basically that whole part of his life isn’t us. It’s not important for us.

When we were in the States we had a common French friend and I think maybe it was him who told me something about Mathias being ‘the rose guy’  but it just wasn’t  and still isn’t at the forefront of our relationship.

What happened at the end of the holiday?

At the end of that months holiday I went back to Indonesia and back to my studies and we continued our long distance relationship. For the  following 3 or 4 years we kept in touch via skype and sometimes by phone.

The first month when I was back in Indonesia Mathias and I spoke once a week on the direct line. For that month I think the phone cost something like 150-200 euros.

My dad was typically diplomatic and said something like “Devi I think we spend too much on the telephone bill. Maybe you should find another way to keep in touch”. I remember I was so sad because it meant we couldn’t speak as often.

Was it difficult keeping up the long distance relationship over so much time?

It was  difficult but at the same time we both had our own lives, we didn’t cling to each other. We continued the relationship but we knew if it was meant to be it would be and of course we tried to make it happen. But at the same time we never really stopped each other from doing things or checked up on each other and who we were with.

I don’t know what he did during that time and he doesn’t know what I did but it doesn’t matter. It made it easier to be like that because you can’t get paranoid and jealous about someone so far  away. There was no facebook etc at that time so contact to each others lives was limited and I think it works much better like that. There was no pressure on us to stay together which is why it worked out I think.

When did you finally decide to get together full time?

For my final thesis I had to arrange a 1 year work placement for my final project. I asked the Meilland company if I could do my internship with them and proposed my thesis ideas.  They said yes sure, come so I came back for my internship in 2005.

During my placement I lived with Mathias so we were together full time from then.

At the end of the placement I finished my studies and we finally decided to get married.

It was my dad who kind of asked us. One day he said “So you have been going out with Matthias for a long time, 7 years in fact. What you guys going to do? Maybe you should get serious. You can’t just hang”.

I told Matthias about  the conversation and he said right I am going to talk to my parents about it too. I think it was February  when he proposed to me. He then asked permission from my dad which he got of course.

So finally after 7 years of long distance dating we got married in Indonesia in 2007.

The wedding was huge. There were 1200 guests. 1200 was just the number of invitations we sent out, it didn’t include their guests so we probably had about 2000 people who actually came to our wedding. It was crazy.

After the wedding  we came back to live here in Cap d’Antibes.

When did you start working with the Roses here?

When we got married it was Mathais’ Aunt who was doing the hybridation here but she stopped a year or so after we were married. A couple of years after that Mathias decided to continue her work.

He had finished his studies and had time so he thought he would try it. I had my web design business which I had set up while still in Indonesia but we didn’t have any children at that point. So we thought that this was something that we could maybe do together. Over time I learned a lot about roses and I realised it was something I loved to do. My Website work keeps me in an office all day.  I hide myself away with my screens in a dark room. I felt I needed something else in my life and doing something with nature felt right for me.

Hybridation is what I now do. It’s fun and I love it.

Tell me bit about what that involves?

Here we play around with different types of Roses. We are working on roses with no pesticides, this is the focus of what we are doing here. We have a special field for this which I use for my breeding.

Our first priority in this field is to produce a rose which can survive without the use of pesticides. Whatever comes out of that field, if it’s fragrant or if it has a nice colour or not we don’t care at this point.

What about the colour and the scent?

Our second priority is the colour. So colour is one of the most important things for Roses. You have whites you have reds, but you have different tones of whites and reds, a lot of pinks and a little bit of yellow. Yellow is the most difficult colour to get a good disease resistance on but it’s something we are working on.

The third priority is the fragrance. So when we combine the three we get the final rose. We have 100-200 thousand babies a year and from those we have to test them for 10 years and then 10 breeds of roses will come out of that. So basically it’s lines and we are trying to get the best out of each line. Sometimes they have a super fragrance but not as much disease resistance then we grade them accordingly. Maybe we take it out on the market or maybe not. When we breed we never know what will work and what won’t or what will sell and what won’t and that’s exciting for us.

Basically  I am learning  so much.  I obviously have the best teachers and reference here in the family.  Mathias’s  grandmother started breeding roses here in 1920, so for almost 100 years we have been doing breeding right here and it’s very satisfying to be continuing this work.

Hopefully one day Mathias and I might have our own variety of Rose which we have grown here.

Describe your typical day.

I get up late actually. The alarm is set for 6.45 but I hit the snooze button a few times so I guess I get up at around 7. Then I go to the kitchen to make  breakfast for the kids and get the coffee. I clean the house while the kids are eating their breakfast. Then I drop them to school. Then I come back home and finish cleaning the house. After an hour or so I take a shower and go to my office.

In the evenings I do the usual stuff with the kids and then generally curl up on the sofa and watch tv.

The spring is different though. In spring after I have dropped the kids at school  I come  back here have a coffee and start preparing my pollens. I stay in the garden from 9am unitl 13.30 and then sometimes I work in my office in the afternoons. During the spring I kind of work around the gardens so I organise myself accordingly so that I can spend more time in the garden.

Do you think you will one day focus only on the growing rather than your website business?

No. I think I will always do both lines of work as they complement each other quite well. The hybridation and the roses are my art my other business is my work. It’s like that really.

Do you think you will you always live here?

We don’t know, the family is here, my kids were born here. But we’re not really the kind of people who are stuck in one place. Moving for us is not a problem. If we had to move, we would move. It’s like me with Indonesia, yes it’s a part of you but it doesn’t mean that you have to stay there forever. I do miss Indonesia but it’s more my family than the place that I miss.  I Have 2 sisters who are also married and also have 2 children so we go back as often as we can to see them. Our kids also need to recognize their other culture, that’s important to me. I want them to know their other family . Obviously they love it in Indonesia and often ask when we are going to go back again.

What do you love about Cap d’Antibes?

The weather. The weather here is really really nice and the sound of the birds I love. The Cap itself is also very beautiful. I love the school here and the people there are lovely, so international, everyone is friendly and it’s very diverse.

Eric the local butcher is great too, he does really really good meat and he is not as expensive as you might think.

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