Summer in Ohio is sticky, heavy. The sky hangs low and sulking clouds blanket the sky. Somewhere down the road, a truck starts, grumbles, crunches down the gravel driveway and then wails down into Sonnenburg valley. A train whistles down at the station, and winds its way through the settling fog after the evening’s rain. The roads were steaming at sunset. The moon is nearly full tonight, but silvery clouds tease in front of the moon’s cratered face, and the night is still and dark.
I’m lonely, I think. Small towns are funny like that—although the waitresses down at the Kidron Town and Country store know my order even before I’ve slipped onto the bar stool, and the police officers know me by name and wave as I speed past, and the local paper publishes write-ups about my adventures abroad, I feel distant, alone. My return home causes a stir. I can see it rippling through concerned faces as neighbors, or teachers, or old friends ask with consternation: “Are ya thinking ‘bout moving over there to Paris for good?” (Paris, in the opinion of small town America, is synonymous to the entire country of France, by the way.)
I myself was a relatively compliant small town American, in my day. I marched in the marching band and thus faithfully attended four solid years of high school football games, and I knew all the words to the fight song. I sang in the choir and sat second chair in the flute section in concert band and I held roles in the spring musicals. I destroyed my body (with all the school spirit in the world) in my 11.5 months a year of training for cross-country, and more importantly, for pole vault. I spoke kindly and even fondly of Dalton High School in my valedictorian speech, and I threw my graduation cap with cheers and tears after a heartfelt singing of the alma mater with my classmates and peers. But I was not happy.
In France, in 2009, I was riding in the backseat of my friend Levy’s car. I was squashed in between Katie and Shawna, two of my best American friends, and Laurent and Levy were up front, singing to the radio and flying down the road. We were on our way to Apt, where were going to spend the night before heading to Mediterranean the next day for an afternoon at the beach. As we wound through Les Alpilles mountains, the sun was setting, and I found myself suddenly smiling, for absolutely no reason. The grin felt foreign on my face. With a start, I realized that I was content, happy even. I had forgotten what it felt like.
I tell this story often. It’s a bit silly, perhaps even sappy, but it’s the only way I have to explain what it’s like to cross that Atlantic Ocean and arrive in a place that inexplicably feels like home. After years of depression, anxiety, panic attacks, anger, bitterness, and the lethargic but encumbering weight of dysthymia, I found myself smiling in the backseat of a car, zooming across a country bathed in the colors of a Cezanne painting. It’s a powerful and singular sensation.
The night before I left the de Lannoy house, Constance wept and wept and wept. She clung onto my waist and gripped my fingers and trembled. At 6:50 the next morning, after an estimated 2 hours of fitful sleep, Eric and Godefoy stood sniffling on the platform as my train screeched and puffed and whisked me away. Eric had made Godefoy, his best friend from childhood, accompany him to the train station because he wasn’t sure he would be able to drive home alone without his beloved Rachel, l’américaine adorable.
On the train, I shamelessly wept. As the world was waking up, I was traveling backwards, facing south while the train swept me north. I watched the sun rise over Mont Ventoux, but as we hurtled past, the mountain itself shrunk into the horizon. Distance melted the mightiest peak. Speed strung landscape after landscape onto a moving reel to a soundtrack of grinding wheels. I wanted to sleep, to let the train cradle me into a slumber of homesick exhaustion, but I was afraid to close my eyes, to let the countryside slip through my fingers while I selfishly slept.
I have fallen in love with a country, like one falls in love with a man or a woman. I want to feel the curves of her mountains beneath my palms, I want to nestle my nose in her waving tresses of lavender, I want to rest my head in the bosom of her fragrant earth. My heart aches for the gentle caresses of her salty, Mediterranean shores, and for the sweet tongue of her language, dripping in honey and romance. She is a feisty lover—when she is angry, the Mistral shrieks outside of windows and slams shutters and shatters glass. But eventually she’ll blow herself out, and smug and satisfied, she’ll settle back into her complacent calm. Her hot summer days melt in golden hues into sultry nights, and to a symphony of cicadas, I allow myself to be seduced.
It’s been cloudy in Ohio since my return, and uncharacteristically chilly, although the stifling humidity hasn’t lifted despite the mild temperatures. Not much has changed here. My room was how I left it, although the posters are a bit more faded and my bookshelf sags a bit more under the weight of its dusty books. My parents have been doing their best to make me feel comfortable and at home; they’ll let me talk when I need to, and they’ll let me sit in silence and stare at the cornfield in our backyard when I need to. We had wine with dinner tonight—a somewhat fruity chardonnay from the Languedoc-Roussillon region that had been bottled in California and put in the “French wine” section at the supermarket. My mom let me by Brie from the specialty foods aisle at the grocery store yesterday, although I was disappointed by it. It was bland. In an attempt to emulate my morning coffee in France, I ordered a double espresso at a coffee shop a few days ago. When the barista tried to put it in a Styrofoam cup, I loudly protested and refused to accept it until a more suitable cup had been found. French wine is not bottled in California, Brie is anything but bland, and espresso certainly does not belong in a Styrofoam cup, goddamnit.
I’ve been trying to make the most of my loneliness in Ohio before I’m cast back into the roaring river of academia and swept away by my studies. I am appreciative of the fact that for dinner, I can go out to my garden and pick a zucchini, some tomatoes, and a pepper or two, and stop by the produce stand by the Dalton Dariette to buy a melon from an Amish neighbor named Henry. It’s comforting to know that my eggs come from my neighbor Glen’s chickens, and that my sweet corn is of none other than the Witmer variety. Under the full moon last night, Jared and I climbed to the top of the Witmer silo and sat and watched the clouds dance in front of the moon, and looked out over the farm where we’ve both spent so many summers picking corn. Tonight, as I write, I can hear the cowbells down from the Neuenschwander’s pastures and sounds of crickets and owls fill the dark void outside my window.
I come from a special place, I must admit. The valley in the morning, when rolling clouds of heavy fog lumber across Sugar Creek and the dawn light glistens on dewy cattails, truly is beautiful. However, nestled in my sheets that smell like clover from having been hung out on the line to dry, I’m still not at home. The Atlantic Ocean bellows between.
One day, I’ll go back. Et jusqu’à là, au revoir.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow
5 août 2010 jeudi
In two weeks, I’ll be back on a plane, flying out of Paris on August 19th to return, once again, to the land where I was born. Instead of flying into the dawn over Paris, as upon my arrival two months ago in France, I’ll be flying into the sunset over Cleveland. It’s just not quite the same.
At the breakfast table this morning, I exclaimed with disbelief: “Tomorrow’s FRIDAY?” Constance laughed at me a bit. “But, yesterday was Monday, I swear.” Time goes by without my consent, it slips through my open fingers, it escapes my desperate grasp. Last night, I said goodbye for God knows how long to my friend Thomas, who saved me from destitute loneliness in the month of July. We stood face to face in the parking lot, neither willing to say the word, to articulate “goodbye,” to turn away, to return home alone.
I begin my preliminary mourning now.
***
I’ll miss the coffee, or espresso, rather—strong, dark, necessarily powerful—with one pure cane sugar cube and served with a tiny café spoon to eat the foam off of the top. And my four-o-clock coffee break, with a Speculoos dipping cookie, to caffeinate myself enough to make it through the rest of the day.
I’ll miss mornings when I wake up before the children, when the air is still cool and the house is refreshingly quiet. And likewise, mornings when Eric wakes up even before me to go to the bakery, and brings back fresh pain au chocolat and croissants for breakfast. And my daily petit déjeuner of croustillants choco (granola bits with dark chocolate chips) and a fresh nectarine (organic of course, since that’s how the de Lannoys rock it).
I’ll miss the cicadas—those obnoxious insects that fill my ears with incessant ringing until the racket tips me to the point of insanity . . . but without them, when a storm approaches and the cicadas fall suddenly silent, the air feels void, lonely. And the eerie whisper of the Mistral, telling secrets to the treetops.
I’ll miss Courgette, my fickle Jeep, and the adventures we take in French traffic, zipping through roundabouts and navigating France’s horrifically marked streets. And the grumble of her engine, and the trembling of the iron pedals and floor boards under my feet. And the whip of wind in my face as we zoom down the road.
I’ll miss the pool, and the sudden silence that gushes into my ears when I plunge in the pool. And the instant relief of cool water after a long, sticky run in the evening.
I’ll miss Eric’s favorite Côtes du Rhône rosé served with dinner, and Activia Nature, and chocolat liégois (or café liégois, if Cosette buys the wrong flavor), and brie and chèvre and conté cheese, and double caramel Mini Magnum ice cream treats that threaten to destroy any moderate diet. And fresh melon and apricots, at the peak of perfection. And the utter importance of dessert in general in this country.
I’ll miss Montaine’s toothless smile, genuine though infantile, and her outstretched arms, begging to be held after a long afternoon nap. And the gentle pressure of her tiny, blonde head on my shoulder as she falls asleep in my arms.
I’ll miss Rodrigue’s begging, beautiful, blue eyes as he looks up at me, tugging at my fingers, asking if we can play Uno. And the quiet satisfaction it gives me when he asks to help to set the table, declaring that he’ll bring the cups if I take the plates.
I’ll miss Gauthier’s laugh, and the adorable grimaces he makes when he struggles over the conjugation of an irregular verb in our daily French grammar lessons. And the calm, encouraging voice he uses when he plays with Rodrigue, patient with his little brother’s childish games in a way unlike any of his siblings.
I’ll miss Constance’s hugs in the morning, and the sad, pleading voice she uses when she learns that I’ll be going out for the evening. And her genuine excitement when I let her help plan family activities, or ask for her help to bake bread or set up scavenger hunts.
I’ll miss Alban’s sometimes ditzy demeanor, and his glorious moments of realization when he figures out a new technique to do a front flip or volleyball serve. And his questions, those silly, half-baked, whimsical inquiries that pop up in his mind, sometimes insightful, sometimes not, but amusing nonetheless.
I’ll miss cooking with Cosette, and her patient explanations of how to make ratatouille, mashed potatoes, pommes de terre sautés, mustard vinaigrette, fillet mignon, escalops pannés, and anything else to fill the little hungry bellies of the de Lannoys, young and old. And the conversations we have while peeling zucchini or chopping potatoes—anything from family matters to political drama, and everything in between.
I’ll miss Sylvaine’s soft voice, and her warm greeting every morning and every evening when she comes home from work. And Eric’s well meaning teasing, and his daily offering of un petit verre de rosé to cap off a long day of Uno, pool games, trampoline flips, dishes, and games with his children.
I’ll miss family runs in Montfavet, winding through quaint residential neighborhoods—Alban next to me, Rodrigue racing ahead on his bike, Constance in stride on her roller blades, and Gauthier keeping up a steady pace behind. And the glorious exhaustion that overcomes the children afterwards, affording me some much-needed tranquility.
I’ll miss chats with Sylvaine, when she takes me into confidence about her own childhood, and about her doubts and worries and fears and aspirations for her own children. And the French vocabulary lessons she gives me, always patient, never reproachful for mispronunciation or grammar slip-ups.
I’ll miss my rare moments of solitude, when I take a picnic and a book and watch the sunset over the Rhône. And the color of Avignon at night—a liquid gold luminescence that teases down empty streets but never quite makes it to the dark corners of the alleys.
I already miss le Festival d’Avignon, spilling out of over 100 theaters and into the streets, with costumed players parading the streets as a animated advertisement for their theater production. And street performers, from live statues, to hip hop artists, to folk bands, to DJs, to magicians, to traditional dancers. And the atmosphere that ensues—lively, surreal, and punctuated by discussions of theater on café terraces and bar stools.
I’ll miss the colors: the burnt blue of the cloudless, afternoon sky, profound and still; the transparent turquoise of the pool, illuminated at night; the pastel palette of Provençal towns; the weary beige of a wheat field; the liquid coral pink of the Rhône, flowing lazily under the setting sun; the sweeping azure of the Mediterranean Sea on a sultry, summer day; the luscious green leaves of the poplars lining the route to Chateâurenard, gilded in the evening sun; the sandy gold of the façade of le palais des papes. And the striking photographs that are captured in my mind’s eye at every turn, every moment in Provence.
I’ll miss taking walks through Avignon, alone although surrounded by people, watching, wondering, coming up with stories about the pedestrians as they pass by. And the weary, lonely sound of my heels clicking down an empty sidewalk, the echo of my footsteps my only companion.
I’ll miss the French language, for goodness sakes, and the way it slips sweetly from my mouth, soft, fluid, romantic. And the small daily pleasure of self-expression in a foreign tongue, or the joy of learning a new word, a new expression, a new nuance of language never taught in grammar books.
I’ll miss the South of France, for all its worth, for its relaxed atmosphere, and welcoming people, and sizzling afternoons, and good wine, and olive oil, and picturesque towns, and nestled castles, and sunflower-lined routes, and stark sun, and blazing colors. And even its Mistral, and immigration problems, and sometimes dirty streets, for I am home here, and that’s what counts.
***
Someone, send me a bottle big enough to fit in the taste of perfectly aged Brie, and the odor of a freshly opened bottle of wine, and the sound of cicadas, and the grasp of an eight-month-old baby pulling at my fingers, and the expanse of Provence, spreading out before my eyes. And a cork, strong enough to contain the ferocious Mistral wind, and the beating of a heart bursting with affection, and the Atlantic Ocean that seems to constantly be separating me from home, no matter what continent I’m on. I cannot bear to let this beautiful life that I lead here escape.
In two weeks, I’ll be back on a plane, flying out of Paris on August 19th to return, once again, to the land where I was born. Instead of flying into the dawn over Paris, as upon my arrival two months ago in France, I’ll be flying into the sunset over Cleveland. It’s just not quite the same.
At the breakfast table this morning, I exclaimed with disbelief: “Tomorrow’s FRIDAY?” Constance laughed at me a bit. “But, yesterday was Monday, I swear.” Time goes by without my consent, it slips through my open fingers, it escapes my desperate grasp. Last night, I said goodbye for God knows how long to my friend Thomas, who saved me from destitute loneliness in the month of July. We stood face to face in the parking lot, neither willing to say the word, to articulate “goodbye,” to turn away, to return home alone.
I begin my preliminary mourning now.
***
I’ll miss the coffee, or espresso, rather—strong, dark, necessarily powerful—with one pure cane sugar cube and served with a tiny café spoon to eat the foam off of the top. And my four-o-clock coffee break, with a Speculoos dipping cookie, to caffeinate myself enough to make it through the rest of the day.
I’ll miss mornings when I wake up before the children, when the air is still cool and the house is refreshingly quiet. And likewise, mornings when Eric wakes up even before me to go to the bakery, and brings back fresh pain au chocolat and croissants for breakfast. And my daily petit déjeuner of croustillants choco (granola bits with dark chocolate chips) and a fresh nectarine (organic of course, since that’s how the de Lannoys rock it).
I’ll miss the cicadas—those obnoxious insects that fill my ears with incessant ringing until the racket tips me to the point of insanity . . . but without them, when a storm approaches and the cicadas fall suddenly silent, the air feels void, lonely. And the eerie whisper of the Mistral, telling secrets to the treetops.
I’ll miss Courgette, my fickle Jeep, and the adventures we take in French traffic, zipping through roundabouts and navigating France’s horrifically marked streets. And the grumble of her engine, and the trembling of the iron pedals and floor boards under my feet. And the whip of wind in my face as we zoom down the road.
I’ll miss the pool, and the sudden silence that gushes into my ears when I plunge in the pool. And the instant relief of cool water after a long, sticky run in the evening.
I’ll miss Eric’s favorite Côtes du Rhône rosé served with dinner, and Activia Nature, and chocolat liégois (or café liégois, if Cosette buys the wrong flavor), and brie and chèvre and conté cheese, and double caramel Mini Magnum ice cream treats that threaten to destroy any moderate diet. And fresh melon and apricots, at the peak of perfection. And the utter importance of dessert in general in this country.
I’ll miss Montaine’s toothless smile, genuine though infantile, and her outstretched arms, begging to be held after a long afternoon nap. And the gentle pressure of her tiny, blonde head on my shoulder as she falls asleep in my arms.
I’ll miss Rodrigue’s begging, beautiful, blue eyes as he looks up at me, tugging at my fingers, asking if we can play Uno. And the quiet satisfaction it gives me when he asks to help to set the table, declaring that he’ll bring the cups if I take the plates.
I’ll miss Gauthier’s laugh, and the adorable grimaces he makes when he struggles over the conjugation of an irregular verb in our daily French grammar lessons. And the calm, encouraging voice he uses when he plays with Rodrigue, patient with his little brother’s childish games in a way unlike any of his siblings.
I’ll miss Constance’s hugs in the morning, and the sad, pleading voice she uses when she learns that I’ll be going out for the evening. And her genuine excitement when I let her help plan family activities, or ask for her help to bake bread or set up scavenger hunts.
I’ll miss Alban’s sometimes ditzy demeanor, and his glorious moments of realization when he figures out a new technique to do a front flip or volleyball serve. And his questions, those silly, half-baked, whimsical inquiries that pop up in his mind, sometimes insightful, sometimes not, but amusing nonetheless.
I’ll miss cooking with Cosette, and her patient explanations of how to make ratatouille, mashed potatoes, pommes de terre sautés, mustard vinaigrette, fillet mignon, escalops pannés, and anything else to fill the little hungry bellies of the de Lannoys, young and old. And the conversations we have while peeling zucchini or chopping potatoes—anything from family matters to political drama, and everything in between.
I’ll miss Sylvaine’s soft voice, and her warm greeting every morning and every evening when she comes home from work. And Eric’s well meaning teasing, and his daily offering of un petit verre de rosé to cap off a long day of Uno, pool games, trampoline flips, dishes, and games with his children.
I’ll miss family runs in Montfavet, winding through quaint residential neighborhoods—Alban next to me, Rodrigue racing ahead on his bike, Constance in stride on her roller blades, and Gauthier keeping up a steady pace behind. And the glorious exhaustion that overcomes the children afterwards, affording me some much-needed tranquility.
I’ll miss chats with Sylvaine, when she takes me into confidence about her own childhood, and about her doubts and worries and fears and aspirations for her own children. And the French vocabulary lessons she gives me, always patient, never reproachful for mispronunciation or grammar slip-ups.
I’ll miss my rare moments of solitude, when I take a picnic and a book and watch the sunset over the Rhône. And the color of Avignon at night—a liquid gold luminescence that teases down empty streets but never quite makes it to the dark corners of the alleys.
I already miss le Festival d’Avignon, spilling out of over 100 theaters and into the streets, with costumed players parading the streets as a animated advertisement for their theater production. And street performers, from live statues, to hip hop artists, to folk bands, to DJs, to magicians, to traditional dancers. And the atmosphere that ensues—lively, surreal, and punctuated by discussions of theater on café terraces and bar stools.
I’ll miss the colors: the burnt blue of the cloudless, afternoon sky, profound and still; the transparent turquoise of the pool, illuminated at night; the pastel palette of Provençal towns; the weary beige of a wheat field; the liquid coral pink of the Rhône, flowing lazily under the setting sun; the sweeping azure of the Mediterranean Sea on a sultry, summer day; the luscious green leaves of the poplars lining the route to Chateâurenard, gilded in the evening sun; the sandy gold of the façade of le palais des papes. And the striking photographs that are captured in my mind’s eye at every turn, every moment in Provence.
I’ll miss taking walks through Avignon, alone although surrounded by people, watching, wondering, coming up with stories about the pedestrians as they pass by. And the weary, lonely sound of my heels clicking down an empty sidewalk, the echo of my footsteps my only companion.
I’ll miss the French language, for goodness sakes, and the way it slips sweetly from my mouth, soft, fluid, romantic. And the small daily pleasure of self-expression in a foreign tongue, or the joy of learning a new word, a new expression, a new nuance of language never taught in grammar books.
I’ll miss the South of France, for all its worth, for its relaxed atmosphere, and welcoming people, and sizzling afternoons, and good wine, and olive oil, and picturesque towns, and nestled castles, and sunflower-lined routes, and stark sun, and blazing colors. And even its Mistral, and immigration problems, and sometimes dirty streets, for I am home here, and that’s what counts.
***
Someone, send me a bottle big enough to fit in the taste of perfectly aged Brie, and the odor of a freshly opened bottle of wine, and the sound of cicadas, and the grasp of an eight-month-old baby pulling at my fingers, and the expanse of Provence, spreading out before my eyes. And a cork, strong enough to contain the ferocious Mistral wind, and the beating of a heart bursting with affection, and the Atlantic Ocean that seems to constantly be separating me from home, no matter what continent I’m on. I cannot bear to let this beautiful life that I lead here escape.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
The Mother Tongue
3 août 2010 mardi
Language is a fickle friend, and jealous beyond reason. Having ignored my mother tongue for a solid two months, imagine the bastardized English that came out of my mouth at my first opportunity to use it extensively this weekend. English, like most small children, pets, and family members, does not respond well to neglect. It shrivels down, vocabulary words go missing, and grammatical structures tumble out backwards. I suppose this is the price I pay for plunging into the French language sea; after a few weeks of gulping water and nearly drowning, I grow gills. And when I come back up to the surface, I’ve forgotten how to breathe air. It’s no longer language acquisition, but rather language adaptation.
It is thanks to language adaptation that such gems as “keep looking for a couch comfy” (instead of “comfy couch”) or “you have the chance” (instead of “you’re lucky”) have appeared in my mouth. It’s barely worth mentioning the number of times construction such as “the car of” or “the house of” (instead of the regular possessive construction “Eric’s car” or “Kevin’s house”) have popped up in my conversation while talking with my parents or friends on Skype. And of course, classic flubs such as: “what day are we?” or “we are how many?” or “I have 20 years” or “I have hungry” are practically unavoidable at this point.
In the words of Nicky Re, my English is broken. This weekend, I had the chance to have live interaction with someone who truly speaks my own language (ie: English) for the first time in nearly a month and a half. Franglais bubbled up from my days at the fac in Avignon 2009, when I spent all of my time with French speaking Americans. “I feel like mange-ing” for when I’d like a bite to eat, or “what a piece of merde” for when I find something particularly disagreeable. At the caisse (cash register . . . no, check-out is better) at Auchan, when Nicky was buying a new maillot (er, swimsuit), we dissolved into giggles because we honestly couldn’t remember in what language Nicky had responded to the cashier. Broken English it truly is.
That being said, a few words about my tremendous weekend. As mentioned above, I had the chance to practice my English a bit this weekend with Nicky Re, who had come down from Paris to the Avignon area to visit her friends and family, who live in Miramas, a small town near Marseille. It wasn’t until leaving Avignon that I understood to what degree I had been quietly suffering from cabin fever. Apart from my brief adventures in Arles a few weekends ago, I have for the most part stayed in the Avignon area. My idea of “getting out” had been taking Courgette and heading into town for the theater festival or a soirée with friends in town. But good heavens, the countryside did me good.
Regardless of the impressive size of the de Lannoy estate, where I spend the majority of my time, it nevertheless has four (massive) walls. I walk in circles around the pool, transporting dishes from the kitchen to the dishwasher across the courtyard, or pace back and forth between the kitchen and the living room and the library. There are only so many geometric shapes one can make before going crazy, or feeling like a tiger in a cage.
There’s no remedy quite like poplar and sunflower lined streets, watermelon and a barbeque, hearty laughs and new friends, and drives through the mountains at sunset. I was wholeheartedly welcomed both among Nicky’s group of friends and at her family’s table. Leftover taboulee, homemade orange wine, and good Brie never tasted quite so good. I was reminded that a table, no matter how well stocked with wine and cheese and meat and bread, is never complete without laughter. And laugh we did.
Michel, Nicky’s French cousin, was more than delighted to act the tour guide and take us around to all of the hidden corners of la Côte Bleue region. Nicky and I were quite literally cradled to sleep like little children who fall asleep on car rides on a late night tour of l’Etang, an expansive inland bay, just inshore from the Mediterranean Sea. Saturday, we tried out a bit of geocaching, one of Michel’s favorite hobbies. In Miramas-le-Vieux, we followed the directions given on the geocaching website and deduced small riddles to find clues here and there in the tiny village. The clues combined to form a GPS point, where a treasure was supposedly hidden. Nicky and I were delighted to find not only the treasure (a logbook of former geocachers and little nonsensical gifts left behind), but a fruit tree lined route that lead from the final destination back to the car. There’s something fundamentally satisfying about plucking fruit directly off a tree and eating it, warm and juicy.
Our second geocaching of the day took us to Martigues, a town justly nicknamed the Venice of Provence. The town spans the two banks of a river and the tiny island crisscrossed with canals that splits the river in two. With its boats, canals, winding alleys, and bright blue bridges, I am compelled to put the town of Martigues in a glass bottle and display it on my mantelpiece.
Nicky and I would not be content until we made it to the beach, so we headed to the Mediterranean just as the sun was setting. We swum upstream against a crowd of sun weary beach-goers and installed ourselves on the beach to watch the sunset (which was magnificent, but that could just be my France/Mediterranean-lust speaking). Despite the frigid (I exaggerate) temperature of the water, we took a quick swim. Summer simply isn’t complete without a dip in the sea, and I always sleep better when I close my eyes and feel as though I’m still in the water, being rocked by waves.
In short, I rediscovered two things this weekend: the English language, thanks to the first American I have seen in person for a month and a half, and the French countryside that I truly do love, that rests just on the other side of the courtyard walls. And one thing is for sure: we live in a beautiful world, regardless of the language we employ to describe it.
Language is a fickle friend, and jealous beyond reason. Having ignored my mother tongue for a solid two months, imagine the bastardized English that came out of my mouth at my first opportunity to use it extensively this weekend. English, like most small children, pets, and family members, does not respond well to neglect. It shrivels down, vocabulary words go missing, and grammatical structures tumble out backwards. I suppose this is the price I pay for plunging into the French language sea; after a few weeks of gulping water and nearly drowning, I grow gills. And when I come back up to the surface, I’ve forgotten how to breathe air. It’s no longer language acquisition, but rather language adaptation.
It is thanks to language adaptation that such gems as “keep looking for a couch comfy” (instead of “comfy couch”) or “you have the chance” (instead of “you’re lucky”) have appeared in my mouth. It’s barely worth mentioning the number of times construction such as “the car of” or “the house of” (instead of the regular possessive construction “Eric’s car” or “Kevin’s house”) have popped up in my conversation while talking with my parents or friends on Skype. And of course, classic flubs such as: “what day are we?” or “we are how many?” or “I have 20 years” or “I have hungry” are practically unavoidable at this point.
In the words of Nicky Re, my English is broken. This weekend, I had the chance to have live interaction with someone who truly speaks my own language (ie: English) for the first time in nearly a month and a half. Franglais bubbled up from my days at the fac in Avignon 2009, when I spent all of my time with French speaking Americans. “I feel like mange-ing” for when I’d like a bite to eat, or “what a piece of merde” for when I find something particularly disagreeable. At the caisse (cash register . . . no, check-out is better) at Auchan, when Nicky was buying a new maillot (er, swimsuit), we dissolved into giggles because we honestly couldn’t remember in what language Nicky had responded to the cashier. Broken English it truly is.
That being said, a few words about my tremendous weekend. As mentioned above, I had the chance to practice my English a bit this weekend with Nicky Re, who had come down from Paris to the Avignon area to visit her friends and family, who live in Miramas, a small town near Marseille. It wasn’t until leaving Avignon that I understood to what degree I had been quietly suffering from cabin fever. Apart from my brief adventures in Arles a few weekends ago, I have for the most part stayed in the Avignon area. My idea of “getting out” had been taking Courgette and heading into town for the theater festival or a soirée with friends in town. But good heavens, the countryside did me good.
Regardless of the impressive size of the de Lannoy estate, where I spend the majority of my time, it nevertheless has four (massive) walls. I walk in circles around the pool, transporting dishes from the kitchen to the dishwasher across the courtyard, or pace back and forth between the kitchen and the living room and the library. There are only so many geometric shapes one can make before going crazy, or feeling like a tiger in a cage.
There’s no remedy quite like poplar and sunflower lined streets, watermelon and a barbeque, hearty laughs and new friends, and drives through the mountains at sunset. I was wholeheartedly welcomed both among Nicky’s group of friends and at her family’s table. Leftover taboulee, homemade orange wine, and good Brie never tasted quite so good. I was reminded that a table, no matter how well stocked with wine and cheese and meat and bread, is never complete without laughter. And laugh we did.
Michel, Nicky’s French cousin, was more than delighted to act the tour guide and take us around to all of the hidden corners of la Côte Bleue region. Nicky and I were quite literally cradled to sleep like little children who fall asleep on car rides on a late night tour of l’Etang, an expansive inland bay, just inshore from the Mediterranean Sea. Saturday, we tried out a bit of geocaching, one of Michel’s favorite hobbies. In Miramas-le-Vieux, we followed the directions given on the geocaching website and deduced small riddles to find clues here and there in the tiny village. The clues combined to form a GPS point, where a treasure was supposedly hidden. Nicky and I were delighted to find not only the treasure (a logbook of former geocachers and little nonsensical gifts left behind), but a fruit tree lined route that lead from the final destination back to the car. There’s something fundamentally satisfying about plucking fruit directly off a tree and eating it, warm and juicy.
Our second geocaching of the day took us to Martigues, a town justly nicknamed the Venice of Provence. The town spans the two banks of a river and the tiny island crisscrossed with canals that splits the river in two. With its boats, canals, winding alleys, and bright blue bridges, I am compelled to put the town of Martigues in a glass bottle and display it on my mantelpiece.
Nicky and I would not be content until we made it to the beach, so we headed to the Mediterranean just as the sun was setting. We swum upstream against a crowd of sun weary beach-goers and installed ourselves on the beach to watch the sunset (which was magnificent, but that could just be my France/Mediterranean-lust speaking). Despite the frigid (I exaggerate) temperature of the water, we took a quick swim. Summer simply isn’t complete without a dip in the sea, and I always sleep better when I close my eyes and feel as though I’m still in the water, being rocked by waves.
In short, I rediscovered two things this weekend: the English language, thanks to the first American I have seen in person for a month and a half, and the French countryside that I truly do love, that rests just on the other side of the courtyard walls. And one thing is for sure: we live in a beautiful world, regardless of the language we employ to describe it.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Midterm Reevaluations
24 juillet 2010 samedi
The last time I wrote expressly of the children, I had barely known them for 72 hours. Today marks the halfway point of my employment Chez les de Lannoys—27 days down, 26 to go before I return to the United States. A few notes regarding my ever-growing familiarity with ces petits monstres adorables.
Alban (still 12)
Alban is in a crisis of pre-pubescence that, for some hormonal reason, leads him to make every possible situation into a competition. Ping-pong, pool volleyball, Uno, Monopoly, flips on the trampoline, and even sickness. When his younger brother, Gauthier, came down with a throat illness a few weeks ago, Alban insisted upon asserting at least twice a meal that the last time he was sick, he was much more gravely ill than Gauthier, and he didn’t even go to the doctor. At Acrobranche, Alban chose to disregard Gauthier’s successful completion of la piste noire (the hardest high ropes course), and instead focused on the failure of his sister, Constance, to complete the course. It is, in short, an adolescent superiority complex. As of late, he doesn’t like ice cream very much, nor meat. Tomatoes are only delicious when they come from the supermarket, not the garden. He’ll eat chicken wings, but not the actual wings . . . only the drumsticks. Last week, he was fascinated by extreme body builders and smack down wrestling (he refuses to believe that it’s not real). This week, he’s been obsessed with Percy Jackson films, and he has a newfound love for the Belgian accent, following the visit of some of Eric’s (who was born in Belgium) friends from medicine school. Most of Alban’s energy as of late has been invested in perfecting his trampoline flips, and I must admit, they have significantly improved since the addition of the trampoline to the children’s palace that the house truly is. Next step . . . back flips. You can imagine my fear for his precious skull and neck . . . and my horror that something terrible should happen during the day while I’m responsible for the entertainment and protection of the children.
Constance (actually 10, but since her birthday is in September, she told me she was 11)
Constance is writing a book of animals to give as a gift to Montaine, her baby sister. Or at least she was . . . she may have lost interest when she realized the work involved. Constance likes to please people—she especially helps to set or clear the table after one of her brothers has just been reprimanded for laziness or disobedience, or when there are guests at the house. Constance is the most likely of all of the children to help me with little gifts. For example, when Cosette, the housekeeper, couldn’t come in to work because a swollen, broken toe prevented her from walking, Constance helped me make “Bon Retablissement” and “Rétablis-toi vite” cards. With Montaine, Constance immediately reverts into motherly mode. She arranges piles of pillows around Montaine’s tiny body to ensure complete safety and comfort, and she focuses all of her energy in keeping Montaine and her baby’s attention span occupied, interested, and happy. Above all, I maintain that Constance longs for female companionship. When Ambre, her best friend, is at the house, Constance is an entirely different girl. She is lively, energetic, and laughs incessantly—quite a change from the slightly perturbed attitude that she tends to adopt when she’s with her brothers.
Gauthier (9)
If I’m allowed to say it, I think Gauthier is my favorite. He truly is exceptional. He helps me set the table without me having to ask him, he takes care of his plate after he has finished eating, he sits with me at the table while I’m finishing my post-dinner yogurt long after the other children have abandoned the un-cleared table, and he reminds his siblings to clear their plates and cups after they have finished. He enforces his parents’ trampoline rules, and unlike his siblings, he is willing to compromise. In all honesty, I forget that he is 9 years old. He has a level of maturity that is not displayed in his siblings, nor in most children of his age for that matter. He adores Monopoly, and especially loves to play chess, because it is a game for two. He recognizes the potentially dangerously competitive nature of his brother, and he prefers games where Alban can’t interfere. At Acrobranche, when Constance was terrified to do la grande saute, or the Tarzan jump, he stayed with her on the treetop platform, giving her words of advice and encouragement until she worked up enough nerve to leap. Whereas Alban simply asserts his strength and superiority, Gauthier is willing to actually work to improve himself. Last week, we went on a family run around the neighborhood (Rodrigue joined on his bike). Gauthier fell behind a bit at the end (a fact that Alban constantly reminded him of afterwards), but for the next few days, he asked me every evening to go out on a run with him, making a conscious effort to improve his endurance running skills. He has a self-awareness and sense of determination that I truly admire in him.
Rodrigue (7)
Rodrigue may or may not have ADHD. He tends to repeat the expressions and actions of his siblings incessantly, without comprehension of the meaning of the words or repercussions of his behaviors. Sometimes, he’ll be inexplicably destructive—I discovered my bathroom in a disastrous state one evening, with a bucket on the floor, with piss in and around it, and Rodrigue’s shoes next to it—a signature of his infantile crime. Today at lunch, he threw the hot pad for the chicken under the trampoline and refused to go get it, simply because he apparently doesn’t like hot pads (or so he says). When he feels neglected, for example, when I’m playing Milleborne or Monopoly with the older children, he’ll tear through the game, throw the cards on the ground or in the pool, steal game pieces, and run away with them. When he feels threatened by a reprimand, he entirely shuts down, repeating “non” over and over, and will often wiggle away from punishment (if any is imposed at all), and escape. Yet when he’s in an agreeable mood, he is adorable. His current fixation is Uno—it is something that he understands and can do without too much guidance. Yesterday, while the older boys were occupied elsewhere and Constance was at Ambre’s house, I dedicated the afternoon to Rodrigue. I let him outline our schedule. In about 30 or 40 minutes, we played Uno, Milleborne, volleyball, hide and seek, freeze tag, regular tag, rearranged the courtyard furniture, and even set the table. His attention span is over in a blink, which can be exhausting. Also, he doesn’t eat meat, or vegetables, which makes satisfying his appetite and his nutritional needs extraordinarily difficult. We recently discovered that he has an enormous taste for baked potatoes, and he adores caramel flan, which, if nothing else, has calcium. I’ve been making baby steps with Rodrigue—at Acrobranche, he asked to hold my hand, and now, when I give him his packet of Uno cards, he says thank you. And sometimes, if he’s feeling particularly agreeable, he’ll apologize when he plays a +4 wild card.
Montaine (7 months)
Montaine is growing by the week. As of last week, she takes the bottle, and this week, she sits up by herself in her playpen. When she wakes up from a nap, I’ll often find her, tiny fists clutched, upright in her crib. She screams louder than any of the children, which is significant, considering the caliber of their conversations. Vanilla Haagen Daas ice cream, which she loves almost as much as her dad does, tends to calm her down. She still doesn't like peas, but zucchini is a success. And she settles down when I sing Regina, which makes me happy on many, many levels.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Sois Heureuse
18 juillet 2010 dimanche
I was happy again last night. Macbett, Eugène Ionesco’s absurd, grotesque, tragicomedic defiance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth had just come to its unsettling, yet perfectly appropriate end. It was 9:30, evening spectacles spattered across the city were coming to an end, and from invisible theaters hidden behind walls of stone and posters, faint cheering could be heard. Another curtain falling, another evening’s success.
It was refreshingly cool, if not chilly after another burning summer day in the south of France. The street was sparsely populated with pedestrians, and the couples clutching each other’s arms spoke softly in whispers as they made their way down the sidewalks, as though in reverence to the falling dusk. I was feeling confident, literary, and lovely, and I let the wind wrap around me like a lover who knows all of my curves and my crevices.
Walking down the sidewalk, I contemplated feeling lonely. I thought of the deep, black expanse of the Atlantic, yawning between my friends and family and me, of the bronzing wheat fields of Ohio, of the waving stalks of sweet corn pushing tassels and saluting the hazy afternoon sky while night was already imminent in France. I had no lover, no partner with which I could saunter down the street arm in arm, or watch the sunset as the sun dipped into the Rhône, or sip a glass of wine and discuss lofty, intellectual subjects. No one would kiss me good night, and I would sleep alone in a bed big enough for two.
Blinking in the imposing darkness, trying to assure oneself of existence with the simple affirmation of sight, it is easy to feel alone, lonely, melancholy. But last night wasn’t a night for disparaging sentiments. The street smelled like lavender and Provençal spices, and when I turned the corner, the great ferris wheel emerged from behind the ramparts, gleaming in metallic shades of white gold and silver as the sun coquettishly donned its colors to the west. No, melancholy had no place in an evening such as this.
Happiness cannot be held and kept like sorrow can, which like a heavy stone wears holes in our pockets as soon as we pick it up. Happiness slips through our fingers as we cup it to our parched lips to drink. And that, perhaps, is the most painful of all: watching happiness slither away. A half-melted ice cream cone splattered on the sidewalk. A brightly colored balloon stuck in the highest branches of a tree. We’re left with sticky fingers and outstretched hands, and we can do nothing but remember. And in that remembering, smile.
I was happy again last night. Macbett, Eugène Ionesco’s absurd, grotesque, tragicomedic defiance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth had just come to its unsettling, yet perfectly appropriate end. It was 9:30, evening spectacles spattered across the city were coming to an end, and from invisible theaters hidden behind walls of stone and posters, faint cheering could be heard. Another curtain falling, another evening’s success.
It was refreshingly cool, if not chilly after another burning summer day in the south of France. The street was sparsely populated with pedestrians, and the couples clutching each other’s arms spoke softly in whispers as they made their way down the sidewalks, as though in reverence to the falling dusk. I was feeling confident, literary, and lovely, and I let the wind wrap around me like a lover who knows all of my curves and my crevices.
Walking down the sidewalk, I contemplated feeling lonely. I thought of the deep, black expanse of the Atlantic, yawning between my friends and family and me, of the bronzing wheat fields of Ohio, of the waving stalks of sweet corn pushing tassels and saluting the hazy afternoon sky while night was already imminent in France. I had no lover, no partner with which I could saunter down the street arm in arm, or watch the sunset as the sun dipped into the Rhône, or sip a glass of wine and discuss lofty, intellectual subjects. No one would kiss me good night, and I would sleep alone in a bed big enough for two.
Blinking in the imposing darkness, trying to assure oneself of existence with the simple affirmation of sight, it is easy to feel alone, lonely, melancholy. But last night wasn’t a night for disparaging sentiments. The street smelled like lavender and Provençal spices, and when I turned the corner, the great ferris wheel emerged from behind the ramparts, gleaming in metallic shades of white gold and silver as the sun coquettishly donned its colors to the west. No, melancholy had no place in an evening such as this.
Happiness cannot be held and kept like sorrow can, which like a heavy stone wears holes in our pockets as soon as we pick it up. Happiness slips through our fingers as we cup it to our parched lips to drink. And that, perhaps, is the most painful of all: watching happiness slither away. A half-melted ice cream cone splattered on the sidewalk. A brightly colored balloon stuck in the highest branches of a tree. We’re left with sticky fingers and outstretched hands, and we can do nothing but remember. And in that remembering, smile.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Anecdotal
16 juillet 2010 jeudi
Adventures with Courgette
• On the opening day of the festival, Eric and Sylvaine asked that I take the kids into town to watch the parade. I was delighted to do so, of course, except for the small matter of parking, which I find difficult in any country, with any car, manual or automatic. Imagine my horror when not ONE parking space was open in the parking lots surrounding the ramparts. With Alban and Constance sweating in the backseat and my nerves quickly fraying, I did something I never thought I’d do: I parked on a sidewalk. Yes, Shawna, I was one of the crazy people that turned the Avignon Trottoir into my own personal parking lot. I do not regret it. It just makes me all the more French for having done it.
• When I learned to drive in the United States, I learned roads by getting lost on them. Why should it be any different in France? After an evening out with Thomas in Avignon, I attempted to head back to Montfavet. I was completely sober, mind you (as the operation of a motor vehicle requires), but this did not stop me from mistakenly thinking that I could get back to my house on Rue de Montfavet. In short, a series of unfortunate turns happened, and I found myself whisked away in the direction of Orange—the last place I could possibly want to be on earth. And, to top it all off, my cell phone had about a 1,6€ of credit left: enough for 1 text, or about 3 minutes of calls. At about two in the morning, I managed to get myself turned back around in the right direction by following every sign that spoke of Avignon, and by doing so, hoping to run into the ramparts that surround the city. Finally, success, after an hour of absolute horror. I picked up a map at the office of tourism the next day, just in case, to keep in the glove compartment.
• Due to the horrific parking situation in Avignon during festival season, Eric and Sylvaine suggested that I park in the garage next to le palais des papes, right down town. It costs a bit, but it’s better than circling the ramparts in 95 degree heat, searching for a parking spot like a vulture. What I was not prepared for was the steep, spiraling hill at the garage entrance that Eric and Sylvaine had failed to mention. I overestimated Courgette’s ability to climb hills, and mistakenly put her in second gear, thinking that she would have enough power to make it to the top. I stalled about 80% of the way up the hill. Although there had been no one behind me as I embarked upon the hill, in true form to Murphy’s Law, three impatient cars zoomed up behind me as soon as I stalled. It. Was. Horrific. Eventually a nice (and probably irritated) French man came up and helped me get Courgette to the top of the hill. I vowed to never park there again (or, at least not before I do some serious hill practice).
Life as a Mihuta
• My grandpa Mihuta is the kind of person who will go up to a person on the street, strike up a conversation, and in a good fifteen minutes, will end up with a life-long friend, an offer for dinner, and an open invitation for a place to stay. My mama Mihuta takes after her dad; in fact, one of her hobbies is finding couples where the husband is taking a picture of the wife, or vice versa, and asking if she can take a picture for them both. I’ve found that I’ve developed as a Mihuta true to form; one of my new favorite things to do is to spot lost Americans, and help them out. Of course, if they try to order without even trying to speak in French, or insult/ignore tourist etiquette, or are wearing Michigan colors (that’s for you, Benny), I won’t always go out of my way to help them. But if I find a nice family of four, standing perplexed under the palais des papes, or an elderly couple speaking asking for directions in broken French, I spring into American-in-Avignon rescue mode. I was having a solitary dinner at Croque au Pain the other day, taking a break from my festival-going, when I heard what could only be a North American accent speaking French. A lone woman, about 28 or 30 had just walked in, and had pretty successfully ordered a Lyonnais salad with olive oil dressing. I was curious, and so I asked if she was American. It turns out that Jen was Canadian, and was on her way back to Canada after having lived in Australia for the last 10 years with a boyfriend. They had broken up a few months back, and so Jen had decided to press the reset button on her life, and do something a little crazy before trying to reestablish life in her homeland—travel for three months around Europe before returning to Canada to go to teacher school. It was a lovely conversation—she came and sat at the table next to mine, and we chatted for at least a half an hour before we went on our separate ways. Mihuta blood, you’ve done me well.
Montaine’s Mama
• About 36 hours before I was entrusted with all five children for an evening as Eric and Sylvaine went into Avignon to celebrate their good friend’s birthday, Montaine (the 7 month old) learned how to say maman. It was the first time since her birth that Eric and Sylvaine had entrusted Montaine to the care of someone else for an evening—the pressure was on. All was well for a while—Montaine was content in her playpen, Constance was at a friend’s house for the night, and the boys were playing Uno outside. And then the wailing started, and the heart wrenching sound of a red-faced baby appealing for her mamamamamaman over and over again, a pitiful mantra. I tried to put her down—she screamed even louder. I changed her diaper. I gave her toys. I tried to give her a bottle of her mother’s breast milk. I sang Regina Spektor songs. This latter technique seemed to work, surprisingly (thanks, Regina), but I couldn’t get Montaine to sleep. In desperation, I sent the boys to the library to watch Star Wars, and I took Montaine out to the garden. Softly singing, we circled the garden, said hello to the horse and the donkey and the dog and the cat and the stars. She fell asleep in my arms. Oh what a relief is a sleeping baby.
Adventures with Courgette
• On the opening day of the festival, Eric and Sylvaine asked that I take the kids into town to watch the parade. I was delighted to do so, of course, except for the small matter of parking, which I find difficult in any country, with any car, manual or automatic. Imagine my horror when not ONE parking space was open in the parking lots surrounding the ramparts. With Alban and Constance sweating in the backseat and my nerves quickly fraying, I did something I never thought I’d do: I parked on a sidewalk. Yes, Shawna, I was one of the crazy people that turned the Avignon Trottoir into my own personal parking lot. I do not regret it. It just makes me all the more French for having done it.
• When I learned to drive in the United States, I learned roads by getting lost on them. Why should it be any different in France? After an evening out with Thomas in Avignon, I attempted to head back to Montfavet. I was completely sober, mind you (as the operation of a motor vehicle requires), but this did not stop me from mistakenly thinking that I could get back to my house on Rue de Montfavet. In short, a series of unfortunate turns happened, and I found myself whisked away in the direction of Orange—the last place I could possibly want to be on earth. And, to top it all off, my cell phone had about a 1,6€ of credit left: enough for 1 text, or about 3 minutes of calls. At about two in the morning, I managed to get myself turned back around in the right direction by following every sign that spoke of Avignon, and by doing so, hoping to run into the ramparts that surround the city. Finally, success, after an hour of absolute horror. I picked up a map at the office of tourism the next day, just in case, to keep in the glove compartment.
• Due to the horrific parking situation in Avignon during festival season, Eric and Sylvaine suggested that I park in the garage next to le palais des papes, right down town. It costs a bit, but it’s better than circling the ramparts in 95 degree heat, searching for a parking spot like a vulture. What I was not prepared for was the steep, spiraling hill at the garage entrance that Eric and Sylvaine had failed to mention. I overestimated Courgette’s ability to climb hills, and mistakenly put her in second gear, thinking that she would have enough power to make it to the top. I stalled about 80% of the way up the hill. Although there had been no one behind me as I embarked upon the hill, in true form to Murphy’s Law, three impatient cars zoomed up behind me as soon as I stalled. It. Was. Horrific. Eventually a nice (and probably irritated) French man came up and helped me get Courgette to the top of the hill. I vowed to never park there again (or, at least not before I do some serious hill practice).
Life as a Mihuta
• My grandpa Mihuta is the kind of person who will go up to a person on the street, strike up a conversation, and in a good fifteen minutes, will end up with a life-long friend, an offer for dinner, and an open invitation for a place to stay. My mama Mihuta takes after her dad; in fact, one of her hobbies is finding couples where the husband is taking a picture of the wife, or vice versa, and asking if she can take a picture for them both. I’ve found that I’ve developed as a Mihuta true to form; one of my new favorite things to do is to spot lost Americans, and help them out. Of course, if they try to order without even trying to speak in French, or insult/ignore tourist etiquette, or are wearing Michigan colors (that’s for you, Benny), I won’t always go out of my way to help them. But if I find a nice family of four, standing perplexed under the palais des papes, or an elderly couple speaking asking for directions in broken French, I spring into American-in-Avignon rescue mode. I was having a solitary dinner at Croque au Pain the other day, taking a break from my festival-going, when I heard what could only be a North American accent speaking French. A lone woman, about 28 or 30 had just walked in, and had pretty successfully ordered a Lyonnais salad with olive oil dressing. I was curious, and so I asked if she was American. It turns out that Jen was Canadian, and was on her way back to Canada after having lived in Australia for the last 10 years with a boyfriend. They had broken up a few months back, and so Jen had decided to press the reset button on her life, and do something a little crazy before trying to reestablish life in her homeland—travel for three months around Europe before returning to Canada to go to teacher school. It was a lovely conversation—she came and sat at the table next to mine, and we chatted for at least a half an hour before we went on our separate ways. Mihuta blood, you’ve done me well.
Montaine’s Mama
• About 36 hours before I was entrusted with all five children for an evening as Eric and Sylvaine went into Avignon to celebrate their good friend’s birthday, Montaine (the 7 month old) learned how to say maman. It was the first time since her birth that Eric and Sylvaine had entrusted Montaine to the care of someone else for an evening—the pressure was on. All was well for a while—Montaine was content in her playpen, Constance was at a friend’s house for the night, and the boys were playing Uno outside. And then the wailing started, and the heart wrenching sound of a red-faced baby appealing for her mamamamamaman over and over again, a pitiful mantra. I tried to put her down—she screamed even louder. I changed her diaper. I gave her toys. I tried to give her a bottle of her mother’s breast milk. I sang Regina Spektor songs. This latter technique seemed to work, surprisingly (thanks, Regina), but I couldn’t get Montaine to sleep. In desperation, I sent the boys to the library to watch Star Wars, and I took Montaine out to the garden. Softly singing, we circled the garden, said hello to the horse and the donkey and the dog and the cat and the stars. She fell asleep in my arms. Oh what a relief is a sleeping baby.
Don't Look Down
15 juillet 2010 jeudi
A few crucial words for when one is attached to a rope, 20–25 feet above the ground:
1: PASSERELLES DES CIMES = Treetop Pathways
Today, the Delannoy family treated the children to a trip to Acrobranche, a high ropes course nestled in the quaintly Provençal Luberon valley, near Fontaine de Vaucluse. Acrobranche has 6 treetop courses of varying difficulty, and I must say, I myself was challenged. As my parents can testify, I’ve been a fanatic of heights from a very young age. My mother had to rush out of the house with a laundry basket full of pillows when she found me hanging from my knees from the top of our story-and-a-half tall swing set. I couldn’t have been more than five years old, and hadn’t quite developed a sense of practical danger yet. As a child, I would walk the perimeter of our barn on the rafters, and even now, if you give me a boulder big enough, I will probably climb it. However, the high ropes courses at Acrobranche still gave me a thrill and got adrenaline pumping though my veins.
2: UN MOUSQUETON = Climbing Caribbeaner
One thing that is refreshing about Europe is that business liability seems to be much more lax than in the United States. Before being let loose like monkeys out of their cages, we had no papers to sign, no fitness tests to pass, no security deposits to pay. A short, required “training” session taught all visitors how to properly secure the two caribbeaners attached to our belts, and how to safely attach ourselves to a zipline. Thus “trained,” off we went. Of course, if all security measures were correctly followed, there was no real danger, and staff members surveyed the course from the ground, but it’s nice to be trusted with one’s own common sense and inherent ability to detect when one is truly in danger.
3: UNE ECHELLE A BRAS = Rope Ladder
To start off easily, we began our parcours on la piste verte—the green course. It served mostly to get land lubbers accustomed to being off the ground, and to practice walking across hanging rope ladders, or slack wires, or dangling logs. Although it was the beginners’ course, I must say, climbing backwards through a suspended barrel and then balancing on a treetop platform is certainly no walk in the park.
4: UNE TYROLIENNE = Zip Line
Travel by zip line should be established in mass. I can just see it now: businessmen in suits and leather gloves, grasping a zip line with one hand and a briefcase with the other, zipping across the open spaces between skyscrapers, sliding into an open window just in time for the 2:00 meeting across the way. After ascending une echelle à bras made of rope and logs to a platform about 30 feet up in a tree, I started the parcours aux tyroliennes. There’s something primordially satisfying about whooshing through treetops, suspended on a wire. Me, Tarzan. You, Jane.
5: ACCROCHE-TOI! = Hang on!
La liane à Tarzan (Tarzan Swing), located at the highest point of la piste rouge, the second most difficult course, briefly made my heart stop. I kid you not. After climbing up une echelle à bras, scuttling across a vertically suspended rope net, swinging across un pont de singes (monkey bars) at least twenty feet above the ground, and making my way across a slack wire, I finally found myself on a platform in a tree. Across a clearing at least 15 wide, was a giant spider web made of thick rope. Mousquetons securely attached, I was given a rope, and told to jump. Yes, jump. Across the clearing and onto the spider web that certainly wouldn’t do the catching for me. Standing on the platform, I thought of my brother Ben, and his bungee jumping adventures, and my Dad, and his experiences leaping out of airplanes, and I refused to be shown up by the Grimm men. Trois, deux, UN, came the voices of the staff members and the Delannoy family watching below . . . and I leapt. And, contrary to my the little voice inside that tells most reasonable people that jumping off of high places is a bad idea, I survived, feeling quite like a fly once I made it across the clearing to the spider web of rope on the other side.
But wait, there’s more. Alban was absolutely determined to do la piste noire, the most difficult course at Acrobranche. Gauthier came along, not to be shown up by his big brother. The boys beseeched that I join. This time, once reaching the highest platform, we were told to leap across a 10 foot clearing . . . sans rope. What, no rope? This time, I jumped at about deux et demi (two and a half), knowing that if I waited any longer I would realize the absurdity of jumping across a clearing without a rope. Of course, I was safely attached to a security wire with my two mousquetons, but hey, a human being who spends most of her time on the ground, and not in trees, is allowed to be a bit skeptical. Hesitation does absolutely nothing for skepticism in this case. Off I went.
6: UN BLEU = Bruise
By the look of my legs and forearms, one would suspect that I am violently maltreated in the Delannoy household. There is une bosse sanglante (bloody bump) on my forehead from where I fwapped myself with un mousqueton, and on la piste noire I turned my arms into sand paper, leaving thick wire-shaped scrapes in parallel red lines across my forearms and wrists from when I mistakenly used the security wire to balance myself on a parcours of logs dangling from stretchy, supple ropes. Upon arriving home, I discovered that my legs are a battlefield of bruises. And yet, I must thank the Delannoys full heartedly for my bruises, and scrapes, and scratches. It’s good to be a kid sometimes. Thank goodness I’m not afraid of heights.
A few crucial words for when one is attached to a rope, 20–25 feet above the ground:
1: PASSERELLES DES CIMES = Treetop Pathways
Today, the Delannoy family treated the children to a trip to Acrobranche, a high ropes course nestled in the quaintly Provençal Luberon valley, near Fontaine de Vaucluse. Acrobranche has 6 treetop courses of varying difficulty, and I must say, I myself was challenged. As my parents can testify, I’ve been a fanatic of heights from a very young age. My mother had to rush out of the house with a laundry basket full of pillows when she found me hanging from my knees from the top of our story-and-a-half tall swing set. I couldn’t have been more than five years old, and hadn’t quite developed a sense of practical danger yet. As a child, I would walk the perimeter of our barn on the rafters, and even now, if you give me a boulder big enough, I will probably climb it. However, the high ropes courses at Acrobranche still gave me a thrill and got adrenaline pumping though my veins.
2: UN MOUSQUETON = Climbing Caribbeaner
One thing that is refreshing about Europe is that business liability seems to be much more lax than in the United States. Before being let loose like monkeys out of their cages, we had no papers to sign, no fitness tests to pass, no security deposits to pay. A short, required “training” session taught all visitors how to properly secure the two caribbeaners attached to our belts, and how to safely attach ourselves to a zipline. Thus “trained,” off we went. Of course, if all security measures were correctly followed, there was no real danger, and staff members surveyed the course from the ground, but it’s nice to be trusted with one’s own common sense and inherent ability to detect when one is truly in danger.
3: UNE ECHELLE A BRAS = Rope Ladder
To start off easily, we began our parcours on la piste verte—the green course. It served mostly to get land lubbers accustomed to being off the ground, and to practice walking across hanging rope ladders, or slack wires, or dangling logs. Although it was the beginners’ course, I must say, climbing backwards through a suspended barrel and then balancing on a treetop platform is certainly no walk in the park.
4: UNE TYROLIENNE = Zip Line
Travel by zip line should be established in mass. I can just see it now: businessmen in suits and leather gloves, grasping a zip line with one hand and a briefcase with the other, zipping across the open spaces between skyscrapers, sliding into an open window just in time for the 2:00 meeting across the way. After ascending une echelle à bras made of rope and logs to a platform about 30 feet up in a tree, I started the parcours aux tyroliennes. There’s something primordially satisfying about whooshing through treetops, suspended on a wire. Me, Tarzan. You, Jane.
5: ACCROCHE-TOI! = Hang on!
La liane à Tarzan (Tarzan Swing), located at the highest point of la piste rouge, the second most difficult course, briefly made my heart stop. I kid you not. After climbing up une echelle à bras, scuttling across a vertically suspended rope net, swinging across un pont de singes (monkey bars) at least twenty feet above the ground, and making my way across a slack wire, I finally found myself on a platform in a tree. Across a clearing at least 15 wide, was a giant spider web made of thick rope. Mousquetons securely attached, I was given a rope, and told to jump. Yes, jump. Across the clearing and onto the spider web that certainly wouldn’t do the catching for me. Standing on the platform, I thought of my brother Ben, and his bungee jumping adventures, and my Dad, and his experiences leaping out of airplanes, and I refused to be shown up by the Grimm men. Trois, deux, UN, came the voices of the staff members and the Delannoy family watching below . . . and I leapt. And, contrary to my the little voice inside that tells most reasonable people that jumping off of high places is a bad idea, I survived, feeling quite like a fly once I made it across the clearing to the spider web of rope on the other side.
But wait, there’s more. Alban was absolutely determined to do la piste noire, the most difficult course at Acrobranche. Gauthier came along, not to be shown up by his big brother. The boys beseeched that I join. This time, once reaching the highest platform, we were told to leap across a 10 foot clearing . . . sans rope. What, no rope? This time, I jumped at about deux et demi (two and a half), knowing that if I waited any longer I would realize the absurdity of jumping across a clearing without a rope. Of course, I was safely attached to a security wire with my two mousquetons, but hey, a human being who spends most of her time on the ground, and not in trees, is allowed to be a bit skeptical. Hesitation does absolutely nothing for skepticism in this case. Off I went.
6: UN BLEU = Bruise
By the look of my legs and forearms, one would suspect that I am violently maltreated in the Delannoy household. There is une bosse sanglante (bloody bump) on my forehead from where I fwapped myself with un mousqueton, and on la piste noire I turned my arms into sand paper, leaving thick wire-shaped scrapes in parallel red lines across my forearms and wrists from when I mistakenly used the security wire to balance myself on a parcours of logs dangling from stretchy, supple ropes. Upon arriving home, I discovered that my legs are a battlefield of bruises. And yet, I must thank the Delannoys full heartedly for my bruises, and scrapes, and scratches. It’s good to be a kid sometimes. Thank goodness I’m not afraid of heights.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Vous me manquez
14 juillet 2010 mercredi (Happy Bastille Day!)
When Eric asked me this morning whether I was happy, I responded with a resounding “OUI!” Then, he asked if there was anything in particular that I missed from back home, excepting my friends and family, of course. I utterly blanked. I’ve been thinking about it all day, between games of pool volleyball, Uno, and chess. If living two lives—a French life, and an American counterpart—has taught me anything, it’s that as soon as I leave one home, it is extremely difficult to articulate exactly what I love about it, or miss, and why. Certainly I miss something about the United States, but when pressed for an answer this morning, I found that I simply couldn’t express myself. I’ve resolved to try.
***
I miss enormous, refillable mugs of coffee from Donkey, and blueberry streusel muffins that have just come out of the oven. And chai tea. Huge, steaming mugs of swirling, creamy chai tea, delicately frothy and perfectly spicy and sweet.
I miss Chinese take out, and Good Fella’s pizza, and Wendy’s frosties and fries in the middle of the night. And DP Dough. And all food that can be ordered over the phone, any day, at any hour.
I miss my walk to work, out of Squat, down the hill by Clip, through Emereti Park, past Peden stadium, under the bridge by the on the bike path, across the highway over the river, and up to the Ridges on the path through the woods. And the view coming out of OU Press, looking over the Hocking River and to the Ohio University campus on the bank, and Athens stretching out beyond.
I miss Sunday runs at Stroud’s Run—hot, 2 hour affairs where we circumference the entire lake on a path through the forest. And the talks we always have between steady footsteps and deep breathing, and the energy beans that Jesse always carries on long runs.
I miss my 14’x18’ box in Squat, ironically enough, with its wall of photographs, and its sticky notes, and its borrowed lounge chair, and its soft lamp lighting, and its reliable internet, and its bottomless pot of coffee, and its view of Morton Hill and the tops of the buildings on East Green and South Green beyond. And I miss Mary, and her rants about the corn industry and food corporations and government corruption and university financial and administrational affairs. And our multilingual conversational exchanges, when one of us forgets a word in any one of the four languages that we collectively speak.
I miss Franklin, my blue 1999 Nissan Altima, and the drive from my house into Dalton, winding down through the valley and across the train tracks at Sonnenburg Station, then climbing back up the other side. And I miss the fog that creeps in the crevices of the valley on humid mornings, and the floods that turn the fields into lakes, and the view of the sunset to the west from the summit of the hill on Wenger Road, before plunging back down into Dalton.
I miss peanut butter, and English measurements (cups, tablespoons, teaspoons), and the Fahrenheit scale. And I miss bulk food stores with endless stocks of flour, and sugar, and oats, and cocoa, and nuts, and everything a baking fanatic could possibly want to make a mid-afternoon snack for five children.
I miss the smell of sweet corn fields in the morning, fresh with dew, and the soft sizzle of morning haze lifting with the rising sun. And granola bar breaks, and iced tea, and field songs, and, believe it or not, counting to sixteen and a half for 6 hours a day, standing on a wagon with sacks of corn up to my waist.
I miss staying up until four in the morning with good friends, making trouble and roaming the town. And Sunday morning brunch, recapping the events of the weekend, and preparing for the upcoming week. (I do not miss dining hall food, however. Thank god that’s done with.)
I miss putting the final period on the final sentence of a final paper, or turning the last page of a novel of epic proportions. And the satisfaction of an essay well written, an argument well defended, a project well presented.
I miss sitting at coffee shops for hours on end, talking about life and love and the universe or nothing in particular. And breakfast at the Bliss (R.I.P) or Mugswigs runs at absurd hours in the evening for thick, rich double chocolate mochas, making it impossible to sleep.
I miss wandering in the middle of the night with Adam, to obscure locations to watch meteor showers, or strangers’ rooftops to sit and commiserate, or the backyards of frat parties to pretend we know “Todd,” or “Brad,” or “Rob.” And Capitol Hill and the Rachel-Stephanie-Rachel sandwich. And inevitable debauchery with my Frenchies and the rainbow crowd.
I miss watching Das Dutch Kitchen wake up and come to life to the smell of freshly baked bread after having been there for hours, knuckles deep in rising dough. And the pleasure of finding a clean apron, or oven mitts without holes, or newly purchased sprinkles for sugar cookies, or just-whipped batches of smooth vanilla icing.
I miss spending time in the kitchen with my mom, peeling beets until our hands are blood-red, or chopping fresh strawberries until our fingers are wrinkled, or squeezing out grape juice until the air smells intoxicatingly sweet and humidity drips down our faces and onto our aprons. And I miss saying goodnight to the night with my dad, or sitting out by the campfire until only ashes remain.
I miss hearing the crack of a bat from summer league baseball games at Kidron park, and the slightly out of tune sound of the marching band playing the alma mater and fight song at Dalton football games, and the breathless encouragement of Augs at cross country runners as they pant on by, and the unmistakable thud of a pole sliding into the box as a polevaulter launches off the runway. And Gatorade, and the unmistakable taste of Nussbaum Road well water.
I miss time alone with only Regina Spektor and my favorite piano in Glidden, forgetting that I have a paper due in 12 hours, or a novel to read by the next day, or a presentation to research and prepare by the end of the week. And the trailing voice of an acoustic guitar, teasing out of an open window as I run by in the evening.
I miss the constellations of summer, puncturing the velvety, cloudless sky with studded diamonds, telling stories across the night sky. And lying flat on my back, listening to crickets and the wind whispering through blades of grass. And catching the lightening bugs that respond to the blinking of the stars.
I miss my cats: Jack, and Lucy, and Smudge (also, R.I.P), and the unconditional love of a domestic animal for She Who Brings the Food. And the braying of Glen’s animals down in the valley, the crowing of the rooster at the first hint of dawn, or the tinkling of bells around cows’ necks as they meander through meadows on the way back to the barn at night.
***
In thirty-six days, I return to the United States. I’ve been in France for thirty-five days. I am not ready to go home. I am not ready for July to be halfway done. I am not ready to face the huge expanses of vast America. I am not ready to drive amongst the car-giants of gas-guzzling ignorance, on roads wide and spacious. I am not ready to choose between twenty brands of chips (or potato crisps, or pretzels), or thirty flavors of ice cream (let alone frozen yogurt and sherbet), or seven shampoo types (straight, curly, greasy, dry, damaged, colored, and last but not least, normal hair). I am not ready to feel dwarfed in parking lots, in waiting rooms, in clothing stores. I am not ready to speak in my native tongue, to hear English on the radio, to be bombarded with all the words I grew up with, and expressions that simply don’t translate into French.
And yet America lies in wait on the other side of the Atlantic. Waves and oil pound at its shores, and the currents of the ocean and time sweep me towards it. I can do nothing to stop this (neither can BP).
I returned to the United States last year on June 23, 2009, after learning on June 19 that my visa extension had been denied, thereby cutting my planned trip short by nearly two months. My return was marked by tears, bitter depression, and a brief expatriate adventure to Canada. I was saved from utter desperation by the legal drinking age in the land up north of moose and hockey, and sweet corn season.
When I think of the United States, I am tempted to immediately fixate on the negatives: the devastating ecological disaster that is destroying the Gulf environment and economy at large; the corruption of private corporations and government alike; the fatal ignorance of the American populace that kills without ever being counted by statistics; the precarious and staggering social security system; the political stalemate in Washington; the mindset of American exceptionalism; the unjust wars abroad, and the silent, internal wars that ravage racially demarcated neighborhoods that barely make the evening news. But I cannot think of the United States as the land of the stolen frontier if I hope to maintain my sanity upon my return. I must instead remember that deep in the crevices of my motherland hide pockets of sunshine that I can see shining from way over here, thousands of miles away, in France. Sure, in thirty-six days, I’ll be leaving my new home, Chez les Delannoys, in Montfavet, France. But who can say anymore when exactly I’m leaving home, and when I’m going home? This is how it works, after all.
I end on a purely Regina note, with lyrics from “On the Radio,” a song that never fails to make me feel better:
“This is how it works
You’re young until you’re not
You love until you don’t
You try until you can’t
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath—
Now this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into someone else’s heart
Pumping someone else’s blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope you don’t get harmed
And even if it does
You’ll just do it all again . . . ”
Bonne nuit, tout le monde. Vous me manuez.
When Eric asked me this morning whether I was happy, I responded with a resounding “OUI!” Then, he asked if there was anything in particular that I missed from back home, excepting my friends and family, of course. I utterly blanked. I’ve been thinking about it all day, between games of pool volleyball, Uno, and chess. If living two lives—a French life, and an American counterpart—has taught me anything, it’s that as soon as I leave one home, it is extremely difficult to articulate exactly what I love about it, or miss, and why. Certainly I miss something about the United States, but when pressed for an answer this morning, I found that I simply couldn’t express myself. I’ve resolved to try.
***
I miss enormous, refillable mugs of coffee from Donkey, and blueberry streusel muffins that have just come out of the oven. And chai tea. Huge, steaming mugs of swirling, creamy chai tea, delicately frothy and perfectly spicy and sweet.
I miss Chinese take out, and Good Fella’s pizza, and Wendy’s frosties and fries in the middle of the night. And DP Dough. And all food that can be ordered over the phone, any day, at any hour.
I miss my walk to work, out of Squat, down the hill by Clip, through Emereti Park, past Peden stadium, under the bridge by the on the bike path, across the highway over the river, and up to the Ridges on the path through the woods. And the view coming out of OU Press, looking over the Hocking River and to the Ohio University campus on the bank, and Athens stretching out beyond.
I miss Sunday runs at Stroud’s Run—hot, 2 hour affairs where we circumference the entire lake on a path through the forest. And the talks we always have between steady footsteps and deep breathing, and the energy beans that Jesse always carries on long runs.
I miss my 14’x18’ box in Squat, ironically enough, with its wall of photographs, and its sticky notes, and its borrowed lounge chair, and its soft lamp lighting, and its reliable internet, and its bottomless pot of coffee, and its view of Morton Hill and the tops of the buildings on East Green and South Green beyond. And I miss Mary, and her rants about the corn industry and food corporations and government corruption and university financial and administrational affairs. And our multilingual conversational exchanges, when one of us forgets a word in any one of the four languages that we collectively speak.
I miss Franklin, my blue 1999 Nissan Altima, and the drive from my house into Dalton, winding down through the valley and across the train tracks at Sonnenburg Station, then climbing back up the other side. And I miss the fog that creeps in the crevices of the valley on humid mornings, and the floods that turn the fields into lakes, and the view of the sunset to the west from the summit of the hill on Wenger Road, before plunging back down into Dalton.
I miss peanut butter, and English measurements (cups, tablespoons, teaspoons), and the Fahrenheit scale. And I miss bulk food stores with endless stocks of flour, and sugar, and oats, and cocoa, and nuts, and everything a baking fanatic could possibly want to make a mid-afternoon snack for five children.
I miss the smell of sweet corn fields in the morning, fresh with dew, and the soft sizzle of morning haze lifting with the rising sun. And granola bar breaks, and iced tea, and field songs, and, believe it or not, counting to sixteen and a half for 6 hours a day, standing on a wagon with sacks of corn up to my waist.
I miss staying up until four in the morning with good friends, making trouble and roaming the town. And Sunday morning brunch, recapping the events of the weekend, and preparing for the upcoming week. (I do not miss dining hall food, however. Thank god that’s done with.)
I miss putting the final period on the final sentence of a final paper, or turning the last page of a novel of epic proportions. And the satisfaction of an essay well written, an argument well defended, a project well presented.
I miss sitting at coffee shops for hours on end, talking about life and love and the universe or nothing in particular. And breakfast at the Bliss (R.I.P) or Mugswigs runs at absurd hours in the evening for thick, rich double chocolate mochas, making it impossible to sleep.
I miss wandering in the middle of the night with Adam, to obscure locations to watch meteor showers, or strangers’ rooftops to sit and commiserate, or the backyards of frat parties to pretend we know “Todd,” or “Brad,” or “Rob.” And Capitol Hill and the Rachel-Stephanie-Rachel sandwich. And inevitable debauchery with my Frenchies and the rainbow crowd.
I miss watching Das Dutch Kitchen wake up and come to life to the smell of freshly baked bread after having been there for hours, knuckles deep in rising dough. And the pleasure of finding a clean apron, or oven mitts without holes, or newly purchased sprinkles for sugar cookies, or just-whipped batches of smooth vanilla icing.
I miss spending time in the kitchen with my mom, peeling beets until our hands are blood-red, or chopping fresh strawberries until our fingers are wrinkled, or squeezing out grape juice until the air smells intoxicatingly sweet and humidity drips down our faces and onto our aprons. And I miss saying goodnight to the night with my dad, or sitting out by the campfire until only ashes remain.
I miss hearing the crack of a bat from summer league baseball games at Kidron park, and the slightly out of tune sound of the marching band playing the alma mater and fight song at Dalton football games, and the breathless encouragement of Augs at cross country runners as they pant on by, and the unmistakable thud of a pole sliding into the box as a polevaulter launches off the runway. And Gatorade, and the unmistakable taste of Nussbaum Road well water.
I miss time alone with only Regina Spektor and my favorite piano in Glidden, forgetting that I have a paper due in 12 hours, or a novel to read by the next day, or a presentation to research and prepare by the end of the week. And the trailing voice of an acoustic guitar, teasing out of an open window as I run by in the evening.
I miss the constellations of summer, puncturing the velvety, cloudless sky with studded diamonds, telling stories across the night sky. And lying flat on my back, listening to crickets and the wind whispering through blades of grass. And catching the lightening bugs that respond to the blinking of the stars.
I miss my cats: Jack, and Lucy, and Smudge (also, R.I.P), and the unconditional love of a domestic animal for She Who Brings the Food. And the braying of Glen’s animals down in the valley, the crowing of the rooster at the first hint of dawn, or the tinkling of bells around cows’ necks as they meander through meadows on the way back to the barn at night.
***
In thirty-six days, I return to the United States. I’ve been in France for thirty-five days. I am not ready to go home. I am not ready for July to be halfway done. I am not ready to face the huge expanses of vast America. I am not ready to drive amongst the car-giants of gas-guzzling ignorance, on roads wide and spacious. I am not ready to choose between twenty brands of chips (or potato crisps, or pretzels), or thirty flavors of ice cream (let alone frozen yogurt and sherbet), or seven shampoo types (straight, curly, greasy, dry, damaged, colored, and last but not least, normal hair). I am not ready to feel dwarfed in parking lots, in waiting rooms, in clothing stores. I am not ready to speak in my native tongue, to hear English on the radio, to be bombarded with all the words I grew up with, and expressions that simply don’t translate into French.
And yet America lies in wait on the other side of the Atlantic. Waves and oil pound at its shores, and the currents of the ocean and time sweep me towards it. I can do nothing to stop this (neither can BP).
I returned to the United States last year on June 23, 2009, after learning on June 19 that my visa extension had been denied, thereby cutting my planned trip short by nearly two months. My return was marked by tears, bitter depression, and a brief expatriate adventure to Canada. I was saved from utter desperation by the legal drinking age in the land up north of moose and hockey, and sweet corn season.
When I think of the United States, I am tempted to immediately fixate on the negatives: the devastating ecological disaster that is destroying the Gulf environment and economy at large; the corruption of private corporations and government alike; the fatal ignorance of the American populace that kills without ever being counted by statistics; the precarious and staggering social security system; the political stalemate in Washington; the mindset of American exceptionalism; the unjust wars abroad, and the silent, internal wars that ravage racially demarcated neighborhoods that barely make the evening news. But I cannot think of the United States as the land of the stolen frontier if I hope to maintain my sanity upon my return. I must instead remember that deep in the crevices of my motherland hide pockets of sunshine that I can see shining from way over here, thousands of miles away, in France. Sure, in thirty-six days, I’ll be leaving my new home, Chez les Delannoys, in Montfavet, France. But who can say anymore when exactly I’m leaving home, and when I’m going home? This is how it works, after all.
I end on a purely Regina note, with lyrics from “On the Radio,” a song that never fails to make me feel better:
“This is how it works
You’re young until you’re not
You love until you don’t
You try until you can’t
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath—
Now this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into someone else’s heart
Pumping someone else’s blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope you don’t get harmed
And even if it does
You’ll just do it all again . . . ”
Bonne nuit, tout le monde. Vous me manuez.
Friday, July 9, 2010
C'est Pour la Petite Bourgeoisie Qui Boit du Champagne
8 juillet 2010 jeudi
To the Delannoy Parents:
We are of the same flesh, you and I, but we are not of the same mind. We belong on opposite sides of the counter, of the fence, of the camera. You are the ones who eat 26€ fish at le palais des papes, I am the one that sprinkles cocoa on your tiramisu. You are the ones that coyly throw 50 centime pieces that drop with hollow thumps into open guitar cases, I am the one who sits on street corners and sings songs in a language you don’t understand. You are the ones who serve steaming croissants and pain au chocolat for breakfast, still hot from the oven, and I am the one who rises at 5 to bake your daily bread.
It is often said that my world exists solely to serve yours, although I cannot agree. It is simply that our worlds only seem to jostle up against one another when we go to work, and you go to be fed, or entertained, or served. You are the question askers, we are the answer givers. You are the hungry, we are the food providers. What would you do without us?
Although our worlds may jockey and collide whilst we wear our aprons and you wear your jewels, our spheres of recreation spin off in separate directions in the night. Under the stars, you glisten in your diamonds, floating constellations on earth that vanish when the lights snuff out. And we, in that darkness that you leave behind, open up, crack a beer, throw our heads back, and laugh, laugh, laugh.
I have something that you have not, and it is certainly not money. Upon arriving in your 300 year old home, I was astonished by the way that you live. It wasn’t simply the high vaulted ceilings, the chandeliers, the in ground pool in a courtyard of its own, the private gate, the barn, the donkey, and the horse, goddamnit. It was your laundry room, your pantry, and, above all, your refrigerator.
When I cleaned out the freezer today, I found rabbit. Rabbit? You have four jars of Nutella in reserve in the pantry. When there was “nothing to eat” for lunch one day, Cosette pulled fillet mignon out of the second freezer. At all times there are three types of yogurt in the refrigerator (Yoplait fruit, Activia, and Bio yogurt for Montaine), as well as caramel flan and chocolat liégois. You have more pots and pans than you will ever use, and more table settings than people you will ever need to serve. And although you buy bio—to save the planet, as you quaintly put it—you live anything but “bio.”
Sure, you recycle, but have you seen your laundry room, and the sheer amount of loads of laundry you do in a week? Or the three refrigerators/freezers you have stock piled and plugged in at all times? Or the enormous television that the children so often refuse to turn off? Or the pool, that is at times up to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit)? Or the three dishwasher cycles it takes daily to take care of the ever-growing pile of plates on your counter?
When I make coffee in the morning (before I eat a lovely breakfast of Bio Cereal and an Organic Nectarine and Ecofriendly Multifruit Juice), I use a small, gold-coated single-serving capsule made specifically for your machine. At Ohio University, in my shared 14’x18’ box, Mary and I brew coffee that she steals weekly from the dining hall, which is stored in a used can. Forget culture shock—it is class disparity that makes me wake in the morning in awe and in stupor of the life that I lead here.
I spend my days with your children—your five lovely little beasties that barely say thank you and leave Nutella on the newly purchased chairs after the 4pm snack. They are quite difficult to interest, you know. They are over-stimulated by television, personal laptops, Wii, and constant attention . . . I can’t imagine sitting down for a whole hour with them to do one of my Grandpa Mihuta’s art lessons. Art, as tempting as it sounds for children, has no crashes, booms, explosions, prizes, or cash rewards. And that is what your children expect me to provide, as though I keep excitement in pill form in my pocket.
Constance is writing a book—a children’s book of animals to give to Montaine. But what she doesn’t understand is the utter delight that an author takes in putting pen to paper. She is writing it, in part, due to your promise to give her a few dollars upon its completion towards her cell phone fund (I remind you that Constance is 11 years old). I am convinced that at some point in their lives, all artists must live in a box—be it cardboard or dorm room sized. What distinguishes an artist from a clever and creative businessman is that an artist can not simply tolerate a box, but also appreciate it, appropriate it, and turn it into something beautiful in and of itself—a work of art in box-form.
While wandering this evening in la place de l’horloge, I stumbled upon a traveling folk band playing on worn instruments with sparse amps in front of l’opéra. They were surprisingly good, to tell the truth; they reminded me of some of my friends from back home in Athens, playing house shows in backyards to drunken crowds. At one point while I was watching, the string bass player bent down and placed his ear just next to the neck of his weathered instrument, and listened. He closed his eyes and nodded his head as though he were giving silent approval, and smiled. The band probably won’t make an exorbitant amount of money tonight, despite the festival crowds—probably just enough to get back home, eat a filling dinner, buy some good beer, and enjoy the night . . . but they will be content. I recognized the emotion that flickered across the string bass player’s face. I too know the feeling of honing in on a harmony, and knowing that it is good. And that is what happiness feels like—bliss, joy, peace, and a good bass line.
Today, you bought a miniature trampoline, a full sized trampoline, inflatable volleyball net for the pool, and a floating scooter for Montaine. The children were delighted, and will most likely remain so for a few days—hopefully through the weekend and on to Monday or Tuesday if we’re lucky. But soon they will want more. Always. More. Ad nauseum. Gaspillage. Why isn’t it bigger, daddy? Why won’t it float anymore, papa? Who will play with me, mama? Can we go to the festival, Rachel?
The house is supercharged, bursting at the seams, bloated: a pool, a Wii, a playstation, a television, laptops, games, animals, food, and now even a trampoline. It is any child’s paradise. But the children are not content. Far from it. They are itchy, they are restless. They ache for the outdoors—an outdoors that lies beyond the pool, the courtyard, the garden, and the gate.
I have something that you have not: EXPERIENCE. Will your children remember specific days in the pool, with the new air mattress that you bought them last week, or the trampoline, or the inflatable volleyball net? Or will they simply melt into an indiscernible blur of summer haze, punctuated by Montaine’s screaming and the knocking of the Mistral at shutters and doors?
I am grateful for what I have, for what I have is invaluable. You can’t poke holes in it, you can’t drain it, you can’t stain it, and the Mistral won’t blow it away. Although my financial prosperity is dwarfed by the size of your estate, I have memories. I remember specific days of my childhood, over a decade ago. I have seen the corners of my country, and of yours. I have swum in two oceans and a sea, I have crossed the Atlantic three times, and I am not afraid to travel alone. And I am here, in France, happy, alive, and grateful, even if my monthly stipend is less than your weekly grocery bill.
To the Delannoy Parents:
We are of the same flesh, you and I, but we are not of the same mind. We belong on opposite sides of the counter, of the fence, of the camera. You are the ones who eat 26€ fish at le palais des papes, I am the one that sprinkles cocoa on your tiramisu. You are the ones that coyly throw 50 centime pieces that drop with hollow thumps into open guitar cases, I am the one who sits on street corners and sings songs in a language you don’t understand. You are the ones who serve steaming croissants and pain au chocolat for breakfast, still hot from the oven, and I am the one who rises at 5 to bake your daily bread.
It is often said that my world exists solely to serve yours, although I cannot agree. It is simply that our worlds only seem to jostle up against one another when we go to work, and you go to be fed, or entertained, or served. You are the question askers, we are the answer givers. You are the hungry, we are the food providers. What would you do without us?
Although our worlds may jockey and collide whilst we wear our aprons and you wear your jewels, our spheres of recreation spin off in separate directions in the night. Under the stars, you glisten in your diamonds, floating constellations on earth that vanish when the lights snuff out. And we, in that darkness that you leave behind, open up, crack a beer, throw our heads back, and laugh, laugh, laugh.
I have something that you have not, and it is certainly not money. Upon arriving in your 300 year old home, I was astonished by the way that you live. It wasn’t simply the high vaulted ceilings, the chandeliers, the in ground pool in a courtyard of its own, the private gate, the barn, the donkey, and the horse, goddamnit. It was your laundry room, your pantry, and, above all, your refrigerator.
When I cleaned out the freezer today, I found rabbit. Rabbit? You have four jars of Nutella in reserve in the pantry. When there was “nothing to eat” for lunch one day, Cosette pulled fillet mignon out of the second freezer. At all times there are three types of yogurt in the refrigerator (Yoplait fruit, Activia, and Bio yogurt for Montaine), as well as caramel flan and chocolat liégois. You have more pots and pans than you will ever use, and more table settings than people you will ever need to serve. And although you buy bio—to save the planet, as you quaintly put it—you live anything but “bio.”
Sure, you recycle, but have you seen your laundry room, and the sheer amount of loads of laundry you do in a week? Or the three refrigerators/freezers you have stock piled and plugged in at all times? Or the enormous television that the children so often refuse to turn off? Or the pool, that is at times up to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit)? Or the three dishwasher cycles it takes daily to take care of the ever-growing pile of plates on your counter?
When I make coffee in the morning (before I eat a lovely breakfast of Bio Cereal and an Organic Nectarine and Ecofriendly Multifruit Juice), I use a small, gold-coated single-serving capsule made specifically for your machine. At Ohio University, in my shared 14’x18’ box, Mary and I brew coffee that she steals weekly from the dining hall, which is stored in a used can. Forget culture shock—it is class disparity that makes me wake in the morning in awe and in stupor of the life that I lead here.
I spend my days with your children—your five lovely little beasties that barely say thank you and leave Nutella on the newly purchased chairs after the 4pm snack. They are quite difficult to interest, you know. They are over-stimulated by television, personal laptops, Wii, and constant attention . . . I can’t imagine sitting down for a whole hour with them to do one of my Grandpa Mihuta’s art lessons. Art, as tempting as it sounds for children, has no crashes, booms, explosions, prizes, or cash rewards. And that is what your children expect me to provide, as though I keep excitement in pill form in my pocket.
Constance is writing a book—a children’s book of animals to give to Montaine. But what she doesn’t understand is the utter delight that an author takes in putting pen to paper. She is writing it, in part, due to your promise to give her a few dollars upon its completion towards her cell phone fund (I remind you that Constance is 11 years old). I am convinced that at some point in their lives, all artists must live in a box—be it cardboard or dorm room sized. What distinguishes an artist from a clever and creative businessman is that an artist can not simply tolerate a box, but also appreciate it, appropriate it, and turn it into something beautiful in and of itself—a work of art in box-form.
While wandering this evening in la place de l’horloge, I stumbled upon a traveling folk band playing on worn instruments with sparse amps in front of l’opéra. They were surprisingly good, to tell the truth; they reminded me of some of my friends from back home in Athens, playing house shows in backyards to drunken crowds. At one point while I was watching, the string bass player bent down and placed his ear just next to the neck of his weathered instrument, and listened. He closed his eyes and nodded his head as though he were giving silent approval, and smiled. The band probably won’t make an exorbitant amount of money tonight, despite the festival crowds—probably just enough to get back home, eat a filling dinner, buy some good beer, and enjoy the night . . . but they will be content. I recognized the emotion that flickered across the string bass player’s face. I too know the feeling of honing in on a harmony, and knowing that it is good. And that is what happiness feels like—bliss, joy, peace, and a good bass line.
Today, you bought a miniature trampoline, a full sized trampoline, inflatable volleyball net for the pool, and a floating scooter for Montaine. The children were delighted, and will most likely remain so for a few days—hopefully through the weekend and on to Monday or Tuesday if we’re lucky. But soon they will want more. Always. More. Ad nauseum. Gaspillage. Why isn’t it bigger, daddy? Why won’t it float anymore, papa? Who will play with me, mama? Can we go to the festival, Rachel?
The house is supercharged, bursting at the seams, bloated: a pool, a Wii, a playstation, a television, laptops, games, animals, food, and now even a trampoline. It is any child’s paradise. But the children are not content. Far from it. They are itchy, they are restless. They ache for the outdoors—an outdoors that lies beyond the pool, the courtyard, the garden, and the gate.
I have something that you have not: EXPERIENCE. Will your children remember specific days in the pool, with the new air mattress that you bought them last week, or the trampoline, or the inflatable volleyball net? Or will they simply melt into an indiscernible blur of summer haze, punctuated by Montaine’s screaming and the knocking of the Mistral at shutters and doors?
I am grateful for what I have, for what I have is invaluable. You can’t poke holes in it, you can’t drain it, you can’t stain it, and the Mistral won’t blow it away. Although my financial prosperity is dwarfed by the size of your estate, I have memories. I remember specific days of my childhood, over a decade ago. I have seen the corners of my country, and of yours. I have swum in two oceans and a sea, I have crossed the Atlantic three times, and I am not afraid to travel alone. And I am here, in France, happy, alive, and grateful, even if my monthly stipend is less than your weekly grocery bill.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Pardon
5 juillet 2010 lundi
To my parents, givers of life and food and Band-Aids, I full heartedly apologize for the following:
• Insulting your cooking, regardless of the time you spent preparing the meal.
• Refusing to put my dishes in the dishwasher, even though it was right next to the sink, where I habitually left plates, cups, bowls, and silverware.
• Putting empty containers of milk, ice cream, and juice back in the refrigerator.
• Forgetting the ice cream on the counter until a sticky liquid oozed out of the bottom of the container, and coagulated on the counter in a creamy film.
• Claiming the precedence of cartoons over family meals.
• Shedding articles of clothing/toys/towels on the ground, like a deciduous tree in October.
• Blaming my brother for misdeeds that I clearly committed.
• Adding salt and pepper to food before even tasting it.
• Imposing upon your few spared moments alone, and barging into rooms without knocking.
• Leaving drawers and doors open, and lights on, and water running.
• Grumbling about boredom, while making no effort to remedy it.
• Spending innumerable hours in front of the television, slowly killing my attention span.
• Cheating in Uno, solitaire, poker—which I’m sure you were aware of, although you let it slide countless times.
• Spitting out half chewed vegetables, or faking gagging while choking down zucchinis, tomatoes, peppers, or other veggie yummies.
• Chowing down on a meal before everyone had been served.
• Completely ignoring requests to help clear or set the table, put away the groceries, or pick up my things.
• Claiming fullness, then suddenly desiring dessert.
• Accusing you of parental negligence for my lack of video game station (Playstation, Gameboy, Wii, etc).
• Playing music loudly while you were trying to watch the news in the living room.
• Demanding incessantly when dinner would be served, without making an effort to help prepare the meal.
• Sulking when you refused a whimsical request of mine.
• Pushing food around on my plate in an attempt to make it appear as though I’d eaten more than I really had.
• Lying about how much television I’d watched in a day.
• Screaming, crying, yelping, howling, or just plain making senseless noise for no apparent reason, and thereby completely preventing silence.
• Misunderstanding the cost of eating, driving, drinking, playing, and living.
• Believing that “no” could somehow transform in to “yes” if I asked the same question enough times.
• Inflicting unsolicited pain upon my brother.
• Whining about having nothing to eat, when the refrigerator was clearly full.
• Spilling flour, juice, chocolate, or milk on the floor, leaving it there, then complaining upon finding chocolate on my socks.
• Dropping more breadcrumbs than Hansel and Gretel.
• Not thanking you nearly enough for all you did for Ben and me, nor telling you I loved you often enough.
Alban, Constance, Gauthier, Rodrigue—take note. In 8 (or 9, 11, or 13) years, when you’re all 20 years old, I beseech you: thank your parents. They work hard for you. And so do I. But I suppose gratitude grows in puberty like everything else. And for now, it’s up to me to watch you grow into your bodies and personalities and brains, and make the same mistakes that I made when I was your age.
To my parents, givers of life and food and Band-Aids, I full heartedly apologize for the following:
• Insulting your cooking, regardless of the time you spent preparing the meal.
• Refusing to put my dishes in the dishwasher, even though it was right next to the sink, where I habitually left plates, cups, bowls, and silverware.
• Putting empty containers of milk, ice cream, and juice back in the refrigerator.
• Forgetting the ice cream on the counter until a sticky liquid oozed out of the bottom of the container, and coagulated on the counter in a creamy film.
• Claiming the precedence of cartoons over family meals.
• Shedding articles of clothing/toys/towels on the ground, like a deciduous tree in October.
• Blaming my brother for misdeeds that I clearly committed.
• Adding salt and pepper to food before even tasting it.
• Imposing upon your few spared moments alone, and barging into rooms without knocking.
• Leaving drawers and doors open, and lights on, and water running.
• Grumbling about boredom, while making no effort to remedy it.
• Spending innumerable hours in front of the television, slowly killing my attention span.
• Cheating in Uno, solitaire, poker—which I’m sure you were aware of, although you let it slide countless times.
• Spitting out half chewed vegetables, or faking gagging while choking down zucchinis, tomatoes, peppers, or other veggie yummies.
• Chowing down on a meal before everyone had been served.
• Completely ignoring requests to help clear or set the table, put away the groceries, or pick up my things.
• Claiming fullness, then suddenly desiring dessert.
• Accusing you of parental negligence for my lack of video game station (Playstation, Gameboy, Wii, etc).
• Playing music loudly while you were trying to watch the news in the living room.
• Demanding incessantly when dinner would be served, without making an effort to help prepare the meal.
• Sulking when you refused a whimsical request of mine.
• Pushing food around on my plate in an attempt to make it appear as though I’d eaten more than I really had.
• Lying about how much television I’d watched in a day.
• Screaming, crying, yelping, howling, or just plain making senseless noise for no apparent reason, and thereby completely preventing silence.
• Misunderstanding the cost of eating, driving, drinking, playing, and living.
• Believing that “no” could somehow transform in to “yes” if I asked the same question enough times.
• Inflicting unsolicited pain upon my brother.
• Whining about having nothing to eat, when the refrigerator was clearly full.
• Spilling flour, juice, chocolate, or milk on the floor, leaving it there, then complaining upon finding chocolate on my socks.
• Dropping more breadcrumbs than Hansel and Gretel.
• Not thanking you nearly enough for all you did for Ben and me, nor telling you I loved you often enough.
Alban, Constance, Gauthier, Rodrigue—take note. In 8 (or 9, 11, or 13) years, when you’re all 20 years old, I beseech you: thank your parents. They work hard for you. And so do I. But I suppose gratitude grows in puberty like everything else. And for now, it’s up to me to watch you grow into your bodies and personalities and brains, and make the same mistakes that I made when I was your age.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Prince Charming
30 juin 2010 dimanche
I haven’t a clue why every nearly girl under the age of 9 dreams of becoming Cinderella—being Cinderalla must have been hard work, damn it. Sure, she got the guy, the castle, the fairy godmother, the carriage, the glass slippers . . . but forget not the rags that Cinderella shed in donning her glorious ball gown. Why is it that so many young girls can completely forget the fact that Cinderella lived in a forsaken attic for a large portion of her childhood, talking to mice? I haven’t a clue.
I had a Cinderella moment earlier today, while climbing over the bumper of my “new” Suzuki Samurai so I could clean bird poop off of the hood. After working a 9 hour day (9h00–18h00) with my 6 lovelies (Alban, Virgil, Constance, Gauthier, Rodrique, and Montaine), I set about cleaning my car while it was still light outside, and the kids were watching Alvin and the Chipmunks (in French) after dinner. Today was my third day of work with the Delannoys, and it was comparable to Monday and Tuesday. No strangling today and less fights over Uno rules, but Montaine would not eat her yogurt this morning, and although she yawned and rubbed her eyes while I was giving her a little stroller promenade in the garden, she absolutely refused to take a nap before lunch. The result was lots of tears and bloodcurdling baby screams. Other than one threatened revoked dessert (due to Rodrigue’s rampant silverware throwing at dinner), it was a normal day.
So after the dishes were cleared and the kids were contentedly installed in the library, I set off with a bucket and soap and rags to tackle my Jeep, which has been sitting in a barn under a pigeon nest collecting straw and leaves and newspapers and bird poop and spider webs for approximately a year. The task was daunting, and I can’t yet claim that it’s finished. Bird poop has been scrubbed away, seats and dashboard and glove compartment and windows have been wiped down thoroughly, and old newspapers and grocery lists have been disposed of, but the floor remains covered with a fine carpeting of dried leaves, too crumbled to pick up by hand.
I have named her (yes, my Jeep is female) “Courgette”—a fancy sounding French word that actually means zucchini, after her peculiar vegetable color. Courgette is my proof that life for Cinderella certainly wouldn’t have it’s fairy tale appeal if she hadn’t had a fairy godmother to turn her pumpkins into a carriage and her mice into horses and coachmen. While clambering over my Jeep to reach into the deepest, dustiest crevices behind the spare tire, I made friends with the cat (Anakin, named after the Star Wars character, of course) and the dog (Tara, who likes to jump in the pool, then run into the laundry room), the donkey, and the horse, as they all watched me labor. I understand why Cinderella cherished her mice—while the adults were in the courtyard enjoying red wine and cheese on the patio couch by the pool with family friends, animals can be welcome company. You can talk to them in any language, and they won’t mock nor respond, except perhaps with a loving whinny, or a curious meow.
But here I am again, making fairy tales out of everyday life. I suppose that’s what I need to do, when Rodrigue won’t eat chicken, and Gauthier won’t touch green beans, and Constance complains over mashed potatoes. I have to remind myself of the chance I’ve been given to be here in France, spending my summer chasing down blown away pool noodles and wet children with towels. Hell, my room is certainly no attic, and have you SEEN my canopied bed? Granted, the canopy is actually a mosquito net to prevent midnight mutinies by those goddamned bloodthirsty beasties, but I can pretend otherwise. Courgette, in all of her vegetable hued glory, will by my Corvette. And my Prince Charming is 9 years old—Gauthier, who came to the rescue with a vacuum cleaner.
I haven’t a clue why every nearly girl under the age of 9 dreams of becoming Cinderella—being Cinderalla must have been hard work, damn it. Sure, she got the guy, the castle, the fairy godmother, the carriage, the glass slippers . . . but forget not the rags that Cinderella shed in donning her glorious ball gown. Why is it that so many young girls can completely forget the fact that Cinderella lived in a forsaken attic for a large portion of her childhood, talking to mice? I haven’t a clue.
I had a Cinderella moment earlier today, while climbing over the bumper of my “new” Suzuki Samurai so I could clean bird poop off of the hood. After working a 9 hour day (9h00–18h00) with my 6 lovelies (Alban, Virgil, Constance, Gauthier, Rodrique, and Montaine), I set about cleaning my car while it was still light outside, and the kids were watching Alvin and the Chipmunks (in French) after dinner. Today was my third day of work with the Delannoys, and it was comparable to Monday and Tuesday. No strangling today and less fights over Uno rules, but Montaine would not eat her yogurt this morning, and although she yawned and rubbed her eyes while I was giving her a little stroller promenade in the garden, she absolutely refused to take a nap before lunch. The result was lots of tears and bloodcurdling baby screams. Other than one threatened revoked dessert (due to Rodrigue’s rampant silverware throwing at dinner), it was a normal day.
So after the dishes were cleared and the kids were contentedly installed in the library, I set off with a bucket and soap and rags to tackle my Jeep, which has been sitting in a barn under a pigeon nest collecting straw and leaves and newspapers and bird poop and spider webs for approximately a year. The task was daunting, and I can’t yet claim that it’s finished. Bird poop has been scrubbed away, seats and dashboard and glove compartment and windows have been wiped down thoroughly, and old newspapers and grocery lists have been disposed of, but the floor remains covered with a fine carpeting of dried leaves, too crumbled to pick up by hand.
I have named her (yes, my Jeep is female) “Courgette”—a fancy sounding French word that actually means zucchini, after her peculiar vegetable color. Courgette is my proof that life for Cinderella certainly wouldn’t have it’s fairy tale appeal if she hadn’t had a fairy godmother to turn her pumpkins into a carriage and her mice into horses and coachmen. While clambering over my Jeep to reach into the deepest, dustiest crevices behind the spare tire, I made friends with the cat (Anakin, named after the Star Wars character, of course) and the dog (Tara, who likes to jump in the pool, then run into the laundry room), the donkey, and the horse, as they all watched me labor. I understand why Cinderella cherished her mice—while the adults were in the courtyard enjoying red wine and cheese on the patio couch by the pool with family friends, animals can be welcome company. You can talk to them in any language, and they won’t mock nor respond, except perhaps with a loving whinny, or a curious meow.
But here I am again, making fairy tales out of everyday life. I suppose that’s what I need to do, when Rodrigue won’t eat chicken, and Gauthier won’t touch green beans, and Constance complains over mashed potatoes. I have to remind myself of the chance I’ve been given to be here in France, spending my summer chasing down blown away pool noodles and wet children with towels. Hell, my room is certainly no attic, and have you SEEN my canopied bed? Granted, the canopy is actually a mosquito net to prevent midnight mutinies by those goddamned bloodthirsty beasties, but I can pretend otherwise. Courgette, in all of her vegetable hued glory, will by my Corvette. And my Prince Charming is 9 years old—Gauthier, who came to the rescue with a vacuum cleaner.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Meet the Delannoys
28 juin 2010 lundi
It’s like giving birth to five full grown children, already full of energy and personality and quirks, and being suddenly responsible for all of their needs, wants, and whims. Oh, and they speak a different language than you. Imagine my exhaustion. And yet, it’s a fatigue tinged with children’s giggles and nutella . . . so for the moment, all goes well. A quick biography of each of my acquired quintuplets:
Alban, 12:
Thus far, Alban has been having a bit of a crisis of classification. As any speaker of French knows, “you” has not one, but two translations. The more informal “tu” is used to address friends, close relations, immediate family, or people younger than you, “Vous” is reserved for professional relationships, groups of two or more, strangers, or as a term of respect to elders, professionals, professors, etc. “Madame,” being in the third person, can be used as an impersonal, extremely formal term. I’m not sure exactly why, but Alban insists upon vouvoiement (using the “vous” form) with me, unless he unconsciously slips into tutoiement (using the “tu’ form). And imagine my surprise when Alban suddenly called me “Madame” while playing Uno! In the Delannoy family, there is nothing but tutoiement, even between the parents and myself (I asked permission first, of course). I insist that Alban tutoie me, but he has to make that decision for himself, I suppose. Other than his strange classification quirk, Alban has for the most part the characteristics of an oldest child. He likes to pretend that he doesn’t want to do the same things as the younger kids (ie: play Uno, jump into the pool in the evening, etc), even though he secretly does. He wants to become a mechanical engineer or an archeologist one day, and he likes to tease his younger sister by telling her horror stories (which frighten her immensely). He and Gauthier can get, well, brotherly violent, which escalated this afternoon when Alban tried to strangle Gauthier in the pool, being fed up with Gauthier’s splashing. We quickly took care of that situation. He’s a Mario champion, and always wins when we play ping pong. Oh, and he loves Michael Jackson.
(I open a parenthesis here to mention Virgil (11), Alban’s best friend, who has been at the house since sometime early Sunday afternoon. Virgil is an expert piano player, and dreams of becoming professional one day. He promised us a private concert while I’m here. His father is a well known Argentinean artist, and married a French woman . . . and voila, now we have Virgil, his little prodigy. And between playing piano, he listens to Metallica. And sometimes Zeppelin, of which I completely approve.)
Constance, 11:
I think Constance wants a sister that can speak (seeing as Montaine is only 6 months old). Constance latched onto me right away—she always wants to be on my team in poker, play games that I taught her, have me swim with her, sit with me while I send emails, etc. She’s a fan of Justin Bieber (I’ll try to change that, don’t worry) and wishes she were American. Today, she taught me the word for cheerleader, and I could see her being perfect on the sidelines of a football or basketball game—she’s certainly energetic, always smiling, and of course, a bit loud from time to time. She’s terrified of horror stories, and she secretly believes in ghosts, which causes her to never want to sleep/walk/or simply be alone at any time. I let her win sometimes at Egyptian Ratscrew, and she’s a conservative poker player, and Uno’s not her favorite, but she plays all the same (although she refuses to play Connect 4 with Alban, because he always wins.) More than anything, Constance is a little fish—always in the water, always showing me tricks, flipping, jumping, diving. She tries harder than her brothers at learning English—I suppose it’s any adolescent’s dream to be able to taunt her brothers in a language they do not understand.
Gauthier, 9:
Of all the siblings, Gauthier and Constance are probably the closest. Gauthier, like Constance, is always in the water, or making cycles around the pool with his scooter. When with his sister, he isn’t too easily bothered, but Alban gives him a bit of trouble (see the strangling incident mentioned above). I’ve spent most of my time with Gauthier playing Uno or Egyptian Ratscrew—he’s not as interested in poker as his brother is. When we all play Uno together, Gauthier defends my position more than Alban, who insists on playing all of his +4 wild cards for me. He also takes great pleasure in the four colors that the Uno game has taught us all: red, green, blue, and yellow (which for some reason is really hard to remember). Gauthier, like me, loses to Alban in ping pong.
Rodrigue, 7:
With long, black lashes and blueberry blue eyes, Rodrigue is adorable, yet timid. When I came to visit the family a week or so before arriving to settle in and start work, Rodrigue didn’t say half a word to me. Yet when I left, he clutched to his mom’s leg, and looking quite sad and pathetic, he whispered to her that he didn’t want me to leave. He stutters a bit, especially when he gets excited. He likes to be with the big kids, even if he can’t join in their games. When we play Uno, he’s on my team—not that he really understands Uno strategy at all. He seems to have the most fun when he’s alone—I’ve seen him out my bedroom window playing by himself in the courtyard, speaking more to himself than he’ll ever dare say in company. And there’s something to be said for a child who comes in second, and not first, when he plays with toy cars in imaginary races. When playing Mario Super Galaxy 2, Rodrigue is always the little orange star that follows Mario around. He is more than content as that petite étoile orange.
Montaine, 6 months:
When playing games with Montaine sitting nearby, she always steals cards out of my hand with her tiny, clutching fingers. She is at the age where she clutches . . . everything: necklaces, noses, books, cards, toys, fingers. She takes her bath at 37˚C and loves to have her ears cleaned. She won’t take the bottle, and her tiny face stretches into the most delighted smile at the sight of her mom. Cosette, the laundry/cleaning/baby lady takes care of her during the day, unless of course she needs to hang out laundry, or prepare lunch, or do the grocery shopping. Then, it’s up to me to take care of little Montaine, watching her amuse herself in the little world where babies exist.
It’s like giving birth to five full grown children, already full of energy and personality and quirks, and being suddenly responsible for all of their needs, wants, and whims. Oh, and they speak a different language than you. Imagine my exhaustion. And yet, it’s a fatigue tinged with children’s giggles and nutella . . . so for the moment, all goes well. A quick biography of each of my acquired quintuplets:
Alban, 12:
Thus far, Alban has been having a bit of a crisis of classification. As any speaker of French knows, “you” has not one, but two translations. The more informal “tu” is used to address friends, close relations, immediate family, or people younger than you, “Vous” is reserved for professional relationships, groups of two or more, strangers, or as a term of respect to elders, professionals, professors, etc. “Madame,” being in the third person, can be used as an impersonal, extremely formal term. I’m not sure exactly why, but Alban insists upon vouvoiement (using the “vous” form) with me, unless he unconsciously slips into tutoiement (using the “tu’ form). And imagine my surprise when Alban suddenly called me “Madame” while playing Uno! In the Delannoy family, there is nothing but tutoiement, even between the parents and myself (I asked permission first, of course). I insist that Alban tutoie me, but he has to make that decision for himself, I suppose. Other than his strange classification quirk, Alban has for the most part the characteristics of an oldest child. He likes to pretend that he doesn’t want to do the same things as the younger kids (ie: play Uno, jump into the pool in the evening, etc), even though he secretly does. He wants to become a mechanical engineer or an archeologist one day, and he likes to tease his younger sister by telling her horror stories (which frighten her immensely). He and Gauthier can get, well, brotherly violent, which escalated this afternoon when Alban tried to strangle Gauthier in the pool, being fed up with Gauthier’s splashing. We quickly took care of that situation. He’s a Mario champion, and always wins when we play ping pong. Oh, and he loves Michael Jackson.
(I open a parenthesis here to mention Virgil (11), Alban’s best friend, who has been at the house since sometime early Sunday afternoon. Virgil is an expert piano player, and dreams of becoming professional one day. He promised us a private concert while I’m here. His father is a well known Argentinean artist, and married a French woman . . . and voila, now we have Virgil, his little prodigy. And between playing piano, he listens to Metallica. And sometimes Zeppelin, of which I completely approve.)
Constance, 11:
I think Constance wants a sister that can speak (seeing as Montaine is only 6 months old). Constance latched onto me right away—she always wants to be on my team in poker, play games that I taught her, have me swim with her, sit with me while I send emails, etc. She’s a fan of Justin Bieber (I’ll try to change that, don’t worry) and wishes she were American. Today, she taught me the word for cheerleader, and I could see her being perfect on the sidelines of a football or basketball game—she’s certainly energetic, always smiling, and of course, a bit loud from time to time. She’s terrified of horror stories, and she secretly believes in ghosts, which causes her to never want to sleep/walk/or simply be alone at any time. I let her win sometimes at Egyptian Ratscrew, and she’s a conservative poker player, and Uno’s not her favorite, but she plays all the same (although she refuses to play Connect 4 with Alban, because he always wins.) More than anything, Constance is a little fish—always in the water, always showing me tricks, flipping, jumping, diving. She tries harder than her brothers at learning English—I suppose it’s any adolescent’s dream to be able to taunt her brothers in a language they do not understand.
Gauthier, 9:
Of all the siblings, Gauthier and Constance are probably the closest. Gauthier, like Constance, is always in the water, or making cycles around the pool with his scooter. When with his sister, he isn’t too easily bothered, but Alban gives him a bit of trouble (see the strangling incident mentioned above). I’ve spent most of my time with Gauthier playing Uno or Egyptian Ratscrew—he’s not as interested in poker as his brother is. When we all play Uno together, Gauthier defends my position more than Alban, who insists on playing all of his +4 wild cards for me. He also takes great pleasure in the four colors that the Uno game has taught us all: red, green, blue, and yellow (which for some reason is really hard to remember). Gauthier, like me, loses to Alban in ping pong.
Rodrigue, 7:
With long, black lashes and blueberry blue eyes, Rodrigue is adorable, yet timid. When I came to visit the family a week or so before arriving to settle in and start work, Rodrigue didn’t say half a word to me. Yet when I left, he clutched to his mom’s leg, and looking quite sad and pathetic, he whispered to her that he didn’t want me to leave. He stutters a bit, especially when he gets excited. He likes to be with the big kids, even if he can’t join in their games. When we play Uno, he’s on my team—not that he really understands Uno strategy at all. He seems to have the most fun when he’s alone—I’ve seen him out my bedroom window playing by himself in the courtyard, speaking more to himself than he’ll ever dare say in company. And there’s something to be said for a child who comes in second, and not first, when he plays with toy cars in imaginary races. When playing Mario Super Galaxy 2, Rodrigue is always the little orange star that follows Mario around. He is more than content as that petite étoile orange.
Montaine, 6 months:
When playing games with Montaine sitting nearby, she always steals cards out of my hand with her tiny, clutching fingers. She is at the age where she clutches . . . everything: necklaces, noses, books, cards, toys, fingers. She takes her bath at 37˚C and loves to have her ears cleaned. She won’t take the bottle, and her tiny face stretches into the most delighted smile at the sight of her mom. Cosette, the laundry/cleaning/baby lady takes care of her during the day, unless of course she needs to hang out laundry, or prepare lunch, or do the grocery shopping. Then, it’s up to me to take care of little Montaine, watching her amuse herself in the little world where babies exist.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Sur le(s) Pont(s) de Lyon
26 juin 2010 samedi
I decided to head this blog with a little map of France, showing where these last two weeks have taken me. I am a bit impressed with the magnitude. In two weeks time, I have been no more than 15km away from the borders of both Spain and Germany, and a hop, skip, and a jump away from Switzerland. In the words of my father dearest—we’re quite the troopers as travelers.
Anyhow, I’m currently in Lyon, staying with a good friend, Soufiane. Again, I have little to report, but I’ve been happy here thus far. I’ve always liked Lyon—even though it’s the second biggest city in France (after Paris, and slightly before Marseille), it has a wonderful small city charm. The Saône and the Rhône, running parallel through the heart of the city, frame a quaint neighborhood, punctuated by bridges of all shapes and sizes. The people here are welcoming and kind, and although they have a strange taste for beef/calf meat of all shapes and sizes, I’ve certainly never gone hungry, despite my own personal aversion to meat.
Yesterday, Soufiane had to work until 5:30, so after he picked me up at the train station during his lunch break, I relaxed at his apartment for a while, then took the metro into town. I’m easily amused—give me a river, a book, some iced tea, and a shady spot on the banks, and I’ll be happy. Sunshine does wonders for mental health, despite my utter exhaustion from traveling so much.
After Soufiane got off work, I met him downtown, and we headed across the Rhône to get a drink before dinner. As I’ve found often to be the case, we ended up talking about politics and current world events and whatnot. Soufiane is originally from Morocco, and his family still lives there, so his perspective on certain world events (ie: Israel/Palestine relations, immigration in France, the United States’ foreign relations in the Middle East, etc) is certainly unique, and speaks strongly of an opinion not often expressed in the United States. I learn so much here, from all sorts of people, from all sorts of backgrounds. I like that. For dinner, he took me to one of his favorite restaurants, where he knows the workers and whatnot. After having slept less than two hours last night (Julien and I stayed up waaay too late talking), I completely crashed after dinner, and so we went back to his apartment, and I slept straight away.
I’m now on my way to Avignon where I’ll actually start to work after two wonderful weeks of vacation. I honestly haven’t a clue what to expect. The kids are certainly energetic, but they seemed relatively well-behaved despite their giggles and excitement. More news when I have it. Wish me luck . . . I’m about to become a nanny. Bring it on.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Aspirateur Sans Fil
25 juin 2010 vendredi
Perhaps my favorite memory of my time in Strasbourg is sitting at a brasserie with Katie and Julien and friends, and laughing hysterically to Philippe’s almost commercial quality sales pitch for his new wireless vacuum cleaner. Poor Dierstein was plagued with that damn “aspirateur wifi” joke for the remainder of the evening, and the next night, when he wasn’t even there.
I can’t say that we did much in Strasbourg, besides eat, laugh, drink, sit, walk, and wander. And yet, I feel highly satisfied by my time there. In all honesty, I owe most of this experience to Julien , who, as of Tuesday morning, I had never met in my life. Let me explain: a friend of mine from Ohio University, Tom Wagener, has a sister (Emily). Emily, like me, was an HTC French student in her day. However, her high school in Kent had an exchange program with a school in Toulon (if I remember correctly). Through this exchange program, she got to know the Servelle family. A series of long and complicated and mostly irrelevant events happened, and Julien, the son, ended up in Kent, Ohio, with the Wagener family. Tom and Julien became close, and when Tom went to Europe in 2006 to make a documentary, he and Julien toured around together.
A few weeks before leaving for France this year, while Katie and I were still trying to figure out where exactly we wanted to visit in France, I ran into Tom Wagener at 35 Park Place. He asked a bit about my plans, and I mentioned that Katie and I were considering Strasbourg, but that neither of us really knew the area at all. Tom immediately proposed to that I get in contact with Julien, and he promised that Julien would take good care of us. And Tom was right.
Julien makes fun of me for being a bit overwhelmingly gracious, but really, I can’t help it. Julien was the perfect host. He picked us up at the train station, took us out to dinner, bought us drinks, brought us bread and made tea in the morning, took us to the top of Notre Dame de Strasbourg, showed us around the city, took Katie to the airport on Thursday, and drove me to the train station at 6 in the morning on Friday. All this . . . for a friend of a friend. I can’t thank him enough.
Anyhow, as I said above, I don’t have much to report from Strasbourg. I can’t transcribe the contents of the countless conversations we had, ranging from politics, to dating, to sex, to family, to social ideas. It must be said that both Tom and Julien have an almost frightening wealth of slang vocabulary, and the time they spent together resulted in a massive transatlantic slang exchange. Julien introduced Katie and me into this very cesspool of argot, and heaven knows, I learned a lot. I told Julien that next time I come to visit I’m bringing a notebook so I can take notes. It helps that Julien speaks impeccable English (although he humbly disagrees), and that he could translate any French expressions foreign to our narrowly educated ears.
Other than the above mentioned vacuum conversation, other highlights from our time in Strasbourg include American win in the USA/Algeria game, the release of the iPhone 4 (which Julien now has, and let me play with), and food. If only food did not have calories, I would be the happiest person alive. From tarte flambée (flamenkuche), to salmon on a bed of sauerkraut, or spaetzle noodles with mushrooms, Julien insisted that we try the most Alsace specific regional dishes. And I am glad he did. I also have a new appreciation for beer cockails (yes, that sounds weird). For example (Stephanie Fisk, take note):
Picon Citron
• picon (caramel colored, bittersweet aperitif, made from a base of oranges)
• beer (probably a light, blonde beer)
• citron (lemon syrup)
Monaco
• beer (again, probably a light, blonde beer, although I can’t be sure)
• grenadine syrup
• limonade (like lemonade, but not quite . . . it’s not as sweet or as strong)
Max
• beer (same as above)
• white wine (wtf?!)
• caramel syrup
• apple syrup
(Yes, that sounds awful, but trust me . . . it tastes a bit like an alcoholic caramel apple, and it is divine.)
But I digress. In short, Strasbourg was at once nothing and everything special. Touring for me is no longer about sightseeing (even though we went to the top of the cathedral), but rather about experiencing all a region has to offer, whether that be through talking politics over pasta, launching into the PC vs. Mac debate at dinner, telling jokes over drinks, trying a sundry of regional dishes, cheering for the soccer team back home, or simply strolling along the Rhine.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Musical Chairs
22 juin 2010 mardi
Fête de la Musique: national French holiday celebrating the first day of summer with live music in every one of the major French cities.
Think Palmer Fest, but add:
• flash dance raves on public squares
• live music on nearly every other block
• windy, narrow streets encumbered with party-goers of all ages
• fountains and fireworks
• impromptu dance breaks
• percussion parades
• wine
• police dogs and firemen sitting on top of their trucks to watch the festivities below
• ice cream shops open until 2 in the morning, complete with flavors like butter pecan, coconut, nutella, lavender, melon, tiramisu, and crème de la menthe, among other delicacies
• DJs pumping out techno in the middle of thick crowds
and meanwhile, subtract:
• maces, tear gas, night sticks, among other forms of police/crowd violence
• burning couches
• police horses and riot squads
• Natural Light, Budweiser, Miller, Keystone, and other forms of piss-water-beer
• open container laws
• bros and hos
• Good Fellas pizza and Wendy’s frosties
• unintelligible crowd chants
• an 11:00 p.m. mass party break-up due to rampant unruly behavior
In short, I’m attempting to draw a distinction between the way that France parties in mass, and the way it goes down in the United States. My French friends kept asking me if we had something like the Fête de la Musique in the states, and the only thing I could come up with was Ohio University’s fest season, but I was reluctant to make the comparison. Although I’ve only been by OU’s fests in passing, I felt extraordinarily uncomfortable and ill at ease each time I was there. I didn’t feel safe, and it was more of an atmosphere of mass chaos and impending violence than anything else. It was nice to be able to sit on a café terrace, listen to music, spend time with friends, and not worry about being trampled by a police horse, or pushed off the sidewalk by flailing bros or stumbling hos in heels.
Vive la Fête!
(Sidenote: while riding on the train from Aix-en-Provence to Strasbourg today, I stumbled across a perfectly pertinent lyric from a Nickel Creek song:
It’s foreign on this side
But it feels like I’m home again
And there’s no place to hide
But I don’t think I’m scared.)
Fête de la Musique: national French holiday celebrating the first day of summer with live music in every one of the major French cities.
Think Palmer Fest, but add:
• flash dance raves on public squares
• live music on nearly every other block
• windy, narrow streets encumbered with party-goers of all ages
• fountains and fireworks
• impromptu dance breaks
• percussion parades
• wine
• police dogs and firemen sitting on top of their trucks to watch the festivities below
• ice cream shops open until 2 in the morning, complete with flavors like butter pecan, coconut, nutella, lavender, melon, tiramisu, and crème de la menthe, among other delicacies
• DJs pumping out techno in the middle of thick crowds
and meanwhile, subtract:
• maces, tear gas, night sticks, among other forms of police/crowd violence
• burning couches
• police horses and riot squads
• Natural Light, Budweiser, Miller, Keystone, and other forms of piss-water-beer
• open container laws
• bros and hos
• Good Fellas pizza and Wendy’s frosties
• unintelligible crowd chants
• an 11:00 p.m. mass party break-up due to rampant unruly behavior
In short, I’m attempting to draw a distinction between the way that France parties in mass, and the way it goes down in the United States. My French friends kept asking me if we had something like the Fête de la Musique in the states, and the only thing I could come up with was Ohio University’s fest season, but I was reluctant to make the comparison. Although I’ve only been by OU’s fests in passing, I felt extraordinarily uncomfortable and ill at ease each time I was there. I didn’t feel safe, and it was more of an atmosphere of mass chaos and impending violence than anything else. It was nice to be able to sit on a café terrace, listen to music, spend time with friends, and not worry about being trampled by a police horse, or pushed off the sidewalk by flailing bros or stumbling hos in heels.
Vive la Fête!
(Sidenote: while riding on the train from Aix-en-Provence to Strasbourg today, I stumbled across a perfectly pertinent lyric from a Nickel Creek song:
It’s foreign on this side
But it feels like I’m home again
And there’s no place to hide
But I don’t think I’m scared.)
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Mastering the Art of Cold Showers
20 juin 2010 dimanche
Mastering cold showers is a finely nuanced art form, as my cumulative months in living in France have taught me well.
First: shorter is better. No matter how long you wait, the water will not get hot, not even lukewarm. Therefore, the less time standing naked with no hope of warmth, the better.
Second: with a handheld showerhead, avoid spraying the body at all costs. When washing the hair, spray only the hair. Wait until the very last possible moment to have to spray the rest of the body.
Third: keep breathing. Standing under a cold shower has very much the same effect as jumping into a freezing pool—it tends to take the breath away. However, an entire shower cannot be completed sans oxygen, so remember to breathe.
And last, but certainly not least: count your blessings. Although a shower may be freezing, at least there is indoor, running water. And although it may be France’s vendetta to make showering as unpleasant as possible, at least I’m in France. And above all, that’s really what counts.
I suppose I should explain the context. The cold shower that inspired this blog is in Laurent’s grandmother’s house in Argeles-sur-Mer, bequeathed to her grandchildren upon her death. Thanks to the generosity of Laurent and his uncle, who takes care of the house, we were able to spend a weekend at the Mediterranean, only 15km or so from the border of Spain.
Argeles-sur-Mer is for the most part like other beachside tourist towns—it blooms in the summer (mostly July/August) with beachgoers in search of sand, waves, sugary cocktails, and ice cream. Our weekend was pretty much true to form. We lounged on the beach and ate ice cream and went dancing and strolled along the boardwalk and even played mini golf.
Unfortunately, the tempestuous winds and uncharacteristically cold weather kept us inside more than we would have liked, and we had to improvise a bit. This brings me to the allusion to Julia Child and her famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking in my blog title. In an attempt to pass the time in a unique way, we took to cooking. We enjoyed apéros of olives and goat cheese, and for dinner one night Laurent made us duck steaks and salad. The man knows how to cook. This is one of the many reasons why we love him.
In gratitude for Laurent’s cooking, Katie and I decided to cook him an American meal. The task was much harder than you’d think. What exactly characterizes American food? Burritos, spaghetti, gyros, pizza . . . none really count as fundamentally American food. They simply reflect our strange mélange and appropriation of cultural and ethnic cuisine. We finally settled on homemade macaroni and cheese after rejecting other choices such as cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole, chili dogs, and corn on the cob for logistical reasons. However, a trip to the supermarket made it immediately apparent that our task would be more difficult than we had foreseen. Our recipe for macaroni and cheese called for four cheeses: mozzarella, cheddar, provolone, and colby—none of which were to be found in a usable form. We ended up having to buy a cheese sauce with Roquefort and other distinctly French cheeses. Certainly not Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese. We ended up with Frenchified macaroni and cheese, hamburgers on French-like buns, and a cobb-esque salad with tomatoes and hard boiled eggs and cheese—a meal that doesn’t really accurately reflect American cuisine. But alas, we tried. Laurent just needs to come to the United States one day, and we’ll show him how we eat.
Anyhow, we’re now back from the beach, and staying in Laurent’s mom’s apartment in Apt. She has a hot shower and she made a nice lemon cake/loaf that she promptly served upon our arrival. I’ll relay more news on the state of French cuisine and hygiene once I have some.
Mastering cold showers is a finely nuanced art form, as my cumulative months in living in France have taught me well.
First: shorter is better. No matter how long you wait, the water will not get hot, not even lukewarm. Therefore, the less time standing naked with no hope of warmth, the better.
Second: with a handheld showerhead, avoid spraying the body at all costs. When washing the hair, spray only the hair. Wait until the very last possible moment to have to spray the rest of the body.
Third: keep breathing. Standing under a cold shower has very much the same effect as jumping into a freezing pool—it tends to take the breath away. However, an entire shower cannot be completed sans oxygen, so remember to breathe.
And last, but certainly not least: count your blessings. Although a shower may be freezing, at least there is indoor, running water. And although it may be France’s vendetta to make showering as unpleasant as possible, at least I’m in France. And above all, that’s really what counts.
I suppose I should explain the context. The cold shower that inspired this blog is in Laurent’s grandmother’s house in Argeles-sur-Mer, bequeathed to her grandchildren upon her death. Thanks to the generosity of Laurent and his uncle, who takes care of the house, we were able to spend a weekend at the Mediterranean, only 15km or so from the border of Spain.
Argeles-sur-Mer is for the most part like other beachside tourist towns—it blooms in the summer (mostly July/August) with beachgoers in search of sand, waves, sugary cocktails, and ice cream. Our weekend was pretty much true to form. We lounged on the beach and ate ice cream and went dancing and strolled along the boardwalk and even played mini golf.
Unfortunately, the tempestuous winds and uncharacteristically cold weather kept us inside more than we would have liked, and we had to improvise a bit. This brings me to the allusion to Julia Child and her famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking in my blog title. In an attempt to pass the time in a unique way, we took to cooking. We enjoyed apéros of olives and goat cheese, and for dinner one night Laurent made us duck steaks and salad. The man knows how to cook. This is one of the many reasons why we love him.
In gratitude for Laurent’s cooking, Katie and I decided to cook him an American meal. The task was much harder than you’d think. What exactly characterizes American food? Burritos, spaghetti, gyros, pizza . . . none really count as fundamentally American food. They simply reflect our strange mélange and appropriation of cultural and ethnic cuisine. We finally settled on homemade macaroni and cheese after rejecting other choices such as cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole, chili dogs, and corn on the cob for logistical reasons. However, a trip to the supermarket made it immediately apparent that our task would be more difficult than we had foreseen. Our recipe for macaroni and cheese called for four cheeses: mozzarella, cheddar, provolone, and colby—none of which were to be found in a usable form. We ended up having to buy a cheese sauce with Roquefort and other distinctly French cheeses. Certainly not Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese. We ended up with Frenchified macaroni and cheese, hamburgers on French-like buns, and a cobb-esque salad with tomatoes and hard boiled eggs and cheese—a meal that doesn’t really accurately reflect American cuisine. But alas, we tried. Laurent just needs to come to the United States one day, and we’ll show him how we eat.
Anyhow, we’re now back from the beach, and staying in Laurent’s mom’s apartment in Apt. She has a hot shower and she made a nice lemon cake/loaf that she promptly served upon our arrival. I’ll relay more news on the state of French cuisine and hygiene once I have some.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Bipolarity
17 juin 2010 jeudi
I suppose I’ll begin this blog with an analogy to cheese—it’s only appropriate, being in France and all. The context: on Tuesday night, Isabelle, my host mom from last year, invited my family and me to go see Thomas and Hugo, her two sons, play in the orchestra. I was looking forward to it—it had been over a year since I’d seen the kids, and I was sure my parents would enjoy going to the Opéra in Avignon Centre to see the boys play. However, my excitement to see the kids was matched (if not surpassed) by my anxiety to see Isabelle again. I realize that it is not normal for an international student to be utterly terrified of her host mother. In good cases, the host-family/host-student relationship is tolerable, if not passably amiable. However, Jonathan (my Swedish roommate), Natsu (my Japanese roommate), and Shawna (my American roommate) are all in agreement—Isabelle Lestrelin can be, well, frightening.
Back to my analogy about cheese: Isabelle is the cheese grater, I am the cheese. Perhaps a nice crumbly Parmesan that upon contact with the grater fragments into tiny pieces to garnish some nice man’s plate of spaghetti. Not 10 minutes after meeting up with Isabelle and Marie and Pauline (her two lovely daughters) outside of the Opéra, I was subjected to one of Isabelle’s epic (yet typical) reproachful tirades. Isabelle has a deteriorating effect on my strong will—in the face of her jet black hair and bony collarbones and rapid, fierce tone of voice, I absolutely crumble, like well-aged Parmesan. I will not go into the specifics (I don’t want to turn my blog into a space for angry rants about overly forceful French women), but at the end of Isabelle’s reprimand, I was on the verge of tears. And then she gave me a bar of violet infused artisan white chocolate, as though that would make it all better, and we all watched the orchestra.
The next day, Isabelle invited my family over to the house for lunch, and of course, she was syrupy sweet and gentle to my parents, welcoming me as though I was one of her own children. She served us a “quick” lunch of tabouli salad, pasta, fresh cherries, and lemon meringue pie, and had her Partridge Family children entertain us with violin and piano. However, it’s hard to enjoy meringue while a grating woman sits across the table, putting on a welcoming air in front of my parents.
I should clarify her that I do not hate Isabelle, and I do not think that she hates me. I’m mostly just afraid of her. She can be extraordinarily kind, and once in a while we can have pleasant, even meaningful conversations. However, it’s hard not to be tense around someone whose mood flip-flops like a light switch. I see now that I spent my three months in Avignon tiptoeing in bare feet around the shards of Isabelle’s bad moods. After this most recent experience with Isabelle, I understand more than ever why Shawna and I so often took refuge in the harbor of Place Pie, sitting in front of Red Sky. When you’re afraid to be at home, it’s simply necessary that you find a safe haven elsewhere. Hence, Red Sky, and my wonderful relationship with Xavier, the bartender.
But I digress. Every negative must have its opposite. In Avignon, the pavement on the rue de la république glitters under the streetlights at night. Last night, coming home from Red Sky (appropriately enough), Katie and I were discussing why exactly the streets in Avignon glitter. Is it broken glass, or is it gold? Having already discussed the broken glass of my time in Avignon thus far, I might as well pass on to the gold.
Wednesday, after lunch with Isabelle and the rest of the family (along with some other random children that were at Isabelle’s house, like usual), I drove with Katie and my parents out to Montfavet to meet the Delannoys, the family that I’m working for this summer. The first serendipitous discovery of the visit is that the Delannoys live on the same road as Adrien, just down the street from his apartment complex. I feel entirely less alone in the world knowing that he will live no more than 200m away from me this summer.
I’m not entirely sure how to describe the rest of my visit. I’m still not entirely convinced that it was real. In real life, I don’t give bisous to movie-star beautiful people. In real life, I don’t live in a 300+ year old house, with a horse and a donkey and a courtyard and an in ground pool and a private drive and a gate. In real life, I don’t have a jeep at my disposal, nor an entire wing of a house to myself. In real life, I don’t get paid to play with five lovely children, who like to swim and sing and ride scooters and paint.
Conclusion: this simply can’t be real. When I start work next week, I half expect the whole thing to dissolve like a vivid dream in the morning. I’ll open my eyes to soybean fields, not poppy fields, and the hazy humidity of Ohio will rise in the absence of the Provençal Mistral wind. Until then, I’ll revel this strange illusion of happiness.
I suppose I’ll begin this blog with an analogy to cheese—it’s only appropriate, being in France and all. The context: on Tuesday night, Isabelle, my host mom from last year, invited my family and me to go see Thomas and Hugo, her two sons, play in the orchestra. I was looking forward to it—it had been over a year since I’d seen the kids, and I was sure my parents would enjoy going to the Opéra in Avignon Centre to see the boys play. However, my excitement to see the kids was matched (if not surpassed) by my anxiety to see Isabelle again. I realize that it is not normal for an international student to be utterly terrified of her host mother. In good cases, the host-family/host-student relationship is tolerable, if not passably amiable. However, Jonathan (my Swedish roommate), Natsu (my Japanese roommate), and Shawna (my American roommate) are all in agreement—Isabelle Lestrelin can be, well, frightening.
Back to my analogy about cheese: Isabelle is the cheese grater, I am the cheese. Perhaps a nice crumbly Parmesan that upon contact with the grater fragments into tiny pieces to garnish some nice man’s plate of spaghetti. Not 10 minutes after meeting up with Isabelle and Marie and Pauline (her two lovely daughters) outside of the Opéra, I was subjected to one of Isabelle’s epic (yet typical) reproachful tirades. Isabelle has a deteriorating effect on my strong will—in the face of her jet black hair and bony collarbones and rapid, fierce tone of voice, I absolutely crumble, like well-aged Parmesan. I will not go into the specifics (I don’t want to turn my blog into a space for angry rants about overly forceful French women), but at the end of Isabelle’s reprimand, I was on the verge of tears. And then she gave me a bar of violet infused artisan white chocolate, as though that would make it all better, and we all watched the orchestra.
The next day, Isabelle invited my family over to the house for lunch, and of course, she was syrupy sweet and gentle to my parents, welcoming me as though I was one of her own children. She served us a “quick” lunch of tabouli salad, pasta, fresh cherries, and lemon meringue pie, and had her Partridge Family children entertain us with violin and piano. However, it’s hard to enjoy meringue while a grating woman sits across the table, putting on a welcoming air in front of my parents.
I should clarify her that I do not hate Isabelle, and I do not think that she hates me. I’m mostly just afraid of her. She can be extraordinarily kind, and once in a while we can have pleasant, even meaningful conversations. However, it’s hard not to be tense around someone whose mood flip-flops like a light switch. I see now that I spent my three months in Avignon tiptoeing in bare feet around the shards of Isabelle’s bad moods. After this most recent experience with Isabelle, I understand more than ever why Shawna and I so often took refuge in the harbor of Place Pie, sitting in front of Red Sky. When you’re afraid to be at home, it’s simply necessary that you find a safe haven elsewhere. Hence, Red Sky, and my wonderful relationship with Xavier, the bartender.
But I digress. Every negative must have its opposite. In Avignon, the pavement on the rue de la république glitters under the streetlights at night. Last night, coming home from Red Sky (appropriately enough), Katie and I were discussing why exactly the streets in Avignon glitter. Is it broken glass, or is it gold? Having already discussed the broken glass of my time in Avignon thus far, I might as well pass on to the gold.
Wednesday, after lunch with Isabelle and the rest of the family (along with some other random children that were at Isabelle’s house, like usual), I drove with Katie and my parents out to Montfavet to meet the Delannoys, the family that I’m working for this summer. The first serendipitous discovery of the visit is that the Delannoys live on the same road as Adrien, just down the street from his apartment complex. I feel entirely less alone in the world knowing that he will live no more than 200m away from me this summer.
I’m not entirely sure how to describe the rest of my visit. I’m still not entirely convinced that it was real. In real life, I don’t give bisous to movie-star beautiful people. In real life, I don’t live in a 300+ year old house, with a horse and a donkey and a courtyard and an in ground pool and a private drive and a gate. In real life, I don’t have a jeep at my disposal, nor an entire wing of a house to myself. In real life, I don’t get paid to play with five lovely children, who like to swim and sing and ride scooters and paint.
Conclusion: this simply can’t be real. When I start work next week, I half expect the whole thing to dissolve like a vivid dream in the morning. I’ll open my eyes to soybean fields, not poppy fields, and the hazy humidity of Ohio will rise in the absence of the Provençal Mistral wind. Until then, I’ll revel this strange illusion of happiness.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
(Don’t) Put the Baby in the Freezer
15 juin 2010 mardi
Oh you know, just another day in the great city of Avignon. A picnic in the park above le Palais des Papes: chicken and baguettes and French mayonnaise (yes, Shawna, that’s for you) and fresh grapes and goûters (FINALLY). A stop at H&M. Coffee with Laurent at Red Sky and then a mid-afternoon Foster’s at O’Neill’s. Token mass confusion and a long bus ride out to the middle of nowhere. Grocery shopping in Agroparc. Soccer games and soccer fanatics. Old friends and massages and rainstorms. Vocabulary lessons (plan cul = one night stand; rassasié = full; griller le feu rouge = to run a red light) and business reports (?). Late night fast food runs. Goodness, it feels good to be home.
(In regards to the title of this blog—it comes from a song that Adrien and Paul were singing to Katie and me last night. It’s actually rather vulgar, so I will not post it in its entirety here. But it nevertheless afforded us quite a few laughs last night, so I figured it’d be an appropriate title for my first night back in Avignon. Adrien, Laurent, Paul . . . I love you all, but putting a baby in a freezer doesn’t keep it “fresh.” Crazy French boys.)
(ALSO: We’re staying in a hotel on the rue de la république called the Hôtel Regina. For all who know my Regina Spektor love, you can understand how awesome this is. And we have clean towels and sheets. No shower curtain, but hey, we take what we can get.)
Oh you know, just another day in the great city of Avignon. A picnic in the park above le Palais des Papes: chicken and baguettes and French mayonnaise (yes, Shawna, that’s for you) and fresh grapes and goûters (FINALLY). A stop at H&M. Coffee with Laurent at Red Sky and then a mid-afternoon Foster’s at O’Neill’s. Token mass confusion and a long bus ride out to the middle of nowhere. Grocery shopping in Agroparc. Soccer games and soccer fanatics. Old friends and massages and rainstorms. Vocabulary lessons (plan cul = one night stand; rassasié = full; griller le feu rouge = to run a red light) and business reports (?). Late night fast food runs. Goodness, it feels good to be home.
(In regards to the title of this blog—it comes from a song that Adrien and Paul were singing to Katie and me last night. It’s actually rather vulgar, so I will not post it in its entirety here. But it nevertheless afforded us quite a few laughs last night, so I figured it’d be an appropriate title for my first night back in Avignon. Adrien, Laurent, Paul . . . I love you all, but putting a baby in a freezer doesn’t keep it “fresh.” Crazy French boys.)
(ALSO: We’re staying in a hotel on the rue de la république called the Hôtel Regina. For all who know my Regina Spektor love, you can understand how awesome this is. And we have clean towels and sheets. No shower curtain, but hey, we take what we can get.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
