The New York Times today includes an article on the psychological benefits of gratitude. Turns out that being grateful and saying thank you, even making lists of things for which you are grateful, can actually make you a happier person--and not just on Thanksgiving Day, which is what today is, but all the time. I would describe myself as generally happy with a chance of late afternoon irritation, but in the spirit of the our first Thanksgiving in France, here is my list.
Thanksgiving is not a noun in French but a phrase: it is une action de grace, literally, an action of grace. So here are some actions of grace for which I am particularly grateful this Thanksgiving day:
Alice and Wendy, curled up at my feet in my warm kitchen, while chicken stock simmers on the stove and rain falls outside. They keep thinking they want to go outside, but when I open the door and they see the rain, they look up at me in horror and go back to the rug.
M. LaChaix, who just phoned me from a traffic jam in Paris to say that I should absolutely feel free, not hesitate one half minute, to use the refrigerator in his house up the hill to store our Thanksgiving overflow. He does go on, but inside the bossy Parisien exterior there lurks a kind heart.
Olivier, who, last night before he went home, gave me two large bottles of eau de cologne, made at the parfumerie where his wife works. One bottle of lavender water, the other of a lemony, light scent, and when I thanked him he said, Non, non, c'est normale.
C., who took me to the hospital last weekend for stitches in my hand after I dropped a tea cup, who found his way to the hospital on the far side of Grasse in the dark and with a bleeding and woozy wife in the front seat beside him. Who figured out where to park the car--which was not evident, pas du tout--and made me laugh. Who stood beside me holding my hand for the whole event; who, even though the sight of blood makes him faint, never paled.
E. and G., who have held my hand every night this week while C. changed my bandage, even though there hands are so small in mine that I am afraid I will hurt them if I squeeze too tightly.
A. and L. and Paris. Oscar Wilde said that when good Americans die they go to Paris; I have not been particularly good, but nevertheless the universe afforded me sufficient grace not just to go to Paris again, but to go with my two best girlfriends. We walked down the Avenue Victor Hugo at dusk, and as we looked at the beautiful cakes in the windows at Le Notre, the trumpeter in a strolling Dixieland band rolled out the first few notes of "Hello, Dolly." His confreres joined in as we gazed in at the pink and green macaroons stacked up into a baroque festival of a patisserie, and then the band followed us as we strolled down the street towards home, where there were people we loved waiting for us, and good food and light and warmth.
Pas mal, as the French say. Pas mal du tout. Thanks.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Menusier
La Bastiole is a new house, and when we moved into it a few months ago, there were still odds and ends remaining to finish. Our landlord, M. LaChaix, assured us that all would be completed quickly and efficiently, and work continued after we moved in, albeit at a decidedly summer-in-Provence pace. At the end of the summer, as our landlord was closing up his house and preparing to drive back to Paris, he told me not to worry. Instead of having Olivier finish all the work inside the house, the landlord's own favorite carpenter, M. Duc, would be coming. From Paris. For a week, in October, to finish all the odds and ends.
The local equipe greeted this news with much rolling of eyes and shaking of heads. He has to have a carpenter from Paris, you know, because of course we don't have any carpenters around here, said the gardener at the villa below us. From Paris? Un menusier Parisian? Violette stopped just short of spitting. C'est typique. Luigi, the Italian man who comes to help Olivier sometimes, sighed and shrugged. Parisians like Parisians, he said, in his Italian-accented French. And Olivier shook his head. C'est ca, c'est M. LaChaix. The work that M. Duc from Paris was to do for us was not complicated or involved or even particularly skilled--there was some sanding to be done here and there, a couple of missing screws to put in, a trap door to fit. Nothing that could not have been done by Olivier, or Luigi, or any of their friends and colleagues in the village. But, the Parisian menuisier it was to be.
Before he took the autoroute for Paris, M. LaChaix came down the hill for a final look over the house. He took me and Olivier down to the basement and pointed to a heap of old kitchen cabinetry in the corner. This, he showed us, this was going to become shelving for my laundry room. He directed Olivier to help him sort the cabinets out, talking the whole dusty time about how the cabinets could be placed, arranged against the wall, to help me put--and here he glanced pointedly at the detritus of our moving--everything in order. M. Duc would do it; he would understand exactly how it was all to be done. The cabinets were old, but they still had a lot of use left in them.
Olivier leaned over to me, unnoticed by M. LaChaix, who was in full voice on the subject of arranging the cabinets, and said in perfect English, These are good for firewood.
Eventually, after a lot of phone calls from M. LaChaix in Paris, the day came when the menusier was to arrive. The night before, I had a long conversation on the phone with our landlord, and we made a list together of what M. Duc's priorities would be. He was driving down from Paris with his apprentice, and would be at our house the next morning at 8:00.
And he was. M. Duc is approaching 50, with thick grey hair and an impressive moustache, and the beginnings of a serious paunch. When he came into our kitchen, his pants were held up by a length of cord looped through the beltloops. The apprentice, Mathieu, was skinny in the way that only 20-year-olds with a heavy dose of attitude and multiple body piercings can be.
I took out my list and began to go over it with M. Duc. He nodded, puzzled, and I continued, using my best French, trying to make myself understood. But no, language was not the problem. After I continued for a few minutes, M. Duc stopped me. "C'est M. LaChaix qui me dirige, Madame. It is M. LaChaix who is telling me what to do, Madame."
I retreated behind southern graciousness and left him to his business. Later on in the day, I saw Luigi and Olivier outside, working on the mysterious septic pipes. We compared notes on the Parisien arrivals, and I allowed as how I had been put in my place. There was some shrugging and rolling of eyes--no accounting for foreign manners, and for once I was not the foreigner under discussion--and we went on to talk of other things. When the locals turned and knelt back down on the terrace to put their heads in the septic pipes, I thanked them for working on the septic. It's not a pleasant job, and they were at it day after day, resigned but cheerful. Olivier popped his head back up. He grinned. "C'est M. LaChaix qui nous dirige. It's M. LaChaix who tells us what to do."
The week progressed slowly, as M. Duc and Mathieu unloaded an entire carpentry workshop from the hatchback of their Peugeot and set it up on our back terrace. The temperature hit 65, and Mathieu took his shirt off, affording all of us the opportunity to wonder how exactly one decides to have the back of one's neck pierced, and the opportunity to hope that Mathieu's hips, skinny as they were, would be sufficient to hold up his low-slung, baggy blue jeans. The knot in the cord holding up M. Duc's pants held, and, after a few days, he even managed to be somewhat friendly to me, in a distant, cool sort of way. I suppose that if you pay a carpenter from Paris to install second- or third-hand cabinetry in Provence for a week, some hauteur comes with the territory. I coped with the attitude and the hauteur and the sawdust pretty well, thinking about the end result: cabinets, such as they were, installed in the basement, fewer loose doorknobs, and, ultimately, the hatchback gone back to Paris.
Wendy never warmed to M. Duc, though. She detested him on sight, and still detested him five days later when he was packing up to go. Luigi and I were in the kitchen with Wendy when M. Duc came in. Wendy barked her best GO AWAY NOW bark and retreated under the table.
Elle ne vous aime pas, Monsieur, I said. She doesn't like you.
Mais non! Dogs always like me, see? M. Roy went towards Wendy and made vaguely soothing sounds. She barked louder and finished off with a growl.
Non, Monsieur, c'est vous. Elle ne vous aime pas. I shook my head and smiled. No, it's you. She doesn't like you.
Luigi, always softspoken, looked up from his sanding and smiled. Elle n'aime pas les Parisiens.
The local equipe greeted this news with much rolling of eyes and shaking of heads. He has to have a carpenter from Paris, you know, because of course we don't have any carpenters around here, said the gardener at the villa below us. From Paris? Un menusier Parisian? Violette stopped just short of spitting. C'est typique. Luigi, the Italian man who comes to help Olivier sometimes, sighed and shrugged. Parisians like Parisians, he said, in his Italian-accented French. And Olivier shook his head. C'est ca, c'est M. LaChaix. The work that M. Duc from Paris was to do for us was not complicated or involved or even particularly skilled--there was some sanding to be done here and there, a couple of missing screws to put in, a trap door to fit. Nothing that could not have been done by Olivier, or Luigi, or any of their friends and colleagues in the village. But, the Parisian menuisier it was to be.
Before he took the autoroute for Paris, M. LaChaix came down the hill for a final look over the house. He took me and Olivier down to the basement and pointed to a heap of old kitchen cabinetry in the corner. This, he showed us, this was going to become shelving for my laundry room. He directed Olivier to help him sort the cabinets out, talking the whole dusty time about how the cabinets could be placed, arranged against the wall, to help me put--and here he glanced pointedly at the detritus of our moving--everything in order. M. Duc would do it; he would understand exactly how it was all to be done. The cabinets were old, but they still had a lot of use left in them.
Olivier leaned over to me, unnoticed by M. LaChaix, who was in full voice on the subject of arranging the cabinets, and said in perfect English, These are good for firewood.
Eventually, after a lot of phone calls from M. LaChaix in Paris, the day came when the menusier was to arrive. The night before, I had a long conversation on the phone with our landlord, and we made a list together of what M. Duc's priorities would be. He was driving down from Paris with his apprentice, and would be at our house the next morning at 8:00.
And he was. M. Duc is approaching 50, with thick grey hair and an impressive moustache, and the beginnings of a serious paunch. When he came into our kitchen, his pants were held up by a length of cord looped through the beltloops. The apprentice, Mathieu, was skinny in the way that only 20-year-olds with a heavy dose of attitude and multiple body piercings can be.
I took out my list and began to go over it with M. Duc. He nodded, puzzled, and I continued, using my best French, trying to make myself understood. But no, language was not the problem. After I continued for a few minutes, M. Duc stopped me. "C'est M. LaChaix qui me dirige, Madame. It is M. LaChaix who is telling me what to do, Madame."
I retreated behind southern graciousness and left him to his business. Later on in the day, I saw Luigi and Olivier outside, working on the mysterious septic pipes. We compared notes on the Parisien arrivals, and I allowed as how I had been put in my place. There was some shrugging and rolling of eyes--no accounting for foreign manners, and for once I was not the foreigner under discussion--and we went on to talk of other things. When the locals turned and knelt back down on the terrace to put their heads in the septic pipes, I thanked them for working on the septic. It's not a pleasant job, and they were at it day after day, resigned but cheerful. Olivier popped his head back up. He grinned. "C'est M. LaChaix qui nous dirige. It's M. LaChaix who tells us what to do."
The week progressed slowly, as M. Duc and Mathieu unloaded an entire carpentry workshop from the hatchback of their Peugeot and set it up on our back terrace. The temperature hit 65, and Mathieu took his shirt off, affording all of us the opportunity to wonder how exactly one decides to have the back of one's neck pierced, and the opportunity to hope that Mathieu's hips, skinny as they were, would be sufficient to hold up his low-slung, baggy blue jeans. The knot in the cord holding up M. Duc's pants held, and, after a few days, he even managed to be somewhat friendly to me, in a distant, cool sort of way. I suppose that if you pay a carpenter from Paris to install second- or third-hand cabinetry in Provence for a week, some hauteur comes with the territory. I coped with the attitude and the hauteur and the sawdust pretty well, thinking about the end result: cabinets, such as they were, installed in the basement, fewer loose doorknobs, and, ultimately, the hatchback gone back to Paris.
Wendy never warmed to M. Duc, though. She detested him on sight, and still detested him five days later when he was packing up to go. Luigi and I were in the kitchen with Wendy when M. Duc came in. Wendy barked her best GO AWAY NOW bark and retreated under the table.
Elle ne vous aime pas, Monsieur, I said. She doesn't like you.
Mais non! Dogs always like me, see? M. Roy went towards Wendy and made vaguely soothing sounds. She barked louder and finished off with a growl.
Non, Monsieur, c'est vous. Elle ne vous aime pas. I shook my head and smiled. No, it's you. She doesn't like you.
Luigi, always softspoken, looked up from his sanding and smiled. Elle n'aime pas les Parisiens.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Ecurie, again.
This is a story about horses and dogs and Abraham Lincoln.
First, horses: Another lesson yesterday, and another daughter off a horse.
We missed two lessons during the school vacation. E. and G. were quiet at the prospect of another lesson, and got quieter as we drove to the stable and lesson time approached. Once in the ring on their horses, they both seemed fine. I stood in the gallery above the ring with two other mothers--one Italian, one French--and we consoled each other while our children took their horses, or while horses took our children, over low jumps.
The Italian mother brings her two Golden Retrievers with her to the stable. Her way of managing anxiety is to walk the dogs up and down outside the ring. The French mother copes by smoking. I cope by trying to call the States on my cell phone, one of those tricks that theoretically my cell phone can do but at which it sometimes balks. By the end of the lesson, we have exhausted our coping tricks and just stand and watch.
G.'s horse yesterday was not unlike my phone: theoretically, it knew how to take jumps and was capable of it, but sometimes it just balked. On the first balk, G. fell off but did so so slowly as to make it look like an awkward but capable dismount. She landed on her feet, grabbed the horse's reins, and put out her hand to touch his muzzle. I think she was reassuring him. She got back up in the saddle and came around again. This time, the horse took the jump but came back down with a lurch. G. lost both stirrups--France, Italy, and two dogs leaned in towards me--and went over the left shoulder. She landed on her knees, but caught the underside of her chin on a plastic cube that was dividing the large ring in half.
I played it cool up in the gallery. We all leaned over a bit, none of us breathing, and watched the monitrice come over to G. and put her hand on G.'s shoulder to keep her from standing up too fast. Not until the monitrice who had been teaching at the other end of the ring stopped her class and came over to G.--a full, count them, 25 seconds or so after she fell--did I go down to the ring. I walked over to where the monitrices were telling G. to breathe.
Ca va, she's fine, she's fine, don't worry. The monitrice for G.'s class reminds me of one of my aunts who, if flames were spouting out of the Lincoln Tunnel, and we were stuck in traffic with theatre tickets and dinner reservations, could say, it's all fine, don't worry, and I would believe her. I patted G. and checked for tears; she was completely collected. Her breathing was shaky but when the monitrices asked her questions, she responded in perfect French.
Then I realized that there was blood--not much--and that G. had about a centimeter-wide split under her chin where she had hit the cube. The monitrices saw it at the same moment I did. Did I know the pharmacie down the road? It was open until 6--half an hour from now--and I should ask for a particular type of bandage, and have the pharmacist take a look at it. Probably no stitches...but we should go right now. And, by the way, if G. vomited in the night or complained of headaches, she should see a doctor.
What you do not want to hear from your child's horseback riding teacher is the phrase: if she vomits tonight after hitting her head in a fall, take her to the doctor.
The French mother appeared with a bandage to cover her on the way to the pharmacy, and the Italian mother looked on sympathetically. The girls and I rushed off to the car and to the pharmacy, where the pharmacist handed over a bandage--two euros--and told me not to worry. We came home, treated the patient with a hot bath and chocolate, bandaged the wound, and are now engaged in trying not to worry.
And it's not about the injury, really. It's not very bad; there will be a small scar, but it's under her chin and will be hard to see. It will make a good story for her to tell, and I can imagine her telling it: I was taking horseback riding lessons in the south of France... What we worry about is our responsibility. We're the ones in charge, making the decisions, trying to find a way that is "reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future,"--here's Lincoln in his second inaugural address--"no prediction in regard to it is ventured."
Now dogs: Last weekend we took the dogs and the girls on another Sunday afternoon walk up on the plain of Caussols. The dogs were happily off leash, and we heard sheep bells in the distance. Rounding a hill, we learned a critical fact about sheep bells: the sound they make is easily distorted, and what sounds like it is in the distance can in fact be as close as the next curve. Wendy and Alice saw and smelled what must have been 500 sheep--a glimpse of heaven for them, I imagine--and bolted towards them. Out of nowhere appeared two of the biggest white dogs I have ever seen. They were more like polar bears than dogs. As we watched, they stopped our little terrier-poodles in their tracks with a few firm but surprisingly gentle and tooth-free nips, and within seconds, probably about 25, Wendy and Alice were back at our sides. E. and G. both thought it was a great adventure.
But what about next time? What if the next polar dogs are not so gentle?
Last night I dreamt about Abraham Lincoln. (Stay with me here.) I was with a group of people from different places in my life. We all knew that Mr. Lincoln was in danger of being assassinated, and together we came up with a plan to protect him. It was a good plan; I don't remember what it was, but I remember the feeling of satisfaction after we had hatched it. Some of us were going to go to Ford's Theater, and others were going to take the president somewhere else, somewhere safe, and then we were going to meet later. The plan worked--everyone did what they were supposed to do--but at the end of my dream, someone shot President Lincoln, and he died.
So here's the moral, as revealed by my subconscious. Even if there's a really good plan, sometimes good presidents get shot, even if they're already dead and memorialized. Sometimes dogs get into trouble, and sometimes girls fall off of horses. What we have to do--back to the second inaugural--is bind up the wounds our charges get, and try to hold firm in what we see to be right, and"do all which may achieve and cherish" lives which are "just and lasting."
If I were to venture a prediction for the future, though, I do not think it would include a lot more horseback riding lessons.
First, horses: Another lesson yesterday, and another daughter off a horse.
We missed two lessons during the school vacation. E. and G. were quiet at the prospect of another lesson, and got quieter as we drove to the stable and lesson time approached. Once in the ring on their horses, they both seemed fine. I stood in the gallery above the ring with two other mothers--one Italian, one French--and we consoled each other while our children took their horses, or while horses took our children, over low jumps.
The Italian mother brings her two Golden Retrievers with her to the stable. Her way of managing anxiety is to walk the dogs up and down outside the ring. The French mother copes by smoking. I cope by trying to call the States on my cell phone, one of those tricks that theoretically my cell phone can do but at which it sometimes balks. By the end of the lesson, we have exhausted our coping tricks and just stand and watch.
G.'s horse yesterday was not unlike my phone: theoretically, it knew how to take jumps and was capable of it, but sometimes it just balked. On the first balk, G. fell off but did so so slowly as to make it look like an awkward but capable dismount. She landed on her feet, grabbed the horse's reins, and put out her hand to touch his muzzle. I think she was reassuring him. She got back up in the saddle and came around again. This time, the horse took the jump but came back down with a lurch. G. lost both stirrups--France, Italy, and two dogs leaned in towards me--and went over the left shoulder. She landed on her knees, but caught the underside of her chin on a plastic cube that was dividing the large ring in half.
I played it cool up in the gallery. We all leaned over a bit, none of us breathing, and watched the monitrice come over to G. and put her hand on G.'s shoulder to keep her from standing up too fast. Not until the monitrice who had been teaching at the other end of the ring stopped her class and came over to G.--a full, count them, 25 seconds or so after she fell--did I go down to the ring. I walked over to where the monitrices were telling G. to breathe.
Ca va, she's fine, she's fine, don't worry. The monitrice for G.'s class reminds me of one of my aunts who, if flames were spouting out of the Lincoln Tunnel, and we were stuck in traffic with theatre tickets and dinner reservations, could say, it's all fine, don't worry, and I would believe her. I patted G. and checked for tears; she was completely collected. Her breathing was shaky but when the monitrices asked her questions, she responded in perfect French.
Then I realized that there was blood--not much--and that G. had about a centimeter-wide split under her chin where she had hit the cube. The monitrices saw it at the same moment I did. Did I know the pharmacie down the road? It was open until 6--half an hour from now--and I should ask for a particular type of bandage, and have the pharmacist take a look at it. Probably no stitches...but we should go right now. And, by the way, if G. vomited in the night or complained of headaches, she should see a doctor.
What you do not want to hear from your child's horseback riding teacher is the phrase: if she vomits tonight after hitting her head in a fall, take her to the doctor.
The French mother appeared with a bandage to cover her on the way to the pharmacy, and the Italian mother looked on sympathetically. The girls and I rushed off to the car and to the pharmacy, where the pharmacist handed over a bandage--two euros--and told me not to worry. We came home, treated the patient with a hot bath and chocolate, bandaged the wound, and are now engaged in trying not to worry.
And it's not about the injury, really. It's not very bad; there will be a small scar, but it's under her chin and will be hard to see. It will make a good story for her to tell, and I can imagine her telling it: I was taking horseback riding lessons in the south of France... What we worry about is our responsibility. We're the ones in charge, making the decisions, trying to find a way that is "reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future,"--here's Lincoln in his second inaugural address--"no prediction in regard to it is ventured."
Now dogs: Last weekend we took the dogs and the girls on another Sunday afternoon walk up on the plain of Caussols. The dogs were happily off leash, and we heard sheep bells in the distance. Rounding a hill, we learned a critical fact about sheep bells: the sound they make is easily distorted, and what sounds like it is in the distance can in fact be as close as the next curve. Wendy and Alice saw and smelled what must have been 500 sheep--a glimpse of heaven for them, I imagine--and bolted towards them. Out of nowhere appeared two of the biggest white dogs I have ever seen. They were more like polar bears than dogs. As we watched, they stopped our little terrier-poodles in their tracks with a few firm but surprisingly gentle and tooth-free nips, and within seconds, probably about 25, Wendy and Alice were back at our sides. E. and G. both thought it was a great adventure.
But what about next time? What if the next polar dogs are not so gentle?
Last night I dreamt about Abraham Lincoln. (Stay with me here.) I was with a group of people from different places in my life. We all knew that Mr. Lincoln was in danger of being assassinated, and together we came up with a plan to protect him. It was a good plan; I don't remember what it was, but I remember the feeling of satisfaction after we had hatched it. Some of us were going to go to Ford's Theater, and others were going to take the president somewhere else, somewhere safe, and then we were going to meet later. The plan worked--everyone did what they were supposed to do--but at the end of my dream, someone shot President Lincoln, and he died.
So here's the moral, as revealed by my subconscious. Even if there's a really good plan, sometimes good presidents get shot, even if they're already dead and memorialized. Sometimes dogs get into trouble, and sometimes girls fall off of horses. What we have to do--back to the second inaugural--is bind up the wounds our charges get, and try to hold firm in what we see to be right, and"do all which may achieve and cherish" lives which are "just and lasting."
If I were to venture a prediction for the future, though, I do not think it would include a lot more horseback riding lessons.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
American English
The voice at the other end of the phone spoke perfect English, with a slight German accent.
Are both of you English?
No, no, I replied. Neither of us is English; we are both American.
But I spoke with your husband before, and neither of you sound American. You must have lived in England for a long time.
No, no. We have never lived in England.
But you don't sound American. Maybe your parents were English?
No, no. I thought I would turn the conversation a bit. Can you tell me more about the English Club at school that I am going to teach? How many students am I likely to have?
Oh, not so many, eight or 10. Eight or 10 native French fifth- and sixth-graders, once a week at lunchtime, for the remainder of the year. She went on: And they have English during their regular class time, so this is really just for practicing conversation, you know. 50 minutes, and it goes fast. I'll be there, too, I'll be in the next building, doing the ping-pong club, if you need anything.
It goes fast when you have prepared material for 100 minutes, in my experience, but I decided not to say so. Instead, what sort of things have been successful in other years?
Oh, you can talk about culture, sing a song or two. Talk about the Queen. Or--I guess--maybe not talk about Mr. Bush? If we really insist on being American, the hesitation tells me, then maybe I can't talk about the Queen. But maybe not Mr. Bush. Maybe you could find something to talk about in American culture? Or...your national anthem?
I have a vision of trying to hit the high G in the Star Spangled Banner in front of a room of French pre-adolescents. Not the Star Spangled Banner. Not Mr. Bush. Lincoln's Second Inaugural might be a bit beyond their English skills. Thunder Road might be hard to explain in a country that doesn't have screens on windows, much less doors. The Red Sox? Julia Child? E. B. White? Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Town meetings? New York City in the snow? My moment to touch the future of France, and show these children an America besides the Iraq war and McDonald's, and it's hard to know where to begin.
If the 50 minutes gets long, I can always talk about the Queen.
Are both of you English?
No, no, I replied. Neither of us is English; we are both American.
But I spoke with your husband before, and neither of you sound American. You must have lived in England for a long time.
No, no. We have never lived in England.
But you don't sound American. Maybe your parents were English?
No, no. I thought I would turn the conversation a bit. Can you tell me more about the English Club at school that I am going to teach? How many students am I likely to have?
Oh, not so many, eight or 10. Eight or 10 native French fifth- and sixth-graders, once a week at lunchtime, for the remainder of the year. She went on: And they have English during their regular class time, so this is really just for practicing conversation, you know. 50 minutes, and it goes fast. I'll be there, too, I'll be in the next building, doing the ping-pong club, if you need anything.
It goes fast when you have prepared material for 100 minutes, in my experience, but I decided not to say so. Instead, what sort of things have been successful in other years?
Oh, you can talk about culture, sing a song or two. Talk about the Queen. Or--I guess--maybe not talk about Mr. Bush? If we really insist on being American, the hesitation tells me, then maybe I can't talk about the Queen. But maybe not Mr. Bush. Maybe you could find something to talk about in American culture? Or...your national anthem?
I have a vision of trying to hit the high G in the Star Spangled Banner in front of a room of French pre-adolescents. Not the Star Spangled Banner. Not Mr. Bush. Lincoln's Second Inaugural might be a bit beyond their English skills. Thunder Road might be hard to explain in a country that doesn't have screens on windows, much less doors. The Red Sox? Julia Child? E. B. White? Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Town meetings? New York City in the snow? My moment to touch the future of France, and show these children an America besides the Iraq war and McDonald's, and it's hard to know where to begin.
If the 50 minutes gets long, I can always talk about the Queen.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Picasso
The rental car company came and took away the Oldsmobile-Citroen the other day and left me with a Peugeot minivan, a Picasso. The name comes to us, I imagine, courtesy of the Peugeot linguists. I would like to have been at that meeting. What else, I wonder, was on the list of possible names? Other Spanish artists--could I be driving a Dali? (What would the clock in a Dali-mobile have looked like?) Or other ex-patriate artists who lived in France--Hemingway, maybe? (Probably not a name for a minivan; Hemingway was probably an SUV kind of guy.)
If Picasso had designed this car, it would be one of his late, intensely abstract works, when he had turned away from all those quaint art-school concepts like perspective. The control panel--odometer, tachometer, all those sorts of things--rests in all its digital glory in the center of the dashboard, a solid 2 or 3 second glance away from oncoming delivery trucks. A second glove box occupies the space between the steering wheel and the windshield. The heating and air conditioning controls are all to the left of the steering wheel, just above where the engine release lever often is, another 2 or 3 second glance away. The steering wheel has all sorts of controls on it--I am sure that one is about the radio, and I think that I could use another to make a phone call.
The car has no parking gear; instead, there is a parking brake lever in the center of the dash, centered under the control panel. To park the car, you put it in neutral and engage the parking brake. The gear shift is on the steering wheel shaft, just slightly above the controls for the windshield wipers (five settings, so that when you accidentally brush the wiper wand on your way to the gear shift there are five different ways you can startle your passengers).
And then there's the shifting itself: I require an automatic transmission. Our friends at Peugeot made the car automatic, and I do not wish to take anything away from their efforts. However, let me just say that on a good day I can shift from first to second to third gear as smoothly as does our friend Pablo. When we start up a hill and the moment arrives for a change of gears, there is a lurch and a bump and if you listen closely you can sometimes hear the engine curse softly. (The difference here is that I would swear audibly, and in English.)
The rental car company left me a key ring with the Picasso's vital statistics: registration number, type of transmission, and color. And there, in the color, is where, so far as I am concerned, the Peugeot linguists really earned their coffee break. My car is not brown: it is noisette.
If Picasso had designed this car, it would be one of his late, intensely abstract works, when he had turned away from all those quaint art-school concepts like perspective. The control panel--odometer, tachometer, all those sorts of things--rests in all its digital glory in the center of the dashboard, a solid 2 or 3 second glance away from oncoming delivery trucks. A second glove box occupies the space between the steering wheel and the windshield. The heating and air conditioning controls are all to the left of the steering wheel, just above where the engine release lever often is, another 2 or 3 second glance away. The steering wheel has all sorts of controls on it--I am sure that one is about the radio, and I think that I could use another to make a phone call.
The car has no parking gear; instead, there is a parking brake lever in the center of the dash, centered under the control panel. To park the car, you put it in neutral and engage the parking brake. The gear shift is on the steering wheel shaft, just slightly above the controls for the windshield wipers (five settings, so that when you accidentally brush the wiper wand on your way to the gear shift there are five different ways you can startle your passengers).
And then there's the shifting itself: I require an automatic transmission. Our friends at Peugeot made the car automatic, and I do not wish to take anything away from their efforts. However, let me just say that on a good day I can shift from first to second to third gear as smoothly as does our friend Pablo. When we start up a hill and the moment arrives for a change of gears, there is a lurch and a bump and if you listen closely you can sometimes hear the engine curse softly. (The difference here is that I would swear audibly, and in English.)
The rental car company left me a key ring with the Picasso's vital statistics: registration number, type of transmission, and color. And there, in the color, is where, so far as I am concerned, the Peugeot linguists really earned their coffee break. My car is not brown: it is noisette.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Olivier
Olivier has worked for our proprietaire, our landlord, for 20 years. To say that he is the resident handyman is not quite right, although he knows plumbing, gardening, carpentry, and I imagine he can take apart and reassemble most engines. To say that he is the estate manager doesn't seem right either, as our proprietaire's land is not enough to qualify as an estate, and Olivier does both more and less than manage: an estate manager has an office and tells people what to do. Olivier has a small green Renault Twingo and seems to find that the work gets done best when he does it himself. When I talk to French people about Olivier and what he does, they suggest that he is the gardien, which comes close in meaning to a steward. He is the person who looks after things.
For the past several months, he has been looking after us. He comes nearly every day, arriving a little before eight, disappearing for an hour or two midday, and leaving around five. On days when he is not mending something in our garden or showing a plumber or carpenter or electrician work that needs to be done in our house--it's a new house, so new that it's not quite finished--I sometimes only see him walking along the restanques on the way to the Bastide, the proprietaire's much grander house several tall, stone-walled terraces up the hill. But I know that he is around and about, and if I see him when I am coming or going, or if I meet him when I take the dogs up the hill to run, we always speak, and he is always patient with my French and happy to explain the latest developments.
Last week one morning C. decided to bike to work and left, kitted up in spandex, well before the girls and I had finished our breakfast. When it was time for me to take the girls to school, I sent them up the hill to the car and began to collect purse, phone, and keys. No keys. Not anywhere. I checked in drawers, dishes, pocketbooks, pockets: nowhere. Minutes passed while I went through the house touching surfaces and trying to remember where they were. Then it dawned on me: C. must have taken them. I looked in the kitchen drawer: C.'s keys. Aha. I would have to take his car.
I went up the hill to two girls who did not want to be late for school and we all got into C.'s little Volkswagen. I found the clutch and looked at the stick shift: it had been at least a decade since I had driven a manual-transmission car, but this moment had to come sometime. I put the car in reverse and it went forward so suddenly that the oleander hedge jumped back. E., in the front seat beside me, stiffened. I put it in reverse again and narrowly missed the olive tree that our proprietaire planted in the center of our parking area. (Charming, yes; practical, no.)
I realized that this was not going to be the morning that I relearned how to drive a manual car. But what to do? In a few minutes more the girls would be late for school, if I could get them to school at all. By the time C. got to work it would be long past time the 8:15 bell, and then he would have to borrow someone's car and drive the 20 minutes home, and then another 15 minutes to get the girls to school. G. and E. were radiating anxiety at the prospect of arriving late to their French literature class, the hardest class of the week, with the most alarming teacher. Our nearest neighbors are summer people, gone now until Christmas at least. I could phone the school and explain my situation and ask if someone could come and pick up the children, but that sounded a little farfetched and pathetic; I wanted to get them to school and retain a smidgeon of dignity.
I looked over my shoulder and saw the Twingo parked just outside our gate. I left the girls in the car and raced up the terraces. Olivier was just coming out of the proprietaire's garage.
Bonjour! Ca va? He shook my hand, as always.
Oui, oui, ca va, merci, mais on a une petite crise. I explained: C. was on his bike and had taken my keys, I could not drive a stick shift car, the girls had to be at school; could he help?
Olivier was already walking beside me back down the terrace. Bien sur, bien sur, he said, I dislike driving manual transmissions myself. I much prefer automatic; the car I do not drive to work has an automatic transmission. He was in the car now and pulling out of the driveway, heading down the hill and out onto the road to school.
As we entered the town Olivier began to talk. He had grown up here: his parents had worked in a perfume factory, a parfumerie: his mother had ended her career as an aromatiseur, someone who mixed flavorings, parfums, for ice creams, like lavender and strawberry and lemon and jasmin and rose. The factory where they had worked was gone now, replaced by apartment buildings.
Olivier's children all went to the College des Vignes, so he pulled expertly into a bus stop just across from the entrance and the girls leapt out of the car. I kissed them goodbye and climbed in the front seat.
When does school start? Will they be late?
Oh no, they'll be fine, they will be just in time. It was so lucky for us that you were there.
No, no, it is nothing, c'est normale. Of course it was normal only if you customarily went into burning buildings to save litters of kittens. We swung back into traffic and down a side street that brought us, within a few hundred meters, back into the countryside.
All of the land around here used to be farms, flower farms, Olivier went on. When I was a little boy my family would all help harvest the jasmin flowers for the parfumeries. You could smell the flowers in the air. There were no houses as there are now. We were coming along the main road connecting our village to the town. There were just a few bastides, a few large farms, that grew flowers. When I was a boy I would spend the summers with my grandparents, west of here, I can show you on a map where they lived and you could go there, it is very beautiful. When I was a boy I can remember going there and there were champs de lavande, fields of lavender, 7 kilometers in length. I remember seeing them. When there was a little wind, the lavender moved, and it was like the sea.
We were pulling into the driveway now. If you need to go out again today, come and find me and I will take you. It's normal, pas de probleme, pas du tout.
My keys were in the back door. The rest of the day, and since, when I close my eyes, I see an ocean of lavender.
For the past several months, he has been looking after us. He comes nearly every day, arriving a little before eight, disappearing for an hour or two midday, and leaving around five. On days when he is not mending something in our garden or showing a plumber or carpenter or electrician work that needs to be done in our house--it's a new house, so new that it's not quite finished--I sometimes only see him walking along the restanques on the way to the Bastide, the proprietaire's much grander house several tall, stone-walled terraces up the hill. But I know that he is around and about, and if I see him when I am coming or going, or if I meet him when I take the dogs up the hill to run, we always speak, and he is always patient with my French and happy to explain the latest developments.
Last week one morning C. decided to bike to work and left, kitted up in spandex, well before the girls and I had finished our breakfast. When it was time for me to take the girls to school, I sent them up the hill to the car and began to collect purse, phone, and keys. No keys. Not anywhere. I checked in drawers, dishes, pocketbooks, pockets: nowhere. Minutes passed while I went through the house touching surfaces and trying to remember where they were. Then it dawned on me: C. must have taken them. I looked in the kitchen drawer: C.'s keys. Aha. I would have to take his car.
I went up the hill to two girls who did not want to be late for school and we all got into C.'s little Volkswagen. I found the clutch and looked at the stick shift: it had been at least a decade since I had driven a manual-transmission car, but this moment had to come sometime. I put the car in reverse and it went forward so suddenly that the oleander hedge jumped back. E., in the front seat beside me, stiffened. I put it in reverse again and narrowly missed the olive tree that our proprietaire planted in the center of our parking area. (Charming, yes; practical, no.)
I realized that this was not going to be the morning that I relearned how to drive a manual car. But what to do? In a few minutes more the girls would be late for school, if I could get them to school at all. By the time C. got to work it would be long past time the 8:15 bell, and then he would have to borrow someone's car and drive the 20 minutes home, and then another 15 minutes to get the girls to school. G. and E. were radiating anxiety at the prospect of arriving late to their French literature class, the hardest class of the week, with the most alarming teacher. Our nearest neighbors are summer people, gone now until Christmas at least. I could phone the school and explain my situation and ask if someone could come and pick up the children, but that sounded a little farfetched and pathetic; I wanted to get them to school and retain a smidgeon of dignity.
I looked over my shoulder and saw the Twingo parked just outside our gate. I left the girls in the car and raced up the terraces. Olivier was just coming out of the proprietaire's garage.
Bonjour! Ca va? He shook my hand, as always.
Oui, oui, ca va, merci, mais on a une petite crise. I explained: C. was on his bike and had taken my keys, I could not drive a stick shift car, the girls had to be at school; could he help?
Olivier was already walking beside me back down the terrace. Bien sur, bien sur, he said, I dislike driving manual transmissions myself. I much prefer automatic; the car I do not drive to work has an automatic transmission. He was in the car now and pulling out of the driveway, heading down the hill and out onto the road to school.
As we entered the town Olivier began to talk. He had grown up here: his parents had worked in a perfume factory, a parfumerie: his mother had ended her career as an aromatiseur, someone who mixed flavorings, parfums, for ice creams, like lavender and strawberry and lemon and jasmin and rose. The factory where they had worked was gone now, replaced by apartment buildings.
Olivier's children all went to the College des Vignes, so he pulled expertly into a bus stop just across from the entrance and the girls leapt out of the car. I kissed them goodbye and climbed in the front seat.
When does school start? Will they be late?
Oh no, they'll be fine, they will be just in time. It was so lucky for us that you were there.
No, no, it is nothing, c'est normale. Of course it was normal only if you customarily went into burning buildings to save litters of kittens. We swung back into traffic and down a side street that brought us, within a few hundred meters, back into the countryside.
All of the land around here used to be farms, flower farms, Olivier went on. When I was a little boy my family would all help harvest the jasmin flowers for the parfumeries. You could smell the flowers in the air. There were no houses as there are now. We were coming along the main road connecting our village to the town. There were just a few bastides, a few large farms, that grew flowers. When I was a boy I would spend the summers with my grandparents, west of here, I can show you on a map where they lived and you could go there, it is very beautiful. When I was a boy I can remember going there and there were champs de lavande, fields of lavender, 7 kilometers in length. I remember seeing them. When there was a little wind, the lavender moved, and it was like the sea.
We were pulling into the driveway now. If you need to go out again today, come and find me and I will take you. It's normal, pas de probleme, pas du tout.
My keys were in the back door. The rest of the day, and since, when I close my eyes, I see an ocean of lavender.
Maps
A facsimile of a 1907 map of Union County, North Carolina, hangs over our telephone cabinet. We have two phones: one has a French number, and we use it to make local calls at a somewhat shocking expense, and the other has our U.S. number, and we use it to call everywhere else for free. My great-grandparents and their families in Union County a century ago would have been more than suspicious of such gadgetry and more than puzzled at our decision to come to a place so far from home.
The map shows an overwhelmingly rural world. The county seat is marked, with its two cotton mills, as are all the churches (of which many, some of them noted as "colored," and none of them Catholic; synagogues or temples existed only in the Bible) and school houses (not as many as churches, but a respectable number). "Land Owners Residences" are marked with a square, and "tenant houses" with a cross. The rural mail routes are listed. The place names are either geographic--Marshville, Lanes Creek--or biblical--New Salem, Olive Branch.
A hundred years later, Union County is a suburb of Charlotte. Almost all the farmland is gone; the land where my family farmed cotton and planted vegetable gardens for two centuries has been paved for subdevelopments and 7-Elevens. Extraordinary change in just a couple of generations.
On a walk the other day I met an old man who was collecting his morning copy of Nice-Matin from the newspaper box at the end of his driveway. We admired each other's walking canes and he told me he was 80 years old.
Have you lived here long?
He gestured to the tumbledown farmhouse, almost overtaken by blackberry vines, a little ways down the road. I was born in that house. I had six brothers and sisters, and my family farmed all this land, from here (the edge of the road where we were standing) down to the valley (his arm took in the side of the hill).
Olives? I asked, eager to keep him talking.
But no, not olives. My parents grew jasmine and roses, for the perfumeries in the next town. When I was a little boy I helped them. (Now he began to hit his stride and all I had to do was sound encouraging.) My brother and I would walk up the hill to the village school every morning, walk home for lunch, and then back to school in the afternoon. We had a few olive trees, enough to make oil for our family. In the fall we would harvest the olives and take them to the mill over there (he gestured to the far side of our hill; the mill still makes olive oil).
Was this road here then?
It was a path, between my parents' farm and the neighbors'. When the town decided to make a road, they took more of my parents' land than the neighbors. (He showed me, with his cane, where his family's land had stopped--two thirds of the way across the road.)
A car passed us. Those people, they are English.
I am from America.
Not England? American? He was startled, and for a moment I felt like part of some latter-day expeditionary force. But you speak French.
I try to speak French. It is very difficult, but it is a beautiful language.
He nodded, accepting the compliment as his due. It is the most difficult language to learn. Where do you live?
I told him, and he told me whose farm it used to be, and who used to own the farms around us, and what they farmed: jasmine or roses or lavender or olives. The farms are almost all gone now, broken up by the families to give a piece of land to each child, or sold off to Parisians or other foreigners for second homes. But my neighbor, this old man, remembered all their names, some of them his schoolmates, some relations, remembered some fondly and some less so.
I went home, watered the dogs, and read a little more in Braudel. He was talking
about the French landscape, how it bears witness to what it does not show,...helps to reconstitute the balance of former times, gives meaning to the remarks of travellers, famous or
otherwise, who have been there before us and seen almost the same things--ah, but it is that 'almost,' the often tiny differences that plunge us back into the life of the past. (Braudel, The Identity of France, 1985, p. 42)
The map shows an overwhelmingly rural world. The county seat is marked, with its two cotton mills, as are all the churches (of which many, some of them noted as "colored," and none of them Catholic; synagogues or temples existed only in the Bible) and school houses (not as many as churches, but a respectable number). "Land Owners Residences" are marked with a square, and "tenant houses" with a cross. The rural mail routes are listed. The place names are either geographic--Marshville, Lanes Creek--or biblical--New Salem, Olive Branch.
A hundred years later, Union County is a suburb of Charlotte. Almost all the farmland is gone; the land where my family farmed cotton and planted vegetable gardens for two centuries has been paved for subdevelopments and 7-Elevens. Extraordinary change in just a couple of generations.
On a walk the other day I met an old man who was collecting his morning copy of Nice-Matin from the newspaper box at the end of his driveway. We admired each other's walking canes and he told me he was 80 years old.
Have you lived here long?
He gestured to the tumbledown farmhouse, almost overtaken by blackberry vines, a little ways down the road. I was born in that house. I had six brothers and sisters, and my family farmed all this land, from here (the edge of the road where we were standing) down to the valley (his arm took in the side of the hill).
Olives? I asked, eager to keep him talking.
But no, not olives. My parents grew jasmine and roses, for the perfumeries in the next town. When I was a little boy I helped them. (Now he began to hit his stride and all I had to do was sound encouraging.) My brother and I would walk up the hill to the village school every morning, walk home for lunch, and then back to school in the afternoon. We had a few olive trees, enough to make oil for our family. In the fall we would harvest the olives and take them to the mill over there (he gestured to the far side of our hill; the mill still makes olive oil).
Was this road here then?
It was a path, between my parents' farm and the neighbors'. When the town decided to make a road, they took more of my parents' land than the neighbors. (He showed me, with his cane, where his family's land had stopped--two thirds of the way across the road.)
A car passed us. Those people, they are English.
I am from America.
Not England? American? He was startled, and for a moment I felt like part of some latter-day expeditionary force. But you speak French.
I try to speak French. It is very difficult, but it is a beautiful language.
He nodded, accepting the compliment as his due. It is the most difficult language to learn. Where do you live?
I told him, and he told me whose farm it used to be, and who used to own the farms around us, and what they farmed: jasmine or roses or lavender or olives. The farms are almost all gone now, broken up by the families to give a piece of land to each child, or sold off to Parisians or other foreigners for second homes. But my neighbor, this old man, remembered all their names, some of them his schoolmates, some relations, remembered some fondly and some less so.
I went home, watered the dogs, and read a little more in Braudel. He was talking
about the French landscape, how it bears witness to what it does not show,...helps to reconstitute the balance of former times, gives meaning to the remarks of travellers, famous or
otherwise, who have been there before us and seen almost the same things--ah, but it is that 'almost,' the often tiny differences that plunge us back into the life of the past. (Braudel, The Identity of France, 1985, p. 42)
The often tiny differences that plunge us back into the life of the past: my neighbor drawing his family's property line from half a century ago on the road, the memory of that perceived injustice as strong as if the town was going to have a hearing about it that night. Now I follow that disputed line every day on the road. When I look at the map over the phone table, I see the jasmine that grew on the hillside. If I can find out how to harvest the olives on our trees, I'm going to take them around the hill to the moulin, and hope that someone is putting in a few rows of tomatoes in the yard behind her new house in Union County.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
