La Coquette

No one saw it coming

My parents were in France a couple of weeks ago. In this video we are having dinner at my 20-year-old cousin Louise’s apartment in Le Mans.  My uncle (yellow sweater) is telling a story about some traveling boy scouts who recently camped on their farm property.  I began filming because I thought it would be a cute story, and it could have been.  But you’ll see, it sort of gets derailed.  What happens is that my mom says something that makes me laugh.  Maybe it was fashion week exhaustion.  Maybe it was the fact that I had a stressful experience at the train station hours earlier.  Maybe it reminded me of all the times I've been the out-of-the-loop foreigner.  Maybe it's the story itself (French boy scouts invading your yard!).  Maybe it's the way my mom and aunt catch my laughter and begin laughing, in shock, at the tears spilling from my eyes.

I wish you could have seen my face.  Actually I don't.  It probably looked all crumpled and pink. 

Scouts
Uploaded by Efourmont

2 more things:

-I love how my Dad (grey sweater) is unphased by my meltdown.  He takes the opportunity (No one is talking!  Finally!) to begin reminiscing.  “We were about 14…”

-If you listen closely, you will hear that my Mom calls my Dad dan-YELL not DAN-yull, because that is how the name is pronounced in French, and that is how she has always said it. To an American ear, it sounds like she is saying “Danielle.” Meanwhile, my Dad’s answering machine at work says, “Hello, you’ve reached DAN-yull Fourmont."  He gets away with his American drag until one of his family members calls, asking if "Danielle" is there. 

My new hole in the wall

In France, when you move, you generally take all appliances with you: oven, refrigerator, washing machine, and sometimes even cupboards. Everything but, you know, the kitchen sink. It seems wrongheaded in a city where so many people live in walk-ups, but that’s the way it’s done.

And since in my last apartment, the one that was an 11-by-14 foot maid’s room, I only had a minibar-sized fridge and a hotplate, I’ve spent a good part of this last week making decisions on my new kitchen. I talked my landlord into giving me all new cupboards and countertops from IKEA, a complicated enough thing to order in your own language. Now I know my plans de travails from my placards, let me tell you.

Luckily, I have the internet, so I’ve been able to take care of work emails for my current freelance job, but in fashion you have to send faxes sometimes (imagine!), especially for fashion week invite requests (so 1980’s!), and being in a new neighborhood where I don’t know where to go for anything has made the easiest things a big production.

Also, everything from my old apartment had to be moved out of my friend Stefanie’s cave, where it was stored during my time in Chicago.

So, that's where I've been these last two weeks.

I’m lucky to have had a lot of help. My parents were here for over a week, and my dad’s friend Regis drove in from Orleans to help move my boxes. If there’s ever a person you want to help you move, it’s Regis. He speaks no English, except for his favorite phrase: “No probleme.” As in, everytime my voice escalates, Regis puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “Eleesabet. Hey, no probleme.”

He also helped us remove a wood-burning oven that was offending my spacial planning. Regis (left) and my Dad pay their respects.

This was right before they spilled ashes all over my staircase. No probleme!

I know, the stove was so cute and typique, right? I felt badly to see it go, but when it came down to it, I needed that extra space to store my American-girl consumer goods. Look, that was mostly a joke.

But I do have a lot of shoes.

Bonus shot of my camera-elusive mother surveying the hole in the wall.

Neither lavender, nor sunflower, nor Puff Diddy

Saint-Céré is in the south of France, in the Lot.  When you say you are visiting the “South of France” in the summer time, I know that people get one of two ideas in their head.  Either they imagine yachting with Puff Diddy and the other various celebrities who pass through Europe to make commercials, celebrities that have to keep their babies from going through the winter barefoot and hungry. 

Although Clooney, man, there's no excuse.  (Warning: music sketchy for work.)

The other thing they imagine is that I am going to frolic in the lavender fields of Provence, wearing white linen, and maybe painting sunflowers in the afternoon light.  My knowledge of Provence comes from a cold November backpacking trip in college, and  the towns I visited were sort of ghostly, but I imagine in the summer time it is scrumptious, and that everything smells like it has been marinated in a vat of L’Occitane hand cream. 

Saint-Céré is not like either of those places, but it is beyond lovely.  And here is what we might call Exhibit X for why you have good reason to hate me, because when I’m not in Paris, I am able to visit family in places that look like this.

The defense rests.

I’ve been visiting Saint-Céré since I was a little kid, but this was the first time I’ve come alone, and only the third time I’ve visited since living in France.  The only explanation I can offer for this is that the ride to Saint-Céré takes six hours, the last two of which occur on a small train so Communist-era, its brown vinyl seats stab your legs with the torn pieces where sticky foam pops out.  It stops for about ten seconds at each little town it passes, which may be why I had the impression I was riding a bus.  When I jumped out at my stop, Breteneux, I was standing on grass.

The alternative to the train is to arrive via car which is what my family did when I was a kid.  After ungluing my legs from my sisters (the car was tiny, no air conditioning) the first thing we always did was climb the small mountain which overlooks the town.  When it came to physical exertion, the breadth of my talents ran the gamut from jazz to tap dancing.  I don’t remember complaining, but when my mother recounts this story her voice hints that it might have been a bit much for me, the only one in the family who has never had the upper arm strength to serve a volleyball more than three feet without ricocheting backwards from the exertion.

My cousin Jean and his wife Salomé (on right) just had a baby.  Salomé is from Austria and every bit as athletic and family oriented as her husband. At their wedding dinner, the Austrians took the stage and formed a band, each one playing a different musical instrument.  You just know this kid is going to know how to yodel.

I thought I was all about walking these days, but this family?  They put me to shame.  Every night after dinner it was “hup” who is going for a walk?  And then we all trooped off for the next two hours, came home, had a glass of water in the kitchen with the windows open for the summer night breeze, our voices lowered so as to not disturb the neighbors, and then shut the iron shutters and went straight to bed.  I kept wondering where they could find the time to live like this and then I remembered, oh right, there’s no Project Runway.  They don’t own a t.v.  Which makes me a little anxious. 

At the end of my trip, my cousin Lise had come home for her summer vacation and she asked if I wanted to do a walk “un peu comme ca,” (here she waved her arm up and down, as if she were hanging from a lowrider), or flat.  I said hilly would be fine and waved my arm like hers.  We have always communicated in pantomime, my French cousins and I, so it’s a difficult habit to break.

And then we went and climbed a mountain.  A different one this time.

There was definitely a moment during this climb, where I had not been mentally prepared for the fact that I would have to use my hands to pull myself up on rock, which is pretty much the definition of MOUNTAIN CLIMBING, and not knowing how much further it would continue like this, I blurted that I might have to turn around.  I even took it a step further and snarled that I didn’t think we had the same idea of what constituted a hike “like this.”  Arm wave.

In my defense I can only ask you this:   Have you ever been in the middle of nowhere with a group and you just know that if things went wrong, you would totally be the Piggy?   Because if you haven’t, if you haven’t felt like the weakest link with the highest proportion of juicy, delicious pudge to bone, then you just can’t understand. 

Here is Lise at the top looking like a daisy.  To reiterate, she is unimpressed by the fact that she has just climbed a mountain.  She does not think it is a mountain.

In a “Can you hear me now moment” she and her friend both got phone calls at the same time.  Lise’s call was from her office and she was so in control of her lung capacity, she decided to take it.  Her friend there is not wearing mountain climbing clothes.  He didn't know we'd be climbing a mountain either.

Meanwhile, I stood to the side lightheaded and listening for conch shells or beating drums or anything that might signify my demise.  At least it would mean I wouldn’t have to use my thighs, not ever again. 

Back in Saint-Céré, I was able to flex a different set of muscles.  There was a flea market in the village and I made off like a bandit with some anatomical school posters from the 1960s (mmm, yummy Penguin Classics font) and Orangina glasses, a set of six for ten euro.  Hollah.

Over this little week in Saint-Céré, I got to see that, while we may have a different idea of what constitutes a mountain and while the I’d rather shave my head than live without a television as they do, we are still very similar, this family and I.  We are bound by more than just the way we all raise our eyebrows.

But no moment was more illuminating than what happened when I got on the train to go home.  I wanted to protect the posters I had bought, so in the car on the way to the station I asked for the plastic bags which I saw stashed in the compartment on the car door. 

After I boarded the train there was some time before it left the quai and I took out my nail scissors and cut the bags, tying one onto the other until I had fashioned a cover for the posters.  I walked back to the train door to say goodbye one last time, and waved my MacGuyver-ed poster cover in my hand. 

I had a hunch this would make them happy, because it’s something my Dad would love.  They grinned so hard they looked like they’d fall over.  My uncle gave me some applause.  So just for future reference, if you are a person who can make something for free with plastic bags and rubber bands, you are totally in with the Fourmonts. 

My Poppa

My family and I have had a rough week.  I thought I wouldn’t say anything about this here.  I could write something normal like “Hi, I bought a dress,” but I’m horrible at disguising my feelings.  My idea of acting happy when I’m sad is to talk stiffly about the weather.

I wanted to let you all know that I flew home to the US a week ago because my maternal grandfather, Bertrand C. Mills, was sick with pancreatic cancer.  He  passed away in a VNA Hospice house Monday morning, really peacefully.  My mother and grandmother were right there with him, and my Dad, Aunt Pat and I arrived within minutes. 

My mother, by the way, she has been so strong and amazing throughout these last seven months; it takes my breath away. 

One memory that I’ll never forget is sitting in the kitchen of Hospice house eating takeout sushi and laughing with her.  She and I have this thing where we are frequently defeated by inanimate objects--seatbelts on airplanes, to name one example.  It is a true fact that I cannot open 88% of the door knobs I meet.  One of us starts laughing at our state of pathetic-ness and we can’t stop. 

This time we were being pummeled by stupid cancer, so it didn’t take much. Like, the fact that my grandfather drank a liter of water in 30 minutes while under my watch, more water than he had had in the last three days, and he just kept drinking?  And then he asked for more?  As I recounted that story to my Mom, it was enough to bring the tears rolling and the foggy glasses, we laughed so hard. 

Another thing I’ll never forget is the last time I spoke to my grandfather and he responded clearly; it was Saturday evening.

[His words were audible, but often incoherent in those last few days, a little bit like talking with someone who was dozing off next to you on the couch.]

I squeezed my grandfather’s hand and said, “Poppa, I forgot to tell you: my blog was in the Wall Street Journal!”

He looked me right in the eye and said, “No it wasn’t.”

Good lesson from my Poppa:  DON’T BRAG. 

When I think of my grandfather, I think of what a gentleman he was, right up to the end when he was too weak to even open his eyes, but would pucker up his lips for every new visitor that came to say hello.  We've been hurting a lot over this last week, and I know he wouldn't want that.  It's just that we will miss him so much. 

I've got you pegged

Something I really like about my father is that he rarely wears the rose-tinted spectacles of the nostalgic immigrant.  (You know, In the old country this would never happen; America is not fit to wipe the poop from France’s shoes, etc.) 

I like to think he is fair and judicious on both countries weaker points.  Able to see where the faults lie.  Never playing favorites.  Like Judge Judy minus the cantankerous shtick.

Maybe this is because I tend to be simpatico with his rulings. 

Which brings me to the day of my parent's arrival. 

The scene:  Their hotel in the 5th arrondissement.  When my mother and I wedged out of the little metal lift onto their floor, exhausted from lugging suitcases, anxious to wash our hands and collapse on the bed, what we saw was not the haven of a clean hotel room.  We saw a naked mattress, garbage littered around the room, dirty ashtrays, and no maid in sight.  Kind of like my apartment if you were to pop by last Sunday morning.

At that moment, my father appeared on the stairs, took one look at the abandoned maid’s trolley and mess of a room and said, “Did the maid go on a protest?"

I giggled under my breath and said, “Welcome to France!”

And then the three of us laughed.  There may have been a snort involved.   

And then we went downstairs to learn that the front desk had given my parents the wrong key.  That wasn’t their room at all. 

All this to say:  Maybe my Dad’s not like Judge Judy.  (And thank goodness.  Lady drives me crazy.)  Maybe my Dad looks at France and America more like two children that he loves equally.  He just happens to see America a little more often.  France is the away at boarding school.  Possibly in England.

It reminds me of something that happened later in the trip, when I was accused of losing a DVD documentary, my sister’s DVD, my sister who was about to return to the US and wanted it.  We ransacked my apartment, my parents tsk-ing at my alleged disorganization.  Even I was sure I’d lost it.  (Look at the chocolate stains on my sweater!  Have you seen what’s under my bed?  It all adds up!)

I promised my sister if the DVD didn’t surface in a week, I’d buy her a new one.  And then it bobbed up the next day.  In my mother’s suitcase, nestled with her dirty socks. 

So there you have it, France.  You, I, and the good people of Court TV know about objectivity issues with family--they know you too damn well.  Fair or not, they’ve got you pegged.

Yours,

The Fourmont Family Member Who Loses Things (even though it was mostly just this phase I had in junior high school). 

Pétanque

Summertime was the time for visiting France.  But it was also the time when the French would visit us.  In our first house in Florida, out west of town, I remember my Dad, Pépé, and Victor on the dirt road over by the canal, playing pétanque in the muggy evenings.  Neighbors pass by, out walking the dog.  “Ya’ll havin’ fun?”  They’re holding beers or iced tea in thick plastic cups with lids.  They’re wearing t-shirts advertising products or sporting events and swim trunks that hit the knees.

Pépé's brother, Victor, has on shorts that are too short.  And also intricate leather sandals that buckle.  My grandfather always has a handkerchief in his pocket and a tweed cap on his head.  They both look so small next to the Americans.   

I ride my bike in circles and notice how my Dad’s voice sounds different in French.  Lower.  And he laughs a lot. 

I took this picture in March in the Jardin du Luxembourg.  It’s usually the same men playing pétanque every weekend.  I do enjoy watching them.

Sometimes, we hold Hoosie conventions and summits on Wee-waws

A transatlantic conversation with my youngest sister Jennifer last night.

“You wont believe what Jeanne just told me,” I said.
“What?”
“Tata Brigitte?  We are supposed to call her taTI Brigitte.”
“WHAT?”
“It’s flooring, I know.”
“But we’ve always called her tata!”
“Yes.”
“It was always ‘tonton Bernard and tata Brigitte.’”
“I can’t argue with that.”
“Bonjour, TATA?  Ca va, TATA?  MERCI POUR LE CADEAU, TA-TA?”
“I’ve been asking the same questions, trust me.”
“What about tata Marie-Line?”
“Oh, we can still call her 'tata.'  Apparently the ‘tati,’ it’s just a southern thing.”
“Why did no one say anything?  ALL THESE YEARS OF ‘TATA’?”
“Life has no logic, you’ll understand this one day.”
“Wait, there’s another call.”

*clicks over*

“That was Kadie.  She wanted me to get rid of you, and I said, ‘No way, my sister’s called long distance from France, and we’re having a totally pivotal discussion concerning our tatas.’”

Update: If you're not from America, go here.  Never say I didn't learn you nothing. 

It's called, Les Guêrets

Me, Mémé, Jeanne, Aimee, Lise, Claire, Jean, Pépé, Etienne. (Cousins not yet born--Jennifer and Louise)

The farm was:

• Light suppers--milk straight from the cow, with morsels of french bread, eaten like cereal from a bowl
• Outdoor lunches that lasted three hours
• "Summer reading" on the terrace swing during la sieste
• A heavy cloth napkin, your own, tucked into a wooden drawer for the next meal
• Climbing barn ladders
• The place my father was born
• The place my grandmother was born
• The place I visited every other summer of my childhood
• Cherry picking
• Wheelbarrow rides, pulled by a work pony
• "Telephone" with my nine cousins at the kids table
• Card games with the adults, Bouchon!, until bedtime
• Hearing our parents laughing and staying up late
• Summer of '89--Sleeping on the floor of the old nursery, the room where my father once slept
• Summer of '93--Graduating to a bed
• Making rounds to see relatives I could never remember, but who remembered me, squeezed me, and kissed me.  Wetly.
• Picnics; hiking to french marching songs, "Un Kilomètre à Pied"
• Sparklers on July 14th, instead of July 4th
• Waking up in the middle of the night to watch calves being born

Today, there's no kids table.  Today, we used paper napkins at lunch, not the country-style cloth ones (I loved the cloth ones).  Today the farm is still owned by my tonton Roger and tata Marie-Line, but someday soon, it will be run by my cousin Etienne (Jeanne's brother).  Today, I turned twenty-five at my father's (far-off-but-steadfast) home, Les Guêrets.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go climb a ladder and see some kittens.

Verbally Challenged

I like to think of my French language status as the verbal equivalent of “wheelchair restricted”--I may not enter gracefully into all environments, you might have to keep an eye out to ensure I don’t get hurt, take me to a party and I'm liable to illicit loud, hyper-enunciated talking from guests--Alooors, vous-venez D'OU?--and maybe some staring, but for all intents and purposes, I get around pretty well, thank you. 

Friday, I had an appointment to get my eyes tested.  I had to look up the word for ophthalmologist, call the ones in my area via the pages jaunes, find out who tests eyes the cheapest and make the appointment.  Then, when I was in the exam room and Docteur Besse covered my left eye, I said “Euh, Bay, Jay,” for E, B, G.  The phrases that I had to read were obviously in French, and the chit chat with the doctor as she drew up my prescription?  That was in French, too.  It’s not like I gave a dissertation or wrote a story for a French newspaper, but I have to celebrate the small things, like eye exams, because otherwise, why am I not in the US getting an MFA right now? 

To be honest, I’ve lived here one year and, that whole speaking in French thing?  It’s still really hard.  Sometimes I’m around other expatriates (expatriates who don’t even have any French in their blood, or a last name that ends in the “awhn” sound), and their accents are so much better than mine, and they throw around the subjunctive tense--a tense which DOESN'T EVEN EXIST IN ENGLISH--as if it were easy as pig latin. 

I want to say to these people, yes, fine, but can you express so much as I in a mere hand gesticulation?  Did you spend the summer of 1986 saying “AH ben dis DONC!” because you wanted to be just like your grandfather, Pépé?  When it comes to cheese, has your motto always been, the stinkier the better?  As a child, would you happily drink watered-down wine that was older than you were?  (Yes, they let children drink wine here, and have you seen how tame their college parties are?  MY FRENCH FRIENDS KNOW NOT THE MEANING OF THE FOLLOWING WORDS:  ICE BLOCK, KEG-STAND, POWER HOUR, ALCOHOL POISONING.)

I digress.  The point?  The point is, FRANCE IS IN MY BLOOD, you overachievers.  So step off with your perfect language skills and correcting my pronunciation of "Buttes Chaumont," before I smack you upside yo' head with that French in Action book.

Maybe this would be a good time to address why my own father, the man who got me into this whole mess, didn’t try to teach his daughters French.  He did.  He spoke it with us on the way to pre-school every morning.  And then he went and worked all day.  Little kids go to bed early.  Could we have learned French on the weekend and at nights?  There are countless families that make it work, but ours was set up so that we spent more time with our mother.  Our American mother who spoke no French. 

But I am here now, and while I may still be handicapped in the language department, I just took an eye exam in French, and that’s something neither my high school French teacher, nor I, nor my grandfather Constant Victor, may the man rest in peace, would ever have seen coming.  I’ve never said this to anyone before, because I know it's so very attractive to make proclamations about what one will do to one’s children (especially when "one" doesn't even have a boyfriend), but it’s my dream to teach my kids French someday. 

We may end up in Tupelo, Mississippi, the father may be from Spain, Denmark, or perhaps even Kentucky, but my God if I wont have 'em consuming stinky cheeses, watered-down wine, and the adventures of Tintin.  And they will like it.  Because Mommy likes it.  That’s how these things work, right Mom?

Home Frozen

Two nights ago, I arrived at the grocery store just as the merchant pulled down the accordion-iron gate.  “Desolé,” he said, pointing to his watch.  I planned to go back last night, but things--important things, things involving mixed beverages--came up.

Which left me opening my refrigerator this morning to find nothing more suitable than beets and some fiercely ripe goat cheese staring back, neither of which seemed an appropriate complement for café au lait.  In desperate moments like these, I cross the hall in my slippers to retrieve some toast and confiture from Jeanne’s refrigerator, all the while whispering prayers of gratitude for my apartment’s “other wing,” as Jason recently dubbed it.

Of course, it’s Jeanne's freezer that is by far the more interesting half of her frigo.  It's composed almost exclusively of plastic butter containers--dozens of them.  Their contents are labeled in red sharpie, and the words scrawled on the plastic are equally direct--porc chataignes, poisson riz, blanquette, or sauce champignons.
A simple exterior belies the home-cooked heaven inside--they are the vestiges of my aunt's phenomenal meals. 

After a visit home, the last thing Jeanne will do before getting into her tiny Peugeot and careening through the countryside to the train station--(I’m telling you, my knuckles are white after every ride, even with France’s new speeding laws)--is to stock a small cooler with these leftovers. 

I have been known to reap the benefits of my tata Marie-Line’s butter containers from time to time.

My aunt and uncle, Roger and Marie-Line, operate a dairy farm in a tiny village outside of Le Mans. When I say tiny, I mean less than 100 people, tiny. My father was born on this farm.  So was my grandmother.  (Talk about attachment to la terre, my family's got it.  Big time).  Every weekend that my cousin doesn't go home, she heats one of her mother's dishes.  I know that it means a hell of a lot more to her than just convenience. 

For me, even though my aunt’s cooking is certainly not my mother’s, and the farm is certainly not my home, the existence of both makes this experience abroad somehow less rocky.  I am living 5,000 miles away from my friends and immediate family, but at the same time, an hour's TGV-ride from the place where my father spent his boyhood.  The farm is my beacon. 

I'll probably visit my aunt and uncle next month.  Until then, there is the stock of home cooking in the freezer next door.  Although obviously not useful for breakfast emergencies.