Big City to Small Town

Somehow I knew my contact before she introduced herself.  I’d been looking for a younger-than-middle-aged woman with possibly two kids in tow, and when a young boy with a slightly Bieber cut and a girl that could melt steel with a smile skipped across the tram tracks, I just knew the couple behind them were my contacts.

Again, I don’t know what gave our little group away as the Americans she searched for, but she and her husband approached us, and I introduced myself and everyone else before they suggested having a drink.  As a rule, one never says no to a drink, so while we’d just finished one café experience, our giant group of eight sat down together.

Insert awkward silence here.


 

The introductions had been bad enough, the French are known for their bisous, or the cheek kisses given between females and between men and women in addition to handshakes between men who aren’t super familiar with one another.  It’s just how everyone greets one another, and while it can mean introductions or coming into a large party a rather gratuitous affair, I enjoy the sentiment and the intimacy of such greetings.  Most Americans, however, are known for their unease surrounding the bisous.  As such, no one really knows how to greet each other when crossing cultural boundaries.  Personally, I have always entered a room or situation in France fully expecting to bisou and be bisou-ed by everyone, even if I didn’t know the majority of people involved.  But when said people know I’m America, all bets are off: I could be bisou-ed anyway, get a lecture on why the French think Americans are silly for disliking bisous, or an awkward in-between of handshaking with a side of going in halfway for a peck.

When I introduced myself and my newfound friends, there had been awkward halfway gestures before everyone gave up and resorted to the smile and nod method.

So add that awesome beginning to a group of kids who don’t really know what language to speak and haven’t spoken extensively to a French person in who knows how long, and you have a perfect soufflé of combustibility and awkward sauce.  And strange sentence structure.  But we gradually fell into a decent pattern, and I had time to completely analyze the new family.

The kids, Nina (6) and Louis (11), were the cutest French kids I’d interacted with, never mind the fact that I’d only ever met one other French girl who loved correcting foreign people’s bad French grammar.  Nina was perfectly content to play with her Zooble, and she explained to me in slow, clear, concise French just what she was doing with it.  Thank God, because Louis was absolutely impossible to understand; he spoke so quickly that only a keysmash could accurately describe any dialogue between us.  He loved all sports and soccer in specific, that much I understood, so all I need to do was mention how I saw the 2007 World Cup of Rugby the last time I was in France, and he took off at the speed of sound, small but nimble fingers tinkering with a new Bakugan toy.

Pascal, Muriel’s husband, was the picture of what a verging-on-middle-aged Frenchman should be: trim and greying with a sweater across his shoulders.  He even gave up his iPhone to the kids when their games would no longer hold their attention.  He admitted that his English was rather rotten and what little remained was rusty, but I assure him that I wanted to speak in French, so he didn’t have to struggle unless my brain hurt too much.  (Even then, I would try to persevere.)

Muriel herself was also everything I expected of a Frenchwoman.  Tall, skinny, and brunette, she seemed somehow stylish and put-together even in just jeans, a white blouse, and a brown blazer.  The other Americans said their contacts had all been Anglophone, so I was pleasantly surprised that mine was verifiably French with a very French family.  She had done some of her studies in Angers at the Fac, and when Amy mentioned that she was still looking for an apartment, both Muriel and Pascal began babbling about places to check out, and Pascal even wrote down a phone number for her in case her current search didn’t pan out.

Amy immediately turned to me and mouthed, “French karma!”  When everyone else was distracted with something else, she explained that since I got the shaft major-style the last time around, it only seemed fair that this time, I’d be taken care of like a princess.  While I secretly agreed, I reminded her that while this family seemed like sunshine and rainbows, my town still resembled a cowtown, so yeah, we’d wait on that French karma thing.

After we finished and more awkwardness ensued about the bill — Pascal insisted on paying, and the poor Americans put up a token but strong resistance — I bid the English speakers a quick goodbye with the promise of seeing them in a week or so for orientation.

And then I was all alone with the French.

We drove out of Angers, and I was peppered with questions about home: what was Chicago like, how’s the weather, did I live on my own?  Muriel and Pascal went silent, though, as they got lost on their way around the outskirts; apparently, they were using me as an excuse to visit pianos they wanted to buy in the near future and had gotten us lost in the midst of Chicago talk.

“These roads weren’t here when I was at university,” Muriel explained in English.

So after trying to make conversation with the small ones in French, we headed back to La Flèche with the goal of giving me a quick driving tour of centre ville.  Unfortunately, Nina chose that time to want to use the restroom — and told us really loudly and repeatedly.  All I remembered afterwards was that La Flèche had two kebab places (the non-green one was “the good one”), a cinema, a couple bars, and a lot of one-way streets.  Muriel kept semi-apologizing for not only the quickness of the tour but also the size of the town.  And honestly, coming from Winfield, where the center of town consists of a train station, Winfield Fuel, and a liquor store, the fact that I could even list different sites in La Flèche’s centre ville seemed like a plus to me.

Muriel and her family lie in la vraie compagne, or no really, the country.  Pascal warned me not to freak out if horses started walking down the street in the morning.

Yup. Country.

I couldn’t tell if he was joking.  Their house seemed very country-modern with a touch of Ikea thrown in.  I immediately coveted the exposed beams and super functional kitchen.   

Family room.

Dining room/kitchen.

Kitchen sponsored by Ikea. [/creeping]

After a bedroom crisis — I couldn’t choose whether to sleep upstairs with the rest of the family or downstairs where I wouldn’t have to lug my person-weight suitcases anywhere special; I clearly chose the latter — Muriel whipped up a dinner of (first course) three different types of pâté squares and smiley-faced chips, (second course) fig salad with prosciutto and parmesan shavings, and (third course) cheese.  Besides being beyond jealous that she could bust out multiple courses without much thought or notice, I thoroughly enjoyed easing into French living.  The parents shooed their children to bed almost immediately after, and the adults spent the evening drinking tea while Pascal read to me from his wine catalogue.

“When we bought this house,” Muriel griped, darting a half-annoyed/half-amused glance at her husband, “the first thing Pascal said was ‘now we can have a wine cellar!’”

Love them both!

After a day filled with anxiety and then frenchfrenchfrench, I fell asleep almost as my body hit the bed.

My (temporary) room!

The next morning, I was too afraid to take a shower, because I hadn’t been given explicit permission to use all bathroom facilities, so I washed what I could in the sink and ate a French breakfast of cereal, milk, bread, and the best honey I’d ever tasted.  Also, as I saw cows and not horses grazing in the pasture across the road, I couldn’t justifiably freak out.  Muriel and Nina were taking me to the marché, or open-air market, that morning before lunch, so I waited while Muriel fought Nina into weather-appropriate clothing and Louis entertained me with two separate cards tricks.  (For the record, one worked and the other didn’t, but I pretended that it did.  Shh!)  Then the three girls loaded into the car, and I tried to resoak in everything I’d missed from the “tour” the night before.

Marchés are probably what I miss most about France whenever I’m not there.  The amount of fresh food on display for rock-bottom prices just cannot be found in the States.  Things to remember: 1) bring your own bag; 2) don’t touch the produce — you can point and specify how much/what size, but they’ll pick it out and bag it for you; 3) it’s in kilos, not pounds; 4) while checks and CBs (cartes banquaires; credit cards) are increasingly accepted, the smaller marchés and stands will only take éspèces, or cash.  But the quality is beyond belief, and as Muriel reminded me, you quickly pick a favorite stall that has great prices, great product, and great people; she liberally rolled her eyes when her favorite meat stall was out of the sausage she required, and she had to buy from the other one.  (Yes, there were only two meat stalls.  The larger marché is on Wednesday.)  We picked up bread from the boulangerie (bakery) and headed for the pub.

As soon as we arrived, Muriel was greeted by nearly everyone sitting outside, including the owner/barman Bertrand, a childhood friend of hers, who warmly greeted me with real bisous . . . and then made fun of me for ordering a Coke, cajoling me into a Becks, en though it was probably barely noon.  Muriel and I made the rounds, and I lost count of how many times I explained I was an English assistant from Chicago, and then consequently explained where Chicago was.  But everyone seemed very nice and welcoming and concerned with how I was adapting to France and, more specifically, life in small-town La Flèche.  Most people, especially Bertrand, made sure that I knew I could count on them if I ever had any trouble getting around or adjusting.  I thanked them thoroughly even if I knew I wouldn’t remember their names an hour later, my diagnosis of Cheers syndrome solidified.

We ate lunch outside, feasting on grilled sausages, potatoes with crème fraȋche, leftover fig salad, wine, and more cheeses than I could count.  For being the end of September, the weather was exceptionally warm: almost eighty or so degrees Fahrenheit, and everyone said that we must “profiter du soleil,” or take advantage of the sun while we still could.  As a result, the family decided they wanted to take me on a walk.

Okay.  Sure.  Why not.

I changed into suitable French walking shoes, thinking we would stick around the neighborhood which sported more gravel than pavement in terms of road.  Then Muriel advised me to bring my maillot de bain just in case.  It took me ‘til a moment after I responded to realize that she meant my swimming suit.  Wait, what.  There didn’t look to be any local watering hole nearby and even if there were, I didn’t bring my bathing suit to France because, really, I’d be in the country from October to April: prime not swimming time.  So I changed into a skirt and flip-flops, and we all piled into the car for a drive so that we could take a walk.  I paid attention so I could replicate the path if need be.

Good thing, as we were going to the Lac de la Monnerie, or the Monnerie Lake, a lake with a walking/biking path around its perimeter and a man-made plage, or beach.  While by no means Lake Michigan-caliber, I was sufficiently impressed.  The late afternoon sun skittered across the lake’s surface; children’s shrieks echoed across the shore; bicycle bells pinged along the paths.  I met Karine, a science teacher at Lycée d’Estournelles de Constant and one of Muriel’s best friends.  Her daughter, Louisa, and Nina were besties, and Nina immediately forgot the scraped knee she’d earned earlier from running too quickly on gravel and ran after Louisa across the sand.

Beach at the lac.

Bike paths.

And suddenly, I became nostalgic.  Only four days without my family, and I was already romanticizing long, lazy Sunday afternoons!  But seeing families together, laughing, and mothers giving out jelly beans willy-nilly made tears form, though I refused to let them fall.  Really, my family just tried to stay out of each other’s hair on Sunday, and I hate jelly beans, but it was the fact that no one would be there to catch me if I fell; the safety net really was thousands of miles away, and I already didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do with myself for the next week until my contract began let alone how to go about getting a money transfer or the mysterious civil liability insurance.  In those few instants, sitting along the beach’s edge while half-heartedly pretending to listen to Muriel and Karine’s French conversation, I felt such a pang of homesickness in my gut that I’d never felt before.  In those few instants, I just wanted to go home.

And then we returned to Muriel’s house, where she included me in their nightly ritual with Nina.  We helped her with her homework—reading in French!—and then read a quick bedtime story.  Nina made sure I understood what was happening by pointing out the pictures and explaining what the characters were doing.

I won’t say this momentarily overwhelming bout of homesickness will be my last, but its strength was disconcerting.  Clearly, the solution was to surround myself with love and substitutions of the things I missed: at the moment, a caretaker, a loving mother.  Yes, this 24-year-old isn’t too proud to say that sometimes you just need a hug.  Or a mom.