French Kids Eat Everything (28 page)

I brooded about this incident for quite a while. After almost ten months in France, I was still making blunders. Someone once told me that cross-cultural analysis is even more painful than psychoanalysis. At the time, I didn't understand what she meant. But now I thought I did. When you are living in a different culture, you spend a lot of time second-guessing yourself. Every interaction with people around you is an opportunity for misunderstandings, faux pas, unintended offenses, and general feelings of sticking out like a sore thumb. And this was really starting to get to me.

Unwillingly at first, I admitted to myself that I found it hard to
live
in France, and to be confronted daily with cultural clashes of which I was often on the losing end. I was tired of being different, of being a foreigner. This was a professional as well as a personal issue. I didn't speak or write French well enough, and I didn't have any French qualifications. I had come to realize that this would prevent me from ever finding a job in my field in France. There were no jobs for Philippe either; having gone to university in England, he too had “foreign” qualifications that simply didn't count. How could we make a living if we stayed here?

So I felt worried about our future. I also felt lonely. Philippe's friends didn't live nearby. With the exception of Sandrine and Eric, with whom we had become very close, I hadn't made what I would consider one good friend. And I didn't think this was likely to change. Not a single person in the village spoke English. My French had gotten much better, but I still didn't feel at ease. The jokes weren't the same. Cultural references—even to people like Oprah—drew blank stares. I was just too different to make close friends (or at least not as quickly as I had expected).

Sure, there were some individual acts of kindness. The village baker confirmed my status as a local when she presented me with an embossed oven mitt on the occasion of the bakery's 150th anniversary (handed to me with a smile after the summer tourists, who were not so favored, had left the premises). We had had a few dinner invitations, and Sophie had been to lots of birthday parties. And I chatted easily with regulars at the market.

But I was beginning to realize that no matter how much time we spent in France, I would never completely fit in, because I'd never
be
French. I'd never be at home. And I also realized what I
would
be: one of the sole immigrants in the village and the only non-Francophone. And France does not treat its immigrants particularly kindly.

Was this a failing on my part, I wondered? I had always thought of myself as someone who was tolerant, who reached out to other cultures. But the more I got to know the French, the more different we seemed. I encountered stark differences in the most intimate areas of life: friendship, child-rearing, romantic relationships. I had spent years fantasizing about the French way of life, but (as Philippe had warned me) the reality of
living
in France was very different.

I was also feeling homesick. I missed things that I hadn't even particularly appreciated before we left. I missed my friends and family. I missed the easy friendliness of strangers. I missed being able to walk with a stroller without bumping along cobblestones or squeezing nervously along narrow streets that had been built before sidewalks were invented. I missed my favorite TV shows. I started fantasizing about my favorite foods, like chewy bagels smothered in cream cheese, topped with lox—none of which was available where we lived. We had even run out of maple syrup.

Finally I admitted it to myself: I desperately wanted to be back in Vancouver. Our move to France had been an interesting experiment, but it was—as far as I was concerned—not a successful one. It was the end of June, and I was ready to go home. The problem was, no one else in the family felt the same way. The girls had even stopped thinking of Vancouver as home. Both of them, in fact, had settled nicely into life in France. Both had good friends. They were speaking French so fluently that a casual stranger wouldn't have known they were half-Canadian. And each had their obligatory
amoureux
(which literally translates as “lover” but, when used with small children means “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”). The way that French parents encouraged these relationships—in which young children platonically played at being amorous—shocked me with I first arrived. It was common to hear adults ask, a bit teasingly, “
C'est qui ton amoureux?
” But, as with so many things, I had adjusted. So when I arrived at day care to find little Hugo embracing Claire, or at school to find Pierre down on his knees, kissing Sophie's feet while she giggled coyly, I didn't bat an eye.

But the ties that were starting to bind my children didn't bind me. I had made up my mind. Or rather, I made up my stomach: I was “feeling with my gut” (
sentir avec mes tripes
). I wanted to go home. In fact, I had
decided
that we were going home. The problem was that Philippe, initially resistant to moving back to France, had slowly come to realize how deeply attached he was to his language, friends, and family. He had even started talking about buying a house in the village. The tables had turned.

I bided my time and broached the subject one evening. We had put the girls to bed early, and Jo had come over to babysit. Philippe and I walked down to the sea and strolled along the beach. The wind had died down as it often did at sunset. The tide was out, and the pale, smooth sand stretched almost a mile in front of us.

“I want to go home. I mean, to Vancouver,” I said, surprised at how close I felt to tears. Guilt was an overly simple word for what I was experiencing. To tell the truth, I felt slightly panicked, thinking of how his family and the girls would react.

“I know,” Philippe replied, looking down at the sand. He stooped down to pick up another cockleshell to add to Sophie's growing collection.

“I'm sorry,” I started, and then stopped. For once, I was at a loss for words. Philippe turned and started walking back to the house. I ran and caught up to him.

“Let's walk down to the water,” I suggested.

“No,” he said. And kept walking. “You knew that I didn't want to move, and you know that I'm not going to be happy back in Vancouver,” he spoke over his shoulder.

Feeling sick to my stomach, I followed him.

“We agreed that it was just for a year,” I said to his back.

“The girls
do
like it here,” said Philippe. “And you can't just experiment with them like that. You can't just drag them back and forth on a whim.”

“It wasn't a whim,” I replied. “I
can't
live here the rest of my life. I'll never fit in here. And you know we can't find work. If we're away for more than a year, our jobs won't be waiting when we go back to Vancouver.”

Silence. Philippe turned around, and looked moodily down at the sand. There was a long silence. “You know,” he said finally. “I've been missing the mountains. And bagels and cream cheese.”

We took our time breaking the news to everyone else.
Philippe's parents were disappointed, but not really surprised; after all, they had warned us that it would be hard to settle in the village. Pierre, Sophie's
amoureux
, was heartbroken. Sandrine and Eric were excited at the thought of visiting us in Vancouver. News spread quickly in the village. I was surprised (and touched) by the people who stopped by or took a moment at the market to wish us well.

Sophie took it the hardest. Most of her memories of Vancouver had slipped away, and she had settled happily into her new life. She and Marie had constructed that cozy cocoon that young girls create when they make their first “kindred spirit” best friend. It would be a wrenching good-bye.

Claire, on the other hand, took the news calmly. In part, it was because she didn't really realize what was happening; her only obvious reaction was to get excited about the airplane ride. Her cheery mood—that sublime self-containment of a toddler—sustained all of us as we packed. We hadn't accumulated very much during our stay, and we gave most of it away. What was left fit into four suitcases. We had doubled the volume of our possessions in a year.

The weather seemed to sense our mood. We had planned to leave at the end of July, hoping to have a sun-filled farewell with long afternoons at the beach. But it rained—poured—for twenty-seven days that month, setting a new record. The air was cool, and gray clouds hovered low: exactly the weather we'd be living with in Vancouver. It could have been one of the longest, dreariest months of our lives. Instead, we retreated to the kitchen and spent our last few weeks joyously cooking and eating. Papi visited almost every day, bringing treats like local
pâté
(with spicy green peppercorns),
cidre, moules
(which I had now learned to love), and crab. Janine went a step further and moved in for several weeks, baking homemade pies and family favorites like
lapins aux prunes
. And I discovered jam making; despite the weather, the local fruits had started to ripen, and we helped Sandrine and Eric shake a few bushels of
mirabelles
(a kind of prune) from their trees, spending the next two blissful days in their kitchen with gooey pots, long ladles, and jam jars.

The sun reappeared two days before we were scheduled to leave. It was good timing because Philippe's parents were hosting a family meal. This happened once every summer, and was usually a chance for us to see everyone during our annual visits from Vancouver. This time, it was also a chance for everyone to say good-bye. So the preparations were even more elaborate than usual. Two
chapiteaux
(open-air tents) were erected at the back of the house, doubling the size of the dining room. The double French doors were thrown open. Five tables were set up, as we'd be hosting nearly forty people. Janine brought out her linen tablecloths, and the children gathered sprigs of lavender and flowers from the garden for decorations.

The
repas
was scheduled for midday, and people started arriving soon after noon. Cousins with children in tow, aunts and uncles—nearly all of Philippe's extended family turned up. Some of his old friends had driven several hours to be there. And our new friends from the village came too. Serving everyone with champagne and
amuse-bouches
(little toasted crackers with a bewildering array of toppings, brought by Tante Monique) took nearly an hour. We didn't actually sit down to eat until close to two o'clock in the afternoon (which was, of course, exactly as Janine had timed it, knowing her family all too well).

The meal was a celebration of everything Brittany had to offer. Janine had asked the chef at the little local hotel (which had all of ten rooms) to prepare one of his specialties for us:
terrine de poisson
: a light fish mousse draped with “noble algae,” the chef told me proudly when I picked it up (I tried to look suitably impressed). We moved on to
coquilles St. Jacques
(king scallops), which came right from our little bay—supplied by my friendly fisherman at the market. Hubert and Joseph brought salad and cheese platters—the little goat cheeses we loved so much came from a farm just up the coast. At half past four in the afternoon, we were still eating dessert:
far breton
(a cakelike flan stuffed with brandy-soaked plums), followed by darkly sweet, nutty
mignardises
made from traditional spelt, buckwheat, and chestnut flours.

Although they can't get enough of good conversation at the table, the French only rarely give speeches or toasts. But Eric summoned up the courage to speak in front of the guests. “Wherever you go, and whether or not you return, you all have a little bit of Brittany in you now,” he smiled. And we drank a toast: “
Toujours le vin sent son terroir
.” Later, as we all walked down to the beach (a family ritual that I much appreciated after hours at the table), Philippe tried to translate this proverb for me. “A good wine smells and even tastes like its
terroir
, the landscape where it was born. And people are the same: where we come from is always part of who we are. No matter where we go, we'll take a little bit of Brittany with us.”

Vancouver has a way of buoying your spirits, even when
you're in the worst of moods. As we flew over the downtown, ringed by mountains and the ocean, Philippe perked up, likely imagining himself summiting some icy peak. I perked up too, imagining myself eating a fresh warm sesame bagel slathered with cream cheese. Even Sophie cheered up when we visited with her old friends later that week. They were charmed by her French accent, her polished manners, even her clothes: our rapscallion child had been transformed by her year in France into someone straight out of the pages of
Madeline
.

Claire had a harder time. Her wide-eyed looks made it clear that she was completely baffled by the “new” language spoken around her. At least she had stopped scowling and saying “
Non, Maman!
” when I spoke English to her. Listening intently to the foreign sounds everyone was suddenly making seemed to take up all of her energy, and she became intensely clingy. It seemed as if August was going to be another long month.

Even I had a hard time readjusting. I had been longing for the “convenience” of North American–style shopping. But by the time I drove the girls to the supermarket (through traffic much worse than I remembered), found parking, wandered up and down the endless aisles, waited in line, loaded the groceries into the car, and made it home, I was exhausted. Doing my shopping at the
marché
, I realized with chagrin, took me less time—with the bonus of getting exercise, being outside in the fresh air, and socializing with other people.