I am handicapped, in that I have only what Julia Child described, with a whiff of scorn, as "a school girl's French." So much of my disorientation and exhaustion here alone in France is based on tension--will I be able to ask for sunflower seeds at the market if I can't find them within an hour? Can I successfully make myself understood, without appearing to be a brusque and Ugly Americaine, to the assistant manager at the supermarche so that I, too, can have a card to give me points for each purchase? Will more be demanded of me than a sweet, fully-chortled "Bonjour" and a transparently dismissive "Merci, au revoir!" at the checkout counter? I hope so, and I tremblingly hope not.
The few times here that I have dared to venture into mon idee of a fully-composed, grammatically-correct sentence in French, the recipient has looked bemused. She either prattles on at me in French-- pushing papers my way to sign, or pointing vaguely with much explication in the direction I've asked for directions to--or else she flips the switch to English and leaves me stammering, the tables suddenly turned. Then I am unsure of how much I can say. Is there a limit to her French, or can I elaborate? I want to elaborate because, in my ten days here, I have talked to no one other than the woman at what I call the Courtesy Counter, and the woman who "gave me directions" at the gas station, and the tiny man inside my computer who gives me French lessons via YouTube.
I throw myself out there daily, into the world of commerce and gustabulatory pleasure, in the hopes of suddenly bursting forth with paragraphs of fluent French. Then the girls and I will share a bon rire. Mais non, it hasn't happened yet. Pascal, the dreamboat at my local restaurant, sees the panic in my eyes the minute I walk in and, wanting my comfort and expenditure levels to be high, he translates, as I point like an idiot to each item on the menu. I just want it over with; I want to eat and drink copious quantities of wine while staring at my compatriots who look oh, so much cooler and French than moi.
The children--for god's sake, the TODDLERS!--speak better French than I. And I could only hope to someday be that lovely French woman across the restaurant from me, the one with the deux bons hommes. Did they come in on motorcycles? Bicyclettes? So romantic, so windblown! She's the one with the perfectly (naturally) plucked eyebrows, the dense (sexy) fringe of bangs, the carelessly (perfectly) knotted scarf, exuding an earthy assuredness that could only have sprung from some farm-raised upbringing in Bordeaux. Certainly not New Jersey, comme moi.
I keep reminding myself of something a Francophile American friend said to me before I left. I'd been told the coffee here was not so good, that maybe I should bring my own if I wanted what I was used to. But when I told this to my well-travelled friend, she said, "Well, not having what you're used to is all part of the adventure, isn't it?"
It's all part of the adventure. So that explains my exhaustion at the end of the day, when my head on the pillow plies the yarn of phrases overheard and sentences practiced on long walks by the canal. I want to say to the female cashier who took forever to start checking me out at the supermarche: "NOW I see why you waited for me to load everything before starting to ring me up! You were waiting for me to be ready to bag! You weren't mad at me because I said it was my "premiere fois" using this particular debit card. Thank you, thank you, I am from a foreign land and I do not understand your customs, but I am learning. I want to get it, really I do. Bear with me! I am on an adventure!"
An adventure in a supermarket, granted, but it's as a good place as any to start.
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