French Lessons

Bonjour Ritual

Pierre swept into a café off the 9^th hole of a local golf course one morning last week.  Behind him was our overseas visitor Charles. 

 

Le garçon stood alone in his café.  Pierre lifted two fingers to order.  “Deux cafés, s’il vous plaît!” he said.

 

The waiter paused.  Then he declared, “Bonjour Messieurs!”

 

Ahem.

 

Rules are rules.  There are rules of politeness, of formality even, that one follows when treading French soil.  It’s as if there is a special tome of Debrett’s Etiquette and Modern Manners intended solely for France, or at least the French Riviera.  And it’s we pesky New Worlders who just can’t seem to get the rules right.

 

Stepping into a shop, whether a café or the local Monsieur-Fix-It, good manners dictate that you say “Bonjour Madame” or “Bonjour Monsieur” – just as if you were walking into the attendant’s home.  The bonjour routine is simply appropriate in France, and frankly, a proper greeting is redeemed with better service.  (Truth be told, you quite possibly are stepping into an extension of the shop owner’s home.  Businesses in this built-up land are often family-run, passed down generation to generation with nary a competing thought.)

 

And yet, try as I may to conform to Debrett’s à la Française, to be an acceptable guest in the land of baguettes and cheese, the nuances are difficult to keep alive.

 

Smiling, in my book, is the ultimate in politeness.  Smiling is the friendly American’s pose in greeting, engaging, even in asking a question.  I smile a fair amount even for a Yank.  My mother, in fact, has forever told me that my orthodontia was a good investment. 

 

That’s way too many teeth for Monsieur Debrett.  Smiling for no obvious reason is a highly suspicious act in France.  Looking at me, locals probably think I’m wholly insincere or up to something illegal.  As a woman who carries Dora-the-Explorer colouring books in her oversized handbag, I’m betting they decide on insincerity.

 

The American ritual of smiling is tough to change.  My face is my face and it’s a smidge inconvenient to rearrange.  So I’ve focused on other parts of my appearance to align myself, at least visually, with the rules of French politesse. 

 

Shoes are an obvious place to start.  Pierre and I often play a game in well-touristed areas:  What Country Are They From?  Assuming we cannot hear our subjects’ voices, shoes are usually the biggest giveaway.

 

Long ago I wore trainers (tennis shoes) in France.  (Remember what Caroline’s French mother had told her in my last blog:  “Darling, there’s no way I’ll go shopping with you wearing those trainers!”)

 

Up until this year-long stay in France, I wore my purple Crocs in the streets.  The chunky, plastic clogs spun French heads, their looks – even pointed fingers – sending two indisputable messages.  Teens and 20s found me incredibly hip.  The rest of the population glared avec horreur at my enormous and vibrantly coloured feet.  Crocs were even worse than trainers.

 

The Crocs have become household slippers.  They’ve been replaced by orange Keenes, rugged sandals so Rocky-Mountains that they have yet to infiltrate French shores.  Visual feedback has proven far more muted.  

 

That said, maybe it’s because I only wear my Keenes in public these days if I’m biking.  All other activities – even if they involve trekking cobbled pavements and crooked sidewalks from one end of Old Town Antibes back to the shores of Cap d’Antibes – must be done with proper footwear. 

 

Which, according to Debett’s à la Française, include a flimsy sole and if at all possible, a bit (or more) of a heel.

 

Actually more effort on the whole wardrobe front seems to make a fair difference in this part of the world.  The idea prompts me to relay a little experiment I tried one sunny day last September.

 

I’d become accustomed to dropping Laurelle off at school and heading out directly to do the household shopping.  In these early hours of the day, Antibes’ New Town (that’s to say, the World War II-era section) would be flooded with folks running errands – making use of that handful of hours before the shops would close again for extended lunch breaks.

 

I’d do my shopping early, like a good antiboise, but somehow I just didn’t fit in – even before I opened my mouth.  Yes, I’d stopped wearing my Crocs and Keenes, but people immediately made me out as a foreigner. 

 

That’s when I recognized that local women dress up to shop.  I don’t mean they don themselves with heavy lipstick and their finest regalia each morning, no.  But there’s a sense of proper attire one assumes when presenting oneself in public.  Even when buying a simple baguette.

 

And so that sunny autumn morning, searching my wardrobe before Laurelle woke, I’d chosen a bit more carefully than usual.  I donned a breezy, knee-length skirt and a three-quarter sleeved, grass-green cardigan with carved buttons to accompany my flimsily-soled flats. 

 

After dropping Laurelle at class, I scooted into New Town.  The attendants at the photography shop were welcoming – even more so than last time, I reckoned, when I’d pedaled in wearing my orange Keenes. 

 

Next stop:  a civilized café-au-lait.  I ambled a few blocks toward the sidewalk seating of a new café.  (Once there I realized the coffee shop, Debailleul, was actually a sumptuous chocolatier who happened to double as a café, but it was a mistake I hardly regretted.)

 

Debailleul’s ponytailed server greeted me as I chose a wicker chair.  “Tu vas bien, madame?”

 

The note of acceptance.  She’d tutoyer’d the properly-attired me.  (That’s to say she used the familiar tu rather than the formal vous in addressing me.  Her choice contravened the rule of formality but somehow it was right.)

 

As I sat down, two ladies at a neighbouring table wished me, “Bonjour”.  French customers had greeted me, another customer!  They’d included me in the bonjour ritual!  What, was this a joke?  Was the secret French handshake the mere show of proper dress?  It was then that I noticed the two French ladies wore skirts, too. 

 

One strong coffee and a perfect morsel of chocolate later, I walked another few blocks to gather groceries.  Maybe it was the sunshine.  Maybe I was smiling (oh-so-un-Frenchly) at my private joke.  It could hardly have been the fact that I wore a skirt.  But in those few blocks a stranger – a man with a creased face and a slower gait than most – wished me a pleasant bonjour, too.

 

In the winter months I confess my choice of clothing has become more sloppy – or shall we say comfortable – again.  But frankly, we wear coats over our garb and I’ve been freezing all winter, and a couple pairs of (flimsy-soled) boots have gone miles in masking my relaxed gear.  Sometimes in a flight of fancy, I still glimpse my reflection in the storefront windows, winter coat swaying above high, French boots and straw grocery bag in hand, and I decide, ‘Yes, I am now French.’ 

 

Which of course, I’m not. 

 

A few weeks ago I stopped by the bricoleur’s shop along the route into Old Town Antibes.  Gusty winds had battled our shutters all night, and on one almighty smack against the house, a bedroom shutter had lost the securing nut from its screw-bolt.

 

The usual, lanky attendant stood behind the counter without his usual queue of querying DIY customers.  So I approached him, wearing boots that were appropriately non-sensible for a hardware store.

 

“J’ai une petite question,” I began, smiling, hoping to indicate that my query would take an unusually small proportion of his time.

 

Just as I was about to launch my petite question, the attendant’s gaze refocused behind me.  I heard a woman’s voice ring out a cheery, even musical “Bonjour Monsieur!”

 

“Bonjour Madame!”

 

“Ça va?” 

 

“Oui, ça va.” 

 

The traditional bout of good manners. 

 

Le bricoleur finally focused back on me and my nut.  But correctly shoed or not, I knew the bonjour ritual had caught me out once again.

Tell It Like It Is

Caroline, Charles and their nine-year-old Ellie visited us in Antibes over the weekend.

 

We’ve dubbed them and their impressive offspring (which include two additional kids in boarding school) the “Uber-Family”.  Among them this family of five speaks a library of languages, undertakes international biking circuits, runs half-marathons, includes a former national-team golfer, establishes and manages unbelievably successful businesses and virtual-businesses (particularly when the economy is happier), and makes riveting conversation.  Unsurprisingly, the Uber-Family has lived in about half the countries that populated the early EU. 

 

The Ubers enjoy, shall we say, an EU Commissioner’s all-encompassing perspective on the area’s cultural crossroads.

 

How did I get along with the other parents at Laurelle’s preschool?  Caroline wondered as we hiked Saturday morning to the top of perched Eze Village. 

 

Her question was sincere.  Caroline is half-French, half-English and has sent each of her three, multi-lingual children to several years of French schools of one form or another.

 

Fine, I said.  There are, indeed, a handful of mothers and fathers who are quite friendly with me.  I’m the odd one out, I continued – the German-blooded American mother who’s not from these parts, the one who scrapes through their beautiful language.  But these French moms and pops are nice to me.  Or to my face anyway, I added.

 

That means they like you, Caroline said.  The French aren’t like the English.  They don’t smile to your face and then shred you behind your back.

 

Whooa!  Did she really say that?  Am I actually reporting it? 

 

Let me say here, in italics to underline the very point, that this blog paints a cultural tapestry with a very wide brush. 

 

One the width of a double wide trailer. 

 

I spent more than half my adulthood in England.  I’m protective of the spot, and so I countered Caroline’s idea.  The Brits’ closet-honesty happens everywhere in the world, doesn’t it?

 

Pierre – my French-Canadian husband whose roots plunge deep into French soil – chimed in to the conversation as we pounded the cobbled pavements of the medieval village. 

 

It is true about the French, he said.  They don’t pave over their feelings.  They tell it like it is.  Pierre offered his latest encounter with Bernard, our real estate agent.  Just a couple days earlier Bernard was giving Pierre the latest installation in his weekly series:  Why I Hate Russians.  (Massive brush, remember?)  But this week’s edition even made Pierre reel:

 

Bernard was showing an apartment – a very nice apartment on Cap d’Antibes – to Russian clients.  Four of them were milling around the pad – Bernard, the Russian couple, and their interpreter.

 

Lucky Bernard, I thought as I listened to Pierre’s story.  He had a prospective rental.  Solvency has become an increasing issue with local real estate offices, even at established ones like Bernard’s.  Our habitually grumbling Frenchman – the very agent who sold Bernard Madoff his digs on the peninsula all those years back – has become more brittle than usual.

 

As his clients ambled through the apartment, Bernard told their interpreter how he hated Russians.  He hated the whole lot of them.  He fleshed out his diatribe with descriptions that included mal élevés (bad-mannered) and les porcs (pigs). 

 

Even writing these words makes my skin creep.  Stroppy or not, Bernard’s was harsh treatment.  But he is French, Pierre said as he continued the story on our upward climb.  Bernard says what he thinks.

 

The interpreter replied to the outburst.  She, too, was Russian.

 

Bernard hardly backpedalled.  He hated Russians.  He still hated Russians.  Perhaps this interpreter was different, the Frenchman conceded all too fleetingly, but Russians are Russians.  He hated them all.

 

Okay, then.  Point made.  The French don’t soften their words.  I should know where I stand with those preschooler moms and pops, and that made me genuinely happy.

 

But I should report that I’ve endured the cultural telescope swung the other direction as well. 

 

It was less than a year ago, in early May, when our family still lived in Denver.  I attended a weekly language lesson at Alliance Française.  My teacher Lisa came from the north of France.  She was an early-30s, hip thing who wore tight trousers and busty tops.  In her slightly raspy voice she told us the slang for everything. 

 

The lesson that early May morning pondered the cultural differences between the French and other nationalities.  The distinctions I found most compelling, of course, were those with Americans.

 

Lisa’s steering of the class conversation started out easily enough.  She began with words.

 

Americans like the word “friendly,” she said.  Some guy might be described as friendly.  Service could be friendly.  The slogan on the corner shop is “your friendly neighborhood butcher.”  Americans even ask if a dog is friendly before stooping to pet it.

 

Amical, on the other hand, hardly creeps into everyday French conversation, Lisa explained.  I’ve since found that gentil is used fairly commonly, but it has a different spin.  It labels someone or something as kind or nice or good or pleasant.  But not necessarily friendly. 

 

Mincing words, are we?  Perhaps so.  But probably not.  And thus the conversation in that Alliance Française classroom upped a notch or two.

 

Friendly is just how Americans ARE.  It’s how they behave.  Who hasn’t heard a non-American, after visiting the US, remark on the friendly service at restaurants or corner shops?  The American waitress or clerk smiles.  She might ask how your day is going.  She’ll almost definitely offer the American benediction:  Have-a-Nice-Day. 

 

But that’s where it stops.  Taking the perspective of a French person living in the United States, such as my instructor Lisa, the Have-a-Nice-Day crowd parades a continual face of friendship with its habitual smiles and How-Are-You’s.  Foreigners can expect such friendliness means they’ll soon be melded into local circles – that American doors will fling wide.

 

But the Americans – and here again, remember the gigantic paintbrush – don’t normally go that anticipated extra step.  They don’t phone.  They don’t invite foreigners over.  They don’t tend to take that very American face of friendship to the next step.  And this can be frustrating.

 

The result?  The French, according to Lisa – who herself, I must say, was well integrated in American society, American boyfriend and all – often think of Americans as hypocrites.  Their niceness – their friendliness – is a pure façade.

 

By now I’ve offended virtually every reader of this blog – Antipodeans aside. 

 

That is hardly the point.  The point is that we grow up in different cultures that teach us to behave and interact differently with others.  What we do and say out of habit or childhood training can be quite curious, or even offensive, to those who aren’t hardened to our idiosyncrasies.

 

Yes, wide can be the gulf.  Caroline summoned her own French-English background.  Her mother is prissily French.  (“Darling, she’d tell me, there’s no way I’ll go shopping with you wearing those trainers!”)  Her father is pedantic, an ex-banker Brit.  (“I swear he could happily ponder the world from an armchair for six hours straight.”)  

 

Caroline basically grew up at the culturally idiosyncratic front.  “My mum and dad have been arguing cross-purposes for 43 years!” she said.

 

Which leaves me at an appropriate juncture to summon a modern-day, marital culture clash – and, conveniently, to report on my new favourite verb that arose from our weekend with the Uber-Family.

 

Charles was born of part-German stock and grew up in the Netherlands.  His French-English wife continually refers to his sensibilities – his decision-making and prioritization in life – as “Anglo-Saxon.”  Lists are made.  Boxes are ticked. 

 

To be honest, Caroline accurately swept me into this box-ticking league, too.  And so I argue – in a continuation of this ultra-broad-brush treatment of cultural collisions – what Germans offer to this heady, relational mix is a sense of orderliness. 

 

I found Charles’ anecdote about his prior creativity at a photography store – how do I say it diplomatically? – I found it quite intriguing.  His photo development technique was perhaps useful, perhaps not.  But Anglo-Saxon type that he is, he was genuinely pleased with himself for a task attempted and effectively accomplished.  For his ability to tick that box. 

 

French, tell-it-like-it-is Caroline (who is blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful) was theatrically outraged as she told me what her husband had done to her portrait:  “Charles, can you believe it…he photo-shopped my wrinkles!”

 

May diplomatic relations be restored within the Uber community.

Rule Number Two: Throw A Party

A couple years ago Pierre developed his Top 10 Rules of Life.  The project came about as part of a university commencement address, so such nuggets as “See the World” and “Give Back” were sprinkled within his wisdom.

 

Rule Number Two, though, is the assignment the world loves best:  Throw a Party.

 

It’s hard to argue with the idea.

 

This past week, we’ve also had the excuse.  Our little girl turned four.

 

Laurelle LOVES being FOUR.  Anyone with a four-year old, much less an exuberant version of one, can imagine the drama in both these words. 

 

And so Pierre, nanny Jennifer and I executed Rule Number Two.  We busily organized a very pink and sparkly birthday party for newly four-year-old Laurelle.  The fête would involve a buffet lunch, a bit of outsourced magic and face paint, and the compulsory singing and birthday cake. 

 

Our template for Birthday Party Number Four would be Birthday Party Number Three, which unfurled last March in our basement in Denver.  The difference between Birthday Party Number Four and Birthday Party Number Three was, of course, the age. 

 

The other critical difference was the fact that Number Three happened in the United States.  This year we live in France.  Birthday Party Number Four therefore would be France-appropriate – with stage-managed bits of America sprinkled on top.

 

Our first clue that this plan was going astray was that everyone invited to the party actually decided to come.  In past parties we’ve found that about 80% of folks normally reply in the affirmative.  Laurelle’s party achieved a perfect 100.  And not just in pint-sized guests.  Their parents, who we’d “invited to participate,” all voted in favour, too.

 

The mother of Laurelle’s classmate Lisa had RSVP’d by email.  Laurelle’s party was, she wrote, the first birthday party Lisa ever would attend.

 

Huh?  In Denver last year, ALL the kids in Laurelle’s pre-school class hosted birthday parties.  Every party involved taffeta dresses.  One shindig (rather alarmingly) took place in a kiddy hair salon, with complimentary hair-dos and mani-pedis for all three-year-old invitees.

 

But that was last year.  I touched base with another mother from Laurelle’s current school.  No, she reassured me, Laurelle’s would not be the first birthday party that Clotilde would attend.  It’d be her second.

 

Okay then.  Everyone was turning out to witness this exotic, American-Canadian spectacle.

 

And turnout they did.  No one was sick or suddenly away on business.  No one simply forgot the invitation.  Last Saturday at twelve o’clock sharp, nine little guests – and their parents and some siblings – began to rock up at Bellevue.  The invitees were dolled up in pink dresses or (in the case of the few boys) clean trousers, and each was armed with a package for Laurelle.  Some even brought goodies for her parents.

 

“IF anyone should bring you presents,” and here I’d emphasized the “if” to Laurelle just before the party began, “you mustn’t open them at the party.”  I explained that some kids might feel badly if their present wasn’t so big (or, more worryingly, if my four-year old blurted out that she already had one of those, or that she didn’t like such-and-such).  Instead, Laurelle should place any presents discretely into the decorative fireplace nook; we’d open them after the party.

 

The incoming parade of gifts was my second clue that things were slightly amiss.  I had to rip each bundle from Laurelle’s robust grasp.  Most all guests hadn’t bothered to attached a card or even scribble their names on the paper.  How on earth were we to write our thank you notes?

 

Which, I should point out, is Rule Number One:  Say “thank you”.

 

First order of the day was to shuffle the younger crowd through a simple lunch line we’d organized along the kitchen counters.  Later the same buffet would feed parents, too:  a big bowl of plain pasta (for the kids) and an even bigger bowl of plain lettuce (for the adults), with oodles of mix-ins.  Simple food meant no wailing from the Little Johnnys and Susies because they didn’t like sauce or green things.  We padded the meal out with lots of baguettes – the French, I knew, loved their bread.  Plus – just to toss in a pre-planned hint of North America – we made a round of peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches. 

 

About half the crowd had never heard of PB and J.  What, I wondered, do their kids eat?

 

As the small guests stopped wiggling long enough for turns at maquillage, during which our guest animatrice transformed their porcelain faces into those of fairies and Spidermans, the parents filled their plates.  That’s when I noticed we’d jumped off the French plan again.

 

About two leaves of lettuce had disappeared from that enormous (adult) salad bowl.  What – didn’t people eat salads for lunch like Pierre and I?  The (kids’) pasta bowl meanwhile was depleted, save for a couple old-maids left at the bottom.

 

Yes, someone told me afterward, French people do eat salad.  But it’s a side dish. 

 

I’d misjudged on the baguettes, too.  Only one of the four had been demolished.  At least the wine had proven popular – and funnily enough, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.

 

It was time for the spectacle.  La magicienne – the French magician – would put on her show.  In French, of course.  At least we got that bit right.  The world paraded outdoors into a sunny patch against Bellevue’s limestone walls.  They perched on loungers and Laurelle’s swing set to watch la magicienne, decked out in a red spotted hat and double-sized electric-blue shoes, lose a five-Euro note.  Repeatedly.  They watched little Clotilde lay an egg.  And the adults laughed as honestly as the squirming audience of fairies and Spidermans.

 

Next came the centerpiece of any birthday party.  “How do you sing ‘Happy Birthday’ in French?” I’d asked Laurelle the day before her party. 

 

She’d sung the tune almost every week at school.  “Joyeuse anniversaire,” Laurelle began. 

 

Okay, same tune.  Simple enough. 

 

Which makes me wonder why, peering over four blazing candles and one lit-up face, I began the chorus in ringing, American English.  I flipped into French on the second phrase, but it was too late.  Laurelle’s birthday song rang forth in mottled American, British, French and Bosnian-lilted English, with a sprinkling of Joyeuse Anniversaire’s to further muddy a joyful sound. 

 

Onward rolled the American birthday spectacle.

 

That Laurelle’s French chocolate birthday gateau was accompanied by miniature, very-American Oreo cookies seemed a mere postscript at this point.

 

Maybe it was over-excitement.  Maybe it was piles of sugar.  But news soon came that little Laurelle, usually a decent rule follower, had broken our “no present opening” edict. 

 

It should’ve been my fifth clue that this French party was not so French.

 

The birthday girl was threatened with a time-out.  She was very sorry for opening the gift.  End of debate – or so we thought.

 

La magicienne gathered the sugar-spiked fairies and Spidermans into the living room and produced her next round of genius:  les sculptures gonflables.  Ah, so that’s what she’d meant by the term when she’d discussed her contract:  weener dogs and flowers and crowns twisted out of long balloons.  Party favours! 

 

The kids were delighted and wilder than ever.  That’s when I received new intelligence.  Laurelle had opened another gift.  What’s more, it was sweet, egg-laying and second-birthday-party Clotilde who’d urged her to do so. 

 

One parent consoled me.  It was no big deal, she said.  All those gifts – it was like leaving a puppy with an open bag of puppy chow, non?

 

Denver birthday parties, I remember with certainty, lasted two hours.  Maybe – maybe – one party in ten merited an extra 30 minutes if the kids and parents were up to it.  But they should absolutely last NO longer, I remember one mother telling me. 

 

But now things have changed.  The English and Bosnian-French guests picked up sticks about three-and-a-half hours after the starting gun.  Only as the party wore into its fourth hour did the French families begin trickling back toward Bellevue’s living room from play on the swing set, coffees on the terrace and general wanders through the house. 

 

Not that we minded the locals’ endurance or anything.  We were merely – unsurprisingly at this point – surprised by it.  More chit-chat.   Lots of giggling children and grown-up smiles.  Sweeping promises of future play dates. 

 

French or North American – in terms of language or tradition – we’ve thoroughly tested the durability of Rule Number Two.  It works.  Indeed, the world loves a party. 

 

The day after Laurelle’s party I learned this nugget:  French kids open their birthday gifts AT their parties.

 

Oops, again.

 

Throwing this party in France has been fun and educational, but frankly, I’m glad it’s over now.  Rule Number Two creates a rather sizeable weight on the Party Throwers’ shoulders.

 

And now Laurelle is asking how soon she can turn FIVE.