French Lessons

Oh, You're in My Blood

I’ve been asking myself a simple question lately:  What makes the Côte d’Azur so special? 

 

I mean, the world has fallen head over heels with nearby Provence, thanks to Peter Mayle and his endless (and hilarious) tales about pigs, truffles and the five-hour lunch that rolls straight into dinner.  Meanwhile, across the border in Tuscany, we’ve rebuilt an Italian villa – and a shattered life – with the celebrated Frances Mayes. 

 

And yet the Côte d’Azur is hardly relegated to the shade alongside these destination superstars.  Far from it.  Already this summer at Bellevue, we’ve hosted visitors who have declared undying love for this place.  Folks who have delayed their return flights.  Others who have launched into song at her aura.

 

The world is drawn to this southeastern corner of France – as are the French who don’t already live here.  On certain days, starting July 9 this year and focusing on the weekends, the Bison Futé, a French government website, has warned that the roads are “red.”  The A8 and A9 motorways from Paris and along the southern coast are so plugged that you may as well turn around and go home – or stay on holiday.  Today is one of those days.

 

What increases the intensity of this Côte d’Azur phenomenon is that the French pretty much take their holidays in unison.  Starting around Bastille Day on July 14^th and ending just before La Rentrée, the very beginning of September when schools start up and the rest of the working world gets back to their desks, the number of inhabitants surrounding Bellevue swells.  It took Pierre and me a full hour and 40 minutes to drive 28 kilometers on Monday night.  On Monday night!

 

Sure, weather is a draw in the CDA.  We’ve barely seen a drop of rain in a couple months now.  The sky is always sunny – and the forecast constantly expecting more of the same.

 

But you could say the same thing about the Sahara Desert.  There’s obviously more going on here.  A whole lot more.  And every now and then, I’m fortunate to get a special insight to the Côte’s enduring appeal.  I stumble on the perfect 10. 

 

(Yes, sure, we’ve welcomed Bo Derek to lunch at Bellevue – see blogs dated June 9, 10 and 11, 2007 – but at the moment I’m talking about experience.  Not curves.)

 

One of the most seducing things about the Côte d’Azur in summertime is its wealth of music festivals.  Jazz à Juan, in our neighbouring Juan-les-Pins, is one of them.

 

This year was a first for Pierre and me.  For the several years we’ve journeyed to this part of the world, we’ve never attended Jazz à Juan.  Instead we’ve chosen to hightail it out of Holidayville while the roads were red.  Jazz à Juan is a reason to stay.

 

One of this year’s featured artists was Diana Krall, so we learned in June, and the remaining tickets to see Vancouver’s jazz diva were basically on the climbing structure at the adjacent Pinède playground.  Pierre typed a quick email to one of his connected, Vancouverite buddies. 

 

The next morning he received an email from a kind man called Darrell:  two complimentary tickets to see Diana would await us at the box office on the night.  There were no references to the avenue that had connected Darrell and us – but if we should run into any problems, here was the Danish phone number for Diana’s Tour Manager and the Swedish one for her Production Assistant.

 

Voilà.  Things don’t always happen so perfectly – I do realize this – but we’re living in the marvelous, magical Côte d’Azur during the balmy summertime.  All things are possible.

 

But perfection in the CDA isn’t all about glam.  I should point out that our perfect 10 evening also summoned the slower, more personal side of life that is evident in much of France – including its Riviera.

 

A few days before Diana’s concert, Pierre had lunched with his friend Jean-Louis, the head of Antibes’ Musée Picasso.  Here he met Jean-Jacques, Jean-Louis’ forever friend and the new proprietor of La Brasserie, the Antibes restaurant where they dined. 

 

(The French, I must explain, may take a while to create relationships, but once born, these connections endure.  Jean-Louis’ description of his long friend Jean-Jacques reminded me of our friend Walid, whose conversations are splattered with friends’ restaurants that we must try (“We were in school together!”), or even their plumbing businesses that we must use.)

 

Pierre’s new acquaintance Jean-Jacques, as it happened, formerly managed the famed Belles Rives hotel in Juan-les-Pins.  Now, in addition to La Brasserie, he’d begun a second restaurant, a beach restaurant smack between the Belles Rives and the Jazz à Juan concert venue.  Why didn’t Pierre and I dine there before the Diana Krall concert? 

 

And so that night, Jean-Jacques reserved a seaside table for two, draped in white linen and set with its own bottle of golden olive oil and two different balsamics, on the dock of his new Provençal Beach Plage restaurant.  As the sun began to set behind the bay, the proprietor organized two glasses of champagne.  And while other concertgoers helped themselves to a luscious buffet, Jean-Jacques frequented our table and ensured we could order from his gastronomic menu – and still make the concert on-time. 

 

(Which we could have, except that Pierre and I adore dessert.  We chose to invoke French time, which is more elastic than in North America, where my relatives would arrive bewilderingly early to gatherings.  Here if we turned up partway through the opening act to Diana’s concert, we reckoned, it’d be just like the French turning up to dinner parties a socially correct, 15-or-so minutes late.)

 

On our own time, Pierre and I ambled to the venue.  Adding to our wonder on the perfect evening, two comp tickets actually showed up for us in the box office.  And a couple “Krall After Show” passes to boot.

 

Our seats were at the very top of the center section, in the so-called Loge area, directly looking down onto the stage.  We scooted to them during a pause in the warm-up band headed by the son of Clint Eastwood on bass, with trumpet, sax, keyboards and drums. 

 

Eastwood was dressed all in black.  His face filled two large, onstage screens.  His hair was sandy blonde and tousled.  The rest of the screen showed a young Clint.

 

The French, I soon observed, don’t keep Mediterranean time when it comes to concerts.  All rows at this Jazz à Juan concert already were filled, except for our Loge section.  Crowds stood like penned sheep at the right of the stage.  Given the virtuosity of this ensemble – which was much more than a group of musicians riding on the glory of a famous father – we maybe should’ve skipped dessert. 

 

The backdrop was equally enthralling:  this glorious golf teeming with pleasure craft; Abramovich’s glitzy new, 377-foot Luna megayacht; and a virtual painter’s palate scattered in the Mediterranean sunset.  Traffic hummed softly behind Pierre and my seats on the sultry evening, while an occasional, musical refrain from nearby beach restaurants tinkled into the arena during the quieter moments on stage.  But the world buzzed superfluously to its own beat while the concert crowd tuned in perfectly to the stage.

 

As Eastwood and his crew shared the lead, I realized the seats in the Loge weren’t just top-notch; they were at the center of this musical world.  A few spots over stood the production platform, housing the handful of backstage types who wielded an enormous spotlight, monitored the sound balance and laughed into headphones with crew members hidden elsewhere within the arena. 

 

Between our seats and this platform was a small section three seats wide.  In that section, one row back, was a female fan club for Eastwood and his gang.  They bounced up and shrieked after every piece.  They snapped forbidden photos – venue staff were guarding a tableful of confiscated cameras at the entry door – and then stuffed the cameras back into their handbags.

 

I whipped out my iPhone and snapped a couple shots myself.  Here’s one of them:

 

Eastwood dedicated his second-to-last song to his fille – using this single, French word in an otherwise English discourse.  His fille likes funk, he said. 

 

The audience murmured.  They seemed to say, “Nice try with the French, Eastwood.  But fille?”  Did he mean his daughter, as the French word indicated?  Or did he refer to his girlfriend?  (I later learned that audience interest probably related to the paparazzi-style debate about who, exactly, Eastwood is dating these days.)

 

Eastwood’s bass rocked as he punched out a jaunty tune.  When he began to improvise, the woman next to me, seated in that narrow section of seats, came to life.  She treaded her slender fingers against each other.  Her left ring finger was stacked high with mod, silver rings.  Her narrow shoulders hunched over as she fidgeted, as if she was trying to get closer to the music.  Her feet tapped the offbeat.

 

The musician’s offbeat.  While audiences tend to tap out beats 1 and 3 in a song, musicians encourage 2 and 4.  It doesn’t drag the tempo.  The slender woman next to me knew music.  She was involved.

 

When Eastwood swapped his lead to the trumpet player, the woman’s fingers stopped moving.  She pulsed a handheld fan in front of her face.  The funk piece finished to grand applause, and the three women in the back row of that narrow section jumped up.  They hooted louder than ever.  The woman with the silver rings – and I now glimpsed more closely her angular face, her long, dark hair and her strappy, black dress painted with large flowers that showed the back of her black bra – this woman remained in her seat.  She spun in my direction and said to the woman behind her, “Kyle and I were playing with this song in his front room, and I said you have to put it on your record.”

 

I peeked at our complimentary ticket stubs.  Kyle was Eastwood Jr’s first name.

 

“She’s the fille!” I said to Pierre, as if I’d just solved some mystery.  Suddenly I was filled with regret.  Had the fille overheard my earlier comments?  When, as Eastwood’s face filled the screen, I asked Pierre how old the musician would be?  How I said that close-ups like that do no favours?

 

Smack at the end of the set, the fille in black jumped up and shot, presumably, backstage.  Eastwood and his gang returned for an encore.  The back row groupies snapped liberally with their cameras.

 

A security guard bounded toward the woman closest to us.  He scolded her in French and then, presumably because she looked puzzled, he asked, “Est-ce que vous comprenez le français?”  Do you understand French?

 

The woman stammered in English.  Yes, she understood the rule, she said with a lilting Southern drawl, but what did this man think she was going to do with the photos anyway?  “I’m his mother!” she declared.

 

Maggie Johnson, a former swimsuit model, was Clint Eastwood’s first wife, the one who lasted 25 years with him and bore two children.  Kyle was the elder.  His sister was Alison. 

 

The guard held his dignity in the face of Clint Eastwood’s former wife by explaining that, okay, she wasn’t a problem, but if the rest of the audience saw her taking photos, they’d think it was okay for them to do so, too.  (My hand floated to check that the iPhone was tucked well into my handbag.)

 

In the fluster, Maggie lost a lens from her glasses.  I helped her scour the floor.  She was beautiful, with gentle facial features and shoulder-length, snow-white hair clipped away from her face.  She wore a shapely, white cotton shirt and a light pink skirt that would’ve twirled if she spun circles. 

 

A woman two down from Maggie – another one of the groupies – found the lens.  She thanked me and passed the lens to Maggie.  “Here,” she said.  “Just put the glasses away, Mom.” 

 

Alison, Kyle’s sister, was a pretty blonde who wore a navy sundress that was more structured than the fille’s.  Between Alison and her mother sat a teenage girl with a high, dark ponytail.  “That was great!” was all I heard her say when she began climbing down the stands.  But Pierre overheard more.  The dark-haired girl was Maggie’s granddaughter.  Kyle’s daughter from his first wife.  Perhaps even the fille he had mentioned.

 

Maggie put her glasses in her purse.  As she started down the staircase next to me, presumably to find her son, she turned to say with her gentle drawl, “Thanks for being so understanding.”  A proper belle to the end.

 

Diana Krall’s concert – the headline act – was equally enthralling, if only for the right reasons.  She came onstage at 10pm, when the Juan-les-Pins sky finally had darkened.  Luna and her nautical neighbours sparkled in the bay.  Just up the coastline, the green light of Port Gallice’s lighthouse flickered three times on each revolution. 

 

Playing alongside a guitar, bass and drums, the celebrated jazz pianist and singer from Vancouver seemed to use 12 fingers to craft improvisations on a Steinway.  Even more stunningly, her mellow, cabaret-style voice sang along to an entirely different rhythm.

 

Diana wasn’t one to tell stories into the mic, but her love of Canada was clear.  She introduced one song saying that it reminded her of Vancouver – even while she bathed in the Riviera’s bliss.  Pierre and I quietly praised the Vancouver connection who’d sourced our tickets. 

 

At one point, Diana wove a fleeting phrase of “O Canada”, the national anthem, within a song whose repeated refrain was “Oh, you’re in my blood like holy wine / Tastes so bitter / Tastes so sweet.”  It was as if the diva was singing directly to Pierre and me. 

 

On reflection, I’m sure she wasn’t, but all things are possible in the Côte d’Azur.

 

The concert ended near midnight.  Back at Bellevue, we realized that a five-year old doesn’t understand that her parents stayed out late the night before.  It is for that reason alone that I still have the Krall After Show tickets on my desk, souvenirs of a perfect evening.

 

The night of Kyle’s and Diana’s concerts, preceded by a delicious new friendship in Jean-Jacques, shows why the French Riviera, sandwiched between Provence and Tuscany, is so enticing.  At least it’s part of the answer.  The Côte d’Azur offers both of these bewitching sides of France:  a slower pace that’s personal and real – and a hive of activity where you can feel, if only for a moment, that you are at the center of the universe.

 

The only unfortunate factor in this love affair is that it’s hardly exclusive.  The Côte d’Azur’s admiring flocks continue to stream in.  The Bison Futé website is forecasting that tomorrow, August 1, will be the worst day of the year for France’s roads – mostly thanks to traffic between Paris and the south. 

 

The government website pronounces that tomorrow’s roads will be “black.”

 

www.frenchlessons.typepad.com

Going Nuts

A few hours after the Moccio family arrived from Toronto, Stephan and I stood at the meat counter in central Antibes’ Carrefour supermarket. 

 

It was hardly the glamourous start to a Côte d’Azur holiday you’d expect for the guy who, just days before, was personally greeting and playing piano for the worlds’ head honchos at the G20 dinner in Toronto.  Barack and Michelle, Nicolas and Carla, Silvio, Angela, Dmitry Medvedev, Hu Jintao, Cristina Kirshner, Jacob Zuma, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz are among his newest friends.

 

No, instead of soaking in the rays on some trendy beach, Stephan Moccio spent his first afternoon in the French Riviera chatting with Carrefour’s butcher, a young man wearing a white smock and wielding a convincing knife.  As he wrapped up bits of pure beef for Stephan, the butcher labeled our pianist-composer friend (who I wrote about in Maclean’s magazine (http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/01/26/a-musical-olympic-bid-of-his-own/#more-102914)) as un cousin.  The French adore the Quebecois like Stephan – and his accent gave him away in an instant. 

 

Our musician friend then handed the butcher a package of pre-wrapped chicken breasts.  Could he dice these, too, with his clean knife?  Stephan didn’t mention the cross-contamination he was trying to avoid.

 

No problem for un cousin!  The butcher declared his love for the most famous French-Canadian, Celine Dion.  Stephan mentioned the hit song he wrote for her.  It was the beginning of a friendship that would flourish during the Moccios’ two-week stay at Bellevue.

 

It was simple, unassuming peanuts that brought these two men together. 

 

Pierre and I have welcomed oodles of visitors to Bellevue over several years, but we’ve never dealt with a nut allergy in France – much less over an extended period.  Stephan and Hilary’s daughter Elle Sophie, a gentle and engaging five-year old with sparkling brown eyes and cascades of curls, has this allergie mortelle – an anaphylactic (or fatal) peanut allergy. 

 

No peanuts – not even a trace of them – can enter her mouth. 

 

Peanut allergy is hardly uncommon in the US and Canada, particularly among children.  Health Canada estimates that up to 6% of the country’s children, and 3 – 4% of its adults, are affected by a food allergy, with peanuts being one of the largest contributors.  The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network says that peanut allergy doubled in US children over the five years to 2002.  And there’s no known cure.

 

Like any food allergy, peanut allergy is life-altering – for everyone involved.  The Toronto school where Elle Sophie and our daughter Laurelle attend allows no outside food, even for birthdays.  Nut-free cupcake shops have sprung up around town and do thriving business.  And now our kitchen in Antibes had to be peanut-free, too.

 

“We used to lead normal lives,” Stephan told me that first afternoon as we waited on the butcher.  With peanuts outside his lens, I bet his first holiday visit would’ve been to a fashionable stretch of sand.

 

In France, on the other hand, hardly anyone discusses peanut allergy.  According to L’Allergie Alimentaire à l’Arachnide, a February 2005 study of peanut allergy at the Université Paris XII – Val de Marne, this allergy is increasing rapidly in France, especially in children – but today it still touches only 0.5 – 0.7% of the population.  

 

As such, there’s little awareness here of the peanut issue.  Restaurants aren’t used to discussing it.  Ditto schools.  Two years ago when Laurelle attended school in neighbouring Juan-les-Pins, parents coordinated daily snacks for the 33 maternelle classmates with little guidance.  Birthdays, practically a weekly celebration, were studded with chocolates and munchies that would’ve been riddled with horror for any nut allergy sufferer.

 

In fact, I was so clueless about the issue that for Laurelle’s fourth birthday party here in France, I prepared peanut butter and jelly sandwiches – an unusual, American treat – for her little invitees.  Pierre and Laurelle, my peanut butter gourmands, bought into the idea and agreed to share their precious jar of imported, Skippy’s smooth for the party.  (Personally I cannot stand the stuff.)  

 

I still remember one little guest Lisa, at the encouragement of her mother, politely placing a dolly sandwich of PB and J on her plate.  The four-year old looked up at me with enormous green eyes and then wrinkled her nose.  “Qu’est-ce que c’est ça?”  What’s that?

 

I’m genuinely happy to report that no one discovered a peanut allergy at that party.  (Truth be told, no French person actually liked the sandwiches either.)

 

But now, with the arrival of Elle Sophie at Bellevue, our family suddenly faced this North American overlay – the peanut allergy – in France.  Surely there’d be little problem, Pierre and I had advised the Moccios as they planned their trip.  Everything is locally grown.  Locally prepared.  There are fewer processed foods in France. 

 

But days before Elle Sophie’s arrival, a quick survey of the local supermarket’s plain chocolate bars – ones we’d use for s’mores or frozen banana treats – warned otherwise.  The peanut issue would be less straightforward than we’d hoped.

 

Elle Sophie scored the top shelf in Bellevue’s refrigerator, where her food remained segregated from the rest.  Her stockpile contained those meats from the Carrefour butcher, along with eggs, vegetables, goat milk, prepared couscous salads – every morsel handpicked by her parents.  Her meals would be different from ours.

 

It had to be that way – and we understood completely.  Our family doesn’t deal with a fatal food allergy.  I can hardly imagine the endless worry and responsibility of those who do.

 

A couple mornings later as I dressed Laurelle in her bedroom, a cloud of garlic wafted in.  Beneath her room lies the kitchen.  We went to investigate.  Stephan was stirring the contents of a frying pan on the stove.

 

“We’re not usually this hardcore,” he said, but the family had a long day’s car journey ahead, and Elle needed something to sustain her:  eggs, mushrooms, a couple cloves of garlic and – what are those green bits?  I asked.  Hilary produced a bag of dried kale chips that she’d brought in her luggage from Canada. 

 

Stephan hovered over his daughter’s bowl and tasted the concoction.  “It’s delicious!”  he said. 

 

Yes, sure, but for breakfast?  And for a kindergartner?  (Until that moment, I’d thought I was the difficult parent, allowing Laurelle only half a bowl of chocolaty Chocapic for breakfast and insisting that the remainder be a sensible cereal.)

 

The Moccio family straddled two worlds during their first week of holiday:  the intensity of hometown Toronto, a place of work and hub of peanut-sensitive consumers; and the anything-goes of Antibes, a Rivieran town where a constant hum of cicadas serenades beachcombers and “peanut” is hardly an offensive word. 

 

Leaving this charged world behind – even when he wanted to – was particularly difficult for Stephan.  Shortly after arriving in Antibes, he, Hilary and Elle Sophie strolled through the Marché Provençal to pick up some produce and local foods.  As Stephan handed the burly cheesemonger a EUR 50 note, a middle-aged woman approached him.

 

I’m so sorry to bother you, she said, but I can’t help it…. You’re Stephan Moccio, right?

 

Stephan nodded.  The woman lived in Ottawa.  She’d just seen his piano concert.  She was a fan – and what do you know?  Here was Stephan Moccio, the real deal, right here in the produce market of Antibes, France!  Could she please have his autograph?

 

A Frenchman overheard Stephan’s name.  He was a fan, too.  He’d listened to Stephan’s music for a couple years now.  How about another autograph?

 

The cheesemonger wanted Stephan’s attention, too.  Your change, Monsieur!  Your change!

 

It’s difficult to be seduced by the Côte d’Azur, to come fully under its carefree spell, when the real world comes along on the journey.  Unsurprisingly in hindsight, it was during this more intense half of the Moccios’ stay that Elle Sophie ate from her shelf in the refrigerator – supplemented by dried kale chips, quinoa sticks, peanut-free chocolate and other goodies that Hilary had packed in her suitcase.  Restaurant food was cooked ultra-simply, as prescribed by her parents. 

 

And no bread.  Definitely no bread for Elle.  No pastries or ice creams.  Even gelato was a risk.  As restaurant and gelateria owners weren’t used to the peanut issue, they erred on the conservative side.  Elle Sophie forewent – necessarily so – but she also missed the gourmand experience that makes France, well, France.

 

Midway through the Moccios’ stay, Pierre and I offered to cook one evening.  We’d do our best to ensure everything was peanut-free.  We purchased a couple large turbots from our favourite poissonnier in Cannes.  We selected des artichauts, des tomates, la salade roquette,and des coco plats (enormous green beans) from a nearby, local marché.  I checked and double checked the ingredients of a box of so-called blé gourmand:  100% natural durum wheat.  Everything would be cooked simply, using only water and olive oil.  Elle Sophie could eat what we ate.

 

All that remained was the question of bread, the staple of any real, French meal.  I headed into Hasselbach, a favourite, family-owned boulangerie in Old Antibes.  Unusually for this bakery, no one queued behind me as I made selections. 

 

One of my guests, I explained to the young attendant, has un allergie mortelle aux cacahuetes.  Aux arachides, I said, using the alternate word for peanuts.  Were Hasslebach’s baguettes peanut-free?

 

“Je ne comprends pas,” she said.

 

Of course.  When an answer isn’t readily available, no French person understands my French.  I explained again, more slowly, more loudly.  A queue began to form behind me.

 

Eventually the young woman made a phone call.  Indeed, everything at Hasselbach was peanut-free, she reported.   I smiled at ten waiting customers as the attendant wrapped two baguettes à l’ancienne and tartes aux abricots.

 

That night, Elle Sophie had turbot.  She ate blé and coco plats – and her first morsel of French baguette.  And I sighed in relief.

 

The next day the Moccios headed to the artsy, medieval town of Saint Paul de Vence, about 45 minutes’ drive from Bellevue.  At the very peak of this perched, stone village is a church.  Across from the church is a gelateria.  The Moccios knew disappointment, but it was becoming hard to bear – particularly as the bad news always hit their five-year-old daughter the hardest.  Stephan entered the store alone.

 

Is your gelato peanut-free?  He was ready for the usual ho-humming.

 

It was.  The gelateria owner was delighted to report there were absolutely no peanuts in his shop and, in fact, a Canadian family had asked him that very same question one day earlier.

 

Stephan barely let the man finish his sentence.  He bounded out the door and urged Hilary and Elle Sophie into the shop.  As the curly-haired girl let the sweet coldness melt on her tongue, she asked her parents quite simply, “Can we drive here every day?”

 

Buoyed by success, we dined out that evening at Crêperie du Port in Old Antibes.  I’d asked about peanuts when making the reservation.  Stephan checked again on-site. 

 

No, the crêperie folks insisted, there were no peanuts in their shop (though Stephan and Hilary spotted Nutella, the chocolate-and-hazelnut spread that’s married to crêpes like jelly is to peanut butter). 

 

Pedestrians streamed past our outside table in the cobbled street.  Stephan sucked in the cooler night air and flushed it out of his lungs.  It was as if he finally was allowing the essence of the Med to soak into his big-city psyche.  The charm had begun to work.

 

“Je suis Antibean,” he said airily. 

 

It sounded a bit like he dubbed himself an amphibian, but Pierre and I understood.  Stephan began to feel like someone from Antibes.  Like a real Antibois.  He belonged here. 

 

“Antibes, je vous aime,” he said, stretching his hands upward in a theatrical plea to the night.

 

As Stephan – Hilary, too – began to relax into the Côte d’Azur’s arms, they began to trust the area with peanuts, too.  Not in an irresponsible way, never, but as their comfort level increased, so did Elle Sophie’s culinary adventures.

 

The sparkly-eyed girl ate a spinach and cheese crêpe that night. 

 

The next morning Pierre and Stephan scooted out to our neighbourhood boulangerie.  No peanuts in their shop, they said.  The men returned to Bellevue with pains au chocolat, brioches aux raisins, une brioche au sucre, un croustillant aux pommes, and about two dozen choquettes – small, lightly-glazed puffs of French pastry encrusted with nuggets of sugar. 

 

Elle Sophie tasted a choquette.  Her dark eyes, already sparkling, could have illuminated the boulangerie’s entire wall of ovens. 

 

That night Chef Emmanuel took up residence in Bellevue’s kitchen.  I’d already explained the peanut issue to him – several times.  He always told me not to worry.  He didn’t cook with peanuts.  Even his chocolate, he said, was just chocolate.  Pure chocolate.

 

As we sat for our meal, Hilary launched the bread question.  Did the chef know whether the baguette was peanut-free – meaning, devoid of all peanut traces?

 

Emmanuel grinned.  “Mais, c’est la France!”  he said.  We don’t put peanuts in bread!  He was amused by this endless discussion about peanuts.

 

Hilary persevered.  But the boulangerie where you bought it – is it peanut-free?

 

Emmanuel shook his head.  He’d never asked that question .  The French aren’t used to dealing with this issue, he said – or as he was implying, this non-issue.  “C’est la France!” he said again.

 

I am sure Elle Sophie missed out on baguette that night.  But she did dive into Chef Emmanuel’s most decadent and intense chocolate tarte.  And it was legendary. 

 

At bedtime, Hilary asked Elle her favourite part of the evening.  There were many highlights.  Elle Sophie put her own timeframe on the question.  “The sugar breakfast,” she said.  Les choquettes.  Emmanuel’s chocolate tarte came a close second.  The girl with the peanut allergy had tasted her first French pastries, and they were unforgettable.

 

Les choquettes became a ritual during the Moccios’ last days in France.  We mourned Friday when the boulangerie didn’t bake them.  Come back tomorrow, they advised.  We did – and bought out their supply. 

 

The following day Elle Sophie (reluctantly) returned to Toronto.  Today she serves as the city’s most compelling advertisement for fresh French pastries.

 

My own revolution has been more subtle.  From here on, I will praise the simplicity of food in France – its freshness and its lack of industrial processing.  And whenever I am fortunate to taste the luscious sweetness of a fresh choquette, I will do so thinking of Elle Sophie – and the extra sparkle in her brown eyes.

 

My new awareness of nuts in France will hardly go to waste either.  Just a few days ago I corresponded with Kathleen, another Toronto friend.  She and her family will visit us at Bellevue tomorrow.  As an afterthought – just to be sure – I launched the allergy question.

 

None in her family, she told me.  Except for seven-year-old Veronica. 

 

She’s allergic to peanuts.

 

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Come Sail Away

A couple weeks ago Judy, an enthusiastic American friend in Antibes, suggested we enroll in a sailing course at l’École Française de Voile.

It wasn’t the first time I’d entertained the idea.  Bellevue overlooks the bay where Club Nautique d’Antibes bases its sailing school.  With the hub of Old Antibes as the backdrop, one of my favourite views from Bellevue’s wide balcony is the daily parade of children in tiny, blue-and-white striped sailboats that streams through a busy bay into open waters, the boats linked up by cords and pulled by a motorized dinghy. 

As the line of little boats slices through a hive of pleasure cruisers and megayachts, jet skis and water skis, fishing vessels and kayaks, swimmers and scuba divers, I think Babar:  the mommy elephant navigating her kids, trunks tied to tails, through the wilds of the African jungle.

As a kid, my experiences with sailboats largely consisted of my brother dumping me overboard on any puff of wind.  My few sailing attempts as an adult have been more satisfactory – both calming and exhilarating at the same time.  And I wanted to know more.

Fortunately l’École Française de Voile also ran classes for an all-embracing, 14+ age group.  Judy and I could take on the Hobie Cat 16 Catamaran, a wholly new experience for me.  I accepted her proposal with nearly matching gusto, and joined last week’s class for four afternoons of training plus an all-day sail and pique-nique. 

Judy and I were not the only adults enrolled in the course.  In our class of 17, a whopping six of us were something other than lanky adolescents or flirting mid-20-year olds.  Aurélien, our tanned and sporty, mid-20-something instructor, assigned Marc, another grown-up, to Judy and my catamaran.  We would be a team.

Straight away, I knew two things about Marc.  First, he liked to eat, as evidenced by a sizeable paunch.  Second, he spoke French.  Just French.  Judy rolled her eyes.

The first thing we had to learn was our ship.  Aurélien gathered our group at the edge of a Hobie Cat 16.  As we baked in the Côte d’Azur’s humid sunshine, he barked the basics and began rigging the machine. 

Aurélien pounded one of the Cata’s two hulls.  “La coque,” he said.  He cast an eye at Judy and me and made some joke about how the word translates to Anglophones.  I smirked back.

La barre (literally a bar) controls the two safrans (rudders), and this contraption – the steering mechanism of our boat – would be governed by le stick. 

Of course une coque would have un stick.  And le stick is always in charge.

Aurélien moved on to the sails.  As he hoisted the smaller, front sail – the one we’d call the jib in English – he barked its name: “Le foc!” 

Of course it is. 

I looked around.  No one else smiled.  Education is serious stuff in France.  And now I began to get serious, too.  I wondered how I possibly could go about sailing this week, saying these words to Judy, my American ex-cheerleader friend? 

And to Marc, this new Frenchman who would hardly let me resort to more civilized words like “hull” and “jib”? 

What would Aurélien say to us as we shoved off into the sea?  Mount la coque?

And to get moving – what? – we grab le stick?

Once sailing the high seas, would I summon that ever-useful French verb faire (meaning “to make” or “to do” – the verb used in a huge variety of combinations), and call out to my teammates that I’d fais le foc?

When Aurélien finished his introductory lesson, Judy, Marc and I headed to our stripped Cata.  My two sailing mates had taken this course a year earlier, so they scrambled to arrange a mind-boggling array of lines and pulleys, cleats and eyelets.  I was still stewing over la coque, le stick and le foc – like it was some big, bad joke, totally on me. 

Was le foc like une otarie? I asked Marc.  I clapped the back of my hands together like a seal.

Une otarie, I’d discovered last year at the local Marineland, is a sea lion.  It looks much like a seal, the poor, unsuspecting species that’s been dubbed by the French as un phoque.  When my young daughter was learning her French animal words, I always avoided that flashcard.

Non, Marc told me while rigging the main sail.  The jib sail is not like a sea lion.  He could’ve ended his sentence with a frank, “Stupid,” but he didn’t.  Instead he gave me a moment to explain the linguistic gymnastics going on inside my head between un foc, un phoque, and une otarie.  (I waited a day or two to venture into the Anglophone take on le foc.) 

Meanwhile our coque was headed into the water.  Aurélien gathered the group for a quick explanation of sailing.  He spoke in familiar, local French, slurring the Parisian language that most students learn in overseas language schools.  Between his accent and my pre-occupation with the Cata’s nomenclature, all I could grasp were two important rules:

 

(i)     Le stick rules everything.

(ii)    Le foc should always follow.

Which aren’t bad rules for sailing actually.  But I hardly plan to pass them along to my daughter.

Needless to say, my first day of sailing was less than world-class.  Aurélien’s sole chance to watch me with le stick held tightly in my fingers brought him motoring alongside our boat, yelling something about the sea and the earth.  Even in slight winds and a calm sea, all I could yell back to him was, “Je ne comprends pas.”  I don’t understand.

I couldn’t sail.  I couldn’t communicate.  I couldn’t rig the boat , or unrig it either.  I was bottom of the class.

Things improved on Day Two – including my attitude.  I learned how to stop the Cata midstream.  (Who knew a boat had brakes!)  I learned that Marc was an affable man, a retired mathematics and computer teacher from the international high school in Fountainbleu who wished he was more gifted in foreign language.  A special treat, our team even grabbed a few close-up looks at Roman Abramovich’s newest beauty, Luna, a 377-foot megayacht complete with aft-deck beach club, that had swanned in to Antibes’ bay. 

On Day Two I also grasped the derivation of the word, le boom.  It’s the same sailing term in English, just pronounced with a French twist, and denotes the heavy, swinging arm at the bottom of the main sail.  (Fortunately in French sailing terminology, le boom hasn’t morphed into le bang.)

Midway through our afternoon aboard the boat, as I kept my left hand firmly wrapped around le stick’s circumference, I let my right hand drift between the main sail’s rope and the top of my scalp.  An egg had sprouted but there was no blood.

Day Three brought a Thermique Force 3 wind.  The air had become stronger and more changeable.  Aurélien, who’d taken to flirting with a couple blond twenty-somethings in the class, aired his concerns about our fleet of six in these seas.  As we gathered in the bay, he introduced the concept of sailing into the wind, one of the trickier maneuvers for beginners.  He barked orders from a floating dinghy; I strained to hear any phrase.  Aboard our Cata, Marc translated Aurélien’s words graphically for Judy and me, creating diagrams with ropes on our boat’s wide trampoline. 

Doing is often the best way of learning.  That day, when it was my turn to hold le stick (and as we know, the holder of le stick makes the rules), I deviated modestly from Aurélien’s agenda.  This was school, I was the student, and I wanted to discover how to manage an oncoming wind from different approaches.  I would attack my education from a North American perspective, and specifically the method used at my daughter’s pre-school.  I had a curriculum to achieve by the end of the week, but I’d get there in my own, investigative way. 

My approach to Aurélien’s assignment ended up putting our Cata scotché – the Frenchman’s delightful term for saying that our boat was completely stuck – in the middle of the sea. 

Aurélien sped up to our sailboat.  Before he could ask me something I didn’t understand, I simply explained, “J’ai essayé de faire quelque chose, mais il marche pas.”  I tried to do something, but it doesn’t work.  Aurélien said little and jetted off to another sailboat.

Day Four, as we rigged our craft, Judy tried out her keenest smile and asked Aurélien if our group could take out one of the newer Catas.  Each day one or two teams sailed newer boats, ones that were suitable for competition.  They were better treated than the typical classroom models, whose coques were dragged daily over a pebble beach by students like us.

Judy shared the outcome of her request with Marc and me.  “Aurélien said we didn’t follow his orders yesterday, so we don’t get the good equipment.”

Of course.  I’d forgotten.  This was French School.  In France, education is about following the rules.  It’s about learning good habits that will allow students to fit into society.  It’s serious business with little room for individual investigation or colouring outside the lines, even in pre-school.  And it didn’t matter that the teacher was half my age:  Teachers deserve respect.  Period. 

I had a new appreciation for my ebullient daughter.  For once, I understood firsthand why her teacher regularly sent her au coin during her year of French maternelle.  Or at the other end of the age spectrum, why a couple French adults I know have long memories of being dubbed nulls (zeroes) in front of their classmates.

Judy looked at Marc and me.  “So today we’re going to follow the rules, right?” she said.  We’d do whatever Aurélien asked so that we might get good equipment on the last day? 

Marc and I agreed, but half-heartedly.  Compared with a couple boatloads of younger, more agile classmates, there was little chance we’d be among the best sailors for the day.

Day Four’s biggest challenge came at the end.  As Aurélien towed our line of craft back into the school’s beach, he commanded us to unrig the boats completely.  Onboard our vessel Marc complained this was a senseless exercise.  Judy, on the other hand, remained resolute in her campaign to follow each and every one of the teacher’s orders.  As if to underscore her resolve, our task was made more difficult by the dodgy main sail we’d chosen for the day.  Being relegated to student equipment on Day Four actually decreased our chances for better gear on Day Five.

Judy stood on the trampoline tugging at the main sail’s line.  It was stuck.  The main sail wouldn’t budge.  She walked out onto the moving boat’s right coque in a bold attempt to free the sail. 

“À terre, à terre!” Marc yelled from the trampoline bed.  Get down, get down! 

“It’s not you who’s my teacher this week!” Judy shouted.

“What do you call this exercise, anyway?” Marc muttered.  (The maneuver actually proved useful on Day Five as we unrigged in a neighbouring bay before heading ashore for un pique-nique.)

Judy prevailed.  During that 10-minute tow into shore, our threesome managed to unrig the wretched Catamaran.  As we came ashore, Aurélien surveyed the teams’ varied rates of success.

Day Five:  Judy, Marc and I scored the only competition-level Cata that headed onto the water.  What’s more, it was the full-day class!  (We later realized that ours was the last team to use the better Cata, but it hardly took the wind from our sails.)

As light winds eased our Cata toward Plage de la Garoupe in a neighbouring cove, the subject aboard our competition-grade Cata was food.  More precisely, it was cheese.  Judy maneuvered le stick and I fait le foc.  Marc lay back on his elbows and delighted in the beauty of brebis, the saltiness of reblochon, the creaminess of different chèvres, and the universality of comté.  He reveled in their pairings with olive tapenades and fig jams.  We talked Dutch gouda.  We mentioned America’s black-wax encrusted cheese (which I later identified as Bergenost) but agreed it wasn’t a taste contender.  Of course we joked about American “cheese food,” too.

Food is among the dearest topics to a Frenchman.  “The French…have surrounded food with so much commentary, learning and connoisseurship as to clothe it in the vestments of civilization itself…,” writes Richard Bernstein in The Fragile Glory.  Here Judy and I, two Americans, were fortunate to witness a grassroots and heartfelt exaltation of this veritable, French form of art.

As I described the creaminess of my favourite bûche aux cendres, a chèvre rolled in ash, I realized that in the past week, our threesome had become a real team.  Together we rigged and unrigged.  Together we analysed Aurélien’s educational offerings.  Together we’d mounted la coque, shared le stick, and fait le foc.  And now we were discussing food.  I knew I’d miss my teammates on Day Six.

Aurélien bothered us less on Day Five, too.  Better equipment allowed us to sail faster (or was it our perfected technique?).  We set the course for the class.  Marc and I commended Judy for her doggedness on Day Four.

The wind shifted mid-afternoon, emanating from the land and pushing boats back into the sea.  It meant that our final approach to l’École Française de Voile was less than exemplary:  Our competitive Cata was towed behind a motorized dinghy.  But so was the fate of the rest of the class. 

Attention shifted to report cards.  This was French school, after all, and rules and reports mattered.  Aurélien distributed a transparent folder to each pupil.  Inside were two booklets:  Le Certification des Niveaux et Experiences (basically a summary of how the student performed in class) and La Carte Progression (on which the instructor ticked off prescribed achievements).

I was an adolescent all over again, opening the envelope that contained summarized feedback of a grueling semester.  Judy looked over my shoulder.  On Le Carte Progression, Aurélien had passed me through Level 1.  He’d ticked three boxes in Level 2.

Inside Le Certification des Niveaux et Experiences, he’d made no comment about my mastery of the French language.  He’d hardly mentioned my more investigative approach to French schooling.  “Bonne volonté!” he wrote.  “Good enthusiasm!  You progressed well through persevering.  Continue in this way and you will progress further!  See you soon.”

Our team said a fond farewell, and I walked back to Bellevue swinging the report card in my hand.  I was tired and sun-drenched.  But I was pleased:  The teach thought I did okay.  And yet, that’s hardly what matters. 

What matters is that I became something of a better sailor.  As a bonus, I had a firsthand crack at the French educational experience. 

And now, sailing even interests my husband.  Always intent on my acquisition of good French terminology, he says he wants to embark on a private course.

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A Homecoming

The penny dropped in the back seat of an Antibes taxi.

 

The fact that five-year-old Laurelle and I were driving around our former hometown in a taxi should’ve labeled us as tourists, particularly in this seaside town situated midway along the celebrated Côte d’Azur.

 

But it wasn’t exactly the taxi ride that gave me this new appreciation.  It was the conversation with our taxi driver as we journeyed away from the stand.  She declared that she knew me.  I knew her, too.

 

A busy, intervening year faded quickly. 

 

Est-ce que vous avez un enfant qui va à l’École St Philippe?  Does she have a child attending the school St Philippe?

 

Oui.

 

Bingo.  Tall and sculpted, with long sandy hair and a prominent jaw line, she was the mother I always thought should be modeling Ralph Lauren sportswear.  Instead – I’d had no idea – she drove a taxi.

 

Votre enfant s’appelle Marcus.  Your child is Marcus.

 

Oui.

 

Beside me in the back seat, Laurelle’s eyes bulged.  She whispered to me more audibly than I liked:  “She’s the mommy of the scary boy?” 

 

Her words were packed with meaning:  Our taxi driver is the mommy of one of the three tough boys from my maternelle class the year before last?  But you promised me all year long, whenever we talked about returning to France, that I’d never, ever have to see that boy again!

 

The taxi’s radio called Marcus’s Mommy at a very fortunate moment.  I hope and believe she missed Laurelle’s question.  But as our taxi journeyed down Boulevard Albert 1^ère and onto the seaside road that leads to Bellevue, our home in Antibes, the situation prompted my new, big idea in returning to this town:  That our family will never again be tourists here.

 

I’d feared that even after living here for a full year – even after enduring a tumultuous winter and sending my only child into a full-on, French maternelle – I feared that we’d still be classed as tourists after a year’s absence.  Relegated to the suite of Anglophone visitors who journey to this celebrated shoreline for some beach and sun.

 

To the contrary.  In these initial moments back in Antibes, I’m realizing that distance has somehow cemented relationships.  It’s as if people now say, “Hey, if these foreigners go away for a year – perhaps sending the intervening email or two – and then come back to town and look us up, they actually ‘mean’ it.”  There’s some dedication in the relationship, even a thought that we derive mutual value in maintaining our friendships – perhaps growing them.

 

Taking the pulse of this seaside town took about a day.  By then I was au courant on the local news:

 

• Economics:  Fabienne, my esthetician, was moving on.  As I wished her luck in her next venture – perhaps she was starting her own salon? – she shrugged her shoulders and said, “au chômage.”  Tomorrow she’d be unemployed.  An English esthetician at another salon later told me Fabienne was taking all of July off work.  That was the problem in France, the Englishwoman said.  People care less and less about employment.  They’re happy to live off state benefits.

 

• Politics:  In the tireless row over whether Ikea would be allowed to open an outlet just north of Antibes, the mayor of Mouan Sartoux trumped the mayor of Mougins in a Paris tribunal.  Ikea’s hopes were scrapped.  The Frenchman’s soul belongs to le terroir, to the soil.  Commerce must not change its face.

 

• Social:  A good half of Laurelle’s former maternelle classmates still remembered her, a year on, as she and I joined parents in collecting the pint-sized pupils at the end of classes.  Laurelle batted her eyelashes at young Eros, the winged cupid who over the last year had become her petit ami.  She’d just forgotten to inform him of the happy news.  Fortunately Eros’ sweet mother laughed as I explained my daughter’s girly outburst.

 

Knowing the fabric here also helps in dealing with local characters.  As Laurelle and I re-discovered Antibes’ cobbled Old Town that first day, we found the carousel closed at the prime hour of 3pm.  Its aluminum siding was locked firmly in place, and the little painted ticket hut was slapped shut.  The attendant we knew from last year, an easygoing chap with shaggy, salt-and-pepper hair and glasses perched on his nose, was nowhere to be seen.  I enquired with a man at the nearby kiosk for Antibes’ tourist train. 

 

Je ne peux pas vous comprendre, he told me.  I cannot understand you.

 

I sank fleetingly into a funk that my French had lurched violently southward over the last year, despite enduring studies at the Alliance Française in Toronto.  Then I tried to think like a local. 

 

First off, I’d goofed.  I’d forgotten the necessary greeting:  Bonjour, monsieur.  Or alternatively something flashier like, Excusez-moi pour vous déranger, monsieur, mais….  Excuse me for disturbing you, sir, but….  Now I had two options:  Create a shared problem (unlikely here), or make a joke.

 

I asked again, a bit more loudly, about the carousel’s re-opening.  Then I looked at my watch.  “It’s 3:00!” I said with sudden drama.  “The man who works there is probably having a very good lunch!”

 

The train man laughed.  He hardly had an answer about the carousel attendant’s whereabouts – but no Frenchman admits a lack of knowledge about anything.  One thing was for certain, though.  This man understood my French.

 

As the ultimate sign of not being tourists in this place, our family was invited into a Frenchmen’s home just a couple days into our stay.  As a culture, dinner parties have stronger roots in North American households.  During our prior, year-long residence on the Côte’s shores, the homes we visited for meals were those of other immigrants – of people from England, Wales, the US, Canada, Bosnia, Iraq and Lebanon.  Not of folks who were born-and-bred French.  (Our few French invitations centered around four-year-old birthday parties.)  Part of this dichotomy reflected the natural course of our friendships; part of it was cultural.  French friends gathered in cafes or restaurants – or at our house.

 

But now we were headed into the hallowed quarters of a French family – people whose daughter attended school with Laurelle – for an aperitif dinatoire. 

 

For an aperitif?  A dinner?  I had no clue.  Neither did my French-Canadian husband.

 

The aperitif dinatoire turned out to be various wines and finger foods.  But that’s not the point.  What matters is where we shared this meal.  We four adults sat in the tidy front room of a real French family’s home.  Laurelle bounded around the corridors with Clotilde; she was expected to roam more of the house.  At one point, just to ensure the crayons hadn’t strayed from the papers, Pierre and I nipped into the further reaches of the home – much against protocol, I recently learned from Polly Platt’s well-read book French or Foe?  But there we were, inside the closed doors of the French family home.  We are hardly tourists anymore.

 

After this productive start, our little family left town.  We cruised the Greek Isles.  We visited England.  And now we’re back in Antibes, opening our own doors to two Canadian families who will stay through mid-July.  We are at home, and actively absorbing how little of life’s routine has changed:

 

• Roman Abramovich – the Russian oligarch, Chelsea Football Club owner and lord of Château de la Croë that graces Cap d’Antibes’ promontory – is back.  Floating gracefully in the bay outside our home when we returned from Greece was the newest boat in his personal fleet, a sleek 377-footer called Luna, including her two helipads and onboard beach club.

 

• “Our” sunbather, as Pierre calls her, has returned, too.  She’s the lean, jet-haired woman with a tattoo on her right shoulder who makes the rocky beach outside Bellevue her sun worshipping mecca every summer.  Oh yes, did I mention she’s topless?  Pierre heralded her appearance as I returned from shopping the other day.  He was mopping his brow after an observational interlude on Bellevue’s sea-facing balcony.

 

• Mr Marc also paid a visit.  A frequent subject of this blog space last year, Mr Marc personally re-engineered Bellevue’s wonky air-conditioning and heating system.  He could’ve taken up residence here last year as the seasons changed for the worse.  But as ever, Mr Marc is never far away.  On the muggy day after we returned from England, as we set up residence in Bellevue for the summer and prepared for the arrivals of visiting families, the air-con in the TV room conked out.  Mr Marc’s arrival in Bellevue’s corridors only signaled life as usual – life in the non-touristy world – for our family in the Côte d’Azur.

 

But there was one thing – a single occurrence since returning to our past lives in Antibes – that convinced me we’ll never again be tourists in this part of the world.  Life, in an innocent and sweet way, has come full circle.

 

When Pierre and I first visited Antibes – that momentous stay during which we’d stumbled on the skeleton of a house we now call Bellevue – it was October 2005.  Laurelle was seven months old. 

 

We ventured into neighbouring Juan-les-Pins one afternoon, Laurelle plastered to my front in her Baby Bjorn carrier.  As we ambled down the main street, the ice cream in a shop called Pinocchio was too dreamy to pass by.  Pierre and I each had a cone, and in a moment of lapsed fatherhood, Pierre requested a taster spoon of vanilla ice cream for Laurelle, who had just begun to take strained (non-dairy) foods.  As Pierre put the spoon to Laurelle’s baby lips, her legs began to flutter.  They began to kick.  She pounded me with all her baby force.  “More!  More!” she seemed to scream. 

 

I’ve blamed my daughter’s enduring passion for ice cream and the entire genre of desserts on this single encounter, her first taste of real sweetness.  Often when we’ve passed Pinocchio over the years, in the car or on foot, I’ve told her of this experience.

 

Fast forward to this week.  In a perfect example of the deferred way in which friendships can blossom after a significant pause, we hosted a handful of Laurelle’s school friends and their parents for swimming and a potluck dinner.  Among the guests were the five-year-old heartthrob Eros and his mother Samantha. 

 

She brought ice cream – tubs of chocolate, vanilla, lemon, mango and cassis.  She juggled ice cream demands effortlessly.  She scooped balls from the tubs with great mastery.  From the banter around the table, I gathered she did this regularly.

 

Samantha scoops ice cream every day.  It is she and her husband who own the famous Pinocchio.

 

When it was my turn for ice cream that night, I chose vanilla.  I let the coolness melt slowly on my tongue.  As the children chased each other in our garden, the ice cream tasted all the sweeter.

 

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