Lessons from Mrs. Goodfellow

When I was in college, I spent summers waitressing in a perfect, perfectly charming historic inn in Maine.

One of the delights was to be assigned to a table of summer "residents" -- guests who came to stay at the hotel for a month or so, who had been coming to the inn for decades.  One of these was Mrs. Goodfellow.

True to her name, she was a delight to be around.  Just taking her order for breakfast or dinner was a lesson in grace, old-school courtesy, and a pinch of old-girl mischief.  A spry octagenarian, she was my lifetime role model.

Her birthday was August 3, and somehow, I always remembered it.  The dining room in those days was low-key and tables were covered in ancient white damask, and the atmosphere was genteel and calm, with the most beautiful view of Somes Sound and Acadia National Park. Men in jacket and tie, ladies in dresses. Mrs. Goodfellow shared her table with another widow and a spinster, all from Philadelphia.  They were a jolly trio.  If you could look forward to serving breakfast (and I did) it was for those three ladies.

On my morning walk to work, I strolled past all the most beautiful Maine wildflowers.  So, for Mrs. Goodfellow's 83rd birthday, I picked her a bunch of lupine and Queen Anne's lace, black-eyed susans, added to a mass of of fragrant phlox and roses from our family's garden.  I arranged them artfully in a vase and set it at her place before she arrived for breakfast.

She exclaimed over the thoughtful gesture even more than was necessary, her luminous blue eyes shining, lighting up my day.

Sometimes being the giver of a gift is happier than being the on the receiving end.  That's certainly how I felt giving that simple bouquet to Mrs. Goodfellow.

The next week, after the flowers had faded, she returned the vase to me.  With a box of chocolates inside.  "Mother always said to repay a kindness with a kindness."

That was lesson #1.  A life lesson, and I have never forgotten it.

A few weeks later, I was about to depart Maine for France to begin my junior year abroad.  At tea time on the porch, as we sat chatting, Mrs. Goodfellow quietly slipped an envelope into my waitress pocket. Patting my arm, she said, with a twinkle in her eyes,  "Mother always said, 'When travelling abroad, take twice the funds and half the clothes that you think you'll need.'"

The wisest travel advice ever.

Thank you again, Mrs. Goodfellow.  And Happy Birthday.

That first magical summer in France, 40 years ago?

Forty years.

Forty years ago today, I boarded an Air France flight at Orly to return from France to the U.S.  It had been a magical summer. My first time ever in France. A life-changer.

That June I had graduated from high school and had gone on a three-week whirlwind tour of Romania with my school glee club.  In anticipation of the flight's stopover in Paris, earlier that spring I had begged my parents to see if they knew anyone in France with whom I might spend some or all of the summer.

Hooray!  As it turned out, there was a family.  Friends of friends had lived in Paris working for Time-Life; eight years before, in 1965 when they were leaving Paris, they had brought along a lovely young Parisian, Marie-Noelle, to Connecticut as an au pair so that their children could keep up their French.

Fast forward to 1973: Marie-Noelle was now in her late 20s, in Paris, married with a baby of her own.  Her extended family (grandmother, parents, and sisters and their families) spent the summer on Ile de Ré.  They would be delighted to have me as an au pair for the summer.

Back then, a fille au pair was not hired help, not a euphemism for a nanny.    Au pair meant on a par.  (In fact, I was never paid a cent.  In retrospect, I should have paid them.)  From the beginning I was treated as a younger sister or cousin, completely part of the family, who earned my keep by lending a hand with the children and household duties, mostly with the assistance of Mamita, the grandmother.

For eight weeks I was immersed, submerged in French family vacation life.  Upon my arrival, they asked if I would rather speak in English or French.  "En francais!" I blurted rather vehemently.  Oh-so-politely, not another word of English was spoken to me all summer.  (Except most evenings when Marie-Noelle's husband Jacques would re-re-fill my wineglass at dinner, joking, "Just a leeeetle drop, Pollee?")

It was a summer of transformation.  Twelve years of classroom French, filled with Moliere and Sartre and verb conjugations, rapidly transformed into must-use everyday French.  Who the heck knew what a biberon was?  Une couche?  I thought une couche was a layer. Baby bottle and diaper.  Got it. But in short order the learning curve became so fast I didn't have time to translate:  I just had to figure it out.

Example:  I knew the word for floor was le plancher.  But when someone said "Tu peux mettre cela par terre," I had to do some quick mental leaps to figure out that it meant "Put that down (on the ground)."  Finally the mental leaps were arriving at such locomotive speed that I put away my mental French-English dictionary and just went with it.  And French food and cooking lingo deserve their own chapter...

I had to keep up daily with spoken French on all levels:  toddler and pre-school age; vivacious sophisticated Parisian 20-somethings with their large entourage, with full-on colloquialisms, at dinner or dancing at island nightclubs or sailing; kind and worldly grandparents whose English far surpassed my faltering French; and the clear-speaking but cryptic Loma, the ancient, tiny, widowed great-grandmother swaddled in black. To me, it seemed Loma parsed out wisdom in 19th-century French haiku.

But it was far more than just a language-learning experience.  For 8 weeks, every minute, every hour was an awakening.  This life is what I was meant to know, I thought.  This is where I belong. French beach picnics -- feasts, not just sandwiches! -- boat outings, everyday summer dinners, daily shopping, meal preparation, everything about French lifestyle was both eye-opening and instantly right. The pace of life and the focus. I found my true sense of self.

I was eighteen.

Reality check:  1973:  no cell phones, no internet, no TV on the summer island; and a long-distance call was prohibitively expensive, ergo was for emergencies only.  Thus my only communication with American family and friends for eight weeks was via postcard or aerogramme.  Bless my mother, who saved all my letters home.  By mid-summer my English syntax was down the drain, and the vocab was slipping:  "We go every day to the plage with the children,"  I wrote.  I wasn't putting on airs, I was losing myself in French and France.

And that is how I really learned French. I lost my American self in the French world.

I think I never fully returned.

Oh, I physically returned to America on that Air France flight 40 years ago.  I had flown from La Rochelle airport to Le Bourget (I think).  I know I took a connecting bus to Orly.   Gilles, my handsome summer-unrequited-crush who had spent many July and August weekends as a guest with the family, was waiting for my bus as it pulled in to the bus lane at Orly (he worked for Air France, as had his uncle, Antoine de St. Exupery). Belmondo-esque, he stood at the entrance, one leg perched on the barrier, leaning and smoking a Gauloise. My heart fluttered.

I attempted to haul my embarrassing, oversized, orange, too-American Tourister suitcase from the luggage compartment of the coach.

"Laches," he asserted gently, grabbing the handle.

Lâche raced through my brain, seeking quick processing.  Lâche, poltron, couard, peureux went the brain scan in a nanosecond from senior-year Advanced French language class when we had to memorize synonyms.  Why was he calling me a coward? My heart pounded.

"Laches," chided Gilles, tugging more firmly.  I finally released the handle to him (which was what he was in fact saying: "Let go"), banking on the body language, still unsure why I was a coward. Did he think I was grasping so tightly because I was embarrassed at the weight of my suitcase?

He bought me an Orangina, got me checked in with his svelte, perfectly perfumed young French colleagues at the desk, and finagled as much VIP treatment as a junior Air France worker could finagle.  After some final chit-chat, address exchanges and "Oh yes, we'll keep in touch" banalities, he accompanied me to the gate.  A total gentleman, truly and genuinely so.

It didn't register -- actually at that point, I couldn't really fathom what it meant -- that I was leaving France and returning to the States.  A seven-hour flight was not enough time to adjust, linguistically, emotionally, or culturally.

I had become a different person.  I was still Polly, but who was she?

Three days later I was sitting in a freshman "French class" in college in Connecticut: nothing French about it, at all, really.

Lost.




related posts:

Mamita

Unlocking

the French R

A la plage

Bloggiversary

Wow.  Have I really been writing this blog for seven years?  Did I really first arrive in Paris in 2006, that long ago?  The digi-world, the blogger world, was so different then.   Click here for the very first Polly-Vous Francais? post.

Seven??  I feel ancient.  I feel humbled by all the wonderful readers and their snarky comments enlightening feedback.

Thanks, everyone!

And I'm heading to Paris in 10 days, so please stay tuned for timely updates about planning for and returning to Paris.

Can you really go home again?  

We'll see.

A Happy Easter Spring Chick.. from Paris

Happy Easter!  Joyeuses Pâques!

This illustration would indeed be a Spring chick, if the advertisement weren't 66 years old.  Circa 1947.

Since it's for an elastic company, however,  let's just say it's a springy chick.

The caption underneath reads:  "Les produits élastiques de haute qualité portent cette étiquette."  (High quality elastic products bear this label.)

The company:  Société européenne de fils élastiques - 14.16 Bld. Poissonnière - Paris.

Alas, the European Company of Elastic Threads is no longer at that address in the 9th arrondissement.  But you can see the building anyway on this real estate video on YouTube.

Wishing all a joyous season.

A New Year's Eve a la Francaise

Rewind to a few decades ago.  A young-ish Polly-Vous, ever the francophile, had been invited to attend a coveted New Year's Eve reception for le Reveillon du Jour de l'An at the French Consulate in Boston, at 10 p.m.  Complete with an engraved carton d'invitation.  Ready to impress her new-ish Beau with that prized invitation, she invited him first for dinner at her Beacon Hill apartment.   Her roommates were away, and she was eager to demonstrate her nascent culinary skills for a divine and romantic repast.

She set to work for an entire day on her favorite recipes from her favorite French cookbook, the Tante Marie.  The Tante Marie was and is the French counterpart to the Joy of Cooking or Fanny Farmer's.  Unadorned, classic French cooking.

The Beau arrived at 7 p.m., and they had kirs and salted nuts.  Then, mussels for a first course. Polly had carefully debearded and scrubbed the mussels; then chopped shallots and sauteed them lightly in butter in a deep pan, added the mussels and a cup of Entre-Deux-Mers. When those wine-steamed blue-shell bivalves opened, Polly and her Beau devoured them, and mopped up the dripping, savory sauce with chunks of crusty baguette.

Already this was heaven.

Add to the scenario candlelight on silver candelabrae and a crisply ironed damask tablecloth and napkins, and Puccini soaring in the background.  Fire in the fireplace and quaint lights of Charles Street twinkling outside the window.  Magic, right?

Next, Polly prepared a filet of sole au gratin, with the slightest whisper of bread crumbs and butter, baked then lightly broiled.  Creamed spinach and parsleyed steamed potatoes.  A Sancerre to accompany.

For the pièce de résistance, she had whipped up choux à la crème -- because Tante Marie had taught her how easy it was to prepare.

By 10 p.m. mademoiselle Polly and her Beau were (to be stated undaintily) completely stuffed to the gills.  But they were rapturously happy, holding hands in the flickering silver candlelight.  With a slight moan and a forced heave-ho to get to their feet from the dinner table, Polly and Beau donned their overcoats and set out in the New England frosty air to conquer the six blocks to the French Consulate on Commonwealth Avenue.  Ready to hob-nob with the elite francophile crowd for an elegant glass of champagne and a festive midnight bisou.  Polly was confident that this would let her Beau appreciate her many, many merits, on oh-so-many, many levels.

The couple was greeted at the door by Abdel, the consul's major domo, and welcomed by Monsieur and Madame le Consul in the glittering and elegant Back Bay mansion that was home to the consulate.  Polly introduced the handsome Beau to Monsieur and Madame, and she politely shrugged off her overcoat to Abdel, to emerge in her shimmering dress.  She was ready to subtly demonstrate that, although an Americaine from Boston, she had the sophistication and social wherewithal (tra-la!) to know how to be a gracious guest at a diplomatic party a la francaise.

And then Polly saw it.

Gasp.

IT.

The most impressive array of the best and most exquisite French cuisine, spread out among many tables, as far as one could see.  Foie gras, glistening chilled oysters, smoked salmon, caviar, hams, roasts, cheeses, blinis, fruits, tarts, pastries, chocolates.

(Egad!!  This invitation had been for dinner?  At 10 p.m.?  Who knew?)

With a graceful flourish of the hand, Monsieur le Consul beckoned Polly and her Beau to dine at the buffet.

Oof.

Polly exhibited a wan, green-ish smile and, in an effort to not appear not worldly, carried a small empty plate across the stands of sumptuous offerings.  Handsome Beau heroically speared a slice of ham, which he then ignored for the duration of the evening.  They wandered under the crystal chandeliers of the salons, smiling and chatting with various VIPs Polly recognized, hoping to avoid the scrutiny of the multitudes of knowing invitees who had been starving themselves for 24 hours in anticipation of this astounding French culinary and social event.

And overstuffed as they were on Polly's beginner Tante Marie home cooking, neither of them could bear to eat one morsel of the exquisite French gastronomic feast.

This, my friends, is torture.

To top it off, when midnight tolled, Polly found herself not next to her Beau, but instead, elbow-to-elbow with her arch-nemesis, and was forced to give a saccharine, champagne-laced, Bonne- Annee cheek-kiss to that dowdy, powdery, simpering old lady.  Indignation meets indigestion.

A New Year's to beat all New Year's.  Unforgettable.

But always a great tale to tell!

And so, dear friends, here's wishing all of you a brilliant and shining 2013, with many French delights and memories to savor.




image via amazon.com.

Christmas letter from Beirut, 1959

Mini-me and mini-Christmas tree 1959

Christmas time is here.  And I found among family mementos a Christmas newsletter written by my mother in December 1959/January 1960, when our family had moved to Beirut, Lebanon, for a glorious year.   I post it not to detail the minutiae of our family life, but as an archive of life in that era, certainly the early era of the Christmas newsletter.  And also?  Where I first learned French.

Younger readers may scratch their heads at the notion of a mimeo stencil required to make multiple copies of a missive.  These days even photocopying a newsletter -- or a newsletter itself --  seems so outdated, n'est-ce pas?  (And these photos were certainly not a part of the original newsletter.)

When a family with five children ages 5 through 12 picks up and moves half way around the world, I would say that it calls for a newsletter. A chronicle of expat life.  Then I wonder:  is this subtly what gave me the urge to re-live an expat experience?  And to write about it?  

I love the 1960's social norm of not writing about misfortunes (oops --  neglected to mention little Polly's two weeks in the hospital in Rome with pneumonia!?) Oh how times have changed!   Here's the letter.

Dear Friends,

What started out being a Christmas letter has ended up being a belated New Year’s message, and for this we apologize. Actually, we did mimeo a Christmas letter, but yours were the 15 or 20 envelopes we put aside because we wanted to write messages on the letters. In our own inimitable way, before we realized it, the letters were consumed and we didn’t even have a copy to make another stencil. So be it! Enough of apologia. You will get the more up-to-date news anyway.

Dad and Polly on board

The past five months have been the “pinch yourself to make sure it’s true” type. This has been a marvelous experience for us all and certainly one that we’ll never forget. Starting with the boarding of the “Bergensfjord” on August 8th right through Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Jordan we have been wide-eyed and incredulous, all the more so because we never dreamed this could happen to us. We only wish we could bottle all this and bring it home to share with you………..beautiful Scandinavia with its lovely countryside, handsome people, sumptuous meals, and abundance of flowers everywhere; Bavaria with Oberammergau….. the Passion Play anticipation shown on the bearded faces of the townsmen, the delicate woodcarvings, fairy tales painted in bold colors on the houses, and the magnificent rolling countryside; Austria with its unforgettable Tyrols right outside our window, folk dancing, The Achensee 3000 ft. up where we swam in 65 degree water, Peter in his leiderhosen and our girls in Tyrolean dresses………..; Italy, after a glorious trip over the Brenner Pass, with its host of churches, monuments, and fountains… plus the usual tourist attractions…. Not to mention “Chaiou, chaiou Bambino” played nightly outside our pensione windows….. sailing out to see the Straits of Messina go by. Greece was almost the high spot… a cloudless warm day with the Acropolis silhouetted against a deep blue sky…it was all we had anticipated and more…the Olympic Stadium, the King’s palace eve to seeing the changing of the guard….we hated to leave. A brief visit to Alexandria with the inevitable “Gullah-gullah” man on the dock to greet us… the museum, the catacombs, bazaars… and back to the ship.

And here we are in Beirut. Having just put down our roots, we will be loath to leave here in June, and hope to be able to return someday. This is a fascinating city and country…. A real meeting of Eastern and Western cultures. You can walk down any street and in one quick glance take in men in tarbushes and baggy pants…. Goat-herders with their flocks, a Cadillac or Chevrolet, veiled women… men with pushcarts of brioches or vegetables… women in mink stoles… and boys and girls alike dressed in their smocks with big white collars, on their way to school. The Lebanese people are kind, generous to a fault, volatile, argumentative, and the biggest bargainers in the world! The city with its souks (markets), mosques, flea-market, luxurious hotels, poverty, and beggars is one great conglomeration.  Beirut International Airport is the third largest in the world (next to New York and Frankfurt) and it is an exciting excursion to go out there and watch the big jets taking off for spots all over the world. The countryside here is incredibly beautiful! From our balcony we look out over the Mediterranean right across the street, and by turning our heads to the right we can see lovely snow-capped mountains. We haven’t yet been able to be really nonchalant about all this… and will miss it terribly.

Even our “routine” life isn’t routine here. Having to speak French to “Information” to get a telephone number; speaking spotty Arabic with our wonderful maid, Hania; eating new foods; getting the “bukra” attitude toward life (“bukra” means tomorrow!); and living in a wonderful apartment on the sea…. Now does this sound routine? The more mundane things include the children loving the American Community School; L enjoying his teaching and research; A tutoring 4 hours a day; the usual Brownies and Boy Scouts, etc., but life will never be the same again!

Skiing in Lebanon, 1960

We have crossed the mountains into Syria for a wonderful trip to Damascus where we saw so many things we have all read about since we were children… the “Street called Strait”…the window where St. Paul escaped… the Omayed Mosque… and many others. We came home laden with lovely silk [illegible] . We plan another trip In the spring.

Shawl made of Damascus silk, seen in photo at bottom

L has had a fascinating trip to Jordan. He saw Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and Amman, staying in the latter for 4 days with a Christian Arab family which made his trip. He even had an audience with King Hussein and has pictures to prove it! We plan to take the children to Jerusalem at Easter when it is a bit warmer.

We still have much of Lebanon to see. So far we have been to Byblos and to Baalbek, plus many lesser places close by, but are very anxious to get to Tripoli, Sidon, and Tyre. L also plans a trip to Ankarra, Turkey in the very near future. We have the traveling bug but good!

Our best trip so far, though, started on December 19th when we boarded a Viscount for a flight to Cairo. Exactly 1 hour and 15 min. later we landed at the Cairo Airport! We had an unbelievably good time there and could have easily stayed another week. Cairo was very reasonable… we seven stayed at a nice pension hotel for the equivalent of $11 a day, room and board, and the food was excellent and excellently served by a team of Sudanese in their red tarbushes and long white gallebeyas with the red cummerbunds. It was quite an experience. Of course, we had the customary camel rides at the Pyramids of Giza, saw the Sphinx, the Tomb of the Bulls at Sakarrah, the second Sphinx at Memphis, all of the lovely mosques, the Egyptian museum with all the contents of King Tut’s tomb, the Mousky bazaars, a boat trip around Gezirah Island in the Nile, and two visits with Egyptian friends in their homes which was great fun. The children were determined to get home for Christmas so we arrived back in Beirut on Christmas Eve and even had a big Christmas dinner for 14 the next day!

Expat night club life in Beirut, 1960

You can see that we are enjoying ourselves to the fullest. We have made many friends, both Lebanese and American, and it will be hard to leave them, too. We have even done quite a bit of night-clubbing which is most unusual for us… plus seeing an excellent “belly-dancer” just the other night who was a real artist.

All this description has been most inadequate but we hope we have conveyed some of our feeling and impression about this wonderful year. Our only regret is that all of you couldn’t have enjoyed it with us. We will most likely be unbearable to live with when we get back with our many slides and stories! Until then, we send you belated wishes for a very Happy New Year.  Inchallah! (God willing!)

Polly, Peter, Meg, Suzie, Johnny, L and A

. . . .

This post dedicated, with love, to the memory of my mother. (November 1923 - February 2012).  She's the beauty in the foreground of the nightclub photo.

p.s. And I was so glad to be able to re-visit my childhood memories a few years ago.

Six years and counting

Break out the bubbly!

Wow.  Here I am, six whole years old, and ready to down the champagne.

I'm not picky, really, but it must be French. Veuve Clicquot will do quite nicely, though I won't turn down a Taittinger, Moet, or Nicolas Perrier. (Am I missing someone important?)

Yup, six years ago today Polly-Vous Francais? was born. It happened by accident, really.  I had been living in Paris for two months on place de la Madeleine, invading and soaking up the cultural and political life of Paris.  Then I found my dream apartment in the 7e arrondissement.  The student protests were all the news, and I was madly sending missives to all my friends detailing the drama and social thrill of my new Parisian existence.

Then, over dinner in Paris, my good friend A. said, "Polly, you really must stop sending all these stories in emails."

Ouch.

"Oh," I apologized, abashed.  "Are they tedious?"

"No, not at all -- but they need to be published on line instead, " she said.  "You need to start a blog."

"But, but... I don't know the first thing about blogging!"  I think I whined a fair bit, feeling technologically incompetent and ancient.

"Look, Polly," said A., all no-nonsense.  "If you... did have a blog, what would you call it?"

(Ah, a question I knew how to answer!)  "Polly-Vous Francais!" I said, maybe a bit too excitedly.  It had been my mantra ever since I understood my first French phrase.

We finished our dinner and our wine and parted ways for the evening.  The next morning, an email from A.  appeared in my in-box:  "Polly-Vous Francais? is up and running.  Start posting!"  She had created the blog for me.

I felt the wind knocked out of me.  It was like the time that the summer lifeguard/swimming coach forced me to jump off the high-dive. You can do it, you can do it.  Just plunge, just plunge.  Breathe later.

And voilà.

Polly-Vous Francais? has grown and morphed over the years, from A.'s great banner above, to a few variations.

I've written 920 posts.  The blog has had probably several million visitors in six years, but in today's internet stream, I can't begin to gauge the importance of that stat.  (For perspective:  when this blog began in May 2006, Facebook had about 7 million users, mostly college students.  Today?  Well, you know.)

Another Polly-Vous Francais banner, made with stamps from the Marché aux timbres.

Back in 2006, many of us bloggers in Paris felt as though we had a mission, but sometimes we felt misunderstood.   We wrote for the Paris Blog (many lucky ones, still in Paris, still do). We fed our feeds to the now-defunct Paris Times.  We gathered to celebrate our blogging life in Paris.  Sometimes I felt as though I were part of a new literary genre scene, and sometimes I felt as though it was just considered clown school.

I am really, really delighted to note that some of the official traditional Paris-based print journalists who had pooh-poohed the very notion of blogs back in 2006-7 are now the proud authors of blogs, Twitter feeds and Pinterest and Facebook pages.  They have hired their social media interns!! Kudos -- now we're all family.

I look forward to returning to Paris this summer to re-connect a) with my inner Polly-Vous, and b) with a lot of pals!  Time for a party.


And to say that I love you all!  

(Okay, almost all.  Except for a few anonymous commenters and so forth.  You know who you are.)


And tonight I nod off to bed, having blown out the six candles for my blog.

And the next burning question:  is it time for a new banner?  What do you recommend? Votes?

Travel Stories

These days we all have our travel horror stories: baggage lost, flights canceled, endless lines upon endless lines. Security itself is worth tomes.

A friend's recent saga reminded me of a most unusual moment in my early traveling days.

By the time I was 10, my parents were divorced and living in different states. We kids became troupers in air travel, shuttling from Tennessee to Pennsylvania without batting an eye. In the 1960s there was a cheap stand-by fare for the under 21 crowd, and we became pros at mastering the take-offs and arrivals. Getting adoring attention from the stewardesses.

One summer in the late 1960s, though, my sister and I had a most remarkable air travel experience.

I was 13, she was 17. We were flying one evening from Nashville to Philadelphia with a connection at National Airport in Washington. En route to D.C., we were in the middle of the most horrific thunderstorm I've ever experienced in the air, before or since. Huge thunderbolts striking down on all sides, and our prop plane was bouncing like a superball from one air pocket to the next. After a terrifying descent, when we finally made it to terra firma, I was happy to be alive.

Then, we were told that our flight to Philadelphia was cancelled. Due to our "youth stand-by" status, the airline wasn't required to give us lodging or any other compensation. We spent our coins in the pay phone to call our mother, who couldn't really help us much.

Yikes. Two young teen girls alone for a night at Washington National? That was almost more spooky to me than the turbulent flight. We went to the airport hotel, the Air Wayte. They were booked, of course. We pleaded with the front desk clerk. Clearly, here were two nice girls in their Villager outfits properly dressed for travel; surely they couldn't leave us unchaperoned to walk the halls of the airport -- or sleep unprotected! -- for a night. (Remember, this was before airport security or cell phones...) The manager was summoned.

He was scratching his head, trying to figure out how to help the stranded waifs. Finally, he said, "Well, okay. I guess I could put you girls up in the Towah Room." I heard "Tower Room" and naively envisioned bunking down on the sofas of a cushy top-floor lounge. Sounded good to me! My big sister accepted, so off we went. To.... the third floor linen closet. The Towel Room.

He wearily told us to make ourselves comfortable in the 4X6 foot space, and shut the door on us. Pioneers to the hilt, we padded the floor with every towel from the shelves, spread out clean cotton sheets on top, settled in; and ah, did we fall asleep?

No, we didn't.

No, because it was also the supply closet, and we found an ample repository of Air Wayte Hotel postcards and a few ball point pens, and so spent much of the night scribbling notes to our friends. "Guess where I am? I'm spending the night in the linen closet of this hotel!"

All in all, it was a heavenly evening (except for a few scurrying cockroaches) where we felt both totally safe and totally outrageous.

We left with great gratitude and an unnecessarily large amount of miniature bars of individually wrapped hotel soap.

Thanks, Mr. Air Wayte, wherever you are!

Postcard image via La Dolce Vintage.

In a parka do bun do?

"In a parka do bun do, in a parka do bun doooo...."

Well, at least that's how I first understood the lyrics to "Dominique," the wildly popular song in the early 1960s.  You remember, Dominique-nique-nique?  Sung by the Singing Nun, aka Soeur Sourire, it was already a hit when she made her debut on the Ed Sullivan show.



My family owned the LP back in those school-girl days before I knew any French.  So I used to spend hours curled up on the sofa listening to "Dominique" over and over, trying to decipher "onto shemay altude you, in a parka do bun do."

Then I found the lyrics printed on the album cover.

Dominique -nique -nique s'en allait tout simplement,
Routier, pauvre et chantant.
En tous chemins, en tous lieux,'
Il ne parle que du Bon Dieu,
Il ne parle que du Bon Dieu.

I must have worn a groove in the vinyl as I repeated the torture until not only could I match each written word to the sung French but  --  at long last  -- was actually able to repeat it.

It's still incredible to me to think that a French song about a saint could have topped the charts on American pop radio.  Soeur Sourire eventually disappeared from view, and I despised the saccharin Debbie Reynolds film version of her.

I'd forgotten about her over the years.

Then on last Sunday's episode of Mad Men, what comes filtering out of Miss Farrell's apartment when she opens the door?  Yup.  Domnique -nique -nique.

And now in a parka do bun do is stuck in my brain.

French Club, 1973

I don't really remember what we did in French Club, except hang out and try to speak in French. A few dozen high-school girls who loved French and France. Did we just love the language or was it the overall allure?

Francophile that I was, I continued with French Club (co-ed!) in college, then moved on to membership in one Alliance Francaise or another as an adult. Recently I joined another French conversation group; we gather once a week for tea and chatter away en francais like schoolgirls. Er, I'm the second-youngest member, though. You do the math.

If you want to be in a French Club, but there isn't one around, you can always start one yourself, of course.

p.s. I'm on the lower right of the photo

Be Careful What You Wish For

The good news: the shipment of my stuff from Paris finally arrived today, after four months of anxious waiting. It was all in fine shape.

The bad news: in a totally fickle, very unexpected emotional about-face, I want to send it all back.

I'm not kidding.

There are two main factors at play here. Plus a third, more minor, reason.

1. The "Won't This Sombrero Look Great at the Neighborhood Pool Party, Honey?" syndrome.

We've all done it. You travel to a foreign land, and everyone there is wearing a sombrero with red tasseled fringe, or puka shell beads or embroidered peasant blouses, and you think, "Gee, Ima gonna get me one a them," and then you carefully select and purchase just the perfect sombrero or what-have-you. You jubilantly take it home, and upon arrival in Little Rock you shake your head in disbelief. What was I thinking? you ask, And why did I really fight to place that sombrero so carefully into the overhead bin of the plane? (Or gawd forbid, you even wore it at the airport.) It is culturally out of context in your native habitat, but your foreign eyes didn't let you see it.

Well, that's not true for all of the belongings that just arrived, but... well, let's see. That adorable confituriere from the flea market that was so, so charming in my old, tiled Paris kitchen? It looks like an uninvited floozy in my Virginia dining room. So I tried placing it in every room. It just looks cheap and embarrassing.

Ditto for some of the more avant-garde items of clothing I bought in Paris or Ile de Re. Gee, an item or two of something unusual or offbeat to perk up the Paris daily mainstay attire was de rigueur... in Paris. If I wear some of this stuff here I may never get invited anywhere.

Cleavage? Spiky heels? Don't get me started. It all seemed so ...normal in Paris.

2. The "I'm Not-Over-It-Yet" factor. It's a biggie.

It's a damn good thing I'm heading to Paris in a week, because when I opened some of the boxes and unearthed items from my Paris daily ritual, I had a really hard time. As in tears, and I don't mean happy tears of reuniting with long-lost favorites.

You know what I mean. Oh, you know. Say you've broken up with a boyfriend, for example, and you're not completely over him but you forge ahead and start a new relationship with some other guy; and while that new relationship is in its tender infancy, by some stroke of nauseating ill fate, up pops the Old Flame at a weekend house party. And you can try to tell yourself til you're blue in the face that it doesn't matter, that you've moved on, but all of a sudden inside your head Barbra Streisand is belting out "The Way We Were" even though you don't like her voice: "What's too painful to ree-meh-heh-em-bah, we simply choose too-wooo foh-or-get..."

Well, blow me down if I didn't have that reaction when I unwrapped, of all things, my coffee cups. Excuse me, but how pathetic is it to have a weird, soppy emotional melt-down over four pieces of bone china?

I felt as though I were acting in the middle of some Woody Allen movie talking to a shrink, "I'm sorry Dr. Proust, I don't know what came over me. I saw those cups and saucers, and all the memories of Paris Nespresso breakfasts came flooding back and I..., I..., I...., boo-hooo-ooo-waaaah." Heroine (me) bolts out of the shrink's office blowing her nose. She doesn't even shut the door behind her.

Over coffee cups?

3. Minor factor: too much stuff. Must make placement decisions. Not easy to cope with any decision-making until factors #1 and #2 take a back seat.

Joyeux Noel 2008

This is a vintage card from the 30s or 40s that I found at the Marché aux Puces de Vanves. At first glance there appeared to be no inscription inside. But when I unfolded the card, in the interior was a lengthy love letter penned by a forlorn Frenchman to his future bride. So sweet.

I hope this Christmas, wherever you are in the world -- whether you have the gleaming snow or not -- brings as much cheer as that little bird and as much warmth as the yellow light shining from the cottage.


Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année, y'all!

So the years spin by

Long ago

Two decades ago today, I went to the hospital in the morning, and in the afternoon I had a sweet new nine-pound baby boy in my arms.

Later in the day my first-born, Miss Bee, came to meet her little brother. Up to then, Bee was my Tiny One: she had always seemed so cuddly and small when I held her, my adorable little 22-month-old towhead.

Someone must have added growth pills to Bee's PB&J at lunch that day, because when she came toddling in the hospital room and climbed on my bed to snuggle and to bestow her first sisterly kiss upon Harry, she suddenly seemed to be the lumbering size of a teenager by comparison. Gargantuan.

How time flies warpedly, I thought at the time. How quickly they grow before your eyes and you don't notice the increments. "The days are long and the years are short," advised Harry's godmother. It was true. Before I knew it Harry himself was toddling in his yellow Hanna Andersson overalls (in the photo above) just as his sister had the day he was born.

Now here we are, two decades later. As of today, I am no longer the mother of a teenager. Today Harry is twenty. How can that be?

To Harry: believe it or not, I remember turning twenty myself and thinking "Aagh, this is the end of the world as I know it." And it is, in a way, kiddo, but you deal with it. And it's not all bad.

Far away

From my perspective, the only better place in the world than Paris is wherever your sweetheart is. And today my Sweet Heart, my baby boy-ee is on the other side of the Atlantic celebrating this milestone without me.

I have lots of photos of both kids in my apartment to keep me company.

I have his self-portrait, painted his senior year in high school, as an award-winning souvenir hanging on my apartment wall in Paris. (Such talent!)

We can Skype and e-mail and all that. But it ain't the same. Transatlantic momma aches to be with her youngest as he crosses the threshold to his third decade.


Happy Birthday, Harry!

A Cute French Chick

"Never Underestimate the Cleaning Power of a 94 Year-Old Chick With a French Name."

That was the slogan from the advertising campaign of Bon Ami cleanser in the 1980s. Incurable Francophile that I was (and am), I liked Bon Ami simply because of its French name. When I was growing up, there was always a can of Bon Ami under the kitchen sink. When this advertising campaign emerged two decades ago, I re-discovered it on the supermarket shelf and starting using Bon Ami as a grown-up domestic diva. Anything vaguely French-sounding was okay by me. And it worked well on all the items that couldn't be scoured with abrasives.




I seem to remember another slogan, "95 years old, and this French Chick hasn't Scratched Yet." I also liked the fact that the old-fashioned company had a good sense of humor.

Of course I don't think many people refer to women as "chicks" any more. But I recently found out that Bon Ami is still produced. What's more, it turns out that it is environmentally friendly. (It stands to reason, I guess, since the non-toxic formula was concocted more than a century ago.)

I contacted the marketing department, who very kindly gave me one-time rights to use their wonderful copyrighted images. So I'm including a few of them as a gift of Springtime or Easter or whatever else you might want to be celebrating this weekend.

I am a Good Friend, n'est-ce pas?

This image can be saved as wallpaper. Adorable!

All images copyright 2008 Faultless Starch/Bon Ami Company

Autumn in Paris

It's almost autumn in Paris. The morning air has a chill which slowly abates as the sun takes hold of the day. Last year, my first Fall in Paris, I had a pang of homesickness. I realized that I missed New England's autumn leaves. Not the brilliant blaze of color from sugar maples and birches, though that was a perennial favorite.

No, I missed the smell of rotting leaves.

That delicious pungent fragrance -- which used to be found all too often in unraked piles in my yard. But also the comforting earthy aroma of walks in the woods in Massachusetts. Paris is a verdant city, with some of the most gorgeous parks, but all so carefully groomed, so well-maintained. No decomposing leaves from the thousands of horse-chestnut or plane trees.

"Try the Parc de Saint Cloud!" suggested my friend Daphne, who politely declined my request to bring me a ziploc bag of old leaves when she returned to Paris from a trip to New York.

So I went to the Parc de Saint Cloud last autumn. Majestic, fabulous place, easily reached by metro and a hop across the bridge. I could walk there for hours.

But no dead-leaf smell.

Then one morning as I took a short cut by the Trocadero, I happened upon a path in a small grotto leading up to the Musee de la Marine. There it was. I sat down on a stone bench and inhaled deeply. Dead leaves. Ah, Paris felt like home, at last.

Meeting Madame Yourcenar

Photo by Philippe Gontier copyright Polly-Vous Francais

Chapter One. In the 1970s my family lived on Mount Desert, a majestic island on the coast of Maine best known for Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, and its French discoverer, Samuel de Champlain. There were a number of luminaries living on the island at the time (many more so today) but mostly all of them were Summer People. Not Madame Yourcenar.

Marguerite Yourcenar, by then, had achieved great international stature as a Woman of Letters. Despite her relative fame, she lived a quiet, simple life at "Petite Plaisance," a small white clapboard house in Northeast Harbor, where she wrote many of her great works.

As a recent French Literature grad, I had heard of Madame Yourcenar, but was unfamiliar with her works, as her classics such as Memoirs of Hadrian were not in the canon of required study at the time. She lived on the island year-round, and also traveled a great deal with her lifelong companion, Grace Frick. This is where I came in.

My mother owned the only travel agency on the island. Always proud of her French-speaking daughter, Mom encouraged me to practice my French whenever possible, often to my embarrassment. One chilly March afternoon when I was Down East for a visit, my wily mother handed me Madame's just-booked plane tickets and nudged me out the office door, saying, "Go deliver these to Madame Yourcenar. She's expecting you."

I drove around the empty village streets for a while, delaying my arrival as I rehearsed potential conversation. What do you say -- in French -- to a great author whose books you've never read?

I strode up the stone path, shouldering the brisk breeze and clutching the ticket envelope. In the grey afternoon, the lamplight from the front hallway projected in shiny yellow squares through the windowpanes. Gathering my courage, I rang the doorbell of the cottage, nervous and cotton-mouthed. Madame Yourcenar opened the door. If ever there was kindness and wisdom personified, it was she. Her calm, enveloping warmth made me feel instantly at ease. I remained mostly awe-struck and tongue-tied, but she had a natural comfortableness with words that helped to fill in the empty spaces. I stammered a bit and gave her her tickets. She asked about my studies, and offered me Memoires d'Hadrien and Archives du Nord in paperback, autographed.

"A Polly. Bonne Lecture. ROMA/AMOR Marguerite Yourcenar"
Our conversation lasted about 5 minutes. I felt as reverent as if I'd visited the Pope.

A year or two later, in 1980, Marguerite Yourcenar was elected to the Académie française, the first woman in its history to join Les Immortels.

Next chapter. The following year, she received an honorary degree from Harvard University. Although I lived in Boston then, I wasn't at the commencement ceremonies. Harvard never releases the names of honorary degree recipients prior to awarding them; but a French photographer friend, Philippe Gontier, heard the rumor that she might be an honoree, and recorded the event. Philippe's masterful portrait above, of Yourcenar at Harvard 1981 graduation, captures her warmth and wisdom... and the perfect silk scarf, magically in place. This is one of the few photographs I've seen that expresses the same radiant essence of Marguerite Yourcenar that I experienced.

Philippe, knowing my anecdote of meeting Madame Yourcenar, gave me this photograph the following week. Later, he left Boston, and I've since lost contact with him. I think he may be in Paris, if it's the same Philippe Gontier. I've never seen this cherished photo published elsewhere. Maybe he has others.

Marguerite Yourcenar died on Mount Desert Island in 1987. Her house, Petite Plaisance, is now a museum.

Fashion

I used to think that life would be perfect if we could only return to the days of glamour and elegance as in this Parisian photo.

I still do, in some ways... Just don't take away my cell phone, WiFi or Velib, s'il vous plait. Besides, lest we forget, when the glam shot was taken of this model, she and other françaises had only gotten the right to vote 5 years before.

Oh, baby!

I sure hope that's not a suppositoire that maman is wielding.

French in Action

"Il y a vingt ans, French in Action, an ambitious French language video course for anglophones debuted in the classroom and on public television. It was the brainchild of Professor Pierre Capretz of Yale University and was produced
by WGBH, Yale and Wellesley College with funding from Annenberg/CPB. The world has never been the same for those of us who fell under its spell."

So begins the wonderful new blog, Mystère et boules de gomme!dedicated to this immortal TV series, which was used in classrooms and by francophiles across the US. Such a classic.

Alumni and fans are encouraged to contribute to the blog and its wiki.

What's your favorite line?

Heads Up

Watch out. I'm immersed in a stash of French fashion magazines from the 1930s - 1950s. Heaven. Je craque!

This milliner's advertisement from 1949 caught my eye.

It must have been inspiration in 1967 for Sally Field's wimple in The Flying Nun.

Other sources claim her cornette was inspired by that of the Filles de la Charité, but I have my doubts...theirs is much more restrained and classical.