Provençal Promises

When I’m in Provence, I can’t help feeling back in Southern California. The same sweetness of star jasmine beckons me to breathe in memories of my backyard; the same rhythmic rasping of insect legs sings to me of fleeting summer promises. Only they don’t bother waiting till dark—and they have earned a more melodic name than “cricket.” Cicadas. I used to dream about them. The sophisticated, continental cousins of Jiminy and company. I wanted to belong to their world. To gaze at their surroundings: marshlands and stone houses; lavender fields and parched dirt paths. And the sea beyond. To prostate myself before them and tell them that I’m ready for more.

Cast from La Gloire de mon père as the Pagnol family. [Online image] 1989.

Ready to Sing Red, White, and Blue Backwards?

People here often ask if I've applied for French citizenship yet, but no one's really tried to convince me to make La Marseillaise my national anthem--until the other day at my local French employment agency. "But don't you feel French? Your children, they will be French," my conseiller said. "They will have la mentalité française--it is much different from la mentalité américaine, non?"
"Uh, yeah, kinda different," I managed, as my mind started to whirl in blue, blanc, rouge: "My kids are going to be French? How has this never occurred to me?" Suddenly I pictured skinny little bourgeois teenyboppers with tight jeans and Longchamp bags, strutting along in the shade of chestnut trees and giggling into cellphones. No after-school sports. Except maybe horseback riding. Or badminton. "Well, don't you feel French?" she was asking me again. I gulped. Thank God French has so many round-about ways to say non.

Madeleine LeBeau as Yvonne. [Online image] 1942.

Finger Food

The French are experts at eating finger food. At a cocktail, you won't see them grappling for hand sanitizer or searching for the toothpicks and napkins. They're trained early on as children in the art of appetizers: as soon as they can walk, they're taught to pass demurely from guest to guest at apéro time with a careful grip on a bowl of gâteaux salés (why call a chip a chip?) or cherry tomatoes, pausing just the time needed for each person to choose a nibble or two and coo, "Merci Mademoiselle." By the time they're old enough to attend a formal pince-fesse ("bottom pincher"!) with glasses of bubbly and elegant trays of canapés, navettes, and petits fours, they're balancing two chamagne flutes in one hand while slurping down raw oysters with the other.
But we Americans have our revenge on taco night!

Tom Hanks and Elizabeth Perkins as Josh Baskin and Susan [Online image] 1988.