The Script Ended

Maybe a French country house

Can I really live in the French countryside? This is a good question. I have always thought that I wanted to, at least for the last dozen years or so. Now I am getting closer to this being reality and I have to get serious and I am scared.

What am I afraid of? This too is a good question.  I think that I am a bit afraid of the commitment that will come with a house in the French countryside. This will mean that it will be harder to pick up and finally go home. 

This is a picture of what someday may be my house in the France:

It needs LOTS of work but that has its advantages like no tacky 1970's restauration to un-do. Just lots TO do instead.

We'll see.

Harmony

One of my daughters gave me Diane Keaton's memoir for Christmas. Diane Keaton, especially for her role in Somethings got to Give, is one of my favorite actresses. I realize as I read her book, that she is a much better actress than she is a writer, but I give her lots of points for her honesty in how she has portrayed herself. So far (I haven't yet gotten to the end) the most poignant line I have read was written by her mother from one of her private journals: 

    "No one gets mad or even raises their voice in your household. What an indictment, but at the     time I considered it the achievement of a good mother."

Complete harmony has been a priority for me since I can remember. Harmony in everything - within the family, between friends, at work. What began, same as for Diane Keaton's mom, as the mark of achievement if it was maintained, became an indictment. Unending harmony means that you have successfully achieved avoidance. Complete harmony is unnatural and there is much else that never develops while you are busy being harmonious.

I know where this came from for me. From where almost everything comes - childhood. My dad's explosive and unpredictable temper coupled with my mother's unending attempts to avoid those explosions set off a never-ending and ultimately unsuccessful juggling act to achieve and maintain harmony.

My own first marriage included about 15 years of close-to-complete harmony followed by 5 shaky years of below the surface lava flow and finally 4 years of destructive eruptions. It was messy, to say the least. And my learnings from the experience were retarded greatly by those first 15 years. You can build up an awful lot of deep layers of avoidance in 15 years. Those habits cripple your abilities to deal with what comes later.

So anyway, today I am trying to live without false harmony, without avoidance of reality and without the illusion that you only succeed if you never dispute anything.

It's not easy.

When you read that "you should just talk it out" when you bump into those potentially unharmonious events, no one tells you that this leads, most often, to a fight. One's spouse or partner, has not, in all probability, read the same insightful self-help books on raising one's self-awareness, as you have. And another thing, I live with the additional challenge (handicap??) of living with someone who is not even from the same culture as me and does not speak the same language either. You would not believe the minefields that creates. 

Probably this is all penance for those 15 years of avoidance-fueled bliss that I sailed through back when I was young and un-evolved........

 

Some private French habits

French people are different from American people. The longer I live in France with a French person, the more I see this truth.

Take bathroom habits for example.

In a French household, the door to the little room that houses the toilet must always be closed.

Always.

I can't tell you how much confusion this causes when my American daughters come to visit.

Who even thought consciously about this before?

In US culture, a closed bathroom door means  "occupied", right? Well not here. This little signal is unavailable because you must always close that door. This then leads to an annoying wave of hesitation each time you need to go to the bathroom - is there someone in there or not? If the door was just left ajar there would be no question. 

See how easy and sensible that sounds?

Lunching with a co-worker a few weeks ago, we began sharing war stories of living with Frenchmen. She happens to also be from California and has been married to a Frenchman and living in France for over 20 years.

I casually mentioned that French people have some strange "bathroom" habits and before I could explain what I meant, she interrupted me with - 

"You mean their obsession with closing the door to an empty room?"

So its not just my French man.....

As it happens in our house, closing that little door is even less simple because our apartment is over 100 years ago and none of the doors close properly. Closing them entails multiple slammings and jigglings of knobs. All the noise this produces is not that big of a deal in the middle of the day but at 2 am - that's another story.

My Frenchman usually remembers when he is up in the middle of the night that the door doesn't close easily and reasonably just leaves it ajar without forcing the issue.

But every once in a while he reverts and goes into a fit of banging and slamming .

His son however has never learned. Cultural training evidently runs very deep - no matter how long it takes, Paul, will slam and jiggle until that damn door is closed tight. Such perseverence!

Another thing about bathrooms - anyone who has ever visited France knows that finding a public one is close to impossible - and once you do, they're not free.

You know how in the US there are public restrooms everywhere? Don't take this for granted! In France, you have to go into a cafe and buy a cup of coffee to be able to use the restroom.

Maybe the lack of public facilities is due to some kind of conspiracy by French cafe owners to sell more espresso...

My Frenchman says no - he says it is due to the fact that France is a Catholic country.

Huh?

Apparently going to the bathroom is somehow connected to sex and sin in the eyes of the church and therefore needs to be discouraged. 

I'm not sure that this is actually true but it would also explain the closing-the-door-to-the-empty-room thing. When you pass down the hall, if the door is closed, you can pretend the toilet doesn't even exist and if there are no restrooms in the malls and stores, the whole issue can be ignored in public.

Seems really silly doesn't it?

I told you the French are different.

 

 

 

Jobs at the Zoo

"Wow, it would be so fun to work at the zoo!" 

The immediate response from my well meaning mother to my 7 year old self was the helpful, "Oh Mary, so many people want to work at the zoo, it is really hard to even think about doing a job like that because it is so fun. Better to set your sights on a job that you have a better chance of getting. Jobs at the zoo are for the lucky few....."

I cannot even begin to tell you the effect that this kind of thinking has had on me for the 46 years that followed.

I know that my mother meant well. Her intentions were pure. She was offering protection from disappointment and failure. What's wrong with that?

Plenty as it turns out.

What I took as truth from this protective reality check was:

#1 -  the fun jobs were for the lucky few who were part of a group who's membership is a birthright and I did not belong.

#2 - by extension, the grown up job that I would someday have would not be fun. Remember, fun was for the lucky kids.

Add to this propaganda some of my mother's other, also well meaning, messages that I should dream of staying home full time with my future children and whatever job I eventually chose should be practical and something I could do part time along with baby making. Fun (code for intrinsically interesting and fulfilling) was not part of the equation.

Okay, I know this was not mean or abusive brainwashing and I can't say that as a result I lived a failed life as an accountant BUT it sure threw up some steep roadblocks in my psyche.

In spite of my mother's warnings, I ended up doing pieces of some of the fun jobs along the way and the outside world would probably never guess the prison cell of self limitation in which I have been living.

But today, I have taken a very big step towards slaying this old dragon. 

In mid August, I will officially be one of the lucky kids. No, I will not be a zookeeper, except metaphorically.

About 4 years ago I heard of what I thought sounded like a dream job and I dared to imagine myself in it.

Through a circuitous path (aren't they all) the opportunity came my way to put myself forward and lo and behold I came out on top of the competition. I will soon direct a global center for leadership with locations in France, Singapore and the Middle East.

I'm still pinching myself. I get to do something that I really believe will be fun, not to mention incredibly interesting and challenging.

The important lesson from all this though is to NEVER believe that you don't deserve to work at the zoo. You can if you want to. 

NOTHING is reserved for only the lucky few.

 

 

 

Some codes....

Did you know that French people are extremely elitist? This in spite of their Revolution where they chopped off all those heads and made a bloody mess of Marie Antoinette's party circuit.

There may not be anymore French royalty, at least not out in the open, but this country still has plenty of the upper class bourgeois  left with their complicated social codes. These codes tell those in the know who is "in" and who is not.

The "in" being those who are part of a socially elite class who smack very much of Junior League without the do-gooder charity part and who clearly maintain a no new members allowed policy.

I'll give you an idea of a few of the codes:

One NEVER uses the word "ate" (manger) when referring to well, eating. Yes I know, it sounded sort of ludicrous to me too but, it is extremely tacky to say for example, "we ate together at noon".

OOO la la la la.

Eating is for animals.

Instead one must say, "we lunched together...." nous avons dejeune'" Eating together, if you are a human at least, marks you down a bunch of rungs on the class ladder.

And then there is the Bonjour code. One must greet someone with a Bonjour Madame

- never simply Bonjour - that's rude - BUT if one says Bonjour Madame Smith - NOW everyone knows you are a commoner.

One good thing - as a foreigner you are excused for not knowing any better and are pretty much given a free pass. 

You'll never really fit in anyway.

Who is We anyway?

Have you ever thought about the concept of "we" ? When you are a we you belong to something or identify with something larger than just your one person. Being part of a we usually feels pretty good. 

My American daughter living in Ireland had her American sister living in Madrid visit last weekend. She kept on referring to we as in "we say it like this, and we do it like that and here we think.......and then she caught herself.

Wait a second - who is this we ? Sometime over the last 6 months, she had migrated over to being part of the we who are Irish. Now, she is half Irish by blood but up until now that was just genes. She actually hated Ireland for the first 3 months she was there -  the people all seemed the same and it felt so small. Now she identified as we with them.

Her sister compared her Spanish we-ness to the Irish one. 

What have I done? My family's we is all over the place. 

My we over here in France eats cheese at the end of the meal, allows only the men to pour the wine and sets the table with all the silverware flipped on its back......and it all is so very normal now. 

Our we has morphed across the 4 countries the five of us currently call home.

Home - now that's a concept. Actually home is California - where the roots of our we-ness really live.

 

 

Grown up

Thanks to the messages I received from PACS'd I thought that I would do the event a bit more justice. I was touched by the congratulations I received and realized why the confused messages from others. That all makes sense because I was both happy and confused.

Confused because a PACS is not a marriage, though many use it like one. MFM thinks it is the same..... But why the confusion? Well as you could probably tell from the previous post, the courts of France go out of their way to make the whole procedure just that - a procedure - one on the order of changing your car registration. No romance or ceremony in sight. 

You do the whole thing alone - no witnesses, no nobody. Just the two of you and the judge in his rugby shirt and Nikes.

I don't know if someday we may also do the wedding part - somehow I have had vague visions of how that would be - an occasion to share with kids, family and friends in a real celebration of the redemptive quality of life. From where I stand near my mid point, I can make the case that a second marriage is cause for even more joy than the first one. Why? 

Because it is all about hope. The first one is happy all right. But it is a happiness (at least for me) that hadn't been battered around quite so much. A light and cheerful and excited happiness.

But just like a middle age man choosing a mid-life woman over her 27 year old younger self because there is a lot more there now that she (and he) has loved before and lived and suffered. So it is with a second union. 

Maybe its also about appreciation. You just don't appreciate something as much as when you don't have it anymore. 

It really could be a great party. Maybe we will do one someday. 

I didn't choose all of that yet. That is a bit confusing. Maybe I am just not ready for all that happiness.......

For now we were very practical. We went on a Wednesday morning in the rain. We did the paperwork. MFM bought a bouquet afterwards. Thank goodness we were too late to get it before. I would have felt really foolish in front of Monsieur Rugby shirt.

Champagne and a romantic dinner were much later that evening.

And here's the happy part. We are happy. It feels nice. There is something about doing all this by ourselves that makes me feel like a real grown-up.

 

PACS or PACS'ED (SP?)

I dreamt of a white wedding when I was a little girl. I would marry a handsome prince and live in a big house with a winding staircase in the entry and polished silver on the table. I would have beautiful children who played nice and practiced their piano. 

I would live happily every after.

And I did.

Then came the after.

Today I was PACS'ed at the Tribunal d'Instance de Paris. Huh?

It was raining.

He wore a tuxedo shirt and bow tie. I wore an ivory silk blouse and boots. The judge (or whatever he was) wore a rugby shirt with "15" on the front, the hems of his jeans were frayed and his Nike's were slip-ons....yes it was a formal affair.

Becoming PACS'ed in France couldn't be less romantic. The poor gays who have to depend on only this to be married! At least we heterosexuals have a choice. But for a myriad of reasons that I sometimes have a hard time articulating, MFM and I decided to go the PACS'ed route to happily every after.

The process is purely procedural.

1 . Judge shuffles the papers in the red cardboard file.

2. Makes the obligatory comment that my birth name is different than my name on lots of other documents.........Duh! THAT name was from those "happily ever after days" don't you understand??

3. Moves directly to stamp stamp stamp on the bottom of official papers.

4. Presents us with the proof of what we have done and how we are joined followed immediately by the official paper explaining how we can undo what we have just done. Correct me if I am wrong but isn't there a line somewhere in my past about not undoing what God has joined together.........? 

5. Search for an envelope in which to put official papers followed by search for our wet umbrellas.

Au revoir.

MFM stopped me on the steps and kissed me in the rain. I tried to figure out how I felt.

Will tell you when I do.

 

 

 

 

C'est possible

I am now back at "home" in Paris after 17 days in the USA. My saying that Paris is home seemed significant to some back in California.

It's not really. Home is where you live. Where all of your stuff is. You can make a case for it being just as simple as that.

Or not.

Home could be where you were born and raised - where you spent the formative years. 

So that would make Los Angeles home for me. I was just there. It kind of feels that way. It sure is familiar. I know where to turn and what freeway to take where. I know how to slide back and forth between lanes of traffic and how to leave LAX by the back way.

Its like riding a bike - you just don't forget certain things. 

Then I went to San Diego. I was at home there too. I went to college there. I raised my family, lived my adult married life and made great friends  under its relentlessly sunny skies. It is more than familiar.

But I don't live there anymore. I am a visitor, a guest.

So how do I feel now that neither of my homes are my homes anymore? I never felt very nostalgic for Los Angeles when I was living in San Diego. San Diegans never pine for LA. It's just not done. So moving to Paris has softened me up on LA. Its not so bad. Lots of nice people who don't tell you c'est pas possible when you make a request, live there.

And moving to Paris has made living in San Diego feel almost like it was all a dream. It was 85 Degrees the second week of November. I had lunch overlooking the ocean and I wasn't on an island somewhere. I could have done stuff like that all the time when I lived there.

But I didn't of course. 

It was wonderful to be back but I don't live there anymore. I'm not sure how I feel about all that.

But I really can't complain. I live in Paris. That is a dream for many just like living where you can go to the beach in November. 

Me living in Paris makes anything c'est possible!

 

 

THAT question again

I often get asked the question whether I will ever return to the USA to live. Ever is a long time and this question never fails to shake me up a bit. My reaction is also tied to who is doing the asking.

Last week the president of my apartment building syndicat (homeowners association) came by to pass out the new entrance badges to the building. Now I have to tell you this man is a French creep.  MFM and I are continually surprised that he can even walk, the stick is so far up his..........

Anyway, he was busily having me sign sworn statements that I was solely responsible for the health and safety of these precious badges, that I concure that I have received four of them, the serials numbers were duly noted, etc....... when in the middle of this latest example of fine French bureaucracy, he turns his blond (I swear its colored) comb-over-ed head towards me and asks with that special breed of suspicion certain French are so good at:

Retourneriez-vous aux-Etats-Unis ?

(By the way - he asks me this almost every time I see him).

Well, yes I visit as often as I can (I will spare you my halting French responses).

That was obviously not what he was asking - visiting and RETURNING are two different things. I'm probably reading way too much into his questions, but he always seems to imply that I must be some kind of exiled criminal in hiding, or a bad mother separated from her children or a traitor to my country.

or all of the above.

I know, I know - who cares what this swarmy frog thinks.

But when the question comes from a friend and someone I care about, it gives me pause. The second person who posed this same question on the same day last week was a visiting San Diego friend.

It is confusing to have done what I have done. Nevermind the exact circumstances that brought me to Paris in the first place. The bottom line is that in spite of the full life that I left behind in California, life is now here.

Amazing how a human can just do that.

You sell your house, you get on a plane, your rent an apartment and boom - you live somewhere else.

I read a piece in the NYTimes yesterday about how social networks are preventing college freshman from engaging in the present experience of college because they are too tightly tied to their high school friends and therefore the past.

Maybe I am too old for the Facebook effect but in moving to Paris, I started a new chapter, never quite realizing the impact it would have on the past. I still don't understand but what I do know is that by immersing myself in the life here in France I have created this whole new world equally full (though of course without the precious history of the old) and the thought of walking out of this one is just as disruptive as was stepping out of the old one.

So my best answer to that innocent question is though I can't really say - the thought of never living in the US again makes me really sad, and the thought of not living in France any more makes me really sick.

Another example of that damned butterfly out of the coccoon problem......and more.

I better get rich quick so I don't have to decide - and can just have both.