Tag Archives: aix

The Meat Nazi

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Posted: September 23, 2022 at 6:09 am

At Place des Prêcheurs, I weaved through outdoor bistros, dodging waiters running between packed outdoor seating and the empty restaurants serving them. Nestled between restaurants was Boucherie-Charcuterie du Palais, aka the Meat Nazi. Streetside, a faded red awning shaded a glass case on casters, full of roasted chickens. But the splendor of the meat display inside was almost indecent. Laid in perfect rows was a yoga class of headless, skinned rabbits, performing sun salutation stretches. There were orderly groupings of magret de canard (duck breast), rognonnade d’agneau (lamb kidney), andouilletes (pork sausages), and fourteen kinds of pâté. Tied in precise bundles were alouettes sans tête (larks without a head), which weren’t larks, but beef stuffed with bacon, sausage and spices. Carol cooked them in a traditional Provençal sauce she perfected.

Some displays were not for the faint of heart. Our butcher arrayed lamb and veal brains, looking exactly like wet, mini, human brain models used in medical school. The brains flanked a cow’s tongue, the shape and size of a football. Who bought the unidentified animal knuckles and feet? There were a bunch of bloody, sweating, grossities left over from some satanic ritual which I didn’t want to look at too closely.

Except for one portly man in a white apron stained crimson and terracotta from nipple to thigh, the butchers were no-nonsense, severe women demanding strict adherence to the unwritten rules governing requests for meat and payment for same. 

I waited at one end of the long, glassed-in meat counter. There was a queue every day. I planned to buy chicken thighs for poulet aux lardons (chicken with bacon), but the chicken was at the far end of the counter; if I couldn’t see the meat I wanted from my place in line, too bad. I was not allowed to leave my spot to look at meat further away. As customers were helped, the line advanced, everyone shuffling along one position. With each shuffle I saw more of the meat display, but once past a section, there was no going back. It was my turn when a butcher, the one with the spiky copper hairdo, doing her best Jacques Brel impersonation, shouted, “Suivant!”

I knew this woman well; when I arrived in Aix, my ignorant meat questions provoked much eye-rolling and shrugging. But she taught me something valuable the previous month, when I asked, “Could I please have one and a half kilos of stewing beef, madame?” 

“What are you making?” 

“Bœuf Bourguignon, madame.”

“When are you making it?” she asked, with sidelong suspicion.

“Tomorrow.”

“Come back tomorrow and buy your meat for tomorrow’s meal.”

I never repeated that error; imagine, buying meat a day early! What was I planning, to keep it refrigerated for a day? Put it in the freezer? She knew I would come back. As my meat-buying skills improved, so did the friendliness of my tormentress. When I asked for chicken thighs that day, she almost smiled, not grilling me about their imminent preparation. Wrapping my meat in brown butcher’s paper with a deft hand, she said her signature, “Avec ÇA?,” shouting the second word, asking if I needed anything else. She kept my package on her side of the counter. 

“I would also like some bacon, cut into lardons, please.”

I saw a hint of a smile. She nodded, knowing lardons were part of the chicken recipe, to be used that day.

Before moving to France, Carol and I took turns patting each other’s backs while serving lean and salt-reduced turkey bacon. What great parents we were, saving our kids from future health issues. In France we were addicted to sizzling hunks of pig fat. No self-respecting French man or woman would ever eat turkey bacon.

Marbled, thick-sliced butcher’s bacon was cut into quarter-inch, bite-sized pieces to create lardons. At the supermarket, several shelves were devoted to pre-cut lardons, in every variation imaginable. How could I avoid buying this? Not only was it bacon, inherently irresistible, but they even cut it up for me! In the lardons aisle of Casino supermarket, I was Homer Simpson, drawing out “baaaaaaaaay-con” in a low, sensuous whisper.

“Avec ÇA?” my butcher said. I hoped she couldn’t hear me thinking about buying lardons at the supermarket.

We continued our dance until she held four brown bundles and I said that was all for today. This is when you think I would receive my packages and pay, but you would be wrong. My butcher traversed the length of the shop, and I matched her step along the customer side of the counter. At the end of the display case, she put my order in a red plastic shopping basket and pulled a plasticized number from her breast pocket. She placed the number in my basket, regarded me solemnly and said, “Thirty-seven.” As I thanked her for my basket, I could see the back corner of the shop. The male butcher was serving people in a line of two or three. I learned later this line was for important people, family and friends of the butchers. So much for égalité.

Basket in hand, I was required to immediately take two steps, and place it on a roller conveyor belt, a smaller version of the one at A&P when I was a kid; at my hometown supermarket, groceries were packed in brown paper bags, arranged in plastic bins and placed on a conveyor which disappeared through the wall. A teenager would load them into our car outside. The Boucherie conveyor was only six feet long, and it was blocked by customers standing beside their respective baskets, waiting for the cashier. In the crush, I could not approach the conveyor to unload my purchases, so I stood there like an idiot, holding my basket of meat. Understandably, all hell broke loose. The lady butchers stormed from behind the meat counter in a race to be first to explain why my foolish actions could lead to the end of 400 years of diplomatic relations between Canada and France. My basket was taken, and several people in the cashier’s line were asked to move, allowing my basket to be placed in the correct order on the conveyor. I felt relieved to be standing basketless, like the other customers waiting to pay.

Each basket inched along the conveyor when another order was rung in. We stood beside our baskets; why couldn’t we stand in the correct order holding our baskets? When it was my turn to pay, the cashier moved my basket to the little shelf beside her cash register. She tossed my number thirty-seven in a pile without looking at it. The number was unfailingly taken from the basket before the meat; otherwise, it was anarchy! The purpose of the plasticized numbers, and the payment system, remained a mystery to me. My instincts warned that questioning the procedure in fractured French could result in banishment from the shop, a risk I was unwilling to take.

The Boy Named Alice

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Posted: May 17, 2021 at 8:16 am

We were lost on a two-lane road twenty kilometers from Aix-en-Provence when Devon said, “Dad, this boy back here is going to throw up.” This boy back here.

         The Boy Named Alice, eight-years-old, had not spoken since he got in the car. A Marcel Marceau fan, he didn’t say he needed to vomit. He poked Devon and made throwing-up motions. I swerved my newish car to the shoulder and Carol pulled a plastic bag from her purse. Too late. A small dollop of puke made it into the bag. The rest splashed The Boy Named Alice, the backseat, the floorboards and the inside of the door. Neither Carol nor I are squeamish about vomit; we’re parents. But this was someone else’s kid, he seemed mute, and we didn’t know his real name.

         “Kcchhhchhh,” said Sophie in the backseat, retching.

         “Ghllghlhl,” said her brother beside her, holding his throat.

         I scooped vomit from the upholstery with a Kleenex. Carol cleaned The Boy Named Alice’s soccer uniform, standing in the ditch. He remained silent, indifferent to the situation or the stranger scraping barf from his shorts. We left the putrid plastic bag and the vomit-slathered contents of a box of Kleenex in the ditch, to lie with the detritus common to the shoulders of French roads.

         “I feel awful leaving our pukey garbage in the ditch, Billy,” said Carol. She looked down, and saw a spot of vomit on her shoe.

         “I don’t like it either, but what choice do we have? I don’t know how much longer we’ll be stuck in the car.” I swallowed back something rising in my throat and gagged.

*

         Every Saturday, Devon played a match for his Aix-based soccer club. The club employed a comical system to get players and parents to the out-of-town pitches each week. If I ran the club, I would send an email to each player’s parents on Monday, asking if their child could play that weekend. I would include the name of the hosting town and soccer field, the time to arrive there, and imbed in the note a Google map. A lawyer’s preparation. Call me crazy, but I imagine that would work out pretty well.

         Devon’s club had a different system. On Thursdays I received a message from an anonymous texter, something like: “come to the stadium on Saturday at 2 p.m.” There was no information about the text’s author, the game time, the opponent, or whether the text had anything to do with my son or soccer. Was it an invitation from a Marseille wiseguy to pick up a suitcase of drugs? I felt like a Luddite, but an email would have been nice.

         Being my father’s son, I had my family at the stadium five minutes early. That was my first mistake, forgetting about le petit quart d’heure (which allows every French citizen to be at least 15 minutes late for everything). Over the next thirty minutes, parents and players would drift into the parking lot. The first time this happened, I ignored the tardiness, and picked the least-late parent to befriend. I targeted a sallow-faced smoking father, held out my hand and said, in French, “Hello, I’m Bill, I’m Devon’s father.”

         The man gave me one of those handshakes which offers only fingers, no palm. “Yes. Hello,” he said, without giving his name.

         “We’re here from Canada. We’re living in Aix this year.”

         “Yes. I know,” he said.

         “Devon is enjoying playing for this club. Is this your son? What position does he play?”

         “Oh, here and there.” The man tossed the remainder of his cigarette to the asphalt.

         That was the end of the conversation. I made similar attempts to engage other parents on other Saturdays, but had the same results. With no parents to befriend, every Saturday we waited in silence for the latecomers, staring into the distance like models in department store catalogues.

         Eventually, the coach told us the name of the town we had to find. I asked him the address of the soccer pitch. Every time the coach replied, “There’s only one stadium. It’s easy to find.” This was patently false.

         The plan was each driver would follow the car in front, and we would arrive at the pitch en masse. Within thirty seconds, all the cars were separated. The soccer pitch was never plunked beside city hall in any of these towns, and was often outside the town’s borders and down an unmarked dirt road. One cannot find secreted and unnamed soccer pitches accessed by unmarked dirt roads without stopping several times to ask indifferent locals for directions. In French. With a Québécois accent. And we were late. Did I mention this scenario played out every week?

         Well, not exactly like that every week – one Saturday had a vomitous twist. Sure, we had the mystery location, lack of directions, and chronic lateness. But as we were leaving our home stadium, the coach pulled me aside.

         “Could you take another player in your car to Peynier?” he asked.

         “Of course,” I said, as a uniformed boy peered up at me. It was his first game with Devon’s team, so I asked him his name.

         The boy spoke to the asphalt. “Ah-leece.” What did he say?

         I didn’t think it polite to ask him again since it was likely a normal French name I didn’t hear clearly. I let it slide.

         “Do you usually play with a different club?” I asked the boy. He looked at me warily and whispered something to his father. They kissed each other on each cheek and the boy silently joined Devon in our car.

         “Thank you for driving Ah-leece to the game,” said his father, strolling away.

         His name couldn’t be “Ah-leece,” I thought, as “Ah-leece” was French for “Alice.” Was it an homage to Alice Cooper, or “A Boy Named Sue” knockoff? I decided to drive this kid to the match without knowing his name. As The Boy Named Alice’s father opened his car door, I thought, hold on, shouldn’t a parent know the name and number of the foreigner driving his son out of town? He didn’t even ask how he would collect his kid when, or if, we returned to Aix.

         “Wait a minute, monsieur,” I said. “Shouldn’t we exchange phone numbers?”

         “Yes. I guess so. If you want,” he replied, retracing his steps.

         “Otherwise, how will you know when to pick him up?” Using a pronoun was a clever way to avoid saying the boy’s name.

         “I was going to come back here in a few hours and wait for you,” he said.

         Waiting, again. The French could plan better, but in France everyone waits for everything; it’s built into every process. This man was content to sit in a hot parking lot with only a vague idea of when a stranger might return his son sometime in the future.

         “I think it’s better if I phone you when we’re close to Aix, and you can meet me here,” I said.

         “OK, if you want to do it that way.”

         Thirty minutes later, we climbed back into our car with The Boy Named Alice reeking of vomit, to continue our tour of Provençal roads which didn’t lead to the Peynier soccer pitch.

         “I can’t sit beside this boy anymore,” said Sophie in English, to spare the feelings of The Boy Named Alice. “He stinks, and I threw up a little in my mouth.”

         “Hang in there, Soph,” I said. “It’s rough, I know, but after a while you’ll get used to it. It’ll become our new normal.”

         “Ewwww.”

         We acclimatized to hurtling down the road in a metal box, the inside smeared with a thin film of puke. I was not surprised that once we reached Peynier, the soccer pitch was nowhere to be found. We approached a local man stuffing a mattress into a SmartCar, and I called to him before we were too close. I thought he would be reluctant to provide directions if he smelled our vomitorium.

         “Excuse me, monsieur,” I said. “Do you know where the soccer pitch is?”

         The man advanced toward the car in a friendly fashion, stopped abruptly and made a face like he had sucked a lemon. He reversed two steps and said, “I hope that’s a rental car. Heh heh. The soccer pitch, yes. Do you want the one beside the school or the new one that was recently built beside Monsieur Beaudrie’s estate?” He pulled a cigarette from where it was wedged atop his ear and flicked it to his lips.

         “I was told there was only one soccer field. Could you give me directions to both? I have a feeling the game will be at the second field we drive to.” Prophetic.

         Both sets of directions were unintelligible. We thanked the man with the sincerity he deserved, and drove away aimlessly.

         “Dad, are we late?” asked Devon, drumming his fingers against the back of the driver’s seat.

            “No, we’re not late.”

            “Are we going to be late?”

         “I don’t know. Maybe. It would help if there was a sign or something to tell us where the field is.”

         “I’m getting worried. I can’t be late, daddy.” Devon’s finger-drumming intensified. “I hate being late for anything.”  Like father like son, like grandfather like grandson, like great-grandfather like great-grandson.

         We crisscrossed the town’s major streets, and chanced upon the school where the deserted soccer field was a stony, hardscrabble playground with rusted goals, the memory of nets blowing in the breeze. That couldn’t be it. We stopped an ancient woman shouldering a straw shopping basket with three baguettes sticking out.

         “Excuse me, madame, but do you know where the soccer field is?” I asked.

         “The soccer field?” she said with a screwed-up face, as if soccer was an obscure sport, like Quidditch or hockey. What we call “soccer” in Canada, and “football” in England, is “le foot” in France. When the French named their national sport, they chose an English word that none of them can pronounce. It sounds like ‘le fute.’ “There isn’t a fute field around here. The only field I know is down that way, about halfway to the next town.”

         “Merci, madame.” This information would have been helpful when I asked the coach where in town we could find the pitch. Devon became increasingly agitated, and bounced his feet on the floorboards. The Boy Named Alice remained silent and unflappable. Scouring the roads between the two towns, we prepared to drive back to Aix when we passed a game of boules, bocce for you Italians. Like all games of French boules, the players were ancient, smoking men, with high-belted pants, ratty cardigans and cock-eyed cloth caps. A serious game for squinty-eyed competitors, mouths set in bloodless sneers. I was deathly afraid of interrupting this crowd with my stupid question in my stupid accent. But I love my kid, and he wanted to play soccer. I mentally prepared my question in French. And chickened out.

         “Carol, I’m driving the car. You go ask them,” I said, looking out the window, away from her.

         “No, Billy, you do it.” Carol crossed her arms. “You’re way better at French than me.” I hated when she said that. While true, her statement extracted her from making linguistic errors in front of car salesmen, immigration officials, doctors, the optometrist, the telephone company, the cleaning lady, the school board, the mayor’s office, and many people working in industries where knowing all the French words related to hockey (as I do) was useless. Carol spoke acceptable French, and was perfectly capable of asking directions. I exited the car to confront the boules players.

         As I approached the group, the game immediately stopped. The players and spectators looked at me, not moving a muscle. Ten people standing still as stone, unsmiling.

         “Hello, everyone,” I said. “I’m very sorry to interrupt your game. I’m trying to find the stadium near here. My son has a soccer game starting in a few minutes.” Blank looks all around. No one was happy I barged into their game.

         “Where are you from?” asked an old woman with a kerchief tied to her head.

         “Aix-en-Provence, madame.”

         “No you’re not,” she replied. “If you were from around here, you’d know where our stadium is.” That witticism garnered laughs all around. “Americans,” the woman added, under her breath. More laughter.

         “Well, we live in Aix now, but we’re from Vancouver. In Canada.”

         A light switch was flipped somewhere as the woman broke into a bright smile and said, “Canada? Céline Dion? I absolutely love Céline Dion! You have a lovely accent just like her!”

         I despaired for my country. Why did everyone in France equate Canada with Céline Dion? Couldn’t we do better than that? I felt it was an inopportune time to mention Céline Dion was my most intolerable public figure, music division, in the world. I had enough of her anguished theatrics when I lived in Québec City.

         “You like Céline Dion?” I asked, faking enthusiasm. “We have the same birthday!” This was true, to my everlasting shame. My disgrace was almost cancelled out by the knowledge Vincent Van Gogh and Eric Clapton were in the same ignominious club.

         “Lucky man,” she said, and gave me perfect instructions to a soccer pitch in the middle of a forest, covered by a Klingon cloaking device.

         Once at the pitch, I was happy to see there was a bar.

         After the game, The Boy Named Alice continued the silent treatment until we returned to our home stadium’s parking lot. The father of The Boy Named Alice was staring at the sky while sitting on a large rock, the kind put in parking lots to prevent French drivers from parking beside fire hydrants.

         “Ah, there you are,” said the father of The Boy Named Alice, pushing up from the rock. “How did it go?”

         “Fine, fine.” I said. “Well, there was a small problem. Your son was a bit carsick on the way there. He vomited a little in the car but he’s feeling better now.”

         “Oh, I’m very sorry about that.” There was genuine concern in his voice. “Is your car okay? Can I do something?”

         “No, it’s all cleaned up,” I said, shaking the hand of the father of The Boy Named Alice. “Don’t worry.”

         As father and son wandered away, The Boy Named Alice said excitedly to his father, “……and we won our first game, but that team wasn’t too good, I was playing midfield, but in the second game, which we also won, they put me at striker and I scored two goals, the second goal was the best, I used the outside of my left foot so it was really hard…….”

         It was considerate of The Boy Named Alice to let me know he could speak French. Sadly, his consideration had not extended to the previous three hours, when he could have said, “please pull over,” or “thanks for the ride,” or “sorry I puked all over your new car.” And the true name of The Boy Named Alice remains a mystery.

Three Vignettes From France

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Posted: December 5, 2018 at 3:13 pm

Having lived in France a couple of times, and written 200 fish-out-of-water blogs, I thought I’d exhausted my quiver of quirky stories highlighting the differences between Canada and France. Not so! Upon my recent return to Aix-en-Provence with Carol, three vignettes stood out. These situations would never happen in Canada:

1.      Reflected in Carol’s sunglasses, I saw the foulard at my throat was tied in the jaunty, insouciant, Aixois fashion. We sat at a spindly, wrought iron table, charmingly crooked due to its cobblestoned base, at a crowded outdoor restaurant in downtown Aix. We sipped from a carafe of Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages, not in a hurry to be served our goat cheese and arugula pizza. I spied our waiter coming from the bowels of the restaurant, bedecked in Aix’s standard straight-guy clothing: white wife-beater t-shirt, scarf wrapped thrice around his neck, dainty pirate boots with many buckles. He held a large pizza in his left hand, another two in his right, and balanced a fourth on his forearm. Since the patio tables were tightly squeezed together, his easiest access to his customers was the middle of the narrow street, dodging pedestrians and the occasional Smart Car. I could see our lunch on the waiter’s forearm. Laden as he was, you’d think the waiter would unload his pizzas as quickly as possible. You’d think that if you didn’t know the waiter’s male friend appeared around the corner at the top of the street. Our waiter stifled a squeal and hustled toward his friend, away from the restaurant, still carrying the pizzas. By the time he caught up to his friend, our waiter was a half block away, but the kisses on each cheek were still audible from our table. The friends’ chitchat was brief, albeit loud, and our waiter quickly returned to his job (after two more kisses good-bye). Our pizza was still hot.

2.      Finishing our pizza, Carol and I tucked into our salads. At a nearby table sat three fashionable young women, one of whom held a baby. Children aren’t encouraged to attend restaurants in France – there aren’t kid menus, or placemats to colour, or jars of dull crayons. Restaurants don’t supply high chairs or booster seats. And I’ve never seen a restaurant washroom with one of those fold down baby changing tables. If you bring your kid to a restaurant, they had better sit quietly and eat a grownup meal (and they do). But seeing a baby on a mother’s lap was even more unusual. As the mother continued her lively conversation with her friends, she deftly moved her cutlery, her wine glass and her table’s flower arrangement to one side. She rooted around in an impossibly large Hermès purse and found a small fuzzy blanket, which she spread flat on the table. You’ve probably guessed what happened next…she lay her baby down and changed his nappy. In a packed restaurant. Six feet from where we were eating. 

I knew I would write this story one day; in the interest of accuracy I leaned forward in my seat to get a better look. Yes, just as I expected: numéro deux.

3.      A day before we were to board the train in Aix towards Paris, SNCF workers went on strike. SNCF is the French national railway, and its workers often strike. It wasn’t a big surprise, but was inconvenient because, (a) if we didn’t get to Paris we would miss our non-refundable flight home, (b) Aix to Paris was too far to drive in the time we had, and (c) Air France triples its prices whenever SNCF is on strike.

In a normal strike, in non-France countries, all trains are cancelled. It’s disruptive, but travellers are calm because no one can get anywhere. During SNCF strikes, one of every seven scheduled trains will run. You just don’t know if your ticket is for that one-in-seven train. You have no choice but to arrive at the station and hope you win the train lottery. I don’t know how they decided running one of every seven trains causes maximum mayhem (not 1 in 3, not 1 in 10), but I expect they have PhDs armed with algorithms and supercomputers bent to the task. Suffice to say, running one in seven scheduled trains ensures the maximum number of people in the train station with the minimum number of these people boarding a train. Any train.

Regular readers of this blog will know when faced with an intractable train problem, there is only one solution: call my friend Nickipedia. Nick has run a Parisian travel company for 30 years, and possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of SNCF and every available scheme to game the system. His advice? Go to the station and sneak onto any train bound for Paris. How could this possibly work, I wondered.

The trick, according to Nick, was to slip past the ticket-checker on the platform and go straight to the bar car. Once there, no SNCF employee will kick you off the train (as they’re not paid for confrontation). We didn’t have tickets for that train, which would’ve warranted seats, but we could stand on any train travelling to Paris, Nick advised. I was nervous when the SNCF employee came through the bar car and checked our tickets which corresponded to a cancelled train. She didn’t bat an eye – even better, she eventually found Carol a seat two cars over. I stayed happily in the bar car; if you must stand, I feel that’s the best place. I was quite content watching the countryside race by at 300 kilometres per hour, drinking several single-serve red wines from plastic bottles.

Thanks to Nick, the pièce de résistance occurred when we arrived in Paris. He said our tickets were fully refundable since our train was cancelled. Even though SNCF transported us from Aix to Paris, a distance of 700 kilometres, on the fastest train in France, we were credited $250. 

Bluebeard

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Posted: August 2, 2018 at 11:09 pm

That evening, I sat in my favorite chair in la Pistache, the one beside the best reading light. I underlined incomprehensible phrases in La Provence in preparation for coffee with Cécile. The children watched The Adventures of Tintin on our tiny television.

“Daddy, can you help me with my homework?” asked Devon, five minutes before bedtime.

“Poor planning, Dev,” I said. “You’ve had all evening. Why are you doing it now?”

“I just remembered.” How could I be angry with him? I was a more skilled procrastinator in my youth. “I have some grammar and I have to review two pages of a story my teacher gave us.” I put down my newspaper.  

“Let’s sit at the dining room table,” I said. I interrupted my reading with pleasure; I liked doing homework with my children more than, well, anything. They both had a curiosity about learning I found satisfying. They were also petrified of being unprepared for class, and wanted the highest score in any academic pursuit. There was no disputing these traits were paternal in origin. 

“Dev, even though it’s late to start your homework, I love we have the time to do it together.”

“You always help me, daddy. Ever since I was a kid.”

“I appreciate that, Dev, but it’s not true. There were lots of times in Vancouver when I was working, or too cranky, and I couldn’t do this. In Aix I don’t have excuses. And you’re still a kid. You’re only in Grade Three.” 

We started with grammar, my weakest subject. Devon delighted in correcting me, with sly grins of superiority. He often forgot I was the reason he was bilingual. At lesson’s end, I used the incorrect French verb for “to know.” The word “savoir” means “to know,” in the context of knowing how to do something. “Connaître” also means “to know,” but it’s used when referencing a person or a place, as in, “I know Paris well.” It’s easy to mix them up.

Devon looked like he swallowed a canary. “Dad, you can’t use connaître like that. You have to use savoir.”

“You’re only eight,” I said. “How can you know that?”

With a straight face, he said, “I don’t know, dad. I just savoir it.”

“Okay, enough grammar. What’s the story about?”

“Get it, dad? I savoir it.”

“It doesn’t get funnier the more you say it,” I said. “Tell me about the story.”

“It’s called ‘Barbe-Bleu.’ That means Bluebeard in English.”

“Thanks for the translation.” I knew this story, a well-known French folktale. We read it together, and I wondered what sadists chose the curriculum for eight-year-olds. The story is summarized as follows:

A wealthy man lived in the country. As a consequence of his unattractive blue beard, none of the local ladies would date him. His neighbor had two daughters, and Bluebeard asked to marry one. The daughters refused, citing Bluebeard’s ugliness, and the small issue of the disappearance of several of Bluebeard’s former wives. Bluebeard had some swinging parties, allowing the ladies to see he was a fun guy, and one daughter finally married him.

After a month of marriage, Bluebeard told his young wife he was taking a business trip. He gave her keys to the house, the safe, and the cabinets holding jewels and gold. He also gave her one tiny key, and made her promise not to use it to open the small door at the end of the hall. Of course, as soon as Bluebeard left, the wife entered the restricted room. It was covered in blood, and Bluebeard’s former wives, throats slit, hung from hooks (did I mention Devon was only eight?).

In a panic, the wife left the macabre scene and locked the door. Unlucky, she smeared blood on the tiny key, and being magic, it was impossible to clean. When Bluebeard returned, he demanded to see the keys, and asked his wife why the tiny key was covered with blood. 

“I don’t know,” she said. 

“You may not know,” said Bluebeard, “but I know all too well. You have gone into the little room! And now you will re-enter the room, and take your place among the others.”  

The wife threw herself at Bluebeard’s feet, crying, and begged him…and begged him…and…

And that’s all we had of the story. Devon’s photocopy ended, mid-story, mid-sentence. He couldn’t read the ending, in which the wife was saved by her two brothers. They slew the serial-killer, rendering the widow both wealthy and Bluebeard-less. I worried about Devon going to bed with the image of Bluebeard’s many wives strung up on meathooks. As I tucked him into bed, he said, “Dad, you know what I was thinking about?”

Uh-oh, I thought. “Uhh, no. What?”

“You know what would be cool? In 1,000 years, people will look back and study us, like we’re prehistoric people. They’ll say, look, they actually reached down and used their hands to pick up a glass if they wanted a drink. Today, we have robot arms which bring the glass to our mouth.” 

How am I going to give up these precious moments? I couldn’t go back to Vancouver and resume my regular job. I couldn’t be like I was before, I couldn’t miss out on my children’s ephemeral years, those unrecoverable years, being an absent father. I pinkie-swore with myself I would structure my new Vancouver life to allow for maximum family interaction, maximum mental engagement, Provence-level. I immediately regretted binding myself to the unbreakability of a pinkie-swear, despairing I could not construct such a life and still make a living.

I returned to my favorite chair with my laptop and a glass of rosé. “Just savoir it?” I had to record that story before I forgot it. I laughed out loud while typing. Why can’t my real life be like this? Crafting stories from the quirks of everyday living for my own amusement. Unfortunately, blogging wasn’t a career; my vignette would be thrown into the blogosphere’s yawning maw, where it would be read by fifty friends and be lost in the beast’s intestinal tract along with millions of blogs written by unfulfilled millennials.

That thought threw me down another well of depression, too deep to escape. While I was down there, I came to a woeful conclusion.

A Christmas Story, France-Style

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Posted: December 15, 2015 at 9:17 am

 

It was Christmas Eve, and no one was telling me what to do. I wasn’t following traditions or making excuses for not going to church. I could do what I wanted, and what I wanted was a big, wine-sodden dinner with the Reid family at la Pistache.

We planned a non-traditional Christmas dinner of beef tenderloin, a tantalizing cut of meat Carol and Michelle chose that morning at the Meat Nazi. They stalled the Meat Nazi’s famous lineup, which snaked out the door, past lecherous Monsieur Bon Appetit’s stall, as the male butcher brazenly flirted. He ignored me, pretending I wasn’t married to one object of his desire. Everyone was meat shopping for Christmas dinner, but no one looked upset by the delay, placid faces of tolerance all. A combination of “it’s-their-turn-so-they-can-take-as-long-as-they-want-and-I’ll-take-a-long-time-when-it’s-my-turn-too,” and “it’s-a-man’s-obligation-to-flirt-with-pretty-women-so-who-am-I-to-object?”

We started our party at the Reids’ house, champagne and amuse-bouches: crab cakes with lemon slices, rolled smoked salmon cigars with caper-dill relish, and tiny leek tarts. We continued our moveable feast at la Pistache. The children trampolined on beds upstairs, and the adults crowded our kitchen to watch Carol make dinner.

“Get out of here, you guys, or we’ll never get to eat,” she said after 15 minutes letting us help. “Let me finish this and I’ll be out in a minute.”

We settled around our dining room table for more champagne and roquefort mini quiches I prepared that morning. Carol bustled in the kitchen until calling out the five minute warning. I said to Michelle and Jordan, “Would either of you like to influence the choice of wine?” I held a bottle to my chest, label side in.

“Uhh, what? No, of course not, you choose,” said Jordan.

“Don’t mind him,” said Carol, stepping from the kitchen. “That’s an inside joke. Remember we said Nickipedia knows everything about everything? That goes double for wine. He picks the wine because everyone knows he’s the expert. One time we were in a Paris restaurant and we assumed he’d choose the wine, and he assumed he’d choose the wine, but he didn’t want to look arrogant. So he said, ‘Would either of you like to influence the choice of wine?’ and we’ve laughed about that line ever since.”

“You’ve already chosen, so what is it Bill?” asked Jordan.

“A Clos de Vougeot pinot noir. It should be good with the beef.” I handed the bottle to Jordan so he could examine the label.

“How do you know that’s the right wine?” asked Michelle. “But I’m sure it is.”

“I’m pretty sure pinot noir is the right grape, but I’m no expert. I chose this one because I dated a girl from the winery in Burgundy. You were in high school, Carol, so I can say that.” I poured wine and the four children came to the table, red-faced from laughter. Carol brought in steaming plates of beef, wild mushrooms and ratatouille, to the mouth-watering of all. We passed serving dishes and plates were filled. Once the baguette basket made the rounds, Jordan stood and raised his glass.

“I want to propose a toast,” he said. “We’d like to thank the Crows for celebrating this Christmas dinner with us, while we’re far away from our families in Canada and the States. We’re lucky to be living this incredible life in our adopted country. To good friendships and all we have to be thankful for. Santé!” Everyone touched glasses. The children leaned dangerously over the table so they could reach the far side with their sirops.

“Santé!” “To the Crows!” “Santé!”

Yes, I thought, I am lucky to be right here, right now, with my family and these wonderful people. This is my happiest moment in Aix, which is odd, coming so soon after one of my lowest. I must hold onto this feeling, appreciate what’s right in front of me, not agonize over everything I’ve messed up. I must use this feeling of contentment to move my life forward. I can do it. I have to do it. I want to feel like this all the time.

“We’re so happy to be here, you guys,” said Michelle, once everyone sat. “I’m starting to feel at home in Aix, and with our families making such a great fit, it’s so much better.”

“You’re happy to have someone to complain about the French to,” I said.

“It’s more fun at soccer games when we make snide remarks in English, Bill,” said Jordan. “What was last week’s record? 1:12?”

“1:12?” asked Devon. “What does 1:12 mean?”

“It’s a ratio, Dev,” I said. “Do you know what a ratio is? It means you played soccer, say for 20 minutes, but all the other time we spent waiting for late people and driving around lost and waiting for everything to start because your coach gave us the wrong time, and waiting for you after the game and driving home and everything else connected to French organizational ineptitude was 12 times as long. So if you played for 20 minutes, the total time we invested in soccer was four hours.”

“What does ineptitude mean?” asked Devon.

“It’s the reason France hasn’t been the centre of the universe for hundreds of years,” said Jordan.

“That’s not what they teach at school, in history class,” said Sophie. “France is the centre of everything.”

“Let’s not focus on negatives,” said Michelle, ever the brimming optimist. “It’s good to learn patience, and we have so many great things going on here. Let’s look at what we’re thankful for. What does everyone like about living here? You start, Bill.”

“Me first? Okay. Well, I love the food. Thank you ladies for everything you made for dinner tonight.” I leaned over and gave Carol a kiss on the cheek.

Carol pushed me away gently and said, “Is that your real answer, or are you sucking up?”

“My real answer,” I said, “what I love the most, is never saying ‘no, I’m too busy’ to the kids. I have time to do whatever they want. In Vancouver I was constantly thinking of other stuff I had to do instead of enjoying aimless fun with the kids.”

“That’s not true,” said Sophie. She put one hand on her waist and shook her finger like a school marm. “You tell us you’re too busy here, too. Like two weeks ago when you weren’t talking to anyone and you were mad all the time. You didn’t want to do anything with us. What happened to Vacation Daddy?”

“Thanks Soph,” I said. “I’m sure everyone wanted to hear that.” I felt heat rise in my face, because what she said was true. Despite my enviable French life, I experienced short bursts of depression as my sabbatical quickly flowed past me. Each time I blinked, another day, another month rushed by without resolution to my professional crisis. Not a “mid-life crisis,” because that suggested I experienced contentment for a long period, and only felt working-life malaise as I aged. I had been in crisis forever, and ran halfway around the world to solve it. I wasn’t sure I could solve it, but I would drink better wine while I tried.

“Most of the time you’re fun here, daddy,” said Sophie, with a smile no father could resist.

“Nice save attempt, Sophie,” I said. “Anyway, I’m sticking with my answer. What about you, Michelle?”

Michelle put her glass down and scrunched her brow before her face brightened. “I’m feeling like a local now, so that’s been great. People ask me for directions, and I know the answers!” Michelle worked diligently at bilingualism, but what she lacked in perfect French was compensated by lovability.

“Me too,” I said. “I think I have the right clothes and I know how to shrug, so I look local. Until they hear my Québécois accent.”

“Did you say, ‘the right clothes?,’ ” asked Michelle. “I think you have a scarf deficiency.”

“I know, I know. That’s been tough for me, but I’m almost ready for one. I want to be immersed in this society. Despite my scarf issues, I have to say, as soon as I was back in France, hanging out in cafés, I felt like I did 20 years ago. I was immediately comfortable. That’s what I love here, feeling like I’ve adopted French relaxation and coolness techniques well enough to fit in.”

“You took another turn,” said Carol.

“Sorry, but there are so many positives here, I need more than one turn. Go ahead, Carol.”

“Oh, me? Okay.” Carol looked at our children, who beamed at her. “For me, it’s all the time with the kids, and you, Billy. I’m not as comfortable as you guys in Aix because my French isn’t as good.”

“It’s getting a lot better,” I said.

“Thanks,” said Carol. “All that extra time also allows me to reassess what is important to me. In my old life I’d say, ‘If I had time to do yoga every day, I would.’ But now that I can do yoga every day, I’ve realized it gets boring. When we’re back in Vancouver, yoga three times a week will be great.”

“Is no one going to mention the wine?” asked Jordan, pouring Carol another glass. “I think everyone’s lying. The wine is by far the best thing here. I should probably be a bit more careful.”

“Our consumption is up quite a bit too,” said Carol, taking a sip.

“Mum, remember when you got drunk in Paris?” asked Sophie. She giggled with her brother. The Reid girls looked shocked Sophie would speak that way to her parent.

“I didn’t get drunk. What?”

“Yes you did,” said Sophie, “At that apartment, La Bohème, remember?”

“Oh yeah, you’re right,” said Carol, “but it wasn’t my fault.”

I felt it time to teach the children a lesson, so I said, “No Carol, you know each person is responsible for their own alcohol intake. You can’t blame your drunkenness on anyone else.”

“But we had dinner with Nickipedia that night,” she said.

“Okay, I forgot about that,” I said. I twisted the corkscrew on another bottle of pinot noir, and popped the cork for emphasis. “That’s the exception to the rule. Each person is responsible for their own alcohol intake, unless Nickipedia is involved. Then it’s clearly Nickipedia’s fault if you get drunk. The wine he serves is too good.”

“I think that rule is fair,” said Carol, holding her glass for a refill.

“What about the teenagers In Aix?” asked Michelle. “They aren’t part of the Nickipedia rule, but their drinking is crazy.”

“I haven’t seen it as too terrible,” said Carol.

“Wait until the festivals,” said Michelle. “During spring carnival, Proxi on Richelme sold full-size, glass bottles of rosé to drunken teenagers for five euros. They set up a big cooler, right on the square.”

“Good idea!” I said. “What could possibly go wrong?”

“Downtown was broken glass everywhere.”

“That’s another good thing about Aix,” I said. “Everyone goes a little crazy once in a while, there aren’t any rules, and the next day city workers clean everything up. I like the idea of letting loose, living, you know, the joie de vivre as they say – I’ve spent so much time following rules and doing everything according to plan and worrying about everything.”

“You want to get drunk downtown daddy?” asked Devon.

“No, Dev, that’s not what I meant. I meant it’s a good way to live your life, paying attention to your experiences, having fun, living in the now.”

“But aren’t we always living now, since it’s….like, you know…..now?” asked Devon.

“Living in the now, Dev. That’s different.”

“Whatever,” said Devon. “I kinda get it. But when do we get the 13 desserts? I wanna live in the now, so I want them now.” The 13 desserts were a Provençal tradition we adopted. As the name implied, 13 different desserts were trotted out each Christmas Eve, 13 being the number of the birthday boy and 12 apostles. We cheated and bought a pre-packaged assortment of 13, but at the market that morning it was obvious many locals did the same.

“You probably won’t eat all 13 tonight, Dev,” I said. “Tradition says the desserts stay on the table for three days.”

“Dad, you said we should live in the now. Who knows what desserts will be left in three days? I’m not waiting.” Devon sidled up to the buffet where I had left the 13 desserts.

As everyone laughed, I wondered exactly when my son became smarter than me. He was right – I had to enjoy what was right in front of me, at that moment. Take those feelings of gratitude, joy, optimism, and love, everything I felt about that night and the people in that room, and let those feelings wash over me, bathe in them, revel in them. If I could do that every day, I had the recipe for a fulfilling life. Hours later, we stood on the terrasse on a surprisingly warm night, making many-kisses goodbyes. I stood on tippy-toes and kissed both cheeks of the towering Jordan, aware I was drunk and realizing I wouldn’t be kissing him if I wasn’t. Maybe I would have – I was that happy. I wondered whether it was my best Christmas ever. Even better than the Christmas seven-year-old me received a Great Garloo robot, after it was on my list for three years. A story for another time.