FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

s'occuper (so-kew-pay) verb
  to keep oneself busy; to deal with, to look after (someone)

Citation du Jour:
Puisque je personnifie la sauvage sur scène, j'essaie d'être civilisée dans la vie. Since I personify the savage on the stage, I try to be as civilized as possible in daily life. --Josephine Baker

A Day in a French Life...
by Kristin Espinasse

Italian Josephine made homemade pizza the size of a hamburger patty, only there wasn't any viande: just a bony anchovy and a meaty olive or two. When she had the energy, she delivered her Italian pies and stayed to watch you enjoy them. And she never charged.

"Ça m'occupe." It keeps me busy, she would say, simply. As I ate, she would sit facing me with her cane, her knitted shawl, and her buckled shoes and reminisce about an American friend, whose name she shared, and the adventures they had back in the 50's along the Côte d'Azur, when one ran an Italian épicerie and the other ran away from Paris. I listened but mostly studied Josey, whose dark eyes, once dull, now sparkled.

The last time Josephine showed up at my door with one of her trademark mini pizzas she was carrying a black-and-white photograph.
 
"I have something to show you," she said. We sat at the table, I in my one-size-fits-all dress (weeks away from giving birth to my second child) and Josey with her shawl and cane and buckled shoes, the black-and-white photo between us. The scratched and faded image revealed the two glowing Josephines: one "café," the other "au lait." The women were dressed in satin kimonos and holding umbrellas, smiles as big as the complicity they shared. I studied the old photo from afar when suddenly my Josey mentioned that her friend loved to sing and dance....

Sing. Dance. Josephine! That's when I grabbed the photo from the table and viewed, up close, the veritable, the one and only Josephine Baker--the celebrated American danseuse (and sometime secret agent) known to appear at the Paris Folies in nothing more than a jupe made of bananas, her pet leopard, Chiquita, in tow.

My excitement was cut short when Josey told me that she was moving to Saint-Raphael, that her daughter could no longer look after her here in St. Maximin. I quietly set down the photo and looked at my friend as a lump formed in my throat. C'est toujours comme ça, I thought bitterly, just when you meet someone--the kind of person you can just sit with and say nothing to and not feel awkward, the kind that makes a little pizza pie for you because they are thinking of you in your absence--they up and move to a faraway city!

Before Josephine left, she pushed the photo across the table. "C'est pour toi," she said, in her soft voice. I tried to tell her that I could not accept her photo, that she should keep it, but she insisted. I couldn't take Josey's only photo of her with her legendary friend...unless...unless it wasn't the only one? Perhaps there were others? Yes! There must be others of those "girls" in the good ol' days--other snapshots--with leopards and banana skirts and maybe a feather boa or two!

I watched as my Josey padded out the door, little steps with her big-buckle shoes. She seemed so fragile that you might have taken her for a broken-winged bird, but for the leopard-printed tracks in her wake.

***

Post Note: I have the picture in a box somewhere... I need to find it and update this post. Meantime, I found this picture....

Josephine, holding baby Jackie, September 1997

French Vocabulary

la viande = meat

l'épicerie (f) = grocer's

café = coffee

au lait = with milk

danseuse = dancer

Folies = Les Folies Bergères (famous music hall in Paris)

la jupe = skirt

c'est toujours comme ça = it is always that way

Hear Jean-Marc pronounce the verb s'occuper: Download soccuper.wav

Expression:
Occupe-toi de tes affaires! = Mind your own business!

Conjugation:
je m'occupe, tu t'occupes, il/elle s'occupe; nous nous occupons, vous vous occupez, ils/elles s'occupent

Here is Josephine with Max and my mom, who came to live with us just before Jackie was born a few months later in September 1997