FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

Looks cozy, no?

douillet, douillette (do-yay; do-yet) adjective
  cozy, snug

"Douillette" is also a feminine noun for "quilted coat or robe" and, in both masculine and feminine forms, has a second meaning: one sensitive to pain (a wimp). There is also the verb "douiller" which means "to pay through the nose" (never a "cozy" feeling).

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L'amour est un coussin douillet et une épée posée sur la gorge.
Love is a soft cushion and a sword against the throat. --Shan Sa
.

                                                      
There used to be a book on one of my bookshelves (back when books were actually mis en place* and not packed in boxes) called "Charms for the Easy Life," by Kaye Gibbons. I haven't yet read the novel, which was left behind--as have been many of the books in our collection--by a houseguest about to board a restrictive transcontinental flight.

Charms for the Easy Life... the title comes to me now and again, especially when reminded, by a well-meaning stranger, of just how lucky I am to be in France, and what a dream it must be to live at a vineyard. On such occasions, I lose myself in a picture-perfect image of a cozy farmhouse, broom at the front door and chicory-laced coffee on the wood burning stove (as a real French farmwoman keeps it, I imagine). Outside, along the window sill, are terracotta boxes full of geraniums and the wood shutters are painted just the right shade of green. Beside the front door, there is a cozy bench, a radassier* to be exact, where one can chat with a neighbor or stare out over the field of vines beyond.

Below, off to the side of an iris-flanked stream--yellow irises, mind you--there is a potager* from where I have gathered haricots* (which, in my dream, I am shelling beneath the shady plane tree) for a savory soupe au pistou.* It is a rosy rêve*: soft, cozy, douillet* and one that has been reeling through my
mind (plus or minus the yellow irises) for some twenty years now, ever since I first imagined life in France. In 1985, back in Des Moines, Washington, where my father and I shared the turning of a page in our lives, I spent a post high school summer taking long aimless drives in Dad's sunshine yellow VW bug, Claude Bristol's "The Magic of Believing"* in the tape deck. By August's end, now 18 summers old myself, I would return to Phoenix, Arizona, driving the VW across the country, eventually to enroll at Phoenix Community College, the future still a film, the dream intact.

                              *     *     *

My, oh my! Like the uneven dresser drawer in my bathroom, I have gotten off track. I had set out today to tell you about the not always picture-perfect reality of this French dream come true. I meant to write about the demolition crew (which, as I type this, is still giving the walls around us a good shake), and to fill you in on the enigma of French plumbing. I wanted to point out the inch thick fissure that runs along the wall at the west end of the house and the crooked doorless frames beneath. Then there are those unfinished cement block stairs (minus a needed guard rail!) that the kids and I run up and down several times a day, as we head out of the building, across the patio, and beyond a stack of plasterboard to access the make-shift kitchen (which even has running water, albeit cold). And, speaking of placoplâtre,* there is the wet plaster that we tip-toe over on our way in and out of the rooms (living areas that I have just vacuumed in vain). I should mention that while many southern French women hang delightful beaded cords or colorful ropes in front of their front doors (to keep the flies out) I have just parted a curtain of electrical cords and tubing which hangs in a lonely threshold that will one day house our front door. And--whew!--looking out a duct-taped French window, I am startled by the proximity of a heavy metal monster--a tractopelle* (the "pelle" or "hoe" of which looks as if it will add another crack, or ten, to the fragile window). I hope we have more duct tape handy...

My eyes leave the pit outside, where the tractopelle is digging a waste canal, to refocus on the pretty green window frame. It may one day match those "just the right shade of green" shutters--and wouldn't that be charming? In the meantime, I will continue to believe; for believing, in my experience, is being.

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References: mis (mettre) en place = shelved, arranged; le radassier (m) = (type of) bench; le potager (m) = vegetable garden; le haricot (m) = bean; la soupe (f) au pistou = vegetable soup with basil and garlic; le rêve (m) = dream; douillet = cozy; The Magic of Believing (order it here); le placoplâtre (m) = plasterboard; le tractopelle (m) = backhoe

:: Audio File ::
French pronunciation: Hear my son, Max, recite today's word & quote: Download douillet.wav
Douillet. L'amour est un coussin douillet et une épée posée sur la gorge.

A pastiche of roof tiles & our pastis-loving roofer, Michel.

jeu de mots (zhuh duh moh) noun, masculine

  a play on words, a pun

Meilleur que mille mots privés de sens est un seul mot raisonnable, qui peut amener le calme chez celui qui l'écoute. Better than a thousand words void of meaning, is one sensible word that can bring calm to the one listening. --Bouddha
.

On the second night we ate out. Forget leftovers, oubliez* the piles of packing boxes, and never mind the fact that we could not properly lock up our new nest (what with half the farmhouse missing doors and windows). Braise, who recently turned seven (in dog years), would have to step up to the plate (or portail,* however cracked and in need of repair) to play the guetteuse.* And I do mean "play" as it is not in her golden retriever nature to stand guard over anything but a meaty os.*

Perfumed, neatly parted, and no longer sporting la poussière,* our entourage (including brother-in-law, Jacques, and Michel, our friend/builder from Les Arcs) piled into the Citroën before the latter snaked through a vine-flanked country road leading to town.

When we passed a baba cool* pedestrian (long scraggly hair, flip-flops, tie-dye trunks), Michel shouted, "Hé-oh!* You're a long way from the beach!" before dissolving into Gallic guffaws.

Jean-Marc found parking along Portalet Street just across from l'Angelus restaurant. Inside, tables were arranged around a stone fireplace. A pottery vase, just beside the entrance, doubled as a wishing well (providing precious entertainment for the kids who pitched solicited centimes* into its coppery depths).

I read the menu to Michel, who is a bit dyslexic. Accustomed to reading French menus to Anglophone visitors, this is the first time I've read one to a Frenchman.
"Tiens, est-ce qu'ils ont un banana slip?"* Michel wondered.
Banana split? These were surely the first two English words that I had ever heard Michel speak.
"You mean they have banana splits in France?" I questioned, never having noticed before. I skipped past the pizza section to the list of desserts, looking for a childhood favorite. That's when visions of chocolate syrup and diced peanuts brought me back, back, back....

For a moment, I was no longer in a tiny French village, but a bustling desert metropolis, eyes wide open before a gigantic "boat" of ice cream. The year was 1976; the place, Phoenix, Arizona where Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor at Metrocenter mall offered an all-you-can-eat sundae decorated with red, white and blue paper flags and whipped cream à gogo.* After an afternoon spent skating in the ice rink below the ice cream parlor, I would head upstairs to test the capacity of my 9-year-old stomach.

The French waitress arrived and, poof, I was back in France, back to the present moment.
"Vous avez un banana slip?" Michel was inquiring.
"Split," the young woman corrected, confirming that they did.
"Alors, un banana slip, s'il vous plaît," Michel ordered, politely.
"SPLEET," my brother-in-law pointed out, to the best of his limited English knowledge.

When Michel kept repeating what in French amounted to "banana pants" (slip, a masculine noun, means "underwear") I got the clue that he was only pulling the waitress's leg. It looked, too, as if someone had been pulling on her cheeks which by now were the color of the cherries that would eventually top our Frenchified spleet.

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References: oubliez (oublier) = to forget; le portail (m) = gate; la guetteuse (le guetteur) = watchman; l'os (m) = bone; la poussière (f) = dust; le (la) baba cool (mf) = hippy; hé-oh! = hey there!; le centime (m) = cent; Tiens, est-ce qu'ils ont un banana slip? = Hey, do they have a banana [split]?; à gogo = galore

:: Audio File ::
French pronunciation: Listen to my son, Max, recite today's French quote: Download mots.wav
Meilleur que mille mots privés de sens est un seul mot raisonnable, qui peut amener le calme chez celui qui l'écoute.

Perhaps we can know the word origin for "déballer" by studying this photo? When the French arrive at a new location, one of the first things they "unpack" are the "boules": "de-ball-er". (In the background, the vine horizon. From left to right: Andre, Braise, Jean-Marc, "Uncle Jacques" and cousin Pierre.)

In Books: "Auberge Of The Flowering Hearth" by Roy Andries De Groot. "This cookbook is a whole way of life. What care, love, and work have gone into it." -Julia Child. Read more here.

déballer (day-bal-ay) verb
  to unpack
  to display, to lay out (merchandise)

                                    *     *     *

Chaque jour apporte ses cadeaux. Il ne vous reste qu'à les déballer.
Each day brings with it its gifts. All you have to do is unwrap them.
                                                      --Ann Ruth Schabacker
.

Well, we made it!

...To a new department, a new town, and a new occupation (apart from wine and writing): le déballage.* While there may be an art to unpacking, Necessity is no poet and one mustn't wait for inspiration to strike from the French heavens when six hungry campers are crying to be fed.

(Now, where did I pack the nonstick spatula? And why don't those leaning box towers in the makeshift kitchen list contents other than "cuisine"* or "cuisine - fragile" or "cuisine - verres"*?)

I proceed by deduction (the nonstick spatula is not in the box marked "verres" or "fragile") and go digging through the other cartons only to give up and use a metal spoon on my favorite nonstick pan.)

"Everybody to the table!" I shout, advancing sideways along the obstacle course that is our front yard, ignoring the piles of taped boxes, stacked chairs, orphaned shoes, and general chaos all around. There is even an uprooted toilet (which the demolition workers salvaged) with a pink plastic seat should our dining experience lack ambiance.

I make my way over to the picnic table where my brother-in-law, Jacques, and the roofer, Michel (two temporary boarders during the renovation stage of this project) are rubbing their hands together as if trying to keep warm when they're really just hungry. I hope they will like fajitas (the menu was decided when I realized that all those carefully kept tortillas, frozen in the freezer, would thaw out during the move north).

As I spoon boeuf aux olives* and emmenthal cheese (French substitutes) into a flour jacket, I explain to Michel-the-roofer the difference between a Mexican tortilla and a French crêpe so that he doesn't go jumping to conclusions (namely, that a tortilla is a failed crêpe...). If the French aren't keen on Tex-Mex, part of it has to do with this floury detail.

According to my calculation, Michel, who burns calories faster than I can burn bread, should be able to put away several fajitas. So why is he pushing the food back and forth on his paper plate? Michel, as if hearing my thoughts, answers with a blush. "I have an appetite like a petit oiseau*..." he apologizes.

I look the other way when Michel fills up on French fries (another perishable that got unthawed during the move), for who can blame a Frenchman for making room for fries?

I'd best leave the culinary arts on the back burner for the moment. With dinner behind me, I now have time to practice the gentle art of unpacking. And somewhere, I trust, deep down in one of those boxes (beneath the nonstick spatula?) is a good cookbook.

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References: le déballage (m) = unpacking; la cuisine (f) = kitchen; le verre (m) = glass; le boeuf (m) aux olives = beef with olives; le petit oiseau (m) = little bird

:: Audio File::
Listen to my daughter, Jackie, pronounce the French word "déballer" and today's quote: Download deballer.wav
Chaque jour apporte ses cadeaux. Il ne vous reste qu'à les déballer.

Terms & Expressions:
  le déballage = unpacking; confession, revelation
  déballer son linge sale = to air one's dirty laundry
  déballer la marchandise = "to unwrap the merchandise" (to undress)
il a tout déballé = he poured out his heart

Shopping:
Melissa's Ready-to-Use Crepes:
In music: Innamoramento by Mylene Farmer
Kerastase Resistance Bain Volumactive Shampoo

Verb Conjugation:
je déballe, tu déballes, il/elle déballe, nous déballons, vous déballez, ils/elles déballent => past participle = déballé

"501 French Verbs" includes a bilingual list of more than 1,250 additional French verbs, helpful expressions and idioms for travelers, and verb drills.

      
      Max, three years ago, in front of the field from today's story.

                                                   
Thanks to an herb wizard from our medieval village, my husband will soon be able to chase the devil out of his vines up north, in Saint-Cécile. Now all we need are a few hundred devil chasers.

Turns out the "chasers" don't even need legs to run down a vine hungry diable.* Instead, they stand powerfully rooted to the ground, as I can plainly see, when I cross paths with the herb wizard who is out on another witch hazel hunt.

"What are you looking for today?" I ask the timid wizard, who startles, causing the patch of knee-high weeds that surround her to tremble.
"Les herbes..." the she-wizard stammers, nearly dropping a bouquet of flowering weeds, as if caught stealing gold from a bijoutier.*

"Golden flowers," I answer unaccusingly, when Jean-Marc appears in time to ask, "What are those?"
"C'est du millepertuis,"* the wizard offers. "Or 'l'herbe de Saint-Jean',* if you prefer." 

The auburn-haired wizard with the gray roots, who stands no taller than the fennel which she collected last season, begins chuckling to herself.
"Some call it 'le chasse-diable'!' she says.
"The devil chaser..." Jean-Marc mumbles. "Je peux?" Can I take a look?
"Oui," agrees the wizard, handing over the bunch of wimpy looking weeds, touted as being "fierce enough" to scare away the evilest spirit. The wizard explains that the five-petaled flower has leaves riddled with trous*--making it easy to identify the medicinal plant.

Jean-Marc and I stood, arms in the air, eyes squinted toward the flower's holy leaf where the sun's rays escaped through "mille pertuis*" or "thousand holes".

"Where can I find more of these?" Jean-Marc demanded, causing the wizard's body to stutter from head to toe. Next she clammed up, sealing her secret within.

"I need to prepare tisane* for my vines!" my husband pleaded, adding that he is a farmer using organic methods to treat his fields. The wizard's ears began to bend as she listened sympathetically, visions of a steamy caldron of holy warts, the warts of a saint no less, igniting her creative soul, a soul grown so full that the fear fled from her in time to share her faded treasure map of herbal hideouts, warts and all.

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References: le diable (m) = devil; c'est du millepertuis (m) = it's St. John's wort; le bijoutier (la bijoutière) = jeweler; l'herbe (f) de Saint-Jean = St. John's Wort; le trou (m) = hole; mille = one
thousand; le pertuis (m) [from old French "pertucer" (percer / to pierce)] = hole; la tisane (f) = herbal curative/preventative tea, treatment

By using the links (in blue) below to order via Amazon.com, you help to support this word journal. Find out more ways in which you can help out by clicking on this link:
http://french-word-a-day.typepad.com/motdujour/2005/06/contribute.html

A certain redhead wowed him and that is how the love affair began. Read about my rival, below.

From a farm in California to one in France... Divisadero: a new book by Michael Ondaatje. Read more here.

angoisse (ahn-gwace) noun, feminine
  anxiety; fear

Toute angoisse est imaginaire; le réel est son antidote.
All fear is imaginary, reality is its antidote.
                                  --André Comte-Sponville
.

Roland Garros* is underway here in France and my husband, a former tennis teacher, should be glued to the tube cheering Amélie Mauresmo to a victory and screaming insults at the screen after Sébastien Grosjean lost. So why is he outside talking to himself?

I let the curtain fall to a close before slipping out to the front porch across from where Jean-Marc is emptying his garage cellar, transferring cases of wine to the back of his car and muttering something about "ce con de vent!"*

"Everything OK?" I ask, for the third time since he returned to Les Arcs to visit the kids and me for the weekend and to help pack another load for our imminent move north.

"Oui, ça ira,"* he assures me. He is just concerned about our vines back in the Rhone Valley. Apart from the diabolic wind, which is breaking vine limbs left and right, certain grapevines are stricken with mildew, Jean-Marc explains, while others are in need of an immune system boost.

Though I have a hard time picturing the immune system of a grapevine, it doesn't take a magnifying glass to reveal the stress written across a new farmer's face. Since I last saw my husband, five days ago in Sainte Cécile, vertical lines have appeared across his weatherworn cheeks giving the impression that he has suffered a coup de vieux.* The deep facial lines, like fissures after an earthquake, hint at the turmoil beneath the surface. As for the weight loss, I had chalked that one up to the maladie d'amour* which is exactly what befell Jean-Marc last November when he first laid eyes on her. Or "them" I should say--all 30,000 fluttery-leafed Céciliennes,* vines which he later agreed to love and to cherish in sickness and in health.

It is the wind and the breakage that obsesses Jean-Marc the most. All those fragile broken limbs left in the wake of a méchant* Mistral. It feels as if each vine is a child and each child has fallen out of a tree to lie helpless on the ground. Jean-Marc cannot bear the silent screams any longer.

"Don't worry about the wind!" I tell him. "Grapevines have been whipped around like that for thousands of years! Besides, there is nothing you can do about it--short of attaching a splint to each and every vine!" Jean-Marc can't deny that. Instead he nods, sighs, and waits as I search the bathroom for facial moisturizer. The cabinets are almost empty now, but there under the sink, lying on its side, is a near-empty tube of emollient cream. I pound the plastic container against my palm and collect enough of its contents to fashion a thick mask across my husband's wind- and worry-ravaged face.

The mini spa soin* seems to work and Jean-Marc begins to forget about the stresses up north: the needy vines as well as the farmhouse renovation which he is supervising.

I put the finishing touches on the mask, assuring him that those deep lines will be gone in no time. I only wish I could say the same about his worries.

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References: le Roland Garros (the French Open) = tennis tournament held in Paris; ce con de vent = this damn wind; oui, ça ira = yes, it will be OK; (donner) un coup de vieux = to put years on/to age someone; la maladie (f) d'amour = love sickness; un cécilien, une cécilienne = one who lives in the town of Sainte Cécile-Les-Vignes; méchant = mean; le soin (m) = treatment

:: Audio File ::
Listen to Jean-Marc recite today's quote: Download Angoisse.wav ...link not working? Try this one: Download Angoisse.mp3 Toute angoisse est imaginaire; le réel est son antidote.

Terms & Expressions:
  une crise d'angoisse = an anxiety attack
  l'angoisse métaphysique = angst
  avoir des angoisses = to feel as if one is suffocating

French items:
Speaking of tennis...have you ever listened to former French Open winner Yannick Noah sing?  check out Métisse(s) for songs in French
French Music of the 20th Century: Poulenc/Milhaud/Messiaen
And speaking of stress... Bach's Rescue Remedy
The Jet Lag Bag- Anti-Stress Travel Pack

Our (current...) village of Les Arcs-sur-Argens and a few of its cud-chewing residents.

flagorneur, flagorneuse (flah-gorh-ner / flah-gorh-nuhz) noun
  flatterer, sycophant, toady, courtier

flagorneur/flagorneuse (adjective): fawning

J'ai déployé tour à tour, pour me pousser au premier rang, la brutalité d'une acheteuse de grands magasins aux jours de solde et la gentillesse flagorneuse. In order to push myself to the front row, I displayed, alternately, the brutality of a department store shopper during sales season, and fawning
kindness. --Colette, Ouvres complètes