FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

Bignonias always remind me of our home in Les Arcs, where the flowers clambored up and over the metal pergola beside our driveway, throwing shade onto the boules (or "pétanque" or "bocce ball") court just beyond. Our house in Les Arcs-sur-Argens was a 30-minute drive from Bagnols-en-Forêt, where my English friend, Michèle, had a "pied-à-terre", or second home....

ravissant

rah-vee-sahn

lovely

At Michèle's home in Bagnols, I am waiting patiently to meet an Englishwoman who has lived through two world wars. It is easy to pass the time, seated here on a lovely terrace beneath the blossoming cherry tree. The picnic table is gradually filling up as Michèle's golden-haired daughters, Violet and Natalie, bring out roasted chicken, a lovely green-bean salad, and baguettes fresh from the local bakery. 

As the girls disappear into the kitchen in search of les couverts, the guest of honor arrives.

"I'm so sorry for the delay," she apologizes. "The workmen are busy cleaning my terrace. The tiles are covered with mold! I told the men to scrub it down with vinegar. Vinegar works best!"

"Hello Bobby!" Michèle welcomes her neighbor, l'invitée d'honneur.  Bobby pauses to admire the cherry tree, which towers above her like a giant floral umbrella. I try to picture this delicate woman giving orders to a couple of burly ouvriers. In my mind's eye, I see the workmen reluctantly setting aside their industrial cleaners for the simple home remedy: le vinaigre—good ol' sour wine! 

As Bobby settles into her chair, Michèle and her belle-mère, Shirley, shake their heads in appreciation of their friend's latest adventure. 

"Oh, they must love you, Bobby!"

Bobby says that's possible, perhaps because of the beer she gives the men at the end of the workday!

The ladies at the table laugh as Bobby explains what happens when she runs out of Kronenbourg.

"I knock on the neighbor's door." We then learn about Bobby's 72-year-old friend. At 18 years her junior, le voisin wears a black toupee and a handlebar mustache, and provides back-up beer for the sour-scented workmen.

Listening to her colorful story, I notice Bobby's charm and how the flowering cerisier frames her beautifully. Its full, white blossoms muffle the rumbling of a thousand nectar-hungry bees. The buzzing causes us to look up through the trees, to the clear blue sky above. 

"When the Mistral wind blows through, it chases away the clouds," Bobby notes. We search the ciel bleu. Not a cloud in sight.

The sky invites our wondering eyes and questioning hearts. I pull my chair closer to Bobby's.

"What brought you to France?" I ask.

Bobby tells me that when her husband died 12 years ago, she decided to come to the South of France and build a summer nest. She was 78 at the time.

As she shares her story, I can't help but admire her. Her eyes are that pretty shade between "steel" and "powder" that some call robin's-egg blue. Her short hair has that quality of white that tips the edges of the blue sea. I notice how it falls back off her face in endless waves.

Bobby is now talking about her 35-year-old granddaughter, an art teacher in Texas. As she speaks, I try to pinpoint her British accent. Just what part of Angleterre has rubbed off on her voice?

I notice her earrings: large pearl-colored disks. I make a note to wear such earrings in 53 years' time, as if boucles d'oreille would render me as beautiful as she.

Bobby tells me that her 63-year-old daughter has a butterfly tattoo on her hand.

"She got it thirty years ago."

"Were you upset?"

"No. But I told her the butterfly might look different when her skin begins to wrinkle!" 

"Does it?" I am curious.

"It's looking fine," Bobby smiles. Her blue eyes deepen as she turns her attention to the saturated sky.

I look down at my hands as I search for words. I want to tell Bobby that she is like that butterfly.

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Your edits here. Thanks for checking grammar and punctuation. Is the story clear enough? Good to go? Share your thoughts, here in the comments box . P.S. Thanks for checking the vocab section, too!

Did you enjoy this story? Check out Kristi's books, including Blossoming in Provence. They are a wonderful way to increase your French vocabulary and to support this blog. Merci beaucoup!
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French Vocabulary

Bagnols (Bagnols-en-Forêt)
a town in the Var, not far from the sea 

le couvert
place setting (fork, knive, spoon) 

l'invitée d'honneur
guest of honor

l'ouvrier (m)
worker

le vinaigre
vinegar 

la belle-mère
mother-in-law 

le voisin
neighbor

le cerisier
cherry tree 

le ciel bleu
blue sky 

 l'Angleterre (f)
England

une boucle d'oreille
earring

The iron campanile in Camaret-sur-Aygues, where the following drama takes place....

French art and a classic car along the port in St. Tropez


la toile
(twal)
noun, feminine
canvas 

Françoise has not changed much in the three years since Mom and I have frequented her art shop. She still has her ballerina-thin figure and still paints cherry-red streaks through her chocolate-brown hair; the contrast is as stark as her customers' paintings, which line the store's entrance hall and make shoppers feel smug about their own art.

At the cash register, when I take out my carte bancaire, Françoise still picks up the phone to call over to the papeterie, shouting for them to bring back the hand-held credit-card processor (the one the two stores have always shared, never mind the inconvenience).

"Moins vingt... moins vingt... moins vingt...." Françoise mumbles, as she tallies up the art supplies. She still gives my mom twenty percent off all items, and then rounds down the total. This morning she even threw in a freebie.
"Those paintbrushes have been discontinued," she said. "I can offer this one to your maman."

To this day, Françoise listens to my mom's English, only to reply in French. Just how the two women can understand each other is high art to me. The paintings which result from their exchanges need not be translated either. They are, like the language barrier the women have overcome, indeed like love itself, transcendent.

*   *   *

Returning a few years later, Mom and I were shocked to discover that Françoise's shop had closed down. Standing out on the sidewalk, we stared sadly at the handwritten sign in the window; it read "A VENDRE". Our eyes caught on a bold reflection in the window; we turned to discover the bigger, fancier, more deluxe store that had opened across the street.... 

Unlike Françoise's window, which displayed tubes of paint, brushes, and even a few modest creations of her customers, the competitor's windows were filled with a new rage: "scrapbooking"... ink pads, stamps, glue and tiny cutouts crowded the window. 

At the back of the glittery new store, a few paint supplies hung, like the end of a belle époque.

Click here to leave an edit or suggestion in the comments box. Thanks for checking the vocab section, below. Note: the story was originally published without the sad post note (about the shop closing). Do you think the postnote should be included in the book? Or leave off the story with the happy ending?

French Vocabulary

la toile = canvas
la carte bancaire = credit/debit card
la papeterie = office/school supply store
moins vingt = minus twenty (percent)
la maman = mom
à vendre = for sale
la belle époque = beautiful era

Jean-Marc's frangine.

la frangine 

  : sister (in informal French)
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A DAY IN A FRENCH LIFE by Kristi Espinasse

When Jean-Marc's sister comes to stay with us, the kids want to touch their aunt's pink hair, ride in her orange car, and give up their beds for her comfort. Do you still live in a school bus and can we come visit? they want to know.

The bus has been sold, she tells them, but there is plenty of room in her two-ton camion. The home being of a mobile nature, such a visit might be in Normandy or Paris or even Africa—wherever work or wonderment might take her. Aunt Cécile has worked as a mime, as a circus-tent technician and, most recently, as a driver for a punk-rock band—she even holds a poids lourds license.

Aunt Cécile with the pink hair drove up in an orange station wagon this weekend. She is taking the clunker to Africa. Her mission is to transport English books to a bibliothèque in Gambia. For cash, which she calls flouze, she will sell her car along the way, in Morocco perhaps, where station wagons are used as taxis. And while she is there, she—and the friends with whom she is traveling—will get the shots they need for Africa. Immunization, Cécile explains, is less expensive in Morocco. For the price of one French injection, she and her potes can each get vaccinated before venturing south along war-torn roads that lead to hungry villages.

Along our manicured driveway, our family gathers for the bon voyage wishes. But before she goes, there are so many things I want to ask my sister-in-law about her life, one so different from mine.

"We don't ask these questions," my mother-in-law sighs, wanting to ask them more than I. 

After my belle-mère kisses her daughter goodbye, it is my turn to say au revoir.

There we stand, side by side, my frangine and I—I with salon highlights in my hair, my sister-in-law with Mercurochrome streaks in hers (the dark red liquid stains it radical pink), I with diamonds on my finger, she with jewels in her soul. She is a French Robin Hood and her treasures are the cast-offs that she spirits away from the privileged. I am the stable, square, secure sister-in-law, still searching, longing to be spirited away with those old clothes and books of mine that are headed out the door, to Afrique.

***
This story is part of a collection of blog posts, in the book Blossoming in Provence.


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l'Afrique (f)
Africa

In the town of Sérignan (Vaucluse)

cafard (ka-far) noun, masculine
  1. cockroach
  2. melancholy, blues (depression)

Chaque minute de cafard vous prive de soixante secondes de bonheur.
Each depressing minute deprives you of sixty happy seconds.  --Blas de Otero

In books: Provence: The Collected Traveler: An Inspired Anthology & Travel Resource by Barrie Kerper
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Chocolate cake. It is one of the things that springs to mind when I think of my belle-mère. I see her cautiously stepping off the train. In her right hand there is a plastic Monoprix sac; in her left, a small overnight bag.

"Attention!" she warns, as I reach for her sacoches. "Le gâteau..." she says, indicating her bag. Knowing her, she's wrapped that cake with a few rounds of aluminum foil before balancing it on top of the few personal items in her carry-on. In the shopping bag she's got the latest editions of Voici and Elle, magazines which she'll hand down to me when she returns to Marseilles after her weekend stay. She's in good form when she's reading gossip and looking at the fashion magazines, and when she's baking cake.

As for the chocolate cake, she's not sure if it will be any good. She's still building back her confidence after quitting cake completely, or the baking of cakes, I should say. At one point in her life, making chocolate cake was akin to climbing Kilimanjaro: a seemingly impossible feat. That period, which
Jean-Marc respectfully refers to as "her tired moment" was, truly, dark as the chocolate in her famous gâteau and minus a merciful dose of sweetness.

Around that time we were organizing a joint baptism/birthday party for our daughter (her older brother, by 2.4 years, was about to turn three). The food was to be catered... except for the dessert. Jean-Marc planned to ask his mom to make her chocolate cake.  

Given my belle-mère's "fatigue," this seemed a cruel request. "Are you sure we can't order the cakes from one of the dozens of bakers in the area?" I asked. "Ne t'inquiètes pas, chérie," Don't worry, Jean-Marc assured me. It would make his mother happy to make the cakes.

When Michèle-France learned that her son had "ordered" from her three chocolate cakes--THREE!--she all but fled under her unmade bed. She had no proper cake pans, for one. For two, three, and four, well, let's just say that there began a scramble--a veritable scurry--to get the cakes together in one blues-busting hurry!

One week later the cakes made it across the French countryside, to the vineyard in Trets-en-Provence where the festivities had already begun. Jean-Marc greeted his mother, helping her out of my brother-in-law's car, and paused to inspect the cakes. Their undulating chocolate surface only hinted at the transformative effort involved.

Later, I noticed Jean-Marc inquiring about the dessert, asking his friends if they had enjoyed his mother's very special cake. With each friend's affirmative nod, I followed my husband's eyes over to his mother's and watched as he added an encouraging wink. I searched my mother-in-law's face which seemed to lift; where once numbness and shadows had gripped, there was now a noticeable shift.

A soft light, like the glowing embers of a fire after midnight, took flight, there behind the once pained regard of a woman whose eyes now reflected her son's delight.

Now, in those lively, soul-filled eyes, I saw that my husband's "cruel" request had been compassion in disguise.
                                        *    *     *

la belle-mère
mother-in-law

attention!
careful!

la sacoche
bag

le gâteau
cake

Read popular French magazines and speak like a native!: Voici (gossip) & Elle (fashion)
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Season's Greetings from La Morra, Italy.

        Learn French in your car : a simple, direct approach to language learning.

indigne (an-deen) adjective
  shameful, disgraceful, unworthy, worthless, inadequate

Qui ne continue pas à apprendre est indigne d'enseigner.
He who ceases to learn cannot adequately teach. --Gaston Bachelard

                                  *    *    *

When my 9-year-old came running out to the garden, all teeth and waving an Advent calendar as if it were a winning Loto* ticket, I had yet another mère indigne* moment. Where had I stashed that one? I wondered, of the calendar. "I found it in the bottom of the armoire," my daughter said, eyes still glued to the colorful package. Jackie didn't seem to mind that we'd missed opening so many of those little "doors" beneath the calendar dates and I would soon understand why.

Still feeling guilty about the misplaced calendar (which I vaguely remember receiving in the mail a few years back after it had been lost in transit) I set aside my book, sprang from the garden chair and its patch of winter sun, and followed my daughter into the kitchen to help put together the pop-up structure.

With the assembly instructions located beneath the calendar's base, I had to hold the cardboard unit above my head and assemble it mid-air. When all sides were taped we stood staring at a Nativity scene. Jackie finished the Three Wise Men cut-outs and we taped their feet to the cardboard base, beneath which twenty-four pieces of stale chocolate were hidden.

With the help of  Jackie's friend Manuella, we began "setting" the calendar to the correct date, a process involving the piercing of cardboard, the opening of numbered doors, the tearing of foil, and the gobbling up of chocolate. Jackie reached behind the door for December 1st and I noticed the dark candy was faded. When it was my turn to eat December 3rd, I discovered the chocolates were a bit tasteless but that didn't stop me from eating December 6th and 9th. At this point the girls were popping open the doors and handing me my chocolates. It wasn't until I sat there with December 12th melting on my tongue that I realized.....

"Quelle horreur!* I ate my mother-in-law!" The girls looked stunned.
"I mean I ate my mother-in-law's birthday!" The girls looked amused.
"I mean I ate December 12th -- which WAS Grandma's birthday!"

Panicked, I looked over to Jackie who was busy eating The Day After Grandma's Birthday, a.k.a. December 13th. That meant it was too late to call Jean-Marc's mother on her anniversaire.* I could now slap the words belle-fille indigne* across my forehead.

Feeling worthless and dumb as the cardboard pop-up I'd just assembled, I dialed my belle-mère* in Marseilles. As the phone rang, I looked over at the Three cardboard Wise Men for encouragement. Two of them had tumbled over from the faulty tape job. We're not perfect either, they seemed to say.

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*References: Loto = French lottery; une mère (f) indigne = unfit mother; quelle horreur! = how awful!; l'anniversaire (m) = birthday; la belle-fille (f) indigne = unworthy daughter-in-law; la belle-mère (f) = mother-in-law

Hear French spoken: listen to my son, Max, recite today's quote:
Qui ne continue pas à apprendre est indigne d'enseigner. Download indigne2.wa
v

Fruit and vegetable crates at a corner market in Orange (Vaucluse).

une emplette
(om-plet)
noun, feminine
a purchase

When Max and his soeur cadette, Jackie, offer to ride their bikes to the bakery, I request a little detour along the way.  "Please stop by the supérette. We're out of toilet paper!" 

The kids wrinkle their noses, complaining that they'll look carrément ridicule shopping for le papier WC.  But not wanting to lose the right to ride to town, they quickly come up with a compromise.

"Can we get Sopalin instead?"  

I'm not crazy about the paper-towel idea, but have to give the kids credit for some creative problem-solving. 

Half an hour later, brother and sister return from les courses with a few unexpected purchases. Jackie, her cheeks crimson from the cool autumn air, hands me a package of toilet paper.

"It smells like peaches!" she says. "Sens-le!"

I sniff the fruit-scented TP. It does smell good! Still, I am suspicious. How did she suddenly muster up the courage to be seen in the toilet-paper aisle?  And what is that in the other bag?

As if on cue, Max pulls a bottle out of his sac à dos. 
Wine? Jean-Marc, walks into the room. He is as confused as I am.
"Pour faire plaisir à Papa," our 11-year-old Max explains.

Jean-Marc examines the bottle, amazed at the coincidence: the Côtes du Rhône wine is from the area to which we will be moving this summer!

Busy reading the label, Jean-Marc seems unfazed by the fact that his child has managed to buy alcohol. More than fazed, I am dying to know a few details about the booze purchase.

"It's a 2004," Max is busy talking wine with his dad. "It cost 6 euros 80 for the bottle!"

"But Max," I question, 'How is it that the store clerk let you buy wine?"

"I told him it was for my dad."

My eyes shoot over to Jackie. Eh bien! That explains the toilet paper confidence. She must have told the clerk that the TP was for her mom!

***
Putting away the groceries, I have a change of perspective and am no longer embarrassed about the toilet paper. All it takes is to imagine the following Could Be Worse scenario:

Early Sunday morning at the supermarket. Two little kids run up to the check-out line (peopled by all of our nosy neighbors!), and plunk down a bottle of wine. In breathless voices they explain, "It's for our Mom!"

Your Edits Here.  Is the story clear?  Better to leave off the final paragraph? ("It's for Mom!" may be a strong enough punch line, no? Thanks for your thoughts here in the comments box. 

French Vocabulary

la soeur cadette
little sister

la supérette
small supermarket

carrément ridicule
completely ridiculous

le papier WC (also le papier toilette)
toilet paper

le Sopalin (from "Société du Papier-Linge")
paper towel

les courses
errands

sens-le
smell it

le sac à dos
backpack

pour faire plaisir à Papa
to please Daddy

Côtes du Rhône
wine grown in the Rhône region of France

eh bien!
well!

Braise (Brez) at her first harvest.

Printed in French, Cuisine Et Vins De France features dozens of recipes in each issue along with articles on wine, cheese, appetizers, table decorations, and more. Subscribe to C&V here.

la pourriture (poo ree tewr) noun, feminine
  1. rotting, rot, decay
  2. rottenness
  3. stinker, louse (person)

Proverb:
Ce que tu manges devient pourriture, ce que tu donnes devient une rose.
What you eat becomes rot, what you give becomes a rose.

A Day in a French Life...

Of fourteen autumns shared with Jean-Marc, I have missed only a few of his uncle's grape harvests. Pregnancy and childbirth were two sneaky ways to escape the backbreaking vendange. But by the fourth family harvest laboring over vines won out over the other kind of laboring. 

Harvesting grapes, like raising kids, gets easier from one year to the next. Perhaps it is due to age: old vines give less grapes; fewer grapes equal less work. As for kids: the older they get, the less lifting they require. On a purely physical level this all equates to less energy loss.

Harvesting might seem easier these days because of the language: with a growing French vocabulary I can now understand the vendangeurs, who are full of information--both serious and silly. All the trivia and teasing makes the time pass and before long the buckets are being stacked, the sécateurs stored away, and we're headed for Aunt Marie-Françoise's kitchen for a homemade harvest dinner. Time to celebrate! (Well, not quite yet. I'm not done telling you my story....)

Saturday afternoon I stood beneath a steel blue sky, my feet parked before yet another pied de vigne. Two rows over, my eleven-year-old was filling his bucket with clairette grapes while his nine-year-old sister collected the grenache further back. As for me, I held in my hand a bunch of rotten grapes.

"That's Noble rot!" another harvester, Eric, said, with a faux aristocratic accent.

I handed the bunch over to Uncle Jean-Claude who stuck his nose right into the rotten mass.... 

"C'est de la pourriture noble. We can use these grapes. But when the rotten grapes smell like vinegar, throw them out!"

I filed the information away before putting the nobly rotted grapes into my bucket and moving on to the next vine. When Eric's gray curls reappeared from the vines engulfing him, I noticed his grin was a little wider than before.

"Have you ever seen les Baux de Provence?" he inquired. I smiled, realizing I had indeed seen the charming southern town in question. But before I could answer Eric pointed to his innocent sidekick, Alain. "C'est nous deux!" It's us two! he giggled.

It took a minute before the play on words (baux/beaux) hit me and a new translation of Eric's sentence registered: "Have you ever seen the "good-looking ones" of Provence." Laughing at his joke, I forgot about my tired arms, which were bitten and scratched, and my reins which were aching. When next I looked over to see how the kids were getting along I found them studying the grapes, trying to decide which were pourri and which were not.

I marvel at the seriousness with with our kids undertake the task they've been assigned--and I feel a little guilty about my own sneaky behavior of yesteryear.... when I'd do anything to get out of harvesting. But I don't regret missing the 95' and 97'  harvests, which brought me two grubby-faced vintages--sweeter than all the grapes in Châteauneuf.

More stories from this French life in the book "Words in a French Life".

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French Vocabulary

la vendange
grape harvest
vendangeur, vendangeuse
grape-picker
le sécateur
clippers, shears
le pied de vigne (m) = vine-plant
la pourriture noble
noble rot, botrytis
les reins (mpl) = back
pourri
rotten

French Pronunciation:
Listen to Jean-Marc's recite today's proverb:
Ce que tu manges devient pourriture, ce que tu donnes devient une rose.
What you eat becomes rot, what you give becomes a rose.

Download pourriture.wav

Related Terms & Expressions:
pourri(e) = rotten, bad; corrupt
pourrir = to go rotten or bad, to spoil
le pourrissement = deterioration
l'odeur de pourriture = putrid smell
la pourriture sèche = dry rot

In books:

Noble Rot: A Bordeaux Wine Revolution.
"A truly fascinating book." --Peter Mayle

Gîtes de France:
AA Bed and Breakfast in France 2006 . Check it out here:

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In Francophile gifts: Limoges boxes

A quiet corner in Marseilles.

Nothing to do with today's word... just a dog days photo taken in Draguignan.

Les Miserables: Complete and Unabridged (Signet Classics) by Victor Hugo and Norman MacAfee

Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language from the South of France by Kristin Espinasse

The Canterbury Tales (Middle English Edition) by Geoffrey Chaucer

Webster's New World Concise French Dictionary (Webster's New World) by Chambers Harrap Ltd.