Eavesdropping on Myself

Ok, so everybody knows this: one of the funny things about being married is realizing how different from you your spouse is. Josh and I were really close friends for...I dunno, maybe six years? before we started dating, and I would have told you we were two peas in a pod. And now, after being married for three years...sometimes I wonder if we're even the same species. Case in point: decision making. When we have a big decision to make, Josh spends a lot of time (like, hours) staring at the floor, occasionally sighing. I assume there's some thinking going on in there. I, on the other hand, never know quite what I think until I happen to overhear myself say it to someone.

Right now, we're in the process of trying to figure out where we belong for the next few years. We're weighing career questions--who will work on which degree, and when?--as well as personal ones, like, can we manage for me to stay home with Bout'Chou for a while, and on which continent should that home be? I've been really glad to have people around that will let me talk things through, so I can listen in and figure out what I want. I overheard a very enlightening conversation with my friends Anita and Neil yesterday: I told them I felt like after three years in France, I needed to go back to the States for a break, and when Neil asked why, I heard myself answer, "to heal."

It was an odd thing to say, but hearing it made me realize that it's true. When we up and moved here, I had been to France only twice, both times as a non-French-speaking tourist; I spoke no French, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I feel like it's been three years of bobbing in waves, trying to keep my head above water. I'd really like to go home and come back with a rowboat. Or at least a life preserver.

I'm not sure what this "life preserver" would look like. I'm kindof hoping that if we spend a few years in the States, I'll get a chance to start desperately missing my life here in Aix. Then I'll spend those years planning and scheming about what it will be like when we come back, and when we DO return to l'Hexagone, I will have years of "the best-laid schemes" preparing me for it. I think this would help.

Regardless, eavesdropping on my subconscious has made it pretty clear that right now, I want to be Stateside. I'm writing this over the remains of my breakfast, a French clafoutis garnished with one of my carefully hoarded Reese's peanut butter cups. I dreamed about peanut butter ice cream last night (no, I am not kidding), and a Reese's was the closest thing I could get.

The dream might have been inspired by Josh's arrival from a week-long trip to the States, and the joy of watching him open his suitcase and pull out jars of Jif, Burt's Bees toothpaste, reasonably priced dental floss, almond extract, and other comforts of home. Without thinking, I spotted the Whole Foods receipt in his bag and stuck it in a frame we have sitting on the green "boot bench" in the kitchen. And then as I realized what I was doing, I started to cry. Seriously? I'm framing a receipt from Whole Foods? What kind of crazy is this? And then I cried even harder as I realized it's the pregnant-and-homesick kind. I think it's time to go home.

Revenge of the Euromullet

Sounds like a bad B-movie, doesn’t it? When I studied abroad in Spain, I made the mistake of going to the hippest, trendiest barrio (neighborhood) to get my hair cut (at the uber trendy salon in the basement of Mercado Fuencarral), and telling the girl “just do something stylish.” I walked out with the same mullet that the girl before me had gotten, and I was pretty sure the girl sitting down in the chair as I paid my bill was also going to leave with those same awful layers. . .

Anyway, my euromullet grew out, and in the meantime, more people than ever stopped me to ask for directions, thinking I was a real madrileña. All in all, the euromullet was a good cultural experience.

And now it’s back.

Quick parenthesis: unlike people I know who have a great unique style—like my rockin’ hipster brother Steve, who will wear pretty much anything as long as no one else is wearing it—I just want to blend in. Not that, if given the choice between the ability to fly and the ability to become invisible, I would pass on flight, but I don’t like to stick out too much. So, to go down to the university here, I’ve stopped wearing colors (unless it’s one colored article of clothing and everything else I’m wearing is black or brown), and majorly upped the beige, black and grey content of my wardrobe, because that's what everyone else does. No joke--one day I sat in a class with about 40 people and counted how many of them were wearing a color other than brown, grey, or black. Seven. Seven people were wearing colors.

So once I had the no-colors thing down, all I needed was a trendy haircut. (And a scarf, but I still haven’t found one that I like.) I realize I sound completely superficial and trend-focused, but I hadn't gotten my hair cut in two years and it was so bad my mom was dropping hints like, "So, how do you like your hair these days?" when we talked on skype. So, when I had last Tuesday off, I meandered around town to choose a salon. I settled on “The New York Salon,” decorated with giant canvases of taxicabs and the Empire State Building (and of course, Marilyn Monroe), since they offer a good student discount. And massage chairs at the hair-washing sinks.

My conversation with the stylist was rather illuminating. Not only did I learn quite a bit about her self esteem as I watched her check herself out in the mirror the entire time she cut my hair, but I discovered one more reason the French have such a reputation for being stylish: it takes FOUR YEARS to get certified to cut hair here. And it showed: I got a gorgeous, trendy haircut. And then I asked her to make the layers an inch shorter. And then, as Marilyn Monroe smirked at me from above, I walked out with another euromullet. But that’s okay. It will grow out. And I really, really liked those massage chairs. . .

Giveaways

When I studied abroad in Spain, I was really able to embrace my host family’s way of life, maybe because I decided before leaving that I would pretend I had grown up with them. I watched movies they saw as kids, read their old books, ate anything they put in front of me, imagined that I shared their political beliefs. Maybe I would never pass (or want to pass) as a real Spanish person, but I had a good experience there.

It was a nice, sound, middle-of-the-road way of doing things, and for some reason, I haven’t done it at all that way this time. Instead of strolling down the middle of the road, I find myself trying to hop along with a foot on each side. On one side, I refuse to give up my cultural “comfort zone.” I’m not willing to put my schoolbooks in a big purse instead of a backpack. I haven’t stopped rolling my eyes (and sometimes threatening civil disobedience) when faced with classic French bureaucracy. I’m judgmental about French educational methods. I boil with anger when I try to get on the bus and six or seven people squish into the door in front of me. I know I should just push ahead, too, but how can I do that in good conscience? Plus, I like my own culture, and I like acting like an American. When my friend Kim and I went to Ikea just before Christmas, we were waiting to take the spot of a woman who had two giant boxes she was trying, alone, to cantilever into her trunk. So, I hopped out to give her a hand (and get the spot sooner). She looked at me like I look at people who I think are trying to get me to join cults: at little nervous, a little weirded out, and very uncomfortable. I felt badly invading her personal space . . . but I figured, hey, she should be thankful for the good-neighborliness of Americans, and she couldn’t have gotten those boxes in the car on her own.

At the same time as I hang on to my “American-ness,” I have this expectation of being able to fit in and seem completely French. I think I’m getting a tiny taste of what immigrants must face—this question of the “A” word: assimilation—trying to keep an intact identity and intact links with home while wanting to have that same old sense of belonging in the new place, too.

But, slowly, we find a balance. It helps that I love French cheese. I can hold my head up proud in the grocery store as I pick out the same chèvre that all the French mamans pick up. And my adorable little students are very accepting. They’ve heard my garbled French, but that didn’t stop two seven-year-old boys from getting in an argument over whether or not I was a French native. Um, guys? I don’t conjugate my verbs.

Lest you think, from my students’ mistake, that I’m managing to fit in, I’ll tell you what happened on my way home that evening. As I waited to get on the bus, the woman in front of me turned around and asked me where I was from. When she saw how puzzled I was, she explained, with a chuckle, what the giveaway was: “You waited to get in a line to get on the bus. Only Anglophones do that.”

Looking French

Today's ideas for looking more French:
1. get a pair of knee high leather boots. (This will not make me look young and hip, since even grandmothers sport them.)
2. Wear a woven scarf.
3. Put on more eyeliner.