Leaving the house at 8:30 to pick S up at the airport at 9:45 this morning. He’ll have time to get home, switch the contents of his suitcase for summer wear (It’s summer in Johannesburg now), take a nap, and do a bit of work before I take him back to the airport this afternoon for his flight out.
I get outside and start the car and it sounds like one of the squirrels is dead or still sleeping or, at the very least, seriously ill. The little Peugeot starts and drives with not so much of a Corvette roar and purr as with a tuberculin cough and rattle, a sound so pathetic that you know its days are numbered. You just have to love diesel engines.
Driving to the airport under a perfectly and unbelievably clear vault of French blue sky. Instead of feeling happy at this sudden clearing of weather I’m feeling damn near murderous. S will be back one day and it would be the sunny one. Days of gloom and he gets back to this. Not fair I tell you.
This time of morning the traffic is backed up for blocks before the circles. I must navigate 4 circles on my way to the highway. When traffic is this heavy though, they are a nightmare. I look ahead of me to see what the big hold up is and notice big wide yellow signs that say ‘CONVOI EXCEPTIONNEL’ oh yeah you guessed it, WIDE LOAD. Some genius is trying to navigate a double wide mobile home through morning rush hour traffic and around these stupid, ridiculous circles. It’s ok, at least now I have plenty of time to open a window and enjoy the lovely, almost warm, weather.
Walking out of the airport with S and he looks up and says. “Wow, it’s gorgeous!” Yeah, whatever.
Got S home and fed and settled. I’m pacing now because today at 3 I get to meet a new AIT member, Andrea, who will be introducing me to my language exchange partner, Michelle. God I hate stuff like this. Meeting new people. My stomach is in complete turmoil and I’m seriously regretting having eaten lunch.
Andrea arrives at 3:00 on the dot and I like her on sight. She’s my height with short dark hair, very tan and has a look in her eye that I instantly recognize as sarcastic wit. Yes, just my type of woman. We get into her shiny blue Peugeot cc cabriolet and she says, “Well since your American I can start peppering you with my rude American questions.” The French don’t do that, they don’t ask stuff like ‘How long have you lived here’, ‘What does your husband do’ (big no no, like asking how much money you make), ‘How old are you’, ‘Do you have any children’ etc. etc. etc.
We drive through our little burg toward Michelle’s house, chatting away. The more we talk the more I like her. I tell her that my husband is a ‘corn pimp’ (as he was dubbed years ago by my brothers) and she says her husband is ‘into ants’. That’s all she says about him, but it’s obviously a lucrative job that has garnered them assignments in many places, including Cameroon, D.C., Paris and now here. She is originally from Michigan. They have been abroad for almost 20 years
Michelle lives in a neighborhood that can only be described, in my new brit vocab, as ‘a little bit dodgy’. Her little duplex apartment is about the size of my garage. She lives there with her husband, 4 sons, 3 dogs (2 of them quite large), a hamster and an aquarium full of tropical fish (no Nemo). As we walk through the front door we have to navigate the already narrow entry hall which is congested with the detritus of boyhood and an ironing area piled with clothes in all stages of pressing. The barking of two large dogs can be heard, but Michelle has locked them into the bathroom.
We enter the tiny little living room and as I sit down on a lime green futon, that had seen better days in the 80’s, a small brown bullet leaps into my lap. It’s Oscar and he looks up at me from my lap with the limpid brown adoring eyes that only small dogs seem to be able to muster. ‘Pet me please and I’ll be your friend for life’ those eyes say and of course I do. Oscar melts into my lap with a contented sigh and doesn’t move from there for the rest of my visit, except to prompt me with a nudge of his head when my hand stops moving over his long and doggy smelling mop. Ahh, pet therapy.
Michelle is Lebanese and grew up speaking French as her primary language. She and her husband currently work as life guards at the public pool down the street from me and she is in the process of getting the French equivalent of a teaching credential.
(A side note here. Almost every town, no matter how small, has a public swimming pool.)
She will teach at the elementary school level and her English has to be graduate level and (I kid you not) she has to have an oxford accent. Michelle’s biggest concern is passing the verbal portion of her examination in which they give her a paragraph on a topic and she must speak on that topic for about 20 minutes. I tell her I can help her with the conversational parts, but the oxford accent is beyond me. I offer Alabama southern (‘Lawd’ knows I do southern well) but she doesn’t understand what I mean or why Andrea is suddenly laughing hysterically. One of those you had to be there (or from there) things I guess.
We chat in English and then they chat in French and I try to follow them. When I look blank they translate bits for me
We talked about the peculiarities of driving in France. French schools don’t have drivers’ ed. programs. You have to pay big bucks at a driving school for this privilege and Andrea says it’s quite the racket. This got us off on road signs and we began to pepper Michelle with questions on their meaning. There is one particularly funny sign whose meaning is obvious but we had to ask. The sign is a bright yellow diamond shape outlined with red and containing a big red exclamation point in the middle. No translation needed.
We discussed the weather and I was informed that it will rain most of the fall. Then through the winter it’s usually sunny. Also was warned to be prepared that the wind will blow 80% of the time to varying degrees. Yippee! (Sarcasm? Me?)
Michelle and I exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet on Monday at my house for coffee around 4. Two of her sons attend the elementary school across the street and this will give us an hour before school is out. I told her that unlike in France, where you absolutely do not drop in uninvited, she could feel free to knock on my door anytime as I’m usually home. We’ll see if she can make herself do that.
Andrea drove me home and promised to be in touch more regularly as soon as the tennis season is over. Tennis season?
Got home in time to load S up into the car and drive back to Blagnac.
………
The mailman has delivered another care package from my good friends at Amazon.com. It contains some books and some things for S’s Christmas stocking. One of those things, unfortunately, will not make it to Christmas. I hold it and turn it over in my hand, set it down and walk away, even go so far as to hide it with his other presents only to go and snatch it back out. I have no will power, I rip off the plastic wrap and security stickers and pop “Pirates of the Caribbean” into the DVD while I settle into my comfy bed to snack and be with Johnny for the night. Shh, don’t tell S.
