The Script Ended

Same place - two lives

2 weekends, 2 different lives, same place, same girl. Talk about contrasts. Somebody up there decided to make sure that I have a clear idea of where I was and where I am now.

So enough of the cryptic references..........

2 weekends ago I had the privilege of spending 3 days with two of my best friends on the Cote d'Azur in a jewel box apartment right over the harbor of Villefranche-sur-Mer. We drank champagne while gazing at the boats bobbing directly beneath our balcony and watched the cruise ships come and go from the bay.

I was in another world - the one I used to live in and the one my friends still do. They were vacationing from their big family houses with some kids still at home;  celebrating long marriages and contemplating futures that I used to share.

I'm not begrudging of this - just noticing really.

So fast forward to the next jaunt back to the same Cote d'Azur two days later. This time to Cannes, glitzy home of the film festival and full of bronze bodies parading the boardwalk. No subtle elegance at this end of the Med.

I know that I won't evoke much sympathy but these four days were not fun in the sun. This was work. "Team-building" with my French colleagues and for me - a study in cultural differences.

We arrived to a lunch poolside before our first session. We weren't told to bring our bathing suits to the meeting but before we adjourned to the conference one of my co workers could not resist the pool. No bathing suit? - tant pis -she proceeded to strip to her underwear (leopard print) while the rest of us fully-clothed-rule-followers, meekly dipping our feet in the water, watched her dive right in. Her bra quickly became a bother so off it went. Her late-fifty-something body frolicked before our eyes. She displayed not a bit of shame (and not much puritan modesty either).

We work for a top European business school - the Harvard of France - could you imagine this same scenario happening in Cambridge?

Neither can I.

Stripping and swimming naked, or close to it, in front of the people you pass in the hall every day, turns out to be a normal activity. Our dean decided that the lapping waters of the Mediterranean were too much to resist after our wrap-up dinner on the beach Saturday night. She stripped to the skin and swam out into the moonlit waters. She inspired several followers who also traded their party wear for skinny dipping.

Is this normal? Do the deans of the Harvards and the Whartons of the world all get naked in front of their staffs and I've simply been in the dark all these years?

Probably not.

In any case, I am now part of this group and though I am an etranger, I seem to be accepted, even if I kept my clothes on.

Voila - a bit of my past and present lives sur la Cote d'Azur.

French Party Anthem

You will never guess which American song compels the French to jump from their seats and rush to the dance floor of every party, wedding and celebration here in the land of love, romance, wine and cheese................

Y-M-C-A

Yes, you heard me right - YMCA, that anthem of disco and the gay culture by the Village People that we all danced to back in high school and college, exuberantly throwing our arms up to form the letters at each refrain as we swelled with inebriated enthusiasm.

Well the French are still swollen. I first observed the Gallic rapture for this song while standing on the sidelines of a summer Village Fête deep in the heart of the Rhone Valley. How quaint I thought as I watched the French winegrowers, their wives and children all waving their arms to each verse about the Young Men. How did these country folk even know about this song, let alone how to dance to it??

Well, the song is not only stuck in the back roads of the South of France. I have since danced to it with merry-makers at numerous weddings as well as at sophisticated Parisian parties - YMCA knows no bounds of social class or age. Not terribly significant to us Americans, the class thing, but here - Mon Dieu - people pay attention to such stuff. French society has all sorts of ways to indoctrinate each social level into its ways.

But certain music seems to transcend all that, not terribly surprising as a concept, but when you look at which songs actually do the trick, well, let's just say, the sociologists would have a field day.

Last night at a beautiful summer garden party in a gracious home on the outskirts of Paris, an eclectic and enthusiastic 3 person combo really got the party rolling with La Bamba (so close to my Southern California heart with its influence of Mexico and margaritas), followed closely with Let it Be, What a Wonderful Life, Fly Me To the Moon (can't help remembering my ex-husband's disdain for Frank Fucking Sinatra every time that I swooned to his music - now I am free to swoon in peace and can almost forget the middle name poor Frank had acquired ), a couple French favorites sandwiched in, and then the all time party favorite, yes, you got it -----

I said Young Man, are you listening to me?

I said Young Man, there's a place you can go.....

Its fun to stay at the y-m-c-a............................

Everyone was on their feet. Here I was in France surrounded by people from everywhere and we all knew the words, the hand motions, the tune - it was part of our shared experiences, our individual histories and our collective humanity.

You never know what will bring people together and capture their hearts or their imaginations. When I came to France I didn't expect to be singing La Bamba in Paris or dancing to YMCA with both French villagers and City of Light sophisticates but then again what had I known anyway?

Rules of the Road

I'm a big city commuter now - not the driving kind of commuter, no, I am part of the sea of train riders flowing in and out of Paris each day. Here is some of what I've learned.

Never stand on the left side of any moving sidewalk or escalator - never. The left is reserved for the speedy. I pardon, excusez-moi, my way down the left side, always trying to pass all those sauntering slow pokes jabbering away on their mobiles.

French people are incredibly oblivious of their surroundings when they walk. Drives me nuts. I don't know if it is their famed arrogance or just plain old lack of attention that results in the way that they navigate. They do not look where they are going and basically demand that YOU watch out for where THEY are going. Not the other way around. Whenever a French person is approaching me on the street, they are invariably texting or fiddling with their cigarette or basically not looking up and I always have to swerve and side step around them. Their personal progression unimpeded by anyone else must be part of their birthright or something.

When streaming through the metro tunnels and the train stations, one should never pause to do anything - your transport pass needs to be ready to slide seamlessly over the turnstiles - don't stop to dig it out of your purse. Best is to have it placed just so in your bag so you just swipe your bag over the reader and pass through.

If someone hands you a morning metro paper - grab it without slowing down as you whisk by. If you are really French, you can start to read it and allow everyone else to watch out for you.

NEVER stop at the top of an escalator - everyone behind you will pile up like a car wreck and domino back down. Don't stop at the bottom either - you'll be trampled like a weak first-day-of-the-sales shopper.

If you hear your train buzz - leap immediately into the nearest car. The buzz is followed 2 seconds later by the automatic doors slamming shut. There is no sicker feeling in the world then being just on the outside of those doors. Once they close - they are unforgivably closed and the train starts to move.

There are no such things as lines in France. At least not the orderly, polite kind that we are used to in the US. Here the mob rules. When it is time to get on the train, cutting in front of everyone else is totally acceptable. Not that others won't snarl or try to elbow you out of their way but its all fair play.

Make friends with at least one other regular commuter (preferable a co-worker). Gossiping or philosophical conversations go well with the morning commute almost as well as does a cup of coffee between trains.

Belonging and not

In the old days things were black and white for me. It was easy to tell what was right and what was wrong, good from bad, smart from stupid, happy from sad.

That was then and now is different. I don't even know how I feel anymore about so many things. It's really unsettling.

I lived in Southern California my entire life until the age of 48. I was completely of California. How could I have been any other way? I wasn't a militant Southern Californian - you may know the type - smugly thinking of all the poor stiffs shoveling snow while sipping iced tea on our patios in February. Feeling superior for only wearing long pants twice in the last year.....Since shorts and sun in February were completely normal, it was nothing much special.

In fact, the grittiness required to live other places was kind of intriguing to me.

I've been living in Paris now for almost 4 years. Not very long as a percentage of all my years, but long enough to make me not quite the same anymore.

I'm not only a Southern California girl anymore, but I'm certainly not a Parisian - or rather a French woman. Pas de tout.

I live a bit on the outside of both places. I'm not part of the tennis team, or dinner groups or the bunco girls anymore back home, but I also am not French, can't speak the language very well, don't have the ancestral family house and structure to go to on Sundays or lean on when you're feeling weak or out of sorts.

How did this happen? Well, I chose it in a way - and in a way I didn't. My husband decided to bag it all and be a Buddhist so I decided that life was too short not to see what it was like to pull up roots and make it in a foreign country like all those heroines in the books.

Well, now I know. There's no real mystery or magic. You just sort of dig in and make a life out of nothing. You learn that other language (though I am afraid that I am destined to speak like a 3rd grader for the rest of my life), you thankfully make more girlfriends (where would any of us be without them?), study, get a job, and even add to the family in a new way.

MFM's daughter is proud to have an American belle mere. My daughters come "home" to Paris for Christmas. I get to show my Californian friends what it is like to cook in a cramped Paris kitchen and survive with only one bathroom. Sunday lunches en famille are on my Paris schedule.

How do I feel about all this?

Changed. Happy and sad, lost and found. I'm of 2 places but belong in neither completely.

That's why what used to be so clear is now kind of foggy.

Waiting for my Breakthrough

Have I mentioned how frick-en hard it is to speak French lately? I have been here coming up to 4 years - FOUR YEARS - I can't hardly believe it. If you would have asked me back then how long it was going to take me to speak fluent French I would have told you "Certainly after 3 years or so".

Wrong.

I now know the correct answer to how long it will take to speak fluent French:

Never.

Or at least close to never.

Yes I sort of speak French now, yes I understand lots of what is being said, yes I have made beaucoup de progress -  but it is not enough.

I cannot tell you how beyond frustrating it is to be in the middle of a lively dinner conversation where you are the only one not laughing at the jokes - you are too busy spending your whole night getting the gist (but little meat) of what is being said. The funny thing is that most of my French friends think that I speak French - I really have them fooled. Its just because I kind of get what they are saying and am capable of responding like a 3 year old.

It is not the most satisfying way to communicate and it is downright boring  - for me and the polite person stuck next to me at the dinner table.

I don't know how much longer I can live just on the outside of the rest of the world. I used to think that this would be fun - what the hell was wrong with me?

They say that when your frustration gets to the breaking point that is when a breakthrough is juuuusssssssssst around the corner.

Okay, I'm ready.

Worn out past

As I shook out my sheets this morning to change the bed, I noticed that the bottom sheet was almost threadbare. How had I not seen that before? I love these sheets. They are special - purchased from an exclusive linen store in Toronto- back when I was still married.

That me, from back then, investing too many dollars in expensive sheets, somehow believed that sleeping between such indulgence insured the continuation of my existence. After all, we were buying these for the bed that we shared, that must mean some kind of longevity commitment.

But the reality of that afternoon in the linen store those years ago, was something that I had been determined to ignore. We were not the happy and complicit couple that had once existed as we debated cream vs white and which duvet cover to match, but we were both silently determined to go through the motions. We were pretending to be happy as if our hearts depended on it. And actually, they did.

I wonder what would have happened if we had just given in and called each others' bluffs. Maybe things would have turned out differently.

But we didn't. Instead we chose the cream ones and covered our pain with their silken touch, hoping that they somehow would help make a difference.

And now they are all worn out.

Well, at least they ended their days in a sunny apartment in Paris - where my new life now lives.

Foreign Language # 2

I struggle everyday to speak and understand French - some days it flows and some days it limps. But when one moves to a different country, this really is to be expected.

I didn't expect to bump into ANOTHER foreign language - the one that is spoken at work.

When I left my Big 8 accounting job over 25 years ago, I left behind a corporate world where everyone was speaking plain English - at least I didn't hear much else in the halls and boardrooms.

Who knew how that simple language would morph over the ensuing quarter century?

Besides catching up on Power Point and Excel, my vocabulary was woefully out of date as well. I'm like a kid learning secret swear words.

I have to quantify the take-aways of our latest initiative.

In our department we hope to on board our new plans quickly. Those plans include up-streaming ideas from our end users....and down-streaming our programs to match their ultimate needs (huh?).

I have learned to leverage (I used to think this had to do with borrowing money) previous experience to achieve glorious corporate goals and contain anxiety of stakeholders (and these guys are not pitching tents with those stakes).

I now know the difference between a flat organization and a hierarchical one and where on this bandwidth mine falls.

I am now a member of a transversal team to develop an alumni strategy  - I know strategy has been around for a long time but never have I bumped into SO many of them. Everything has a strategy, looked at from a strategic viewpoint, or is part of thinking strategically. 

Oh yeah - I almost forgot. One must learn to drive strategy or at least drive something.

Remember when strategy had to do with who won at RISK? And driving was what you did in a car?

All of a sudden after hiding my ignorance for months and pretending that I knew what someone was talking about (at least I hoped I was convincing), the corporate buzz words are starting to flow without me even translating in my head like I do in French.

Ha! I have begun to on-board this new paradigm as a result of my experiential learning experience..............I know, I know, its sickening isn't it?

And I thought speaking French was going to be hard.

Foreign Language # 2

I struggle everyday to speak and understand French - some days it flows and some days it limps. But when one moves to a different country, this really is to be expected.

I didn't expect to bump into ANOTHER foreign language - the one that is spoken at work.

When I left my Big 8 accounting job over 25 years ago, I left behind a corporate world where everyone was speaking plain English - at least I didn't hear much else in the halls and boardrooms.

Who knew how that simple language would morph over the ensuing quarter century?

Besides catching up on Power Point and Excel, my vocabulary was woefully out of date as well. I'm like a kid learning secret swear words.

I have to quantify the take-aways of our latest initiative.

In our department we hope to on board our new plans quickly. Those plans include up-streaming ideas from our end users....and down-streaming our programs to match their ultimate needs (huh?).

I have learned to leverage (I used to think this had to do with borrowing money) previous experience to achieve glorious corporate goals and contain anxiety of stakeholders (and these guys are not pitching tents with those stakes).

I now know the difference between a flat organization and a hierarchical one and where on this bandwidth mine falls.

I am now a member of a transversal team to develop an alumni strategy  - I know strategy has been around for a long time but never have I bumped into SO many of them. Everything has a strategy, looked at from a strategic viewpoint, or is part of thinking strategically. 

Oh yeah - I almost forgot. One must learn to drive strategy or at least drive something.

Remember when strategy had to do with who won at RISK? And driving was what you did in a car?

All of a sudden after hiding my ignorance for months and pretending that I knew what someone was talking about (at least I hoped I was convincing), the corporate buzz words are starting to flow without me even translating in my head like I do in French.

Ha! I have begun to on-board this new paradigm as a result of my experiential learning experience..............I know, I know, its sickening isn't it?

And I thought speaking French was going to be hard.

plans

You know how we all make plans - plans for dinner, plans for vacation, plans for going on a diet. Without making some kind of plan, most of us wouldn't get much done. It is hard to take a Hawaiian vacation for example without making plans - plane tickets, hotel reservations, stopping the mail............

But what about plans for your life?

In the beginning it is easy, at least for lots of us.

Do well in school, apply to college, get a degree, get a job, get married, have babies, buy a house, work......

I guess I planned for all that stuff just by following the crowd and it got done.

But did I plan? Sort of, not really.

But at some point there arrives a gap in the plan - or the plan is all executed and you find yourself drifting along at the tail end. This is often when other stuff happens.

You begin a transition from one plan to the next one. But lots of times it is not obvious that you need to even make another plan.

My life took a left turn near then end of my first "sort of" plan.

I did the college, work, husband, kids, house thing. In fact that plans loops back on itself when the kids start their own plan - you know - college, work..........  It streams along in a blur.

And then - screech...............husband goes against plan. 

Now what?

Boy it takes a long time to get back on solid ground and really make a new plan. I have done lots of steps but if you looked at the pattern of my footprints they are all over the place. No straight lines in sight at the moment.

Got to get a new plan. It's beginning to percolate but the coffee is not quite ready.

There's lots of books on this subject - many of them titled some variation or another of "Create the Life you Want to Live - Now"...

Easier said then done.

Rugby vs everything else

I love sports. I love getting crazy over the battle, screaming, sweating, praying. I've been there over the Padres, the Chargers, especially the Trojans, and even the Lakers and Dodgers back in my LA days........Pete Sampras (on occasion), Andre Agassi (almost always after he grew up), Boris Becker, Roger Federer. They are all teams and individual players who just do it for me. I didn't just root for them, I had fits over them.

When I get that way, its just the best! Totally involving. You don't care about anything else in that moment except that your team/player wins. Whatever else had been on your mind is erased by the emotion of the moment. If you could bottle this, you would never need another visit to your therapist or happy pills.

At this moment I am sitting next to MFM watching Team France battle it out on the rugby field against Wales.

He is TOTALLY into it. He is texting his best buddy every time we (WE being the French) do something good to gloat or stupid to share the pain.

I just do not get it.

IT being Rugby.

I want to get it. I want to scream and yell at the TV and really care.

But I don't. It's boring and confusing. They push each other a lot and run in short spurts back and forth without getting very far.

They spend a lot of time scrubbing around on the ground together and occasionally somebody kicks the ball.

At least we are winning at the moment but it's not in the bag yet.

I think maybe it is time for the band to strike up "Fight On for ol' SC"....or something........

MFM doesn't need the Trojan fight song - He doesn't know what he's missing.

Apparently the announcers don't need anymore excitement either from the sounds of hyperventilating French they are spewing.

Wales just scored again.......our lead is cut........this may just get interesting.

or not. It's over. We won. Yippee.

Frankly give me Andre or USC anyday.