The Script Ended

THAT question again

I often get asked the question whether I will ever return to the USA to live. Ever is a long time and this question never fails to shake me up a bit. My reaction is also tied to who is doing the asking.

Last week the president of my apartment building syndicat (homeowners association) came by to pass out the new entrance badges to the building. Now I have to tell you this man is a French creep.  MFM and I are continually surprised that he can even walk, the stick is so far up his..........

Anyway, he was busily having me sign sworn statements that I was solely responsible for the health and safety of these precious badges, that I concure that I have received four of them, the serials numbers were duly noted, etc....... when in the middle of this latest example of fine French bureaucracy, he turns his blond (I swear its colored) comb-over-ed head towards me and asks with that special breed of suspicion certain French are so good at:

Retourneriez-vous aux-Etats-Unis ?

(By the way - he asks me this almost every time I see him).

Well, yes I visit as often as I can (I will spare you my halting French responses).

That was obviously not what he was asking - visiting and RETURNING are two different things. I'm probably reading way too much into his questions, but he always seems to imply that I must be some kind of exiled criminal in hiding, or a bad mother separated from her children or a traitor to my country.

or all of the above.

I know, I know - who cares what this swarmy frog thinks.

But when the question comes from a friend and someone I care about, it gives me pause. The second person who posed this same question on the same day last week was a visiting San Diego friend.

It is confusing to have done what I have done. Nevermind the exact circumstances that brought me to Paris in the first place. The bottom line is that in spite of the full life that I left behind in California, life is now here.

Amazing how a human can just do that.

You sell your house, you get on a plane, your rent an apartment and boom - you live somewhere else.

I read a piece in the NYTimes yesterday about how social networks are preventing college freshman from engaging in the present experience of college because they are too tightly tied to their high school friends and therefore the past.

Maybe I am too old for the Facebook effect but in moving to Paris, I started a new chapter, never quite realizing the impact it would have on the past. I still don't understand but what I do know is that by immersing myself in the life here in France I have created this whole new world equally full (though of course without the precious history of the old) and the thought of walking out of this one is just as disruptive as was stepping out of the old one.

So my best answer to that innocent question is though I can't really say - the thought of never living in the US again makes me really sad, and the thought of not living in France any more makes me really sick.

Another example of that damned butterfly out of the coccoon problem......and more.

I better get rich quick so I don't have to decide - and can just have both.

 

 

Quail Day

You gotta love this about France..........and being with the right French man.

We did Saturday morning grocery shopping and MFM spied some good looking quail. Great lunch idea, he said. Now I have prepared quail exactly once - in the kitchens of Le Cordon Bleu. Of all the complicated dishes we slaved through on our way to our hard earned diplomas, the Quail Day, was up near the top of complicated.

How, you ask, could a bitty bird containing about 6 bites if you're lucky, be so complicated?

This was thanks to the sadistic French recipe writers who called for those bitty birds to be boned and stuffed WITHOUT breaking their thin skins. This brought back memories of several hours wishing that my fingers were the size of toothpicks and that our kitchens were supplied with microscopes as I basically turned those damn birds inside out to extract their bones before sliding teaspoon sized bits of stuffing inside (stuffing that required an hour to prepare and included peeling grapes (of course) and mincing mushrooms to the size of housedust before plating the final dish.

Not my finest culinary hour.

So when MFM casually suggested quail (le caille) for our lunch I responded - great, as long as you're cooking.

Well as I said - you just have to be with the right guy.

In about 40 minutes he produced a dish as beautiful as it was tasty. We sat at our coffee table and polished it off with some left over, but still sublime, Sancerre.

Don't tell Le Cordon Bleu - he didn't peel the grapes!