Being Wrong (and Not At All Happy About It)

Back in Brooklyn, when we said we were going away to France for the year, we heard two things over and over, a chorale of feedback that I somehow managed to ignore or repress.  The refrain I heard on an endless loop was how unbelievably lucky Bill and I were to have such an incredible opportunity – that we would love France, and cherish all the time we would have to spend so much time with our girls.  

The dissonant note layered into the song was how hard it was going to be for our kids to leave home and go to a French school. 

It’s one thing to be lolling about in France, age forty.  Another to be ten, in school all day long.

Way back then, I managed to find ways to deny both of these (now obvious) truths.  I thought I was going to miss Brooklyn and my job so much I wouldn’t be able to enjoy being here.  Or maybe I was so uncomfortable hearing that slight tone of envy and anxiety in other people’s voices, and tried to wish it away. 

Conventional wisdom has never been our family’s strong suit, aside from Abigail, who has it in spades. But here I will say it, with awful chagrin: your conventional wisdom has turned out to be true, damn you all.  I love, adore, cherish, and am thriving on these moments, days, and weeks here embedded in the natural world – so far from home that home, and sewn so tightly into this one, close to my family. 

And as much as I dread the new song I am going to hear from now on (“We told you so, you idiot,”) I have to tell the rest of the truth, the unhappier part.  The girls, to put it frankly, often flat-out hate school right now, in their own individual ways.  And while I think Abigail’s going to push through it, we are holding out the possibility that we might eventually be in for a change for Grace.

Today, after almost two weeks of misery, she played with the popular little girl who also speaks English, and even gave her a little present.  But not all of our days are so sanguine, and the day started in tears.  I would like to imagine that good days are the shape of what is to come, but I know that they may not last. 

You may have been reading between the lines, as hesitant as I have been to write about this directly.  But we are finding that it is proving so much harder than we had thought for them to speak French and to break into the tight social world of a small town in a foreign language.  We have made it harder for the girls by not insisting forcefully enough on their learning French in advance, and now I feel I squandered and wasted all the time this summer when they could have been doing so.

But what is worst, the children (and parents) of this small rural town have hardly embraced us, or them, and we haven’t exactly figured out how to reach out and improve the situation either.  Our usual bag of tricks, honed back home, don’t work here in a new place.

Things were pretty great to start with.  We had one first day of fear at the portail, followed by several weeks of relief and ease when Grace was immediately pulled into a little girl clique, despite having no French at her disposal.  There were two other children in her class who spoke English, and the principal pledged that they would help her out.  He insisted that they would be just fine, learning French quickly and with the generous help of the French government providing regular instruction.  Her teacher at first seemed pleasantly aloof, the kind of guy who stand around gazing benevolently while she got into the swing of things. 

It took Abigail a few more days to get with the program, but she quickly turned to her strengths (tag, mostly) to engage kids to play with at recess.  She has since employed her practical wisdom in the classroom as well, learning to sit next to our landlord’s son, an incredibly sweet boy who speaks English, and to copy everything he does.  When one boy picked on her, she fretted for a day and a half, then took care of him as swiftly and silently as Tony Soprano.  Her teacher speaks a little English with her, just enough to help her to figure out what to do, and clearly takes an interest in what Abby is learning.  Abigail’s starting to be able to pronounce French nicely when she reads.  Some days she even runs ahead to school to get a chance to be independent and strong. 

But in the last few weeks, the bloom is well off the rose, most obviously with Grace.  First the bossy girl who adopted her early on lost interest in playing with her and skipped off to other pleasures.  Then we missed the grade parent night, our only apparent opportunity to hear directly from her teacher.  (This was not sloppiness on our part, I promise you:  there was literally no official communication from the school on this one.  None.  Grace wrote “V” in her book for the date (who schedules a meeting for Friday???) but since she didn’t know what it meant, we didn’t either.) 

We found that we could never understand Grace’s homework, once the teacher stopped sending home plain old worksheets.  We also didn’t understand that the list of art supplies the teacher sent home was something for us to buy for her (as the Mairie had promised we wouldn’t need to do so) so she spent the day she could have been painting sitting still and watching.  Perhaps it was just as well, because that day her teacher ripped up the painting of another child when it displeased him.  

Art is treated with enormous reverence back home, at our old school, and Grace’s art teachers have long been her idols and gurus; the shock and contrast of somebody ripping up a child’s work was a little too much for her.  So the whole “old school” approach went overnight from being a curiosity to being just plain scary.

Additionally, Grace has never been able to bear the sound of other people coughing, her particular pet peeve.  For you, that pet peeve might be nails on a chalkboard, or cat posters, or overpowering cologne.  For Grace, it’s cold season.  So once she realized that she not only couldn’t understand any French, and no children would be willing to translate it for her or let her even see their work, she spent all of her time in class hearing only the sound of a little boy’s hacking bronchitis.  Instead of seating her next to a kid who could speak English and translate for her, they seem to have seated her next to some sort of eleven-year-old tuberculosis patient.

The French lessons that were promised have turned out to be just great, but as they started late and happen only once a week, the girls have had only a total of three so far.  The magic of foreign language immersion has yet to take hold.

But perhaps the worst thing, the possible nail in the coffin of Grace’s adjustment to school, happened when the one little girl with whom she had played for several weeks, and on whom she had pinned most of her hopes, dropped her as well, in just the sort of painful way that children (and grownups) across the globe do to one another.  She not only cast her off, but did it with that crossed armed finger waggle that we all have come to dread.  And suddenly, there she was sitting alone in the schoolyard, left wholly out of the loop.  I can’t be sure whether it is a good or a bad thing that she didn’t understand enough French ever to have any idea why. 

So here we are, the beneficiaries and victims of our grand plan, coming face to face with every single shoulda coulda woulda we heard and managed to ignore.  We shoulda chosen a bigger town.  We shoulda found a bilingual school.  We coulda pushed the French so much harder.  We woulda (if we coulda) figured out how to set up opportunities for the girls to play outside of school with other kids in their classes.   We shoulda realized that with all of the pleasures of being together as a little family unit all the time would come the social isolation of being together as a little family unit, all the time.  We coulda realized that the portail, the language barrier, and old-school French formality not only limits our ability to shape her school experience in any way at all, but prevents us from really knowing what goes on there for her.

Or, to listen to Abigail, we just never shoulda come here at all.  Just as I am finally reconciled to all of the losses we forced on ourselves in the spring (our Adirondacks house, our Brooklyn house, my job, the kids’ incredible school and their attentive and gifted teachers) and have figured out how to stay in touch with my friends, she is suddenly mourning all of it. Why did we sell the Adirondacks house?  Why did I give up my job?  She misses her school, her friends, her favorite teachers.  She is notlearning French, she insists, despite steady evidence to the contrary. 

For Grace it is even worse.  A lot of days she simply doesn’t want to go to school, or can’t get herself back there in the afternoon.  At all, despite our forceful and supportive efforts.   The boys throw erasers, and maybe even little rocks, when the teachers aren’t looking.  We never know what the homework is.  She is so busy holding it all together that not a word of French seems to be getting through all the blah blah rip-up-that-painting blah.  And when you sit alone in the schoolyard at recess, you might as well be in a jailyard. 

So we’re at a turning point.  When we came here, we told ourselves that we had just a few goals:  the kids would learn French.  They would each make just one friend.  Their math skills would not dissolve and dissipate, because we would work on that at home.   But while Abigail seems to be on her way with both French and friendship, it might be time for a change of direction for Grace.  While it’s not yet time for the quatrieme sortie and packing up to head home, I can’t see that we’ll keep going straight ahead either.

To be fair, today was a fantastic day.  We complained to the principal about the boys who were throwing erasers and little pebbles at Grace, and he seems to have convinced everyone to be extra-super nice to her.  She cried bitterly this morning, but before Bill and I had walked away from the schoolyard, she was already playing hopscotch.  She had all sorts of tales to tell us about her new friendships, and Abigail has pledged to beat the stuffing out of anyone who bothers her big sister. 

I would like to imagine that this is the roadmap for what is to come.  But up ahead, I see a familiar sign, marking a roundabout with roads leading off in different directions.  Straight ahead is stay in school, limp along, hope and pray that things stay more comfortable, and help her along the best we can.  Appeal to the principal when things get tough, and give her lots of candy and hugs at the end of each day. 

There have been years of our own lives, even as adults, when each of us has had to do just that, and we did our best to help each other through.  But we always had so many more resources available to us for those years when things just couldn’t go right.  Here, we are the resources.  Poor girl.

So off to the left is the turn we always talked about but didn’t think we would take:  bringing her back home for school.   Yes, that school: homeschool.  We would still be required to teach the French curriculum, and she would somehow still have to learn the language and make a friend.  She has already made several friends this year, just none yet her age.  But if I pull her out of a class that is clearly a terrible fit, she might learn a lot more, as she will no longer have to cry and freeze up as I force her back into the pointless exercise of listening only to other children coughing all morning. 

I am sure that if and when I post this, I will hear from you: with pity, well-meaning concern, or those dreaded I told you so-s.  Better yet, if you’ve got a few I told you so’s, enjoy the small pleasures of keeping them to yourself.  Or just head somewhere to gossip about your crazy friends Bill and Launa, and how people get what they deserve.  We’ve got enough chagrin and guilt here to last us awhile. 

Still, we are all hearty little travelers; don't lose sleep on our behalf, because we are learning how to grow stronger rather than crumble and fold as we face the world's challenges.  Stay tuned for news of which road we all take, and how exactly we will get to where we are heading. t 

Nice

Fondation Maeght

Updating my Maps

Last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the family and I toured Jackie around the glories of the Haut Var, including a trip to Aix-en-Provence, a super-fancy dinner in Tourtour, a picnic on the bank of the Lac St. Croix, and a hike up the mountain in Moustiers Ste. Marie. 

I spent most of my time playing, and talking, and shopping and walking, rather than writing, and thus left a lot of this past week undocumented.  But highlights of our time together included a visit to the Hyper Casino (hypermarkets being a clear step up from a mere supermarket) a long out-of-the-way-to-the-A8 drive courtesy of Diesel Liesel, a trip to the Market in Salernes, and delicious tiny baby chickens and tarte tatin for dinner on the terrace.

We spent time looking for spices and salts and sweets and oils in Nice, and cheese and wine here at home.  Jackie met our friendly local vitner, who enjoyed having Jackie and Bill taste wine so much that she eventually just sat down at the table to enjoy a glass right alongside them.  We went to a farm to buy chevre directly from the new age hippies who milked the goats themselves when they were not busy making strange monumental statues that look like a cross between scarecrows and something you would see at the MOMA.

During Jackie's visit, we were all thrilled to be able to show off the places we have come to know.  The kids welcomed her with sweet little cards and an apple pie.  Grace read her the story she had been working on for weeks, and Abigail had lots of hugs to go around (as usual.)  

When you know and love someone for a really long time, it’s as though you are visiting all of the parts of your life when you see her.  Jackie arrived, and suddenly I was back in Amherst, and Connecticut, and Brooklyn, all at the same time.  Jackie was half of my past life walking through the door, and a friend with whom I could share the house and the town and my kids.  And now, she would know all about the cafes of Aix, the color of the roofs in Moustiers, and the scents of the market.  And I could bring my own past into my strange and beautiful present, in a way to measure how far I have already traveled. 

Jackie may have had to work at full speed to adapt to this strange world we have created for ourselves, but if so, she took it all in stride.  Our family is not exactly, well, easy to understand.  We eat weird food, we play weird games in the car, and we disagree about as often as we draw breath.  We don't always know exactly where we are headed or how to get there.  I can only hope that she found us at least as entertaining as we are strange. 

After a few days in Aups, Diesel Liesel took Jackie and me away to Saint Paul de Vence, home of the modern art museum Fondation Maeght, and then eventually to Nice.  We left on Monday, just as the girls were heading back for another week of blah blah recess blah.  School has officially lost whatever luster it had initially, and neither child is particularly willing to go anymore.  Abigail is hanging in there, and is developing her friendships as well as her ability to read French.  But Grace is flat out miserable, hating every day of French school as much as I had feared that she might.  (Let the bitter chant of “I told you so” begin.)  

So let’s just say that both girls were quite vexed that I was ditching them thus, and made it utterly plain to me.  I promised candy and treats upon my return, but this simply was not going to fly to make it all better quite that easily.

Lots of people complain about their mothers making them feel guilty.  (Hi Mom!  I know you're reading!  Love ya!)  However, in my experience, there is nothing like the guilt that a child can evoke in a mom driving off in her little blue Audi for some fun times in Paris and Nice.  While I left them in more than capable hands, there I was, heading off to the Cote D’Azur for a few days of modern art, strolling on the boardwalk, and eating chickpea fritters and caramel ice cream in the marketplace.  As I headed off towards something great, they were still dealing with the strange and still uninviting reality of French school in a not-particularly welcoming little town.

Just as they were mourning the fact that they have no friends at school, there was my good friend showing up to enjoy things with me.  And just as they were trying desperately to survive the world in French, I was diving out of Aups, back into the world of the English that everybody speaks to the tourists in Paris and Nice. 

And if I didn’t have enough other reasons to feel guilty, there was the hotel bed in Nice.  The remarkable and undeniable pleasure of sleeping quietly and calmly in a single bed in a nice peaceful (and chic) hotel, at less than half the going rate.  (I love it when the world goes on sale.) The sheets were crisp and white.  The pillow was soft and squishy.  And I slept so soundly and well that when I woke up, the bed didn’t even need to be made.  I do love my family to the moon and the stars, but there is nothing like a full night of undisturbed rest.  So I may actually have earned their ire with my own leisure and pleasure.  

Friends are supposed to wish each other well no matter what; however, in a family – or at least in our family – there is rarely a time when someone else’s great pleasure and ease is not at the expense of the rest of the family’s well-being. 

Before Jackie and I headed to Nice, Abigail, Grace, Bill and I had gone there for an exploratory overnight: in part to give the kids and ourselves a little break from Aups, and in part to check out the big city and learn what was the what.  Although Grace had bad cold that weekend, the rest of us did a little shopping, a little walking, a little swimming in the calm, warm water of the Mediterranean Sea.  We got to see the Vielle Ville, the park on the high hill, and the famous brightly colored houses of the port. 

So when Jackie and I arrived, this was my second trip to Nice, and I realized that I had learned a few things the first time around, becoming a slightly-less-incompetent host of this French corner of the world.  I could deal with the parking garages.  I could find our hotel on the Baie des Angles, I knew where to find the market, and I had the all-important location of the ice cream store with 100 flavors.  Some of the flavors were Bubble gum, and Tomato-basil, and Chervil (you have to dig just a little too deep to get to 100 flavors) but many others were ones that Jackie and I would actually want.   And actually eat.

But as much as I enjoyed bringing my old knowledge to bear on this new trip, I learned something more crucial this time around.  And – as has become a Theme of This Blog, once again I learned this important thing by making, then reflecting on a mistake.  This time, I learned by making exactly the same mistake twice.

Or rather, by following Liesel in making the same mistake twice.  You would think that because she is guided by computers and satellites, she would rarely make a mistake.  But during my travels with Jackie, we caught her being wrong several times in just a few days. 

First, while directing Jackie and me towards Aix-en-Provence, Liesel chose the world’s windiest and stupidest path towards the A8.  Once we realized that not only were we lost, but we were also committed, Jackie and shook our heads, then forged ahead along the twisty roads towards towns for which we had no maps.  We theorized that Liesel might be trying to get back to her old home with her previous owners, the pornography dealers, who lived somewhere down in that godforsaken maze of roads below Cotignac and above La Val.  We got to Aix just fine, but it would have to depend on your perspective to decide whether we wasted the extra hour or were treated to the pastoral pleasures of the French countryside.

And then on the way from Saint Paul into Nice, Liesel said “droit” when she must have meant “gauche.” In fact, this was the same exact navigation error as she made on our first trip to Nice, directing me off to the right just as the road for the Promenade des Angles should have taken me left.  I knew that I had gotten lost right about there last time, so I hesitated just for a minute before following her lead.  This time I realized much more quickly that both she and I were ruing our decision.

Liesel asked for the phantom droite just as a big huge sign was directing us correctly in the proper direction: left to be right.  The first time, as our whole family made this error, I beat myself up horribly, nearly giving myself black eyes of remorse for taking the wrong road and getting our little family lost on their way to the Mediterranean Sea.  I then had had no idea that it was Liesel, not Launa, making the mistake.  However, this time I recognized the error even as it was happening, and quickly saw that once I was headed the wrong way, she was trying to turn me back on track in exactly the same way she had the previous time. 

I have to say this for Liesel:  she covers and recovers from her mistakes much more gracefully than I ever do.  Rather than fretting about her errors, pointing them out and amplifying them, she straightaway sets about fixing the damage, sending her driver and herself back as quickly as possible on the right course.  Sometimes she gently suggests a U-turn (only “si c’est possible,”) but usually just waits for the next roundabout and tells me to take the “quatrieme sortie,” the “fourth exit.”  It’s educative for me to see how she takes these wrong turns in stride, and now I realize that she does so in exactly the same way whether it is she or I making a wrong turn.

But here is what I learned from making that same error twice.  Trust your G.P.S. only as long as it seems to accord with what the signs are saying and with all the other things you know.  Liesel is generally a great asset, particularly when she is helping me follow a path already laid out in advance.  However, when she suddenly seems to be taking me the wrong direction, I should not assume that she’s found an awesome new shortcut.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I need to remember that it is always me driving my car, and driving my little life, no matter what kinds of expert advice comes my way.

But speaking of awesome new shortcuts, let me say a few words about Modern Art – that most excellent shortcut between representations that were merely realistic, and representations that reinvented the world.   On our way to Nice (before learning how fully unreliable Liesel could be) Jackie and I spent midday and the afternoon in Saint Paul de Vence, a tiny Medieval city that has turned itself, through the good graces of savvy art dealers Aimé and Margurete Maeght, into a paradise of incredible modern art, in a setting purpose-built to serve that art.  

The Maeght’s Museum is at the town’s core.  Not a bit of their museum is “contemporary” art.   Instead, Fondation Maeght has dedicated itself to the modern: that universe of beautiful and strange work made from the fifties to the seventies by men (and one or two women) obsessed with new ways of representing humans and animals.  While the impressionists revolutionized the representation of light and color to shift the way we look at the surface of things, the moderns took us back to our roots in cave paintings and primary colors and allowed us to see the outlines of the world anew.  They were not afraid of a wrong turn or two, but instead followed their guts to get to the soul of the world.  Bonnard, Miro, and Picasso were not waiting for G.P.S. to tell them which paint brush to choose and where to put all that black and red and blue. They had a much more personal conversation going on, one that changed not only the maps but also the actual landscape of art.

Femmes et oiseaux, (women and birds,) were clearly Miro’s favorite subjects, and he re-shaped them in sculpture, in painting, in prints, in books and in ceramics.  At the time of Jackie’s and my visit, the museum’s extensive Miro collection was on display.  The Maeght family has so much damn art that they have to rotate their collections and they tend to show just one genius at a time, with just a few little amuse-bouches from Chagall or Giacometti thrown in to remind you what else they must have lurking in their deep, deep closets.

When you’re at the Fondation, you go straight back in time to an era when it seemed like a good idea to see the women and the animals of the world in new ways.  Perhaps it is my new obsession with the cavemen of Southern France, evolving here over the centuries, but Miro’s work looked so primal, even tribal.  He didn’t ever paint a pretty woman, or a cute little bird, but rather struck at the heart of birth or flight.  There would be just the outline of a head and a beak: oiseau.  Or a sculpture of an egg sitting on a chair: femme. Centuries of decoration and depiction sliced away, leaving only essences in line and color.

This museum’s insistence on seeing the world anew extends past the art into the architecture, which uses concrete, rocks, tile, water, and glass in strange shapes and directions.  My good friend Terence used to have a funny phrase for this kind of late-60’s, early-70’s modern architecture (used to such awful effect in several of our college’s most egregious dormitories):  “Gee, let’s see what weird shapes we can make out of concrete!”)

But here, in the hills above Nice, the strange shapes of the buildings might look dated, but they never look awful like the social dorms.  They have retained the effect their architects intended back when they were built.  The whole of Fondation Maeght is rather 1970’s – not just in its strange and anti-domestic design, but also in that it is so deeply unsupervised.  No guards ward you away from the art; precious few signs mediate between you and the paintings.  So you get the nice feeling of being right up close to the droopy Giacometti dog, and the one-off Miro prints, and the incredible swirling perfection of Chagall’s monster mural-size work, La Vie.   While we were there, a few guys in regular clothes kept taking priceless Miros off the wall and walking around the museum with them, sometimes leaving them on the floor.  As we were leaving, they had even taken down the Chagall and were huddled together looking at the lower edge of the frame.  And because the Maeghts were dealers, not Museum curators, you can buy the real stuff in the gift shop, not just posters, just as long as you brought along many many thousands of Euros.

Here, the art is both new and old.  I realized there, with a stupid sort of shock, that to be “modern” is to be dated.  In most cases, it is to be older than I am. 

Jackie and I spent several sunny hours wandering around the museum, backwards through Miro’s life (I missed the sign, in French, directing me in the “sense of the visit” which was clockwise, rather than counter.)

On our way, we saw a film of Duke Ellington playing around the year I was born at the Fondation, riffs improvised on the spot and at least ostensibly inspired by Miro’s work.   The film was old and grainy, turned all blotchy with the process of digitization.  Listening to that music, under the colored light coming through a huge stained glass window, was the most movingly religious moment I have ever had in a museum.  Ellington’s music, Miro’s art, and me: all born into the world at the same moment in time.  The music, the art, and me: all growing older with the remorseless march of time.  But as I listened and I watched, I could also see that that music, that art, and (at least for now), and me: still just as alive and powerfully vibrant as the days we were created.

Change.  Growth.  Improvisation.  Adjustment.  Finding the new path out of the old patterns and places.  Everything I encounter these days speaks to putting the new into context with the old.  This new life demands that I re-examine and put aside the old habits in favor of new directions.  That I update the old maps, stay open to new twists, and trust my instincts when life shows me that it is time for a U-turn.

Being so open to change is entirely against my better judgment, the way I have lived my safe life.  It is taking me awhile to get with the program, to see the shape and the map and the context of the path Bill and I have put ourselves and our family on, and not just to flee stupidly in terror into various wrong directions.

When I got to see Jackie again, she brought with her a whole bunch of truths of our shared past.  But being here in these new places made me see all of those old things in new light.  She has shared my joys, my complaints, and my experiences since I was 18, meaning over half my life, and now here we were in the present, reveling in the new and old all at once.  We were once young together, and now we’re just as old as “modern” has become.  Which is to say, that while we both still got it going on, and are still pretty sweet little tartes tatins, we’re no longer the baby chickens we once were. 

To get where I am going, and not just plod the road well-traveled, I have to continually re-negotiate my relationship to the world in the past and in the present.

Take Liesel, for example.  She was all au courant in 2005, but now she has certain limitations, her map of the world fixed, stuck in the world of four years ago. 

I wonder about her wrong turns:  were they programmed in from the start?  Does every driver following G.P.S. instructions get diverted off the Promenade des Anglais at the crucial moment?  Does that account for all those cars making U-turns at the next set of lights?   Am I destined to do the same stupid things that everybody does when they get to the exit for 40?

Or is that wrong right turn in Nice Liesel’s private quirk?  Is she trying to route me through the world as it was when she learned it?  Maybe she’s trying to direct me around some danger that no longer exists, or past now-completed construction in Nice.  Maybe she has a faulty map, and I’m trying drive based on outdated truths.

Maybe the road to 40 that she and I are looking for doesn’t even exist anymore.

So here I am, negotiating my relationship to the world in the past and the present.  Which parts of the past do I listen to, and which ones do I not listen to?  How do I get my gut and the maps to align? 

And what do I do when I get to the edge and discover that there is no more map?  Or that I have made (yet another) wrong turn?

Here is my hope: to have the wisdom to hold on to essences: to cling to the best relationships, to my primal love for my family, and to the crucial truths, even as I gain the courage to paint and drive and learn and live in new ways.  

Chez Guillaume

After spending a few days in Paris with Jackie and her mom, we sent a sad and wistful Loni back to New York, and Jackie and I headed back to Aix-en-Provence on the TGV at 200 miles an hour. This time, however, our assigned seats were facing backwards. I watched the misbegotten suburbs of Paris float by into the future, then field after field of white cattle lying down in the rain. The whole trip spooled out backwards (luckily not upside down, I suppose) setting Paris back into its place of beautiful impossibility and bringing me back to the Country Roads where I now belong. Just after we crossed the Rhone from Languedoc into the Cote D'Azur, the clouds cleared from the sky and I was back to our eternally bright sunshiny day.

Once we were back in Diesel Liesel and on our way towards Aups, we called to check in on the crew back home. We were excited (but also a little anxious) to hear that Bill and the girls had been working most of the day to make us a special dinner, theme franglais.

When I walked in the door, there were incredible smells already there to greet me, even before I got enormous hugs and kisses from the girls. Abigail had high ponytails in her hair, and was already standing ready to pour us glasses of white wine from our favorite local vineyard. Grace was wearing a long yellow gingham apron and seemed impossibly grown up. While I had been gone, Grace had magically returned to her old wonderful self, and appeared to be thriving and happy once more. Bill attributed her recovery to the big turkey leg he found at the Aups market on Wednesday, but I would more likely credit the Amoxycillin prescribed on Tuesday afternoon.

For bacterial infections, there's penicillin. But for everything else that ails you, a combination of good food, good wine, and good conversation is the best medicine. I could not believe how much I had missed Bill and the girls, and was eager to see what they had cooked.

Long story short, it was quite the experience. Grace and Abigail had both applied to be waiters at Chez Guillaume, and were competing rather than cooperating in their desire to get things to the table to serve me and Jackie. They veered back and forth between totally adorable and just flat out fighting. At moments, they looked like a couple on Dancing With the Stars who thought they were supposed to beat one another rather than the other contestants.

Bill had put little radishes on the outside table, as well as pickles and little sausages. I didn't ask what animal they came from. It's never a good thing to think about these things too closely unless you're actually shopping and therefore deciding among donkey, wild boar, and regular old Wilbur-flavor.

While Bill pushed hard for Jackie to try some pastis for the full Provençal experience, she wisely stuck with the wine. Grace and Bill finished off the French onion soup, pushing slices of bread onto the top and covering the whole with comte to put in the oven. Abigail treated us to some stories, some more wine, and some backbends. She loves to show off her backbends. I'm glad that she did them, and equally glad that the staff at Guy Savoy refrained.

I helped Grace to set the big table in the crazy Moroccan dining room and we all ate our yummy gloopy soup. Our wait staff once again lept up to volunteer to clear the plates. I began to wonder if Bill had given the girls something stronger than penicillin to get them to behave this way, then realized that I was on the receiving end of actual gratitude. They were as happy to have me home as I was to walk in the door.

However, there were some significant missteps here and there in the second course. The mashed potatoes turned out to actually be boiled apples. When poor Bill started to carve the duck, it seemed somehow to wrestle him back, requiring him to take the dish back to the kitchen in order to eviscerate it with his bare (now greasy) hands. Through it all, Jackie maintained her composure, and stuck mainly to the bread and olive oil, always a safe choice at a potentially problematic restaurant. By the time the enormous apple pie arrived at the table (with one big slice already taken out of it) the previously attentive staff had all quit their posts and were either dancing around the table or slipping off to watch Sponge Bob before the proprietor noticed.

Impressed with his style, and curious about his methods, I later interviewed Chef Guillaume to learn more about this impressive meal. This time we were all in the kitchen cleaning up. Well, to be clear, I was just typing, while Bill and Jackie were cleaning up.

Launa: Bill, you created a great meal the other evening as Jackie and I were coming back from the TGV. How did you decide on the menu?

Bill: Oh, I don't want to be interviewed. Can't you just write this one?

Launa: But you mentioned something earlier about burnt toenails. They didn't make it into the meal, did they?

There was a long, thoughtful pause before regular old Bill once again became a renowned chef of the Cuisine Franglais.

Guilaume: Launa, you don't decide on a menu. A menu decides on you. I mulled it over for days and days, waiting for inspiration. Not kidding. And I kept thinking bout those cartoons where somebody is cooking, then the steam turns into a little fist, and smacks the chef in the nose, and I was just waiting for that to happen to me with the food.

At first I was going to make Duck A L'Orange, in a nod to my Franglais roots; I thought that a dish that American housewives could make couldn't be that hard. Then I looked into it, and saw that it was just going to be completely impossible. Plus I wasn't sure I would be able to get the ingredients.

And then I wasted a lot of time reading this Elizabeth David cookbook to get an authentic recipe for onion soup.

Launa: You mean the kind I told you how to make right before I left?

Guillaume: Your recipe is fine, but I didn't want to take any shortcuts or use bouillion or anything. So I turned to Mrs. David, who had strong opinions on the topic. She seemed to think nothing of spending five full days just making the broth to get to onion soup. This seemed like the kind of authentic meal I wanted to make.

If her recipe were written in stepwise fashion, it would start with: "Find a cow." Then it would move onto "render the cow." Then "cook the other parts in these other recipes . Then cook the cow's feet off and boil those for two days with seven different specific kinds of vegetables."

Launa: Is that how you ended up with the burnt toenail problem?

Guillaume: Almost. I went down to the butcher and asked for good bones for soup. The first time I went he told me I could have them, but I would have to return. The second time, when he told me he would be there, the store was fermé. The third time, he brought out an enormous bone that was out of a kind of dinoasuar. He put it under a saws-all and told me to boil up two chunks and promised me that it would make delicious soup if I just boiled it for awhile. I thought, this country rocks.

I did exactly what he said, then I followed Elizabeth David exactly. I cooked it for basically two days straight, while the kids kept complaining that it made the house stink. And when was about to put it in the onion soup, I had a moment when I finally admitted to myself, "there is a funny smell in the kitchen." I had spent a long time on those onions, and thought that maybe I should listen to that still small voice of fear and reality before ruining them.

I poured some into a spoon, took a good whiff, and finally admitted to myself that the kids had been right: the kitchen had been smelling bad for two days. And then it hit me, I knew that smell: it smelled like when you cut your toenails off and set them on fire.

Jackie, (incredulous): did you used to do that?

Guillaume: Well, not every day.

But then I tasted it, and first I thought I was going to throw up into the soup itself. Then I thought, maybe this is just an acquired taste, like andouilette or stockfish soup, or most cheese: things that taste good but have bad smells. Then I thought, don't bullshit yourself man, this is serious. Then I poured it down the drain. Immediately. I should have flushed it down the toilet, but I had to get it away from me as soon as possible.

Launa: Jackie, do you think Guy Savoy has ever had a moment like this?

Jackie: I'm sure Guy has had his toenail moments. But they might not smell like actual toenails. There is no way to reach levels of genius without failure.

Guillaume: In the life of every chef, there are always moments when you think, "What the f-ing hell was that?" But there can be no antithesis without hypothesis.

Launa: Didn't you get that backwards?

Guillaume: Whatever. This toenail soup was antithesis, for sure.

So I resorted to using bouillon from the store. I guess once again you were right.

But you asked me about where the menu came from. So I just decided, I'm going to go down to the market and buy whatever looks good. And I was going to get a duck, because I like duck. At least when other people make it. I wanted to make apple pie to indicate the Franglais nature of the meal. Also because it is the only dessert that I have ever made.

But first I want to tell you about how I found the duck. I asked all around the market for a duck, and everybody said, "That lady sells great duck. But you're going to have to ask her today and then come back in three weeks, when the duck has been fattened up."

Luckily, this turned out not to be true. She had a perfectly fat duck for me right away, and she was very happy to sell it to me. But it was not prepared at all. It had been plucked, but when she pulled it out of the bag, it still had its head on. She had removed the innards, which were sitting in a giant plastic tub on the counter. She pulled the duck out.

She told me exactly how to make it, which was exactly the opposite of what the recipe said. And I told her it was my first time cooking duck, and she laughed and said, "You're going to need a lot of good luck."

She chopped off the head, reached into a bowl full of innards with her bare hand, and filled the duck with duck heart and guts.

I was freaked out and said, "What are you doing?" And she said, "You will love these. These are delicious."

So you are also probably wondering how I got the amazing dried out, paté-like quality in the duck. I scrupulously followed two completely different recipes simultaneously to cook it. One said to do it on high heat for 15 minutes at the beginning, and one said to do it at the end, so I did both.

I completely ignored the old woman in the market. Her instructions probably would have resulted in a nice juicy piece of duck that you could get anywhere.

Launa: I thought it was delicious. I was surprised it proved so difficult to wrestle into submission. Speaking of submission, what can you tell me about your relationship with your staff? They seem to be a high-spirited group; much more so than Guy Savoy's. What is your ethic of service?

Guillaume: My ethic is that I tell you to do something and you do it. Their ethic is that I tell them to do something, then they whine about it and ask to do something more fun. There was also a big fight over who got to wear the apron. I tried to fire them several times, but they kept coming back.

Launa: Jackie, did you notice any big differences between the staff at Chez Guy and Chez Guillaume?

Jackie: There was a major height difference, to begin with. And athough it might have happened out of view, I don't believe that any staff at Guy Savoy quit mid meal and decided that they had something better to do. This staff also let you have your space. I had the impression that if I got up and left midmeal, my napkin would remain where I had left it.

Guillaume: Well, I'm sure that dinner at Guy Savoy was great and all. But how well would he cook if he had to feed his staff and put them to bed while cooking dinner? Anybody can cook; can you cook with Grace and Abigail whining at you?

Jackie: I was a little surprised to see that the apple pie already had a slice taken out of it. Did the staff revolt and take a piece?

Guillaume: Actually, that was the second pie, after the disaster pie. There is a little problem, in that Apple pie is an American dish. So only American measurements work. And then when I was making the crust, basically I screwed up on a metric conversion. And we ended up with a ball of flour eight inches wide. And very dry and crumbly.

By then the staff was shouting for more water. They wanted me to put the dough in the sink so it would get more sticky, and I tried to roll it out, it was a total disaster, and there were two tantrums, and they both got sent to their rooms. Actually there were three. And then a fourth when I came back, and realized what a mess we had made.

Jackie: I would like to see what happens when the staff at Guy Savoy has a tantrum.

Launa: Time outs, and then Guy keeps all the tips for the night. So Bill, how did you select the wines?

Bill: What did we drink that night?  (Long pause.  Then smile of recognition.)

Oh, I can tell you exactly how those wines were selected. There is a nice little vineyard just outside of Villecroze. And inside that nice little vineyard is a nice little tasting room. And inside the nice wood paneled tasting room, there is a very nice looking woman who serves you as much free wine as you want. With no expectation that you will ever leave the store. Or buy anything. So I selected the wine by the looks of the vintner.

Jackie: She clearly enjoys selling it to you as well.

A duck, sliced apples boiling on the stove, a radish dipped in butter and salt, a pie missing a slice. A wine from the next town over and a vintner with her eye on my husband. Two beautiful girls jumping around and singing to us and giving us their whole hearts and their best efforts. A setting sun in the west, and the people I love around the table. I loved every second of that meal, even more than the perfection of a three star restaurant. It didn't matter that the boiled pommes de terres were actually pommes, or that the gravy wouldn't thicken, or that the beans were cold. I loved every little bite, every glimpse of the girls, every hug they would slip in between courses and serving and clearing.

When you have dinner at Chez Guillaume, the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts.

No. I mean it.

When French people say no, and mean it, first they cross their arms at you.  If you don't immediately relent, you get the big old finger waggle.  

Jackie's pictures of Tourtour