French Toast Read Online Free Page A

Canary Islands, and Spain before hitting my final destination.
    I
loved
Paris. It was all my stepgrandmother had told me, and more. The first night I was in Paris, I boarded a
bateau-mouche
to cruise down the Seine; the air was soft and warm, a man spoke some unintelligible words to me in French, and I was conquered—by the sound of the language, the way people walked and moved, even the air, which seemed different. I felt I had walked into a Toulouse-Lautrec painting. Later, I would find Paris too noisy, too traffic-filled. But that first heady moment was a strong one. I felt I should savor that moment, leave Paris in my mind as a beautiful memory, and head for a new destination—South America. I was on my way when I met Philippe.
    It’s not that he swept me off my feet. In fact, when I saw him, I thought that in my entire life I had never seen anyone with such a scowl on his face. In spite of his expression, though, he had one of the driest, funniest senses of humor I had ever encountered. This very typical, totally chauvinistic (he denies this charge) Frenchman became very good company. And then we married.
    As my husband periodically points out, I chose to come to France, and to stay. I did not arrive kicking andscreaming, someone’s bride, wrested from her native land. I came of my own free will and am free to leave anytime I decide I don’t like this place anymore (he says this on days when I am making critical noises about my adopted land). True, but it’s not so easy. Wherever you live becomes your home, whether you like some of it, all of it, or not much of it. My home is here and I love living in France, but that doesn’t mean that my thoughts about the French are not ambiguous. The cultural gaps, which seemed small twenty years ago, grow larger, not smaller, with time. When you’ve signed on for the long haul, you start to have a definite opinion on matters you didn’t really care all that much about and didn’t have to deal with initially (in my case, the French family, education, attitudes). You are both appreciative and critical of the host culture in a way you wouldn’t be if you had remained safely at home. Even the word
home
takes on a different meaning. Once when I spoke of “home,” I was referring to the United States. Now, I realize “home” is where I live—that is, France.
    As far as I can see, American couples living in France have a very different perception of France and the French. France is an interlude in their lives, but they retain their Americanness as a couple. They are a united front. The adjustments they make to the culture are the ones they wish to make, not ones they have to make.
    With a Franco-American couple, on the other hand, there is always a push and pull—over what language to speak, over what schools to put your kids in, over what religious instruction to give them, if any. Over attitudes. I call the French negative, weighed down by history. My husband says Americans are positive to the point of being naïve because,
justement
, they have no sense of history.
    My first reaction to anything new is always “Fantastic!” My husband’s is “Why change?” We meet a new couple and I say, “Aren’t they nice?” And my husband will say, “They’re rather nice”
(assez gentils)
, which means that if he could get to know them over the next two hundred years, he’d have the time to judge.
    I am overwhelmingly enthusiastic, my husband less so. I don’t suspect everyone I meet of having ulterior motives; my husband is always on his guard. And so on. This doesn’t mean he’s not a great guy, but we find we do have different viewpoints. Fortunately, we have moved beyond the point of taking sides on who is “right” and who is “wrong.” We just chalk up a lot of misunderstandings to cultural differences.
    You come here and you think that (apart from a