habits

Je suis desolee.
In English, I have this unnecessary and somewhat unpleasant, although completely well-intentioned, habit of apologizing for everything. It is something that my mother and father have been picking on me for years, some sort of force that keeps me from doing anything but apologizing, even when things aren’t my fault. “It’s raining outside.” “I’m sorry.” “I was late to my meeting.” “I’m sorry.” “The Eagles lost again this weekend.” “I’m sorry.” Regardless of the conversation, regardless of whether or not I was even involved in the momentary instant of annoyance, I am sorry for it. It’s a habit that I’m working on I swear, but apparently I’m doing it in French too.
My HF and HM comment on it after the first week.
“Why do you apologize so much? Stop apologizing. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I don’t know. I say it a lot in English, too. I can’t help it. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry for being sorry?”
“Hm. Apparently.”
These conversations take place in quick French – my French is definitely improving – but what’s funny is, I think they sound even more ridiculous in French. For whatever reason, I find that my defenses don’t hold up as well; I find myself relaxing more and accepting the fact that there are parts of my life that just don’t translate and there are parts that do that maybe shouldn’t. Like the fact that I’m sorry.
One night at dinner my HF and HM ask me about my religious background. I don’t remember how it comes up but they are curious as to whether or not I’ll be celebrating Yom Kippur this week, that is, if one can actually celebrate it. I explain that I’m Quaker, and they ask if this is Protestant, and I say, it probably was at one point but it’s remarkably different. They ask me to explain and I begin to realize that certain words just don’t translate. Try to explain to someone what the Inner Light is in French. Oh, you know, the lumiere dedans. I’m sure there has to be another way to say it, but I don’t know it, so I wing it. They are fascinated. I am confused. I feel like I’m describing something that is entirely maniacal. Inner light, community and peace, they must think that I’m some crazy granola-eating-birkenstock-wearing-child-of-some-crazy-granola-eating-birkenstock-wearing parents.
“Is this a religion from the sixties?”
“Actually, the 17th century.”
“Are your parents Quakers?”
“That’s even more complicated.”
“Are there lots of Quakers?”
“Define ‘lots.’”
If there’s one thing I’m picking up here, it’s something about the art of conversation. They enjoy a good banter, they enjoy a good question. They have endless questions, my HF and HM, but they are genuinely curious in a way that my family in Bordeaux was not. I feel less like a neighbor being spied upon, a curiosity, and more like someone they are trying to actually understand. It is in the middle of this conversation, when I am just starting to get frustrated because I feel like I sound like I am out of my mind, that my HF speaks up and says something so wonderful, so delicate, so thoughtful that I hope I can translate it without losing its power. He says,
“The issue is that there are really two types of religion for everyone. There’s the part that you outwardly practice, the part that you attend services, you make changes to your life, you join a community, you act upon. That’s the part you can discuss. But the part that is within you, that part of you that only your heart, your soul can know, that’s the part you can’t really discuss. In any language. It just doesn’t translate into any words.”
I am sorry for not being able to explain more of the former or the latter, but I am told that I have no reason to be sorry.
Each day here matters. I’m seeing the sights of course – climbed the Eiffel Tower, and the bell towers of Notre Dame, and the Arc de Triumphe – already been to the Musee d’Orsay, the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume and have plans to see four more museums at least– already seen one piece of theater and am scheduled to see five more – been to two famous cemeteries and seen the Moulin Rouge – had coffee at the café where Amelie worked in that wonderful movie – and have found my own little café where I like to write and read on Tuesday mornings. I’ll start my internship this week working in a third grade classroom for a bilingual progressive school called the Ecole Aujourd’hui. Each of these things are great – my classes, my host family, the fact that I can go to a local Boulangerie to pick up the bread for my family (they’ve assigned me that daily task) and they know who I am there. But the moments that take place in conversation, when I am thrown completely out of my Anglophone world and put at a table with two incredibly curious and lovely adults, those are the moments I can hear myself (in French and inside) expand. Changing habits, thinking more.