The Love of My Life

              In all this chit-chat about Frenchmen, it dawned upon me that I really haven't touched upon this country, or why I am here in the first place, and even what really propelled me here and why I've stayed so long. Many American gals find themselves here at some point for a semester or a year during their undergraduate career and hop right back over the ocean afterward. Another lot come over after school to teach English for the French government (like I did) and then again, return home. Another batch of those gals, even fewer, stay on for higher degrees after teaching English and then, once again, return home. Then there are the few and the bold who never return home, but ¨come home,¨ and never leave France again.

               Am I going to become one of those few?

               Perhaps.

              Who the hell knows? I don't have any answers at this point.

             But what I can tell you is about my story with this country, why it is mine and why it is so special to me, and why--despite it taking me this long to figure out--France is the love of my life.

              Consider this my love song to France.

* * * 

              My love of this country goes back to single digits. I am four and my mom reads me Madeleine before I go to bed.

                   I kiffe this book so hard it sets off the beginning of a life-long obssession with this country, proof that books really can change lives, if this literature girl ever needed more solid proof of that.

                   Fast forward to the 5th grade. At this point, I'm eleven and enrolled in GATE classes. We have a project to present to the class ten words and phrases in a foreign language of our choice. Of course, my choice is French. For Christmas that year, my mom gets me another life changing book:

                 
                     This time, it's the story of an American girl who writes to a French boy, with side by side translations. And I literally remember sitting glued to this book in my step dad's lazy boy arm chair scanning the pages word for word trying to memorize the translation of English words in French. I was hooked. 

* * * 

                    Malheureusement, in America, kids have to wait ( for the most part ) until high school to learn a foreign language, and by then it's a sad, two-year requirement sort of affair, and most kids drop foreign language study after that like a hot tamale. At least in California, where I grew up. Luckily I had the option to study French for four years. I started at fourteen and I bolted like an Alaskan sled dog racing the Iditarod to my second period French class my first day of high school, I was so so so excited.

                    And then I became that girl. The annoying as hell beotch who, despite reading Molière's Tartuffe in English translation in her English class, INSISTED on reading it with a faux French accent aloud, much to the dismay of the ENTIRE SOPHOMORE CLASS. The insane chick who, when reading Patrick Suskind's Perfume as a senior, produced a phonetic pronunciation guide for her class because she couldn't stand to hear her beloved second tongue butchered. The girl who was predictably the French club president, attempted to make quiche and King's Cake and sables among a myriad batch of other things from scratch. The young teenage girl who, rather shamefully and bashfully, admits here that when she saw Disney's Ratatouille in theaters, she weeped a little bit at the scenes in which Remy peers over the Parisian night sky. The young woman who dreamed that one day, despite not knowing how, she would visit that country she loved on the other side of the Atlantic.

*  *  * 

                     Once I got to college, I figured I'd keep up my French. You know, just so I wouldn't lose it. I hadn't considered being a French major. What, after all, would I do with that? But then I threw in the kit and caboodle and double majored in two languages and literatures. Without a single regret. And after a collegiate existential crisis of figuring out I DIDN'T want to be a lawyer (thank you two internships!) I took a hard look at what I really loved, and one answer leaped out at me: I love French. 

                      So I became a French major. And then I got it into my head that I wanted to become a French professor. An honors thesis ensued with an adorable little Parisian professor. While I knew I wanted to go to grad school, I also knew I was burned out and needed a break. My senior year I was accepted to become an English Teaching Assistant through TAPIF and I was assigned to Parisian suburbs to teach elementary school kids English for nine months. 

                     France was finally within reach. 

*  *  * 

        

                       The night before boarding my first flight to France at SFO, I was afraid. Afraid I would get to France and be disappointed, or that it wouldn't be what I was expecting, or that I'd be really homesick. That I wouldn't mesh with the country I had dreamed about and fallen so in love with all these years. 

                      Luckily, none of that proved to be true. None of it happened. In fact, quite the opposite: I fell ten times more in love. My French rapidly improved. I lived with a French family and learned a ton about French culture. My accent smoothed itself out, becoming less and less pronounced. 

                      I did not want to leave after my teaching contract. I still envisioned a career in academia, and my honors thesis adviser ( the adorable Parisian ) suggested I stay on for my Masters degree here. So I applied, was accepted, and did. 

                       My first year of Master's study, I worked on the 17th century. Low and behold, after a fair amount of genealogical research, my stepdad discovered that ( as fate would have it ) I am French on my mother's side. Our ancestors left France under Louis XIV mid-17th century to found Montréal in Canada, which is how we made it to the US. But in the sixty-page treasure trove of a PDF documenting our family tree, we have the likes of Archange Langlois, Marguerite Le Preuvier, Simon Drouillard, and Catherine Guichelin. Born and baptized in various parts of France, mostly Normandy, others in the Gâtinais, and even a decent chunk from Paris. Of those born in Paris, they were baptized in the likes of Saint-Sulpice and Saint-Germain-dès-Pres and even Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. One of our ancestors was even the coachman for Queen Anne of Austria, the mother to Louis XIV.

                       Is it serendipity I chose to study the 17th century long before I ever knew this about my family roots? Or is it just buried deep within my blood? 

                       I often walk home from campus on foot, traversing the Left Bank from the 5th to the 7th, in a pleasant stroll that I know by heart, passing by the above mentioned churches. I cannot help but gaze at them in awe and feel an intense connection to them knowing my ancestors set foot there. I cannot help but cherish walking down rue de Seine and rue de Buci in the Odéon region of Paris knowing my ancestors lived there. 

                       It all makes sense now: French, and France, is in my blood. 

*  *  * 

                       Over the past two years, I have assimilated in this country. My French is strong enough and my accent smooth enough that the French often mistake me for French. I couldn't be more damn proud of that fact. It has only taken a life time of dreaming, ten years of study, three of them extremely intensive and in immersion on site, to achieve that. 

                        If you had asked me five years ago if I would ever expatriate, I would've laughed in your face. If you had told me I'd consider becoming a dual citizen, I would've laughed even harder. But somehow, it seems, I am doing these things. It is when I think back upon the fact that, for many, many years, my mother would remind me just how worldly I am, that this all seems to make some sort of sense to me.  

                          I like to joke now that I am not expatriating; I am simply ¨repatriating¨ the family back to where it rightfully belongs. 

*  *  * 

                       It was in September of last year, after 'breaking up' with E, if you want to call it that, that it hit me: I am not in love with these Frenchmen, or at least I haven't really truly seriously fallen for one yet, but I am in love with France. I love this country and its roots, its history, its culture, its foundations.  

                       This may sound traitorous, but I have never truly felt American. I have never had a sense of connection to the United States. This is not to say that I do not love my home country and ¨native¨ culture; there are wonderful things about the US of A. But France reverberates within the very chords of my inner being. I absolutely feel in tune with this country. 

*  *  * 

                       For nannying this weekend, I could be found at Disneyland with my two girls, their musician father, his girlfriend, a special Disneyland guide, and a bodyguard. A motley crew of seven people, we were walking through Sleeping Beauty's castle when the Air and Hymn of the French Monarchy, which was written for Henry the 4th, and is also recognizable as the song used in Sleeping Beauty for the arrival of the King and Queen in the film's opening, that it struck me how engrained this all is now. 

                        I turned to my two girl children and explained to them what the song really is and how cool it is and how old it is. Dad and girlfriend were dead silent. 

                        It reminded me of how on Friday, when their dad picked them up from school and I was giving him driving directions through Paris and telling him to pass by the Panthéon that it really hit me how engrained it all is. Dad of girls exclaimed ¨I don't even know what the Panthéon is!¨

                       How can you NOT KNOW what the Panthéon is as a FRENCHMAN and a decently educated one at that? How can you NOT KNOW? 

                       I am ¨American¨ and I know! 

*  *  * 

                       One of the requirements in a naturalisation dossier is that you show proof of assimilation. Most studies show that immigrants assimilate within five years, which explains why most nations require immigrants to be on their territory for at least five before applying for citizenship. This is certainly the case for France. 

                      You also have to show proof of decent knowledge of French history and understanding and acceptance of the French Republique's laws. 

                      Seeing that I know a lot more about French history and culture than a lot of Frenchies, I think we're solid here. Only thing to add to the dossier? A picture of me in a beret with a baguette, cheese, and wine. Bien sûr. 

*  *   * 

                       My nanny boss asked me the other day if I am staying in France for a guy. 

                      ¨No,¨ I explained. 

                      ¨Good,¨ she replied. ¨Because at your age Frenchmen are pretty capricious. They change their minds a lot. They go abroad, they don't commit, they move around. Things aren't solid at this point.¨

                      ¨No,¨ I said again. ¨If I stay, I stay for me. And no one but myself.¨

                      Which is true. I know far too many an Anglosaxon woman who has stayed for the French guy and had it blow up in her face later. I refuse to acquire citizenship through the marriage route. So many women go that route that it's nearly farcical. 

                       If I stay, I stay for me. Which is going to shock the hell out of the préfecture: a single, un-PACS'ed, American woman, asking for French citizenship!? What the hell, are pigs flying?

                       It is nothing in the ordinary. But then again, neither am I. 

*  *  * 

                      France is the love of my life. It has been my whole life long. Now I am at the point where I fully commit to this country. I will be pulling a naturalisation dossier this year. I will be asking for dual citizenship. Not just because I love this country, but because WHY the hell not? I'll admit it's on my bucket list. I'll admit it's also partially strategic: get me an EU passport and I have access to working and living in all of the EU sans visa. Ever. 

                        But most of all, it is because France is the love of my life. 

                        My fear is this: How will I ever explain to Monsieur François Hollande, to the French government, to the Consulate in San Francisco, to the Bureau des Naturalisations at the Préfecture de Police abutting the Hôtel de Ville, and to the intimidating fonctionnaires in charge of my naturalization dossier, that the love of my life is not a person, but a language and a culture and a patrimony and a country?

                         In a nutshell, that's how I got here, to this place and this time and this blog. About dating Frenchmen. Which is really about so much more than Frenchmen.

                         Frenchmen come and Frenchmen go, but France is always with me.