French Class

At around 10:15 this morning I notice I’m having fun.  Each morning this week I’m in French class at the Lyon Bleu.   That means I’m surrounded by nineteen-year-olds from all over the world, plus one unfriendly fifty-something couple from Pittsburgh.  My teacher, Grégory, is twenty-six, and absolutely adorable.  He’s lively, quick, and funny, even while keeping us focused on the difference between when to use de and when to use en.   

Today is “audio-visual” day, and we spend most of the 2 hours and 15 minutes talking about Ben, “l’Oncle Soul.”  Ben, uncle of soul that he may be, is also twenty-six years old and sounds a lot like Otis Redding.  We listen to his song Soulman several times and parse out its every word.  In Soulman, Ben l’Oncle Soul lists a number of famous people whose personality characteristics he lacks (e.g., he does not have the sagesse of Gandhi, the assurance of Mohammed Ali, the bonté of l’Abbé Pierre, nor the aura of Che Guevara.)  You guessed it -- what Ben DOES have, listen up baby (écoute ça, baby), is soul.  (No one knew who l’Abbé Pierre was except for Lise, the young German woman sitting next to me, who insisted he was a famous Chicago gangster.) 

In 1965, I was one of these nineteen year-olds.  I look at their beautiful smooth-skin faces and there I am, my whole life ahead of me.  My mother had just died a few months before, so I was confused, insecure, and sad even as I was thrilled to be in France, learning the lilt of the language.  That’s why I majored in French in college:  because the entire language sounded to me like a song.  All I knew back then was that this was a song I wanted to know how to sing. 

Sitting on my other side is Kayo, from Japan, whose father died two days before the earthquake.  With a brave smile Kayo says everything is fine now.

I want to tell her she doesn’t have to act so brave, but, actually, I guess she does.  Instead, I simply say how sorry I am, and smile whenever she looks my way.