Strange, But True

I adore my mother-in-law. Really, I do. And, although I think she occasionally finds me strange, I would like to think that she feels likewise. She does seem to relish my company. For example, a few weeks ago she called me into her house, and we had a one-hour chat about nothing much really. Just before I had to go, she dropped the bomb: "I'm getting a boob job."

A firm believer in everyone's right to self-improvement, I told her, "Go for it!" But as someone with a very low tolerance for pain, I had to warn her that I had read in Asia Carrerra's website that silicone implants hurt. She didn't know Asia (Me? I swear I was at the website for the makeup tips!), but told me, "Don't worry about it, I'm not getting implants. I'm just going to get them lifted, because they're sagging, you see." And then she lifted her shirt to show me the sad state of her mammaries.

Later that day, to my husband I announced, "Your mom showed me her boobies!"

"No, that can't be," he began. "She's always been a prude. Not me, not even my sister, maybe my dad. No one has ever seen her naked." It was obvious that he was only half-believing me.

We forgot all about it, until after the operation, when to my terrace mother-in-law came to show me her bandaged babies.

"Wow!" I exclaimed, genuinely impressed. "They're proud and perky."

"Touch them," she told me. "No!" Now I was feeling more than uneasy.

This time she commanded me: "Touch!" So what could I do. They were as firm as a sixteen-year-old's, I tell you.

Meanwhile, my husband still couldn't believe all this exhibitionism was happening. Then yesterday, as we were driving past his mom's, he quietly announced: "She did it to me too."

"What," I asked, looking out the window, a bit absent-mindedly.

"She showed her boobs to me."

I fumbled for my cellphone. "Should I call a psychiatrist? You're going to need therapy now, aren't you, honey." Then I began to laugh, but he only sighed and shook his head, trying to empty it of the traumatizing memory.

Suddenly, A Movie Review (well, sort of)

Yesterday, after finally finishing a project that I'd been procrastinating on, I decided that as reward I would park myself in front of the television and watch the first Filipino movie I would see in two years. Five shirts and a pair of pants have been waiting crumpled in the clean laundry pile forever, so I decided to attack those too. So there I was at six p.m., watching Milan, ironing clothes, crying during Claudine Barretto's breakdown scene, feeling absolutely OFW!

P.S. If he reads this, Raymond Lee might well give me a boink on the head while saying, "Ano ba, Apol, Milan is so old. I'm in my Maximo Olivares era na, ano!" But I do have a quibble with the script: Why is it that, a quarter of the time, the Pinoy characters speak Italian to each other?

Whenever I find myself in the company of Filipinos, I immediately switch to Tagalog, and as pure as I can manage it while still being conversational. The long periods of not being able to speak my mother tongue and the hunger to express myself in it whenever the opportunity arrives have even reduced my tendency to speak Taglish. I can't imagine myself conversing in French with Makis and Hazel, except maybe to joke around or when we're with French people, so when the Milan characters start going, "Amore" and "Pronto" to each other, it strikes me as very odd. This is terribly corny, but as a Filipino living somewhere far from home, I find incredible comfort, and sometimes even strength, in speaking the language of my heart.

Out Gardening

While all of France is caught up in the presidential elections, all I'm really concerned about are the goings-on in my garden.

I gathered wild garlic from a field in Salvetat and replanted them in a deep pot, hoping they'll thrive here in the Midi. For a good quarter-hour yesterday, I hand-picked the snails infesting my iris, then drowned the pests in vinegar, their punishment for daring harm the bearded beauties that are blooming so well this season. After much research, I've figured out what plants can survive the poor soil and the heat of where we live, so I've brought in ornamental grasses--Festuca glauca and Carex buchanani--as well as sempervivums and various sedums--acre, spectabile, monregalense, and reflexum. The Pampas grass we dug out of a nearby field and replanted here last autumn is currently testing its new home with a few tentative blades. Roses like sandy soil and lots of sun; they grow well here. So I've taken cuttings from Jeanette's profuse peach variety and pray that it's not too late for them to root. To give them a boost, I soaked the eight-inch long tips in weak tea made from split-open willow twigs. The oleander cuttings have received the same treat.

When I do wash my hands of soil and brush up on current events, I find myself drawn to the colorful first-round losing candidate José Bové, high-school kick-out, defender of sheep farmers, Roquefort cheese-maker, marijuana decriminalization adherent, one-time Rainbow Warrior passenger, organic farming proponent, genetically modified organisms enemy, and, in connection to this last and most famously, a McDonald's dismantler.

On top of all that, I have to admit, I am awfully attracted to his posters decorated with a giant coquelicot, my favorite spring flower.

Unsettling Moment

There I was, watching a documentary on a Palawan tribe, lost as to what the tribespeople were saying except for the occasional word shared with Tagalog--"babae," "lalaki," "oo"--reading the subtitles meant for the citizens of this foreign land to understand one of the languages of my own country.

Photograph, In Words

Strangely beautiful sight seen today: A half-naked young man--blue jeans holding on to a strip of brown leather belt, pale winter skin teased by spring sunshine--standing in the middle of a wide field, accompanied only by rows of grape vines just beginning to leaf, blowing on a golden trumpet, offering his music to the wind somewhere on that long, quiet road to Arles.

Scene from a Marriage

I was nagging my husband: "I've decided that I want a child. Now, I know you're not so hot on the idea of having one, but you better think about it again, because I know I want to have a baby, and I'm not going to stay with a guy who doesn't want to have one with me."

For a few days, he was being wishy-washy, trying to get me convinced that we should only consider having a child if we could be back in the Philippines the first few years of the baby's life, because then we could afford yayas, and having help really makes things easier during those difficult infant years. Then one evening he comes home, and goes all emotional on me.

"I have something to say," he began, his eyes tearing up. "Life is going well for us, and we're in love. In fact, we're the happiest couple I know. So I realized that this is really the best time for it. Yes, let's have a child. Let's have a child right now."

"Huh," went I. "Right now?"

"Yes," he affirmed.

"Uhm, you know, I didn't mean rrrrr-right now," I stuttered. "I just wanted to know that the option of having a child was open."

He only stared.

"Like, if I felt that I was ready to have one, we could. But I didn't mean right now. Maybe, in two years or four. Or maybe even later. Just so I know that the option is there, you get it?"

I know, I am an impossible wife.

Lovely Weekend

I find that the best way to recover from an injury is to pretend that it's not there. So off we went to Salvetat, to stay at a house beside the lake. (That's me, limping but up and about!)

We brought along some wine, a bottle of pastis, and food enough to see us through a night and a day spent with really cool people.

I also packed my pearls and a bias-cut skirt. It was Karine's birthday, we were having a party in the evening, and the invitation said to come all sexy and glamorous. Now familiar with the quirky sense of humor of people in these parts, I really should have known better...

Sexy was interpreted by artist Emeline as giant boobs with the perkiest nipples made out of foam and resin for the girls.

And the guys decided that glamourous meant walking around half-naked all night wearing neckties and body hair.

Or maybe the nudity we can attribute to the twenty empty bottles of various types of alcohol we were throwing into the garbage by Sunday's end?

Skiing Lesson

Before the fall...

I am ready for anything, will try everything at least once, and if I really, really want something, I won't give up until I get it. My friends will tell you that my middle name is "Game!"

For the Easter weekend we decided to go skiing. A sport I had decided I adored, despite two factors that would have made anyone else think otherwise: I come from the tropics, where if it snowed it meant that the end of the world was nigh, and I'd only done it once before, and then just for two hours. This time I had three entire days! By day number three, gung-ho creature that I am, I felt I was ready to go up the steep red slopes. I glided down nice and easy. Once on the easier blue, however, I fell badly, hit my chin with a ski and got up feeling a throbbing in my right knee. I was determined, so despite that I felt my jaw going numb and my ears ringing, I pushed off. It took my husband noticing that my chin was dripping blood to make me stop.

Trips to the first-aid station for a band-aid and to the café for a Coke Light later, I was insisting that I was okay. Convincing myself that my knee was only mildly uncomfortable, I got on the lifts again. Bad move. Doing an easy turn, I felt the knee do a double clack and fold up on me. No amount of stubborn pushing myself could do anything--the knee had had enough of skiing.

These days I'm looking like the bride of Frankenstein, with a stitch on my chin and a hideous contraption on my right leg. I’m told that if I hadn’t forced it that second time, my knee would have been okay after a good night’s sleep. Instead the doctor has forbidden me sports for ten days. Quite an unnecessary reminder, really, as right now all I can manage to do is hobble from bedroom to kitchen with much difficulty.

Eastertime lesson: While “Game!” is good, one should also have the wisdom to know when to call a Time Out.

Beefcake of the Month

Because, after many visits to the mechanic's, the secondhand motorcycle that he bought for himself last Christmas is finally in good working condition.

Because never mind that the mechanic called the Honda a "grandmother," this motorcycle is exactly of the same type he used when he was in his teens and twenties driving all around Europe being young and absolutely crazy.

Because extra insurance money let him buy a spanking new leather jacket.

Because even if he was a hardcore biker, he never did buy a motorcycle jacket ever before, the last one he was using was a hand-me-down from friend Babs, and even that was already 10 years old when he was given it.

And really just because I think he's hot.

Tsismosa, Ako

May ilan akong kakilala na ang buong akala ay sumkinda wild child ako. Sumkinda true naman. Aaminin ko, may pagka-lukaret ako. Pero dito, sa bagong bansang ito, naipamukha sa akin na meron din akong aspetong konserbatibo. Hindi ko alam kung bakit (nasa alignment kaya ng planets?) pero sa kasalukuyan ay napapaligiran ako ng mga babaeng may asawa o nobyo, pero mayroon ding pangalawang pag-ibig. Pramis, hindi makitid ang utak ko. Naniniwala ako na kailangan nating hayaan ang bawat isa na buhayin ang buhay na magpapaligaya sa kanya. Pero pag kuwentong kalaguyo na, napapanganga ako. Kapag nagsasalaysay ang mga girl friends ko tungkol sa kani-kanilang pamamangka sa dalawang ilog, sa loob-loob ay napapa-ohmygod ako. Tapos, natatawa ako sa sarili ko. Kasi kahit saanman ako dalhin, hindi ko yata talaga makakalimutan ang mga turo ng loka-loka-pero-relihiyosang nanay ko.

They're Back!

I blogged about them last March, and here they are again: a family of five flamingos (one is camera-shy) has, for the last two weeks, been coming every few days to feed in our marsh. Last Friday there I was, eating the best oysters in the world that Tonton Dedou gathers from where they grow wild in the Salins du Midi, squeezing on them drops from the lemons freshly picked from Tante Jackie's garden, in between slurping down mollusks looking out the window to admire my occasional neighbors, thinking that life rarely gets better than this.

Sigh...

Maybe because it's the first day of spring, but I really can't get any work done. Instead I'm sipping a glass of California zinfandel (Ssshhhhhh.... Don't tell my vine-growing neighbors!), looking at all the new pictures sent by a best friend in the cusp of a romance, wishing Pierre and I were back on that island in the middle of nowhere, not thinking of grownup responsibilities, instead playing footsie on the beach and watching sunsets, falling in love all over again. What can I say, today I'm 34 going on 16.

Everybody Has An Accent

My friend Garch is impossibly adorable, so every time he would nag me about how I pronounced certain English words, I would humor him. I say "chocolate" as regular Filipinos would, "cho-ko-leyt," but I think he found this insufferably pedestrian. He insisted that I say it brisk. So "choc-lit." Same with "Jesus." I say it "jee-soos," with the lips rounded off at the end; but Garch always corrected me. "It's 'jee-saz.'" He would make me say it with the lips stretched out. As I said, he's adorable otherwise, so I'd say the words like he wanted to hear them whenever he was around.

If you grew up in the Philippines, you'd be conscious of a certain snobbery--let's admit it now--a feeling of superiority amongst people who said those English words perfectly correct. There is a wrong way and a right way to pronunciation: Very wrong would be how the Visayan nanny stereotypically spoke, pronouncing pink as "penk" and tricycle as "tray-si-kol." So right would be, for example, the articulation of former ABS-CBN TV show host Cher Calvin, who grew up in the States. We try oh-so-hard to do it how it's supposed to be done, that is to say, with an American twang.

I land here and in the very beginning speak French like I'd hear in their movies, with the curt, Parisian accent. My husband and his family would have none of it; they always corrected me. It didn't take long for me to be using the deliciously robust word endings of the South. Last December, I go to language school in the nearby city of Montpellier. One of the teachers think I'm almost a real bilingual (she only knew I spoke English aside from French, as there was never any occasion to communicate with her in Filipino), another tells me to tone the accent down, try to sound like they do in Paris.

Fast forward to a few weeks later, when I introduce my southern-French husband to a couple of Swiss friends. "The Swiss really speaks French funny," Pierre said after they had left. Later on he meets my Belgian climbing buddy, who speaks French, Flemish, and English. "You're not French, right?" Pierre asked her. "You have an accent." The Belgian replied, "No, I'm not, but it's only now that I'm here in France that I find out I speak the language with an accent." Spunky girl that she is, she adds, "Hey, you're French, but you also have an accent."

The brouhaha is not limited to the Philippines, France, Switzerland, and Belgium, I tell you. In the climbing club there are three Spaniards and one Ecuadorian who always hang out together. "So it's the same kind of Spanish in both your countries?" I ask Marcos, the scientist from Ecuador. "Pretty much," he replies, "just certain words are not the same, and also the pronunciation." A pause and he adds, "The Spaniards, you know, they don't speak Spanish correctly. They don't have the right accent!"

So Garch, I know you speak Spanish and you do it like your insulares ancestors did, but I'm not going to go all Ecuadorian on you. After that long blog post all I really want to know is this: Can I just keep on saying "cho-ko-leyt"?

Love at 64

A table for two, photo by Nicky Sering.

They met at a New Year's Eve ball. She was feeling lonely, and he asked her to dance. At the end of the night, he also asked for her phone number, and while usually she doesn't do such things, this time she scribbled it down. Maybe it was his friendly blue eyes (definitely it was not the mustache that reminded her of a rat's whiskers). Soon they were dating regularly. Once they went for a wintertime walk on the beach. Often, they would have dinner at his place. He made her feel special, how he would insist that she do nothing, just sit down and listen to some music or watch TV. He, meanwhile, took care of everything else, cooked the meal and even insisted on washing the dishes. He paid attention to what she had to say, did things to please her (yes, even trimming his whiskers!). This was so different from what she had been used to, when she had first been in love many years ago.

But, no, she would tell family and friends, this was not love. She was not in love, she insisted. She just enjoyed his company, that was all. Yet given the chance she could talk about him for an hour. Also, she maintained, she had no intention of ever living with him. She was perfectly fine being a single girl, treasured the fact that she could do what she wanted when she wanted and how she wanted. She had every intention of keeping her independence, she declared. Despite the speech, in the mornings when they look out their window, her neighbors have gotten used to seeing the car of the man who is not supposed to live there still in the spot where he had parked it the night before.

My girl friends, take heart! I have recently discovered that romance can be available to women all their lives. The lead character in this story--the one who smiles all the time now, who these days is always well-coiffed and well-dressed, and who talks about her dates as effusive as if she were a teenager--the woman is my mother-in-law Jeanette who, after nine years of widowhood and at the age of 64 has, without expecting it, found Alain. Believe me when I tell you: Sexagerians still bloom!

Performance Anxiety

I knew that this blog was going to be featured as some kind of must-read in Mabuhay magazine, but the writer is someone I know and love, so when she told me, I was thinking quite foolishly that it was going to be just a little piece passed between girl friends, no biggie at all. And then I read Katrina's comment in the last post, and I looked up the blog where she found out about the writeup, and because I am admittedly tsismosa, I went to the comments box of that blog and found people I do not know at all talking about "the provenciana." I was a magazine writer for a decade, so I was surprised to find myself going inside my head, "Oh my god!" But there it was. I was nervous and, I have to admit, a little bit afraid. These readers may well find my accounts of gendarme visits and fighting with ignorant barmen banal and self-absorbed. Nyarks! went I. Must I now start talking about Sarkozy's immigration policy and the traitorous nature of a dual citizenship? All that important stuff, you know.

Carnavaling in Nice

I swear I try my best. I go somewhere and start out acting all cool and proper and my age,

BEFORE: around 7 in the evening,
at a café in the old part of Nice, having
delicate glases of kir with friends.

but as my mom will tell you, I was born hyperactive. And I haven't been cured of the malady. Give me any reason to have fun and make a party, I'll be grabbing it.

AFTER: At the Promenade des Anglais, at the height of the
Carnaval , bombarded with silly string and confetti, some of which
I'm sure I swallowed, given how big my open mouth was.

I imagine I'll be one of those grandmothers wearing feathered purple hats and dancing the mambo into their eighties...

(Maya took the pictures. For deeper insights on the merits of silly string, go to her blog through my links.)

Back from Nice

Utah, the monster dog.

I am barefoot on my terrace, swinging on a hammock, the unseasonably warm weather making me think of Camembert left to melt on the grill at the end of a summer barbecue. The husband is working just a few meters away, the cat is in her basket napping, and the dog who is visiting for a week is slobbering copiously. Five seagulls are making a racket as they dive for the old bread I had left for them on the marsh. I don't think dogs eat live bird, but it does make me wonder. Does the labrador hear their cries as a dinner bell's clanging?

The weekend in Nice with old friends was very, very interesting, but it feels good to be home.

People in My Neighborhood

Her name is Gudrun, and she runs a bed and breakfast some two kilometers from where I live. Born East German, she has called France home for the last thirty years.

"I came before the Wall came down," she told me over coffee and biscuits.

Looking at the cane she held in her right hand and remembering how earlier she had had me run up to the second floor to fetch a forgotten key because she managed the stairs but with difficulty, I went for the obvious; I asked, "So you jumped over from the other side?"

"Ah," the reply came with the appropriate enigmatic smile, "it was much more complicated than that." Gudrun paused for a beat, and after would give me nothing more to satisfy the curiosity. She changed the subject.

Impossible to resist whispers of intrigue and mystery! I have turned village tsismosa, and am determined to get invited another time for coffee.

Ranting and Raving

Art shot that has nothing at all to do
with the contents of this blog entry.

Every Filipino immigrant will have tales of little indignities and humilations to tell, injurious encounters with stereotypes and prejudices. Each one will tell you his own way of dealing with being a stranger in a land where the locals are occasionally assholes. I'm betting that majority will say that the best defense is no defense. Either get away from the situation or, if that's not possible, swallow your hurt and smile if you can. Unfortunately, I'm no Gandhi. What suits my temperament best, I find, is to look the monster in the eye and tell it to go back to the dark uneducated hole it came from.

The monster this last time was a small-village barman in his sixties, and the eyes, as is often the case with people of his profession, were rheumy. If that weren't enough to tell you who he was, just look at the popped blood vessels of an old alcoholic all abloom on his nose. We were there for hot chocolate, but he decided he'd also serve us with conversation. The group being multicultural, naturally he began by asking from where we came.

"Ah, the Philippines," his eyes lit up when he heard it. He proceeded to say he had friends over there--presumably as ancient and as potbellied as he--prolonging the life of their retirement euros where everything costs three times less. "It's a poor country," he said. "For you to be studying here, your parents must be capitalist businessmen. Are your parents rich?" I just looked at him, mildly appalled at the tactlessness.

The Belgian girl beside me corrected the assumption, saying I was here married to someone French. "Ah," he was at it again. You knew from the tone of his voice and how he smiled that he actually thought he was being friendly. "You got lucky. You found a way out."

Stunned, I was silent for a beat, during which the Belgian chick tried to come to my rescue by saying, "But no, it was her husband who got lucky!" But I never needed any saving.

"Monsieur," I finally found my voice, icy-cold though it was this time, "I did not get married to my husband to escape my country. Rest assured that I had a very good job and a very good life over there." I looked at him with what I tried very hard to be a withering stare. "I am not some poor, ignorant country girl, do you get that?"

At least he got that he wasn't welcome near our table, so he muttered something unintelligible before lumbering away. One of the French guys with us tried to calm me: "I don't think he meant it." And that is exactly my point. Very few of them mean it. They open their mouths to display how their thinking has been malformed by stereotypes and prejudices, and when confronted with how they had been offensive, they'll say they didn't mean it. They just didn't know any better. Are we to let them continue using ignorance as an excuse to do harm?

That's a big No for me. I take their education as my own personal responsibility. I open my mouth in turn and tell them off so that next time they see an Asian girl, they'll think twice about labeling her a spoiled brat, a poor island girl, or--let's not forget the great big scarlet brand--a whore.

Of course, my goals are not all lofty. "I don't think he meant it," Thomas said. "No, I'm sure he didn't," I replied. Then in a voice I made sure was loud enough to carry to where the monster was wiping glasses behind a counter, I continued, "He's just an idiot!"

Meeting

I met a girl who just recently moved here. She was peppy, which is refreshing for a European chick, and with clever layering managed the feat of being fashionable while engaged in the very unglamorous task of rock-climbing. Like regular girls, we started talking about the soldes, happening right now, with most shops selling their wares at a discount. Think Midnight Madness, only nation-wide. She really had to go visit the boutiques this Saturday, she said, it was her only day free. You can rush it a bit after work, too, I suggested. No, she replied, she works almost every day well into the evening, until 8:30 or nine. I hope they pay you overtime, I sympathized. Whereupon she gushed, No, it's my choice really, I like staying late at work. I really really love my job. Really love it. Given a statement like that, of course you have to ask, What's your job?

Her response was not quite what I expected: "I do research on evolutionary biology. We're studying the asexual reproduction of these multicellular creatures that have existed on earth since life began--how they have managed to survive the environmental changes, how they have done that solely with females, by cloning, and what, in the evolutionary sense, their existence means to humans." A pause which I used to search for the signs that scream Nerd! that I must have missed, but, no, there really weren't any thick glasses. Then she thrilled with the same enthusiasm I've heard former colleagues use when talking about fashion styling and beauty reportage, "There is just so much to do and to know!"

And so now let me display my awe of humanity by saying, it really takes all kinds to keep the world moving and shaking. Ang galing, ano?