We are not living in the moment. La Rochelle nous manque. We are missing La Rochelle. I was in a French bookstore this week. Hearing two people speaking French, I wanted to rush up to them in a way that never occurred to me when I heard English being spoken in La Rochelle. We are missing the ease of our lives there, being able to walk everywhere, the wonderful food in the Marché, the beauty of the buildings, the fact that cars are not worshipped. And of course, we miss our friends, our café dates with them, our studies with Sylvie. We miss the friendliness of people in shops and the chorus of “Bonjour, Messieurs, ‘dames” as everyone enters.
We are in a different kind of ‘in-between’ and this one is more uncomfortable and difficult than the ‘liminal space’ of La Rochelle. Once again, it has to do with expectations. Who could imagine that having expectations would cause so much difficulty in life? However, we definitely expected it to be easier to come home and be Home. We are so joyful to see friends and family, to catch up and to have that experience of being with people who know you well, with whom you have a kind of conversational shorthand. They know where you are coming from. We definitely missed that in France. But now we are also noticing differences in life in a large Canadian city that we hadn’t been aware of before. Everyone is in such hurry, rushing down the streets on foot, honking at people who hesitate for a second in their cars. We are back to the ubiquitous paper coffee cup, sipped as the holder races along the sidewalk. Multi-tasking reigns supreme as we see people texting while they drive!
And the cars, everywhere! Our food shopping expeditions are definitely an exercise in frustration. We mutter together that no Rochelais would ever accept the hard-as-baseballs ‘tree ripened’ peaches we saw in Loblaws. And while Lake Ontario used to satisfy my need for big waterscapes, it doesn’t have the smell of salt or the big waves crashing. I am no longer the French Jeanette and that feels different too. Of course, as well as expectations this is also about change and the difficulty we all have with it. Always difficult, requiring so much of oneself and in this case, so unexpected. Once again, this experience has thrown us a curve!
