On Thursday evening at 7:00 sharp, I stood on a doorstep in the darkness. My face was scrubbed, my fingernails clean, and the contents of my bag were as follows: 2 freshly sharpened pencils, a vinyl eraser, a notebook with smooth, creamy pages, and a snack.
I hesitated for a moment, then knocked on the door. There was no turning back now. Presently it was opened by a bespectacled gentleman looking somewhat like an absent-minded professor.
His name? Monsieur Rivard.
"Bonjour, Madame," he said, ushering me into the house with a broad gesture of his arm.
I had come for a French lesson. My first one ever.
We sat at the table and exchanged pleasantries until I summoned the courage to ask M. Rivard a question that had been on my mind since I'd made his acquaintance several years ago. Why, given he was Canadian, did he not speak French like a Canadian?
Dear reader, are you aware of this distinction? Just as someone speaking English from the United States sounds differently than an anglophone from England, so there is a striking difference in pronunciation between a French Canadian and a francophone from France (let alone the nuances within a single country). Or the Congo. Or Algeria.
It's really quite fascinating, if you happen to be like me and think about things like this.
At any rate, M. Rivard told me the story of growing up in Quebec City, the eldest of nine children--an inquisitive, bookish boy born to a father of less refined interests. When M. Rivard's father announced his intention of withdrawing his son from school in order to enter the work force, the maternal grandfather intervened and petitioned the parents for guardianship of the boy.
Which they granted.
As luck would have it, this grandfather happened to be a diplomat, and so from the age of eight until seventeen, M. Rivard went to live with his grandparents in Paris. Incroyable! He described for me a field trip he once took with his class wherein they spent the night at the Palace of Versailles. Magnifique! And he told me the lineage of this particular grandfather, how he'd descended from an ancestor who was once a member of the court of Louis XIV. And how the king's eye was drawn to a lovely mademoiselle who later fell in love with and married this man. And how, in petulant retaliation, Louis XIV sent the couple to Canada in some official capacity...which was probably a favor when you stop to consider there was a revolution coming down the pipeline.
Anyway, the best thing about this story? M. Rivard told it to me entirely in French. And to my great surprise, I understood every word of it.
At least, I think I did.
Dear reader, if you could only know how thrilled I felt upon leaving his home that night! How I practically skipped! How magical it seemed to speak and understand things in another tongue! How, if I had another life, I'd spend it living all over the world, learning as many languages as I possibly could.
And yet, how deeply grateful I am to have this one, which has lately presented me with the opportunity to enjoy a half hour each week in which to learn a language that has beckoned to me since childhood, one so lovely there is hardly anything in this world that would make me happier than to truly speak it.