I've been thinking a lot about the life I left last May. It's taken me some time to realize that despite all of my frustrations, I wouldn’t mind returning to la belle vie by the sea. I don't miss the heartache from the later months, and I don't miss the constant urge to jump in the water and swim back to Virginia shores. What I do wish for is to go back to the weekend market at the bottom of my street and chat about curry with the woman who sold me spices. Without a doubt I would fly straight to Provence for another sunny afternoon picnic on the jetties with my housemates. But most of all, I would drop everything in an instant for one more early morning croissant from my favorite boulangerie.
Truthfully, I’m not sure how I managed to wake up at 5.30 am most days to travel one town over and teach hundreds of young French children. I remember my first morning alone in front of the students, feeling especially ill-equipped to be commanding a classroom. Fearfully, I rambled in English, loudly and slowly like strangers sometimes do to the blind in movies because they’ve confused them with the deaf. In this case, those 30 pairs of eyes might have very well been hard of hearing because their faces showed no signs of understanding. Though I towered over the desks, I felt significantly small among the seven-year olds. They terrified me with their Bonjour Madame’s. In their hands, they wielded fountain pens and for-construction-paper-only child safe scissors. Their silence was menacing in the way only a quiet mob can be before the destruction.
Teaching became my life. My classes were the first thing I thought about in the mornings and the last before I fell asleep. The single hall where I traveled from class to class permeated my dreams and my days off. All of a sudden, I could only speak of lesson plans and disciplining the misbehaved. I couldn’t explain enough times how there are only so many different techniques to teach the correct pronunciation of I am so that these kids didn’t grow up announcing to everyone, I ham! It was almost ridiculous how I agonized about arming a youth with existential crises of identity and deli meat.
After all of that, I made it. I survived the paper cuts and chalk dust; I endured coloring days and bingo games. Maybe it’s the time and distance, but now I fondly think about the friendship bracelets and drawings I’ve collected from my students.
I think a lot of my sanity was preserved in the quiet moments of respite that distanced me from foraging through foreign languages and cultural anomalies. There were naps during lunch among the library books and breezy Saturday mornings when the sounds of life below my apartment floated in through my tiny attic room window. Then there are the memories that I want to remember most.
Give me one perfect croissant and I am right back in those moments of clarity and purpose. They are always the same: the smell of butter rises in the cold air as I make my way past the clanking trash truck and closed post office. Holding a delicately warm wax paper bag under the weight of another navy sky, I try not to think about how today I will enunciate horse, human, and head. And as I wait for the last 6 am regular to saunter up just in time to see the bus pull in, I bite into an unmistakable balance of butter and pastry. First comes a crackle, then the soft and sweet, followed by a salty creaminess and a pocketful of air to tame the tongue before another mouthful of perfection. The taste is almost as pure as hanging a brightly colored Thanksgiving hand-dinosaur on the blackboard.
