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A Day in a French Life…
My mother-in-law and I are on the back porch, sipping Diet Coke and eating pistachios, watching wildflowers spring up all over the lawn. Michèle-France is wearing her son’s T-shirt; the words on the front read “Senor Frogs.” Under the title, there is a cartoon of four grenouilles:* two of the frogs have on sunglasses, the other two, sun hats–all four frogs are in striped swim trunks. My belle-mère’s* pearl necklace is just peeking out of the t-shirt’s neckline; the combination frog t-shirt-with-pearl accoutrement makes an amusing, if unintended, fashion statement.
Earlier I had picked up my belle-mère at the train station where she arrived from Marseilles. Pulling up to the curb, I noticed her short hair, which had been freshly colored a striking auburn; around her neck, a bright orange chiffon scarf. Her large Jackie O. sunglasses hid her pretty smile lines, but the coquet* gap between her two front teeth revealed itself when the corners of her lips turned up, “Salut!”* she sang, getting into my car.
She had on her signature coral-toned lipstick and when I reached to kiss her cheek, I was engulfed in an Opium cloud of her favorite perfume. On her black cardigan she wore the brooch I brought her from my last trip to Arizona: a silver libellule,* the wings and cigar-like body were inlaid with mother-of-pearl and coral. Above the dragonfly brooch, she wore an heirloom cameo pin.
“You look so chic!” I tell her.
“Chic, c’est ça” she says, patting her stomach, reminding me of her battle with le poids.*
Back home on the porch we tchatche* about tout et rien* including how a certain tante* is in good health–far from reaching “le bout du rouleau,” or “the end of the roll”.
Il fait chaud ici–It’s hot here,” she says, pinching her wool pants.
“I don’t know what to wear this time of year.”
I sit facing her in a tank top and cropped jeans, sipping my Coca Light.* “I know what you mean.”
“Nice shoes…” she says.
“Oh, I’ve had these for… EVER,” I reply, giving a typical belle-fille* response to her belle-mère, though it is entirely unnecessary in view of our unusual daughter-in-law/mother-in-law complicité.*
“My shoes,” she looks down turning two feet outward, “I’ve had since le Roy d’Espagne.”
“Oh la la!” I say, and we both laugh. (Le Roy d’Espagne is the neighborhood in Marseilles where she lived when I met her son, almost 15 years ago.)
Suddenly those shoes represent so much to me: a lifetime or two (my son’s and daughter’s, combined), the duration of our belle-mère/belle-fille friendship, and the number of years that I’ve known my husband. The patent-leather loafers with the muted square buckle had appeared at marriages, baptisms, funerals, hospital stays and innumerable get-togethers in between. I’d seen the shoes dulled, I’d seen them tattered, I’d seen them buffed, I’d seen them battered–effectively reflecting the mood of the epoch in question.
But today. Oh, today. Qu’est-ce qu’elles brillent–How they shine!
Glossary of
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