Different Views

I went horseback riding with Norman yesterday.  The morning was overcast and cool, and a rain shower approaching from the west darkly threatened to soak us.  Because it was relatively cool, the flies didn't bother us.  It was a perfect July morning for a ride. 

I rode Nicole’s horse for the first time, and enjoyed myself so much, and feel enough confidence in my riding abilities, that I’m going up to her place this morning to take Tasha for a solo ride .  It will be the first time I’ve attempted to catch a horse in a field in order to bridle and saddle it. 

Norman is a very talkative seventy-nine year old. If I’m looking for solitude, he’s not the one I should choose for accompaniment on a ride. He talks constantly.  However, his stories are very interesting and his language is rich and colorful in that Shakespearean/Chaucer-based, British  manner. I don’t believe that Norman had the benefit of any college training, but whatever education he received was far superior to the English Literature degree I received from my University. Compared to Norman, I don't know squat about English literature.  Norman is a treasure trove of information about  literature, the English language, and world history.  Norman was in the navy the last year of World War II.  He lived in Australia in the fifties, California in the Sixties and Seventies, and moved to rural France in the early Eighties, so he’s seen these wonderful locales when they were at the height of their now-stereotypical mystique. 

Yesterday, as we sat astride our horses slowly picking their way through the hills and woods, he was telling me about how much the area has changed, and while he lamented the fact that change has eaten away at the majesty of the area, he said that we have to accept it. Not too long after he had made that pronouncement, he said that the French need to accept that they must modernize.  I didn’t bother to ask him what they could possibly have left to modernize since everything seems overly-modernized to me, and in some instances, the French are more advanced than we are in America.

Amazingly, Norman doesn’t like French food and he doesn’t like to eat late.  He likes mutton.  He enjoys rice pudding. So he's not going to attend our annual village dinner tonight, depite the many pleadings from the neighbors for him to join us.

Carol from New York drove over yesterday with her two French grandchildren and she made the surprising comment to me that she thinks that the French are not very polite . . . and she’s from New York City.  I didn’t mention to Carol that just the other day I remarked to my husband that the rudest person I’ve ever met in our departement was Carol’s AMERICAN daughter. But no, perhaps the rudest person I've met here is Carol's husband. Carol seems to have forgotten that just last week, when she and her husband pulled in the driveway to announce that they were here, her husband, upon meeting my husband for the first time, shook hands and immediately blurted out, “Did you know your wife had such a big mouth before or after you married her?”

Norman doesn’t like the fact that you can’t just pop into a neighbor’s yard to drop off something, that etiquette requires you to stay and talk for a while.  

Carol thinks that the French are ruining their economy with their high taxes. She doesn’t have to pay taxes here, so I don’t believe that she knows the true situation. The income tax isn’t a great deal more than in the U.S. The property taxes are low. The VAT tax can be avoided by not consuming rabidly, and it is a tax that is imposed on all of the European Union countries, not only France.

Norman was telling me about the free, high quality medical care he received for his prostate cancer two years ago in France.

Carol, who just retired in the U.S., is trying to figure out how she and her husband, whose parents were French, can live here in France and partake of the free healthcare and retirement home system without the French taxing them.  Her husband has MS.

I point out all these observations, collected in one day, to illustrate the point that not every foreigner sees France through the same rose-colored glasses as I do.  Norman who has lived here for over twenty years complains about the food, the people, and the bureaucracy.  Carol who has spent two months here every summer for over thirty years complains about the people and the government.  I complain about development. 

All of us foreigners come to live here in France because the country offers us something that is missing in our lives in our native country.  But what exactly that “something” is, is elusive.  I don’t think you can find too many people who complain about French food.  But here’s Norman saying he hates it. I find the French to be overly polite.  But then I run into a New Yorker who finds them to be overly rude.  I tell you, it’s extremely hard to grasp the mystique that is France.  I'm trying to transcribe her siren song, but after yesterday's conversations, I'm starting to believe that will be an impossible task.