On my way Home

I am sitting at the Quebec city airport, surrounded by glass and the cacophony of a hundred voices in conversation. After six days in French Canada, my ear is attuned to the rhythm of French, so much so that an English voice stands out. My poor mind struggles to keep up, catching a phrase here or a word there, snatching a hint of meaning before losing the thread.

After a few days of being around French-speaking people, my ear does not tune in better. It actually seems to get worse, as exhausted as my poor legs are after walking up and down hills in Vieux Quebec for the past six days. Strangely enough, my eye seems to be better focused; I find after a few days I can read and understand French almost as easily as I did in the days when French was not so much a foreign language as an exotic one - one I used only in special circumstances.

My children are bilingual. They are comfortable in both French and English, although French is mostly restricted to the world of academia and profanity (they are kids, after all). I bought them books, in French (although translations, this time, from English authors they already know). They will roll their eyes, and thank me with a long-suffering tone, I know. But there is a difference in the intention of words when you heard them in a different language. And I want them to remember that, because it is important.

Today I was reading a sign, which talked about le dommage done to a building after a fire in the 1970s. I remembered my French lessons: C'est dommage (That's too bad). But in the first instance, damage is intense; in the second, it is merely a polite saying. I am sorry in English becomes Je sui desolé in French. How much worse does desolated sound, compared to merely sorry?

Je suis desolé que my langue Français est pauvre. I speak baby talk in French, laced with numerous errors and English interjections. Even when I work a phrase painstakingly out in my head, I stumble and trip over the pronunciation (not helped by my ever-so-snotty children). One day, I tell myself, I will learn to converse in French.

A la futur. Peut-être.

On knees and pictures and yes, plans

We have had a week! Record temperatures pushed me to my tolerance level - no hothouse flower me. I am a temperate zone kind of person, and I prefer not to sweat. Ever.

After a few days at the beach with some of my family, man and I drove into the interior to visit a surgeon. Training for a marathon and then a triathlon finally paid off for him - the surgeon confirmed he needed knee surgery. On Friday.

So we returned home to send some kids off on an adventure up north then drove back (3.5 hours each way) and put him under. The surgery was fast, and his recovery has been steady, but none of this had been planned - I would have said I had too much else to do. But a cancellation meant a possible three month wait became a three day wait - not something to pass up in any system.

Next week, the big birthday bash - my sing-a-long movie is all ready, and my presentation is nearly done. It should be a fun time - I am looking forward to seeing everyone, meeting the newest baby in the family, and just enjoying the people I grew up with - many of whom are still pretty great people, even if they no longer play "Let's pretend..." with me.

Then my man and I are going on our first ever vacation sans kids. Quebec City for a week of sights and strolls and laughing at each other's French (without being mocked unmercifully by my bilingual children). I am looking forward to it enormously, and hope that everything goes as planned.

Spent the day with unplanned repairs going on around me - a new house for us doesn't in any way translate into a new house. Dryer stopped worked two weeks after we moved in, microwave stopped working before we even got here, lights clamped together to keep them from falling apart - old houses are pretty, but impractical. Luckily, handymen can be efficient, friendly, and skilled - what a difference a day makes.

Kids and I went through two boxes of pictures to the music of the hammer and drill - ten thousand pictures of first born. A measly handful of the youngest. Sigh. (More) Proof that we don't love him. So hard to be 13.

Plans for tomorrow: finish presentation and make sure it will fit on a disc. Clean kitchen and hang out laundry (hope for dry, windy weather). Pick blackberries. Find a project for daughter eagerly waiting to get back to school.

Yeah. I should be able to handle that.