June 2, 2019 – Joie de vivre

         Occasionally, I even surprise myself.

         My Mom had a life-long passion of wanting to learn French.  WHY?  Well I know part of it is my grandmother on my Father’s side was from the outskirts of Paris.  Grandmother was brought over at the end of World War I by my Grandfather – through Ellis Island, and she didn’t speak much English.   She learned to speak English through her husband, her neighbors, and the French butcher.  It helped that my Grandfather was Canadian French – so communication wasn’t that much of a mystery.

         All her life Grandmother had that soft French accent, like her creamy skin.  As a child, I tried my best to ask her “How do you say ____ in French?”  She would have none of it.  Her pat answer was, “I am American now, I speak English now.” 

         What she didn’t understand was us grandchildren were forced to take French classes as part of the basic curriculum in grammar school and high school.  I wanted to hear how she pronounced it, maybe it would be easier to mimic.

         I always hoped she’d reach out, cup my face, and squeeze my lips a certain way to improve my pronunciation as instruction to a better sound.  Sadly, that never happened.

         It was the era that French was the international language at the time.  In high school, we had a choice of German or French.   I, of course, chose French due to my heritage. Spanish wasn’t introduced until many years after I left public school.

         I had a grasp of a handful of phrases and thankfully the classes I participated in were mostly a “verbal” rendition of  the language.  If I’d had to write something on paper, I’d have been sunk.

         Over the years I have been exposed to French in books -
Agatha Christie drops phrases often and I had to look them up to figure out what they were.  And, many words in the everyday vocabulary come directly from the French language, and many are pronounced the same.

         One year, a dear friend sent me a French phrase-a-day desk calendar as a Christmas gift.  I read it daily. But without someone who knew how the words actually pronounced, I was handicapped.   [I still have that silly desk calendar and when I run across it, I flip through it to see if I can master any of it.]

         One time, on a visit back home, after my Mom had retired, I discovered her hand written notes all through the house with a French word or two and below an English translation.  While I was there on vacation, I practiced those words the same way my Mom did, daily.

         Less than two years ago, while cleaning out my Mom’s house just a week before her death, I ran up on a boxed collection of 33 LPs.  It was a 20-week French course.  I paused and flipped through all the records and the accompanying paperwork.  I didn’t have a stereo system that could play the old vinyl records and I knew I would never have time to work my way through the process.  I had a desire – no, more like a dreamlike wish – not a real desire.  The French course found the exit door with the rest of the unwanted items.

         We are back to the title of this little essay. Joie de vivre – noun – exuberant enjoyment of life.

         One day my husband came in the house and said,

         “That cat, you know the one I call ‘Tubby’ he barreled across the lawn and ran up the China tree, right to the top.  He has such boundless energy.  He does that all the time when he sees me out in the yard.”

         I pulled the phrase out of nowhere and replied, “Joie de vivre!”

         “What,” he cocked his head to look at me with a quizzical look.

         “Joie de vivre – love of life – a certain attitude about enjoying life to the fullest – it’s French – I am not sure I am pronouncing it correctly . . .” and put my nose back in the book I was reading.

         “You sure?”

         “I am pretty sure, would make a lovely name for that cat other than Tubby - Joie de vivre.”  It sounded good to me for a cat name.

         I snapped my book closed and padded to the computer – a wonderful tool for everyday life questions – a computer hooked to the internet.

         I put in my poor spelling of joie de vivre and up popped the definition.  I printed it off after I listened to the pronunciation several times.

         I padded back to the living room and dropped a copy of the below definition into my husband’s lap at the same time I pronounced it correctly two or three times.

         He read it and asked,

         “How did you do get this?”

         “The computer – a very valuable tool, isn’t it?”  It shocks me that he is so naïve sometimes.

         Meanwhile I was thinking – Gosh, I wonder if someone has bottled the essence of joie de vivre and it’s for sale – I could use a double dose of it right now.

         How about that, some French has actually sunk into my thick skull after all these years.  I wonder if it like laying bricks: “one brick at a time” –  rather learning one phrase at a time.

NOTE: Definition obtained from: Google search

joie de vi·vre

/ˌZHwä də ˈvēvrə/

noun

1.    exuberant enjoyment of life.

"they seem to be filled with joie de vivre"

synonyms:

gaiety, cheerfulness, cheeriness, merriment, light-heartedness, happiness, joy, joyfulness, joyousness, delight, pleasure, high spirits, spiritedness, jollity, jolliness, joviality, exuberance, ebullience, liveliness, vivacity, enthusiasm, enjoyment, verve, gusto, relish, animation, effervescence, sparkle, buoyancy, sprightliness, jauntiness, zest, zestfulness;  informalpep, zing, get-up-and-go, being full of the joys of spring, perkiness;  literarygladsomeness, blitheness, blithesomeness "Mediterranean joie de vivre is not a quality found in the typical Briton"