We have been in France for almost 20 months. By now, the French greeting has become pretty natural for us. Called faire la bis, the greeting consists of giving a friend or close acquaintance a kiss on the cheek. It's really not a kiss, but rather placing your right cheek to the other person's right cheek and left cheek to their left cheek, while making a kissing sound into the air beside them and saying "Bonjour". Remembering all this is important, so people that cannot walk and chew gum at the same time simply lack sufficient co-ordination to even say hello in France. A misplaced pucker that actually lands on the side of the person you are "pretend kissing" can communicate an entirely unintended sense of affection or familiarity that could scandalize the poor soul. They were bargaining for the French version of a hearty handshake, but instead got the equivalent of a full body hug. (Picture your teenager saying, "Awkward" in a sing-song tone).
There is a whole inculturation process of understanding at what point you know someone sufficiently to plant your cheek next to theirs. And if you wear glasses like I do, you learn to aim a bit wider for a fellow bespectacled individual. Otherwise, the violent clash of eyeglass frames can jar the senses and sound like duelling swords. Some people actually take off their glasses quickly to greet. The advantage of this is that if they are far-sighted, they at least won't be able to see any unsightly facial hairs as they hone in for the kiss.
But just when you think you've mastered the art of giving the bis, you come to find out that how many kisses and which side of the cheek you kiss first varies from region to region. And getting it wrong can result in some funny, if not uncomfortable moments. It gets worse when two people are aware of where you are from and are attempting to be culturally sensitive. For example, we just took a trip to Belgium, where they only kiss one side of the cheek, instead of two. And wouldn't you know it, they start on the opposite cheek of where we do in France. So at first, as someone from France is aiming for the left, and a Belge is aiming for the right, the danger of a real kiss actually taking place increases dramatically. The first encounter goes someting like this: French person (or clueless American living in France) goes left and suddenly sees the Belge headed right; French person suddenly realizes custom is different and adeptly pulls out the kiss, re-meneuvering to the right around rapidly approaching noses; Belge is equally alert and pulls off his or her own deft move to the left; French and Belge almost kiss for real twice; both stop cold in awkward laughter followed by a conciliatory handshake.
So with every greeting, we had to remind ourselves to begin by aiming for the right side, instead of the left, and stopping after one smooch. But, If we had stopped off on our way home somewhere else in France besides Grenoble, we would have had another kind of awkward encounter. This happens when the kisser envisions a different number of bisous on the cheek than the "kissee". If you intend to give three kisses and the other person turns away after two...well, regional wars have started over less humilitating circumstances. Just to give you the rundown based on a recent French online poll, one kiss is the preferred greeting in only two départements of the country, with three kisses the norm in 12 departments, four kisses de rigueur in 22 départements, and the rest of the country remaining two-kiss territory. I think the five-kissers were driven out of the country back in the time of the Camassars. Try keeping all that straight if you are a campaigning politician, long-haul truck driver, or typical American tourist going from Normandy to Nice and visiting everything in between. Fortunately for us, we don't travel into other departments too much. If so, I might have a whiplash from all the sudden neck contortions.
Mid-January to mid-February marks a special time to all people in France who care about their budget, which nowadays amounts to almost everyone that doesn't live in West Paris or isn't named Sarkozy. It is a glorious time of year featuring what is known as les soldes, or "the sales". This is unlike in the US, where one never knows when the real sales are going on unless there is a line of tents outside of Best Buy, and because WalMart's prices are always falling while Sears seems to come out every other week with its lowest prices of the season, whatever that means. In France, real, legitimate mark-downs of the 70% variety happen only twice a year - between January and February and again from mid-June to mid-July. You know this because it is regulated. Stores are not allowed to have sales at any other time without special permission from the authorities.
In her insightful book "60 Million French Can't Be Wrong", Julie Barlow explains this is leftover from the practices of the merchants' guilds in the Middle Ages. The guilds of that time served to protect merchants from competition from other villages by regulating prices. This was enforced by a sort of medieval policeman called the Provost. The Provost would enforce the law by breaking the legs of any offenders. The Provosts eventually evolved into today's local policemen. Today it is still the local authorities who insure that businesses can only reduce prices more than 10% during the approved periods, or else face severe penalties. These sales in France pre-date the founding of America. To go out and look around at the mall during this hallowed time is more than just shopping. It is participating in French history. At least that's what Dalene tries to tell me.
Since necessary things like shoes and coats and man-purses at normal prices in Europe usually require a decade-long layaway plan or government bailout to afford, these sales are something not to be missed. So typically on a day like today, the last Saturday of les soldes, we were out in minus-5 degree Celcius weather with the rest of the country, jammed into stores with interesting names like Babou, Tati, and LeClerc, which is kind of like a Super Walmart with a better bread selection and without AARP greeters.
Today, we happened to need to grab a quick lunch at KFC. Now most French will bad-mouth our American fast-food for its poor nutrition and quality, and rightly so. But all sense of taste must have gone out the window, because the lines were coming out the doors and there wasn't a seat in the house. This was also caused by the school winter holiday schedule. Different areas of France have their holidays staggered. But at least a third of the country's holiday makers at any one time, find themselves in our vicinity of southeastern France. All the skiers who had spent the week of the school holiday up on the slopes above Grenoble, were on their way home, while a new batch of snowboarders and sledders were coming from another part of France to take their place. And every one of them got hungry for the Colonel's secret recipe at the exact same time.
Skiers and shoppers, there we all were, brought together by an act of fate and the State. And yet there was no hate. Despite the crowds and the waiting, there were no angry outbursts or beligerent customers. Everyone seemed to take it in stride - even the dad who was getting up from the table to leave and had his drink knocked out of his hands and into his lap by an overanxious kid trying to sit down quickly to stake out the imminently vacated table. Maybe a lifetime of regulated sales and school holidays makes jostling crowds just part of the expected for the French. Long lines, traffic jams and spilled cokes tend to make most Americans have an aneurism. Maybe the French are experts at staying cool and composed. Either that, or they're still afraid of that Provost still lurking around somewhere.
These past few days, Dalene has been busy doing spring cleaning around the house. Yeah, I know we just started winter, but a woman’s sense of needing to give the family nest a makeover is not necessarily regulated by the seasons. It can strike at any time. She finally had enough of the slow build-up of wear-and-tear, clutter and dust bunnies since the last time she went through the house with a white glove, fine-tooth comb and whatever other proverbial tool helps one find dirt and root out all t-shirts with brown-stained armpits. It might have had something to do with our 17 year old Christmas tree that sheds a good amount of its needles every time it is put up or taken down. After our post-Noel cleanup, we were finding little green artificial pine needles everywhere and were getting tired of everything looking like it had a dusting of oregano. Something just had to be done. The deep cleaning started in the kitchen – which was great. Her domain. What should be a hygienic place from which yummy food is brought to the table. It gleamed and glistened more than normal when she was done. I liked it a lot, right up until my first cup of coffee the next morning, when I shuffled in to the kitchen and reached for my favorite mug. I could do this with my eyes closed, which I usually do at that time of the morning. I unexpectedly latched onto a plastic pitcher. That could mean either my coffee cup had been super-sized, or that Dalene was both cleaning AND rearranging.
A quick check of the house confirmed my worst suspicions: sock drawer suspiciously well organized; top drawer of hall cabinet cleared of all paper-clips, guitar picks, half-sticks of gum and miscellaneous screws; and the clincher, all coats, gloves, shoes, and hats had been mysteriously taken and put in a new top secret location. This was bad news for me. One, because I am a member of the male race and I already struggle to find things that are where they have always been, let alone after they have been whisked away to a place heaven knows where. But secondly, because I am a bit like a blind person who needs things to be in familiar places, otherwise I get disoriented and easily lose my way. As I write, the process is continuing. Nothing is safe from being swapped with something else. Sweaters, books, furniture, photos on the wall, even door-handles (well not really, but it wouldn’t surprise me). Little piles destined for the garage appear regularly, unfortunate items deemed unfit for the “new” us. Now the real opinion of a shirt or tie is evidenced by its appearance in the rummage-sale stack.
There is a spiritual analogy to be drawn here. In the same way I like to feel clean and be clean, I love it when Christ comes to my rescue and performs a deep cleansing of my heart and soul. It feels so good to shine again and get the gunk out. But cleaning AND rearranging? I don’t like that so much. As he lays his finger on unattractive attitudes or habits I have been wearing, I find myself a little reluctant to put them on the throw-out pile, even though they might be dingy, moth-eaten and even smell a bit rank. I like things in my life to remain comfortably predictable, just the way I arranged them. I have grown comfortable with the way things are. And so I am adverse to the Holy Spirit rearranging elements in my life, suddenly and without permission, when I am not ready. Relational styles, emotional supports, and coping systems – all are fair game for his tendency toward renovation. But my life is His domain. He has the right. And frankly, there are times when He has just had enough of the clutter and the dirt; something just has to be done. I feel a little disoriented at first. But slowly, I begin to see the wisdom of the new arrangement. And it begins to feel more familiar and not so foreign. This month as we begin extended days of fasting and prayer to begin 2012, I expect my life to go through some cleaning and rearranging – maybe a lot of it. And you know what I’ve found? Both my wife and the Holy Spirit are pretty good at spring cleaning. And it’s OK.
