The French Connection

2003 was a rough year for me, and it had nothing to do with a boyfriend or a job or even poor fashion choices I'm forced to relive in tagged Facebook photos. 2003 was particularly rough because of our feud with the French.

You see, while as an adult I can't say I really have strong feelings about the French in any way, shape or form, being forced to order "freedom fries" did remind me of my desperate childhood obsession with the French. (Did we go so far as to call it "freedom kissing"? I'm just curious.) And while I shouldn't have cared anymore, the little girl in me really, really wanted to make up with our beret-creating European neighbors.

When I was little, I wanted to be an actress, a lawyer and French. The first two were going to require more education and resources than I had access to at the time, but I figured the latter might be something I could actually work towards.

I knew there wasn’t much I could do about actually being French in the present, having been born in Alabama and all, but I was willing to settle for French ancestry. Also, after the disappointment of learning that my middle name was not actually "Fame," I figured Fain might be able to work for me in other ways.

“What are we?” I asked my mother one day. I was hard at work on a first grade family tree project, and she was trying to get dinner ready.

“We are a family,” she said.

 Not what I was hoping for. “No,” I said. “Where did we come from?”

“Montgomery,” she said, continuing to devote her attention to pork chops or something similar.

“No,” I said, “before that?”

“Troy.”

This was not going well. “No,” I said. “What countries did we come from before that?”

“Our ancestors? Is that what you’re asking about?”

I nodded, wondering if I would ever get this project done. Even at six, my mother and I had a history of communication problems. At four, I asked her how it was possible that God made the world in seven days if dinosaurs were around for so long, but there weren’t people when there were dinosaurs. She told me that Adam and Eve had dinosaurs as pets, but when they got kicked out of Eden, the dinosaurs became extinct. This might have worked out OK until I could advance further in school and learn about the Big Bang theory, evolution v. creation, etc., except for an incredibly embarrassing Sunday school incident when my drawing of Paradise included Eve walking a triceratops.

“Scotland, I think,” she said, still struggling with my questions. “But Mills is definitely English. I'd focus your project on Great Britain.”

“What about, oh, I don’t know…” I said, trying to seem as if this thought had just occurred to me, "France?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Isn’t it possible anyone in our family came from France? Maybe one of those Scottish people married someone from France?”

“I don’t think so, Honey. Could you set the table?”

“Couldn’t ‘Fain’ be French?” I said. They did start with the same letter after all.

“I really don’t think so,” she answered. “But I suppose you never know. Do you want to call your grandmother?” I didn't want to make any phone calls, and the truth was, and is, I come from a long line of WASPs, and there's very little that can be done about it.

So, instead of preparing a project about my brilliant French ancestors, I had to settle for pretending to be French. I couldn’t imagine anything better than being part of a long line of people with accents and great clothes. After all, they had an Eiffel Tower, restaurants called cafes, and they were too good for water – only coffee and wine for the French.

When I had tea parties with my stuffed animals, we only spoke in French. And, we ate pretend croissants rather than muffins or cupcakes. Of course, we didn’t actually speak French; I simply spoke in a long string of nonsense syllables that I substituted for a foreign language, but it was enough for me. (Although, I was pretty jealous of every single kid in my class who got to present a family tree that involved French ancestors.)

Within a few weeks of my family tree work and the made-up language gatherings, I'd moved on to other pursuits -- begging for a kitten, trying to finish The Boxcar Children before the rest of the kids in my class, convincing my parents I deserved a later bedtime because of my incredible maturity -- and that desire to be French was buried somewhere far beneath a love of Jem and the Holograms and a need to get the attention of my elementary school crush. I went on with my life, and I even survived that pesky 2003 international disagreement.

But, every so often, my little Francophile does rear its ugly head.

A few years ago, my sister and I were riding in the care discussing our extreme WASP-iness.

"Being Scottish works for me," I said. "We gave the world Scoth and bold plaids. You're welcome Universe."

"Yeah," she said, "but I don't think we're really completely 100% WASP."

"Rachael," I said, "our entire family tree is Scottish, English and Irish. We're Episcopalean, and you and Sarah are the only people in the family capable of tanning."

"I'm not sure," she said. "What about 'Fain.' I'm pretty sure that one's French."

Where had that kind of conviction been 20 years before when I really needed it?