I don’t really remember being so
interested in France when I was little, but apparently I was because that is
when my Nana made the promise that brought me to Paris ten years later. When I
was three, Nana promised to take me to France for my 13th birthday
and much to my mother’s shock she followed through.
This first exposure to true Parisian culture sold me on my love
of all things French even further. After an exhausting flight that was a blur of
movies and excitement we landed and were immediately whisked into a cab that whipped
and wound its way impossibly through the tiny streets of Paris. We were flying
faster than I ever imagined possible until suddenly we slammed to a stop in
front of an old building on a cobblestone street.
Our room was the tiniest room I had ever
stayed in, but the mere inches between the beds didn’t matter because of the
large view of the Eiffel Tower- the ultimate symbol of France. At the end of
that week I returned home with the glowing lights of the Eiffel Tower lit up
like a Christmas tree burned into my memory and a burning desire, brighter than
those lights, to return as soon as possible.
***
The next year I started a new school and
a new French program and began working towards realizing my dream of returning
to France. When I transferred to a new district for high school I felt like I
was in a whole new country. The sights may have been the same as my past school
and the sounds of teenagers don’t really change wherever you go, but I didn’t
know which hallway to turn down and when lunchtime came I was left looking for
a place that my ham sandwich and I could fit in.
French class became the place where I
fit and could begin to make connections; maybe it was because we were all lost
there. Our teacher, who we simply called Madame, had a reputation that
stretched across county lines. When I had told my previous French teacher the
school I would be attending the next year her response, in her distinctly French
accent was, “Oooh, Madame, she’s a tough one.”
On the first day of school you could see
the excitement tinted by fear, or maybe it was fear tinged with excitement, in
the eyes of the students filing into Madame’s room. Even those who had moved
onto high school with friends and knowing which direction to turn in the halls
were unsure of what to expect in the new world of our French classroom.
That first day of French class is a
blur, but certain aspects of it still shine in my memories. That was the day
when I met my best friend. That was the day when I began to truly learn French.
And that was the day that marks my first day as a “real” student.
At Petaluma High School French, and
Madame in particular, were infamous. Actually the reputation of the Petaluma
High French program stretched much further than just our school and even
further than our town. Madame was known for pushing her students, but she was
also known for how much she cared for them. It may seem cliché to say that she
pushed us because she loved us, but it’s the truth. It was not unusual for a
student to call her mom by mistake and I must admit that I did so myself on
multiple occasions.
The seventeen of us in that class were
bonded in ways that others couldn’t understand. We didn’t all hang out when we
weren’t in class, but a knowing glance in the halls or standing in line
together at Kinkos the morning a project was due brought us together because we
understood what we were all going through in a way that our friends who were
taking Spanish or sign language could never understand.
I
remember one morning; it must have been in my junior year because I had driven
to Kinkos on my own. It had been a late night finishing up yet another French
project and after crashing for a few hours early in the morning I was awake
again and sitting in front of Kinkos waiting for it to open so I could print my
project before rushing off to my first period of the day. As I stood in line
behind a business man and a suburban mom who was taking forever to print the pictures of her dog dressed up for various
holidays I must have had a mix of sleep deprivation and desperation on my face
as I watched the clock tick closer to the start time of my first class. As I
checked my watch for the thousandth time the man standing behind me tapped my
shoulder. Questioningly I turned around and the man simply said “Madame?” I was
close to tears as I laughingly replied, “What gave it away?”
The
man turned out to be the father of one of the girls in my class, here to print her
project. This complete stranger who I had never met, and whose daughter I had
never spent time with outside of class, took my project from me and delivered
it to class with his daughter’s so that I could make it to class on time. This
is the type of community that French created. Even our parents understood the
pressure we were under.
Why
would I stick with this you might ask? That was a question that I asked myself
many times, particularly in the middle of the night when the rest of my family
had been tucked into their warm beds for hours and I was still salving away at
the kitchen table making sure that I had glued down the photos for my project
in a perfectly straight line. Ultimately I realized that while Madame was
tough, she was only making me stronger.
In
high school French I not only learned how to conjugate avoir and être or how to
order a baguette from a bakery, but I also learned how to create a professional
project, how to work with others, and most importantly how to put my all into
everything I loved. That’s what Madame did; she put her all into her students,
her team (she was the tennis coach), and her school.
***
French
class also brought me back to France. After three years of dreaming about
walking down the crowded streets of Paris, panting my way up the hundreds of
steps on the Eiffel Tower, and strolling along the Champs Elysée, pretending I
could actually afford anything being sold there, I finally found myself back in
my dream city with 12 of my French classmates. And Madame.
This
time around my trip was not nearly as much of a whirlwind, even the bus that brought
us to the families we would stay with in Paris felt like it moved significantly
slower than the cab I had been whisked to my hotel in the first time I visited
Paris. This was most likely because the HUGE bus (probably small by American
standards, but it felt huge compared to the teeny tiny cars and mopeds that the
Parisiens used to get around) could barely squeeze between the parked cars. My
best friend, Cyprien, and I had to drag our massive suitcases three blocks to
the family we stayed with because the bus couldn’t get any closer on the tiny
streets.
This
trip let me see Madame in a whole new light. She was still pushing us to be
better, but maybe it was the lack of major projects keeping us up all night, or
maybe it was the long plane ride and train rides around the South of France
when we travelled to Nice for a week, but that trip truly allowed me to connect
with Madame as a person. I began to view her more as a friend than as a
teacher. I returned from France with a new appreciation for everything Madame
put into us, her students, and feeling even more connected with France and the “je
ne c’est quoi” that made me fall in love with the country all over again.
***
Last
Spring I walked out of class one day to find a multitude of messages from my
fellow French students, many of whom I hadn’t spoken to in over a year. My
heart dropped into my stomach as I read the news that took away my mentor and
my friend. Madame was dead. She was gone.
It
didn’t even hit me at first. I went back to my room and just sat there in
shock. How can you ever understand how to react when you lose someone who was a
part of you life for so long and in such an intense way?
This
was the first and only time in my whole freshman year that I felt the
separation between myself and my home. I knew that I couldn’t go home, but I
still found myself researching flights late at night in the dark as my roommate
slept. I wanted to be with those who would understand how I was feeling, but we
were strewn all over the country and world for college.
Over
the next few days I began to realize that Madame’s spirit had not just been
felt by my classmates and me, but by hundreds of other students she had taught
over the years. While I was unable to return home for the memorial service many
of Madame’s past students flew in from all corners of the country to share
their stories.
Madame
taught not just French, but everything she had learned and experienced in her
life. One girl who spoke at the memorial summed up how we felt about Madame, “She
did everything for us because she knew we were capable of it all. In reality
she knew us better than we knew ourselves.”
Madame’s passing coincided with the
completion of my French studies, but the feeling of belonging that washed over
me the first time I strolled down the cobblestone streets of Paris was the same
feeling that I feel whenever I think of my days in my French classroom with
Madame and the students who became my family inside of the world that only we
could truly understand. French was and is and always will be my home.
***
In Memory of Sarah "Madame" Wadsworth
No comments:
Post a Comment