Fierté

n. – pride
Cadre
n. – frame
cher
adj. – expensive
Rentrée
n. – re-entry
September 1st signifies the re-emergence of the Parisians from their vacations. The word for vacation in French, vacances, is always plural, perhaps because they have so many of them. This year since the Monday of the first week in September was actually August 31st, many Parisians chose to extend their vacations one more week.

I’ve been trying to get a picture framed for a while now. It’s nothing of particular value as we tore it out of a magazine, but the colors are perfect for the place I want to put it which is in the small space that houses our toilet.

There’s a little frame shop just around the corner, but like with many French merchants, his hours are basically the same as ours, only open during the week and closed during lunch. Since I don’t work on Fridays, that’s my only window of opportunity so I went over there a couple of weeks ago to deposit my picture.

The sign on the door clearly posted his hours and left a number to call in case he wasn’t there during those times, which he wasn’t. So I called and he explained as if I should have already known that he was still on vacation and wouldn’t be back until the following week after Tuesday.

Well this was unfortunate because the following Friday was my day learning about civil laws where I thought I would be stuck until his closing time. So imagine my delight when we were let out early and I knew I had time to run home and go back over with my picture.

Once again, he wasn’t there so I called the number and got the same response – to try again the following Tuesday. Well fed up now, I decided I needed to find another framer. I asked a woman who worked in a store nearby that restored paintings and she suggested another shop not far away.

So I wandered over there just to confirm that he was open before returning to get the picture. He was and told me that normally he is open until 7pm, but that day he was closing early because he was still partially on vacation. I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting another week so I sprinted back to the apartment, grabbed the picture and sprinted back.

I think I impressed him with my perseverance so he didn’t rush me as we selected an appropriate frame. I explained, not that he couldn’t see for himself, that the picture wasn’t anything of value and as such I didn’t really want to spend a lot of money framing it. At the same time, I was embarrassed to admit that it would be hanging in our “toilette” since he is after all an artisan who takes pride in his work.

He totaled everything up and to my surprise, it came out to just under 100 euros (twice what I imagined paying even on the high end). Of course by then, I didn’t want to say never mind. After all, he had taken his time and almost risked missing his train. When I told a friend who was visiting from New York the story, she thought that maybe because the picture itself wasn’t of any value that he wanted to make it more special by creating a nice frame. Maybe that’s true or maybe it’s just that custom framing always costs more than you realize.

The French are a proud people and I noticed examples of this with the same friend and her daughter who were visiting. They don’t speak French so I was proud myself to translate on their behalf. But since we visited a lot of tourist spots and live ourselves in a very international neighborhood, I noticed that many of the merchants or waiters would respond to me in English.

At first, I found this disconcerting because it made me question whether my French was good enough. But I realized that they’re proud to speak English and don’t want someone to make them feel inferior. My husband can get away with speaking French because he is French, but with me it’s almost like a competition…oh you can speak French, Madame, well guess what, I can speak English. It’s funny in a way because I realized I was just as proud of my skills as they were. Perhaps I am becoming a little bit French myself.