Vouvray, hairy armpits and the toxotwins...

...so, I was one of those kids growing up on the east coast that started taking French in school in 5th or 6th grade. My teacher's name was Barbara Baker - she was tall, had a teased bouffant like a Shangri-la and wore Jackie Kennedy-like sleeveless, smart dresses (it was the late 60's) and...she didn't shave her armpits. She was an amazing teacher but as middle class, white, suburban kids, we were all struck by her underarm hair. She also had the same name of a major Roller Derby star of the era and I would watch her namesake, racing around the track on Sundays on NYC metro TV as she would obliterate her competition. Now that I think about it...they could have been one in the same. Madame Baker taught us to speak and ask questions in French by addressing "La Souris Mickey" - that is: Monsieur, the one-and-only Mickey Mouse. "Dites à la Souris Mickey que vous avez faim..." and she would point to one of us with her arm raised as we tried not to stare and coyly would respond: "J'ai faim!" I want to say that she even had a small plastic model of Mickey Mouse that sat in front of the classroom...She drilled into her adolescent heads that speaking French, hairy armpits and talking to Micky Mouse was really, not a choice but a requirement. So, by the time I got to high school - in the early 70's - I was thrown into the world of the hipster, recently back from France-educated bi-lingual duo of Madame Sardella and Monsieur Castaldo. Mme Sardella wore short skirts, had a reverse flip hair-do and told funny stories about living with a French family and making mistakes in translation and M. Castaldo had a goatee, was très sérieux, carried a man purse and said "Ouais!" instead of "oui." They would switch levels every year so we had our full dose of each of them. So chic, so French, so 70's...I wanted to live their lives, speak their French and be like them. When the opportunity arose to take "their" trip to France, the devotées were ready...3 jet-lagged days in London (only my friend Debbie cared about London as she was on the hunt for Ziggy Stardust) and then we were there: on French soil. My friends Pam, Ellen and Karen cried when we stood before Notre Dame at dusk - beautifully lit with the sun setting behind us. Versailles, la Tour Eiffel, Sacre Coeur - you name it, Monsieur Castaldo and Madame Sardella took us there. And then, they took us to Vouvray...We had been in the Loire valley, Chateau-seeing, and as we drove along the river, a stone hit the front window of our very "modern" tour bus and the entire glass blew out. No one was hurt - especially not the driver, but we stopped at Vouvray - the vineyard. We took a tour down into the caves and left with bottles of wine tucked under our arms. And then our teachers performed magic: took us to a hillside on the side of a French country road, opened the wine and a baguette and some cheese appeared. That was it. That was all it took. I have a photo somewhere. Did we really drink the wine as students in high school with our beloved teachers? That's not really the point but in my mind we did. And the memory remains. It was the perfect afternoon... And I think of this often - it becomes the ex-patriot, all-is-right with the world scenario. I was 16 then and I have kept coming back: for undergraduate university in the south of France, a Master's degree in Paris, school for clothing design, living, working and hiding out in my atelier in the 13eme arrondissement for years and now teaching. Soooo...do I want my kids to love this country? Of course I do. Will I force them to? No - not possible. Can I at least give them this experience, this opportunity, these memories before they start to complain that they are forced to summer in Paris? Ah, ...oui, yes, of course... SUNDAY AUX JARDINS DES TUILERIES: Creed on the giant toboggan...

Zelda on her favorite bouncy trampoline...