L'un après l'autre

Nothing mars my memories of the one wonderful year we lived in Estepona, Spain. In retrospect--and someday, if I have the time and inclination, I will tell the full story of how my mom, sister, and I came to end up there, in a country where none of spoke the language, with no acquaintances (at least not initially) to speak of, with very little actual cash, and no access to my father, who was still back home (and would be, for the first six months of that year)--by all definitions that should have been a a disastrous year for our family, but it wasn't. A little bit due to some incredible coincidences, and even more incredible chance circumstances, but mostly--and this is no surprise--due to the amazing fortitude of my mother.

That's all another story, though, as I said, and tonight I have neither the time nor the inclination for it.

That was also the year, by the way, that I first learned French. As did my mom. Every evening she would watch as I did my homework, moving from one language to the next: Farsi first, then English, then Spanish, and last of all, French, the order preordained by her own level of familiarity with the language at hand (although she knew no Spanish prior to living in Estepona, she enrolled in an adult language immersion class about a month in, and so was able to keep just a bit ahead of what I was learning in school). French was completely new (aside from our joint exposure through my parents' love of the Eurovision song contest), however, and so we learned it together, syllable by syllable and word by word, conjugating our way through. My teacher, Monsieur G___, was a demanding taskmaster, but he couldn't hold a candle to my mom in that area, and so, delighted with my delight in and apparently devotion(!) to the language (and make no mistake, I loved learning French more than anything else, that year, but my mom's the reason I didn't procrastinate about the harder parts), he would give me opportunities for all sorts of extra credit work, including learning various French songs (which was a very smart move on his part to get me to learn more vocabulary), helped along by tapes from his own music library. By the end of that year, I--and my mom--knew more than our fair share of French songs, especially old folk songs.

This is the first song Monsieur G___ ever had me learn. Although my mom's pronunciation in French was at best, passable, she knew how to make sure mine was spot on, by transcribing the correct pronunciation into Farsi--with special notations for a rolling 'r', for example--for herself from the recording we were lent, so she could correct me without the aid of the song. If I close my eyes, I can still see the pieces of paper she'd follow along as clearly as if they were right in front of me this very second.

A La Claire Fontaine - Les Petits Minous

(Very nice movie rendition of Maugham's book, by the way.)