Looking around the table last night with my entire face glazing over in a fit of hyperbole, I remembered the dream behind the incredible pull to return to France.
This time, however, in the harsh light of morning, we define dream in the terms of "unrealistic and improbable aspiration" and "fantastic machinations" and "ni ce thought but it won't work".
I'm embarassed to admit that even though I realized it in words at the time, I didn't realize just how desperate I was to forget the very existence of my birth-parents and to simply adopt the faintly related cousins here as binding blood.
To be able to say that "my family are all happy and healthy and strong and attractive and creative and educated and most importantly ALIVE".
To suddenly forget the fear of turning into my father, because my new father would be ANdr� and he's perfect.
How pathetic and yet when I realized that last night's meal was a handful of salads and a simple soup, there was no wine and the glasses were the ancient hand-detailed things of dreams and not the trendy-straight-lined Ikea-defined classy.
When I realized that the conversation touched on subjects I only half-understood not because my ears are slow in french but because they were discussing the biological properties of allergies and what they imply and that the engineer, architect, journalist, and housewife in the room all had a greater grasp of biology than I with my extra year of bio in college.
I fell for the so hard, fell for the tanned thirty-year-old beauty who without a stitch of make-up was more feminine than I will ever be in high heels and silk scarf, and who still looks to be twenty-one... She spends her life working in gardens.
There was no alcohol at the table. In France. They didn't feel like it. That's it.
The establishment slides off them like irrational oil on the water of logic and education and the utter lack of hormonal imbalances.
They are compassinate and caring, utterly jewish and yet utterly devoid of racism.
They are not only who I want to be, but who I've always wanted to be able to believe stand behind me in the unconditional love of a family.
I have never felt the warmth of christmas movies, never understood the impossible magic of the happy babble of voices around a table.
Around our table, it was always stress, and yellling, being cemented to the table for two hours by years of a warped sense of tradition, holidays were for criticising the children, not celebrating life.
And last night they welcomed me with open arms, invited me for weekends and theatre, invited me to this city in Antibes and that village in Aix, they sang songs in Proven�al and then translated for my uneducated ears.
I went home in tears of wonderment, but woke up realizing
that I am a coward to expect them to adopt me and allow me to leave tewnty five years behind.
I came here hoping to find a home in the sense of the books I'd read as a girl and to simply slip into it as though it had always been there
But I know that this is not the solution that my heart is crying for, it is another mask, another false hope, another way of lying to myself and promising that it will always be okay.
But now that I know that such a family is possible,
then I can live anywhere in the world and hope to build one, one day.
Whether it is a family of friends, a family of heinlein-like lovers, a family in the biblical sense, I don't care.
So long as I know I don't have to be alone.