The human condition

We’re almost ready to return to our default settings.  We’re leaving Paris, and I’m in pack-up mode.  I’m clearing out the cupboards, dealing with unfinished business, attempting to give back things I’ve borrowed, and starting the difficult process of fitting all our things into the small suitcase in which they came.

I’ve missed things about back home, but aside from the human element it’s mostly been labour-saving devices: my electric toothbrush, the dishwasher, and a proper grown-up fridge (I’ve spent far too much time bending down to get the butter).  Wilf, like me, will be glad to see the English contingent again, but he certainly hasn’t concerned himself with the lack of labour-saving devices or much else in the way of life’s furnishings.  Actually, I wonder what he actually remembers about his existence before Paris, since he’s even forgotten how to ask for a glass of milk in English.  And, save for his continuing disapproval of the many smokers in our midst, he’s accepted life here as if it were his own.

Perhaps he doesn’t even have default settings in the way I do.  He’s turned native with barely a backward glance, and if it wasn’t for the fact that his name picks him out as a foreigner (something we misjudged a little at the time of naming) he’d blend in effortlessly.  We came here for all sorts of reasons, but I can’t deny that it was primarily a linguistic experiment in which my son was the unsuspecting subject.  So while I would have been mightily disappointed if his surroundings hadn’t rubbed off on him in the way they have, I’m astonished and delighted by how easy it’s been to turn this Lewes boy into his Paris equivalent.  Language, it turns out, is just a different spin on the same human condition.