Paris, June 13th,
Recently I had the occasion to be an innocent bystander at a wedding in the South of France. It was fun and I enjoyed myself. I drank a little too much wine, I suppose, but atleast I did not fall into a pool or otherwise embarass myself. While I was at the reception afterwards I was reminded of the phenomenon of the grandmother who is old enough to remember everything and because of the nature of the occcasion and so many people in close proximity, will absolutely exploit the opportunity to recount to you everything under the sun.
I had never met her before. She was short in stature but this didn't prevent her from pointing out that after the the war, the men in her village said she had legs like two freshly baked baguettes. I wondered why she had started out with this detail. She had all her faculties as her conversation was fluid and she was dressed properly for the occasion. A smart blouse that had recently been pressed. I had noticed her earlier in the party, conversing with another stranger but I had assumed that she knew the person well. Now I realized that she was grabbing anyone in close proximity and just letting go in stream of consciousness memory dumping. French grandmothers use occasions like this to do all the talking that they should have been doing during the year if only their daughters in law would let them.
I was exposed to an array of random subjects that tied together in slim tangents. You could open up with the weather and in five sentences, you could be talking about beauty marks and why God put them there. Five more phrases and you could be hearing about why her late husband always made a racket when he dispensed with his old Pernod bottles.
Grandmothers at wedding reception are like wells, get too close and you might fall in. Wisdom is dispensed freely and randomly, with very little logical connection between subjects but this is alright. Because it has its charm. It is a beatnic, benzadrine induced spasm. It is a jazz solo from Thelonious Monk. It is Bob Dylan if he were concerned with his own household chores for their own sake.
Some of the things I learned:
Trash receptacles make much more sense if they have some sort of concrete support holding them in place so that the wind does not blow them over.
Ducks always walk in a row behind their mother. Kids walk all over the place.
It's always a shame when younger generations do not use butter to cook and eat with. (Actually, this one was not new. I have noticed that all women over the age of eighty are consumed with the subject of butter. When to eat it? Where to buy proper butter... How you can never have enough of it.) I wondered if when I am eighty, I will talk about butter. I probably will. I will be talking about how I am unable to eat it anymore.
I stood and slowly shook my head in accordance with the other rule of weddings. When you are a guest, and receiving food and champagne, all information you recieve is worth your time. Especially from women over eighty.
The conversation lasted a good twenty minutes before she slowly lost interest in me as a listener. She drifted off as an asteroid does, gravitating towards other more powerful energy sources. She had found a woman of a similar age in a bright blue dress, by the champage table to go through a litany of completely unrelated topics. An hour and a half and I marvelled that she had not once felt the need to repeat herself. I listened from a distance, a little sad that I had been abandoned.
I do not believe that most old men have the same desire to unload like this. Although I have no doubt the existence of elderly chatty men, I just mean that they may still have some ulterior motive, as in fancying themselves still able to charm a woman forty years their junior. But an elderly French woman at a wedding reception, she does it for the pure unadulterated joy of it. The pure joy of speaking to another soul that may recognize the value of what she had been though.
For in this brief window of time, even the most widely defined wedding guest becomes a receptacle for words built up over many afternoons of quiet reflection. She knew and I knew that I would never be trusted confidant. These were helpful memories designed for the benfit of mankind. I just happened to be at the right wedding reception on the right day and time to receive them.
Recently I had the occasion to be an innocent bystander at a wedding in the South of France. It was fun and I enjoyed myself. I drank a little too much wine, I suppose, but atleast I did not fall into a pool or otherwise embarass myself. While I was at the reception afterwards I was reminded of the phenomenon of the grandmother who is old enough to remember everything and because of the nature of the occcasion and so many people in close proximity, will absolutely exploit the opportunity to recount to you everything under the sun.
I had never met her before. She was short in stature but this didn't prevent her from pointing out that after the the war, the men in her village said she had legs like two freshly baked baguettes. I wondered why she had started out with this detail. She had all her faculties as her conversation was fluid and she was dressed properly for the occasion. A smart blouse that had recently been pressed. I had noticed her earlier in the party, conversing with another stranger but I had assumed that she knew the person well. Now I realized that she was grabbing anyone in close proximity and just letting go in stream of consciousness memory dumping. French grandmothers use occasions like this to do all the talking that they should have been doing during the year if only their daughters in law would let them.
I was exposed to an array of random subjects that tied together in slim tangents. You could open up with the weather and in five sentences, you could be talking about beauty marks and why God put them there. Five more phrases and you could be hearing about why her late husband always made a racket when he dispensed with his old Pernod bottles.
Grandmothers at wedding reception are like wells, get too close and you might fall in. Wisdom is dispensed freely and randomly, with very little logical connection between subjects but this is alright. Because it has its charm. It is a beatnic, benzadrine induced spasm. It is a jazz solo from Thelonious Monk. It is Bob Dylan if he were concerned with his own household chores for their own sake.
Some of the things I learned:
Trash receptacles make much more sense if they have some sort of concrete support holding them in place so that the wind does not blow them over.
Ducks always walk in a row behind their mother. Kids walk all over the place.
It's always a shame when younger generations do not use butter to cook and eat with. (Actually, this one was not new. I have noticed that all women over the age of eighty are consumed with the subject of butter. When to eat it? Where to buy proper butter... How you can never have enough of it.) I wondered if when I am eighty, I will talk about butter. I probably will. I will be talking about how I am unable to eat it anymore.
I stood and slowly shook my head in accordance with the other rule of weddings. When you are a guest, and receiving food and champagne, all information you recieve is worth your time. Especially from women over eighty.
The conversation lasted a good twenty minutes before she slowly lost interest in me as a listener. She drifted off as an asteroid does, gravitating towards other more powerful energy sources. She had found a woman of a similar age in a bright blue dress, by the champage table to go through a litany of completely unrelated topics. An hour and a half and I marvelled that she had not once felt the need to repeat herself. I listened from a distance, a little sad that I had been abandoned.
I do not believe that most old men have the same desire to unload like this. Although I have no doubt the existence of elderly chatty men, I just mean that they may still have some ulterior motive, as in fancying themselves still able to charm a woman forty years their junior. But an elderly French woman at a wedding reception, she does it for the pure unadulterated joy of it. The pure joy of speaking to another soul that may recognize the value of what she had been though.
For in this brief window of time, even the most widely defined wedding guest becomes a receptacle for words built up over many afternoons of quiet reflection. She knew and I knew that I would never be trusted confidant. These were helpful memories designed for the benfit of mankind. I just happened to be at the right wedding reception on the right day and time to receive them.
Comments