At an apéritif dînatoire last week, a colleague and I were discussing the highly theoretical but useful allegory that places France as adolescent America's aged mother and the UK as America's aged father. The idea is a bit jarring for the super-individualist American "teenager", intent on creating an identity separate and in spite of their parents, but the idea rings true as one adds more and more layers to the millefeuile.
Mommy's been good to Sonny Boy, taking great care as an expectant mother, and instilling Sonny Boy America with sound values. Mommy France of Louis and Lafayette gave birth, the side affects of which led to a national insolvency (also caused by insanely corrupt tax practices and lavish royal household spending) that became Mommy's beautiful stretch mark. Mommy's Enlightenment, which saved most of the Western World from over-religiosity and superstition for the sake of civil liberty, advocated rational thought and discussion as the basis for civil code and government, and laid the ground for 2 centuries of astounding scientific innovation. Without Mommy France's Enlightenment, this two-century era of individual and artistic freedom that has accelerated the Western World, for good or ill, into colonial, post-colonial, militaristic, and industrial dominance probably would not have happened. Most importantly of all, Mommy France gave picked up where the Renaissance Italians (note what language the name for that era) left off, championing art, literature, and music. It takes a book that I do not yet have time to write to build the argument, but I am clear that without France, Sonny Boy America would not have the media and creative dominion over the world that he enjoys today. This is no small thing, considering my belief that reality is constructed in language, and that everything is resolved or left unresolved by communication and/or a lack of it.
Mommy France helped Sonny Boy America grow at a fairly cheap price with the Louisiana Purchase. A beaming Mommy watched Sonny grow further, stout of both heart and body, saving Mommy France twice when her European cousins came to rape her and kill her her father and helping her recover from the trauma. As a result, Mommy France had never been more loving towards and proud of Sonny Boy America. Their bond was more than mother and son, they had truly loved each other as individuals. Mommy loved his movies, his music, his New York, his cars, his loyalty to friends and family, and his sense of justice and freedom. Sonny Boy, who had grown far larger and stronger than his loving parents, loved Mommy's pastries, Mommy's dresses, Mommy's kind words, Mommy's sophistication, Mommy's knowledge, Mommy's cooking, and Mommy's Paris. Daddy UK was happy, too (but that's another story for another day). All seemed right in the family.
Then something gradually happened. America, like many a rebellious teenager, is spitting in the face of what Mommy and Daddy taught him while mocking old-fashioned behaviors that don't make sense in a youthful world. Daddy, despite his knowing the right thing to do in his heart, started having a mid-life crisis of sorts, imitating and endorsing the Sonny Boy's reckless youthful behavior (but again, that's another story for another day). Meanwhile, Mommy's become more and more angry and argumentative.
And as we all know from many a heated argument, anger has this strange way of being both acutely rational and alarmingly irrational. But there's one thing I'm hearing from Mommy that's ringing truer than ever, and making me realize that I've been homesick for years, and was homesick before I even left Chicago six months ago.
To Be Continued...
(Francophones: Difficile traduction. viens bientôt...mon projet de week-end J'ai fait un essai, mais il a été une catastrophe. Désolé.)
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