Letter from Marseille
‘…for my part it’s nothing to me–as I am only a lodger–and hardly that.’
– LETTER XXXVIII of Ignatius Sancho
In Marseille, autumn arrives suddenly. The leaves do their day-by-day slow dance from green to all those gorgeous browns, oranges and yellows. Then, one day, the mistral, a named wind that is funnelled south through the Rhône valley, blasts the city. Every leaf from every tree is thrown off at once like a celebration of the end of summer. My daughters and I kick through the piles and watch the multicoloured tumble above us. Autumn was my favourite season when we lived in the UK, first in Edinburgh and then London. The chill in the air, the relatively dry weather, and leaves that change colour. What an amazing months-long firework display.
In the subtropics of the United States, in the southwest Florida of my childhood, I knew only two seasons: tourist season and off season. The palms and pines are evergreen. In the summer and early autumn, rain comes reliably every afternoon to bring apocalyptic thunderstorms but there is little difference in temperature and rainfall throughout the year. The mild British summers are very agreeable when you remember getting first-degree burns from the asphalt after a day at the beach because you forgot your flip flops. The British winters, I endured for the promise of the first spring days. Colleagues used to mock my childish enthusiasm for snow. It’s ice flowers falling from the sky, for fuckssake! In Marseille, I still get the parade of seasons but more balanced toward the warm and sunny days reminiscent of Florida.
My pat answer for why we moved here is because Marseille reminds me of a Florida where the patisserie is better and there are fewer guns. We thought we were settled in the UK after twenty years but Brexit, the cost of living in London and two quickly growing children in a tiny flat made us reconsider. Why not move to another country where you don’t speak the language with two small children during a pandemic? The truth is that it was time for a change. Being a foreigner suits me. My adult life was spent in the UK. I feel more at home there than in the US, but my accent, though employed less often and at a lower volume, marks me as a foreigner. Not that that is a bad thing, some of my best friends are foreigners. Hell, my own house is lousy with them.
As an immigrant, you can pick and choose your level of engagement with the new country. I embrace the best bits. For example, in the UK, in a pub, when someone splits the spine of a crisp packet to share with the table. That’s a beautiful convivial gesture. There should be a line about that in the national anthem. For me, because I look and sound like an extra from Friends, I’m exempt from the accent-judging contests that are the British national pastime. I’ll take a ‘where are you from?’ over that any day.
Once a month, Marseille pedestrianises the Corniche Kennedy – it’s hard to imagine an American president ever being commemorated like that again – a wide coastal road that skirts Marseille from the Old Port (as in 2,600 years old) to the beaches to the south. With three hundred days of sunshine a year, the view is inevitably a sparkling lapis blue sea lapping at the island fortress where the fictional Count of Monte Cristo was fictionally imprisoned. My wife and I walk while our daughters skateboard and bike nearby. The route is garlanded with food vans, live bands and various activities like board games, double-dutch or parkour. Marseille is a small village pretending to be a city of a million people. On our walk we inevitably run into parents from the school, friends, the barista from my local and his girlfriend. This time, it was some other Americans freshly arrived. We spent most of the conversation mourning the election, but the inevitable handwringing doesn’t interest me. It’s another of the emigrant’s prerogatives. I left the United States when George W. Bush’s daily affronts seemed beyond the pale. I used to think America deserves better; now I think that America gets what it deserves.
Of course, that disconnection comes at a cost. There is a sense of loneliness and vulnerability. It’s hard to be so far from my family especially as the older generations grow even older and more frail. The everyday niggles of a country are much more annoying if you didn’t grow up with them. I loathe any administrative tasks here in France. When the revolution dismantled the oligarchic church, they replaced that sense of damnation and purgatory with bureaucracy. Mostly I enjoy how the everyday can be strange and amusing. The girls’ school is organising a ‘snow school’, which I’m pretty sure is just a ski holiday, but I want them to assimilate. At the meeting, the teacher went through the itinerary and mentioned une boum. My French is okay, but I had no idea what she was talking about or why the entire room of parents were burbling with excitement. I dutifully write ‘Boom. Pyjamas. Bonbons. Thursday night’ and asked my daughters later. NB: A boum is school pyjama party and a rite of passage for the French.
I don’t buy into the idea that one country is better than the other. They are different. They have their joys and pains. It’s a matter of what suits you. The UK suited me. Things about it I miss; other things I never quite got used to. The south of France has its charms. Surprise, surprise. Here I have the sun and the sea again, and my daughter will never need to learn the phrase ‘live shooter drill’. My seasonal vitamin D deficiency has disappeared, and it is a rare opportunity for someone in his forties to see his brain learning new things. Each day that passes, I’m a little less stupid in French. If that isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.
I am not a man without a country. I have three, and none of them are home. I left the United States by choice. I left the United Kingdom because of what 17,410,742 other people chose. I live in France now. My children can be French, British or American, if they choose.