A Little Room: On belonging, beginners, and a café in Burgundy
There is a café in the old part of Joigny where, on Sunday afternoons, I try my best to be a part of the community.
Café Perché is volunteer-run and community-owned; the kind of place that exists by and for the people of a town. To eat and drink there you must be a member, but all that really entails is signing up with your name and, if you want to, donating any amount you like to the café. My main aim there is work on my French. I have been in Joigny only a few months, and my French is functional in the way a raft is functional: it will keep you afloat, but you wouldn't call it graceful, so I practice every chance I can.
My friend Peter who had the brilliant idea to volunteer. He’s also the one who the one who suggested I move to Joigny in the first place, so I owe him a lot. I'm staying in his house while he travels, and before he left, he helped me talk to the café and get set up as a volunteer. It was a gift, in the way that a good push off a pier is a gift for learning how to swim.
Now I show up on Sundays, a little lost for words and doing my best to be helpful.
I've worked in professional coffee shops before, so the basics are familiar: pour the coffee, serve the food, take the money, clean up afterward. But the social aspect is a whole new challenge. It's not just the words, but how they are said, and the little meanings I miss because I don't have the context. The regulars know me now, for the most part, and when I stumble, people are patient. They slow down. They wait for me to figure it out, or try their own English. Being a little town in France means most folks aren't very confident in their English, but honestly, most people here speak better English than I do French. Nobody has made me feel stupid, which is big for me, as I can be easily intimidated in social situations. I’m often fairly quiet even in my native tongue.
One unexpected thing has come from speaking a whole other language: it makes me much more attentive. I nod along and do my best to understand, and I find I am more present than I can be in English, because it isn't easy for my brain to go on autopilot. I don't accidentally tune out. I have to focus very hard to follow conversations and parse out meanings. Often I miss the specifics but catch the larger shape of things. I think it's good for me, even if it is a challenge.
I think people’s minds in general have a tendency to wander. Something someone says can set you thinking about something even when you don’t intend it. I really wonder how much we actually listen to what other people are saying. Do we really and truly engage with them or do we let the words flow in through our own filters, changing the meanings as they fit our narratives and following the journeys though own thoughts that their words trigger? I want to be better about that. For a while now I’ve tried to be more cognizant of it. I attempt to actively listen, ask questions, and try not to judge their experiences though my own. Honestly, I acknowledge I’m still bad at it. I find I often want to relate to them by telling the stories I have that reflect what I interpret them as trying to communicate. I don’t mean to center myself. I’m just trying to find a way to connect, but it’s something to improve upon for sure. Back to the café though…
Café Perché holds a lot of events; writing workshops, crepe days, informational talks, and concerts. In March, there was a St. Patrick's Day concert. I wanted to attend as half my family came straight from Ireland including my father. I thought it would be fun to see local musicians interpret Irish songs into French, but to my surprise, when they began to play the songs were in English.
I laughed at myself a little. I had traveled to a small Burgundian town, moved into a friend's house, spent months conjugating verbs and trying to remember the genders of random objects, and here was my moment of belonging: Irish folk songs, in my own language, sung by French musicians to a French audience who knew a lot of the words. It felt like everything had been turned around on me. For the first time since arriving, I could be fully present in a room rather than slightly adjacent to it. Afterward I found the performers and talked with them for a while. It was nice to truly feel a part of everything, even if only for a little while.
This is what nobody tells you about moving somewhere new as an adult: belonging doesn’t present itself neatly to you. It arrives as a series of small moments; when someone gets you joke, when someone remembers your preference of tea, when you sing along with a room full of people, when you stop worrying about getting the words just right.
I am a beginner here; in the language, in the town, in whatever version of myself is slowly taking shape in this place. Café Perché is where I practice all three. The people there are patient with me, the way you are patient with something that is still becoming. I’ve been figuring myself out for a long time and I suspect it will a lifelong pursuit, but this seems like a good place to spend some time pondering it.
I think that's the kindest thing a community can offer anyone: a little room to not yet know what you're doing and time to figure it out.