Teilhard de Chardin

English speakers increasingly begin their spoken sentences with the word, "So", while the French who speak some English, not a lot but a little, often begin their spoken sentences in Englisfh with the word, "Well." 

"Well," Genevieve or Antoine, my fine French guests who've been piped into San Francisco for a week or so on their way to Australia to visit family there, will begin a sentence in English, as if not only assuming I've understood what they've just said but that I'll also understand what they're about to say. 

We traveled to Yosemite while they were here. When we returned to San Francisco, Antoine found that he'd left his coat in the hotel room there. "What a pity," I said. "Well," he said, the pity was not the coat--he'd only paid 2 Euros for it at a thirft store in a town in The Auvergne near their home--but the tin of small Cohiba cigars that he'd left in the coat. "Que lastima," he said, Spanish for 'what a pity.'

The time I spend with Genevieve and Antoine, whether in France or in America, is always lively. We enjoy one another's company even when we don't completely understand what the other is saying. "We are not human beings having a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings having a human journey," wrote the French theological philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, words I understand and which often come to mind when in the company of my French friends. 

 Genevieve Roupon and Antoine Sevilla of San Julian, France. Photograph by the author.