Everyone is speaking French. She tries a few words but her new mother-in-law immediately cuts her off, saying “Please speak English, dear. Your French hurts my ears." She’s perspiring , doesn't know which fork to use and has lost her appetite, but when she tastes the appetizer it’s so good she asks what it is. “Aubergine of course. What a question.” Disappointed in her son's choice of wife, her beautiful face lands in a sulk that will become a familiar sight. A Philistine, non-European, what was he thinking? It won’t get any easier. And in better French, one day she will say: Adieu.
Ann Fischer is a writer and a photographer living in an Artscape community in Toronto.