Apples & Oranges

Sometime in July, let's call it mid-July, my daughter-in-law's parents will arrive for a visit. Semi-ambitious gal that I am, occasionally, if I've had enough sleep, which is almost never, I'm determined to get back all, or even a sampling, of the French I learned in college. It's only been, what, 40-ish years. How difficult can it be? I'm going to be very honest with you now. Very difficult. Make that tres difficile. Even though I did well in French, I never had much confidence speaking French. I could write it, I could read it, but speaking it was painful for me and anyone else in my immediate vicinity. In the presence of Parisians, I got tongue-tied. I got totally farklempt. I failed, linguistically. So here I am, many decades later, with my lovely French daughter-in-law trying to help me, and so far, I've mastered a few sentences that will never come in handy during normal conversation: "Good day. The boy is a boy, the girl is a girl." "It is an apple." "It is an orange." I'm already off to a rocky start.

Yesterday, I may have said in French, "Good day, I am an apple." "The boy is an orange." "The girl is red." So, I've got a ways to go. But the good news is that my DIL's mother is using the same ridiculous app, learning the same silly things I'm learning, but in English. By the time she arrives, I expect we'll be having scintillating conversations about fruit. If there's a better way to bond, I'd like to hear it.