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The Greene Line: Finding yesterday in the rain

By Norman Greene
San Diego Jewish Press Heritage, January 17, 2003, page 17

Chamonix, France— Il pleut! Il pleut! Et il pleut! It poured for 10 days in the French Alps, Geneva and the Gex countryside, but the rain
didn't quite dampen our enthusiasm for a European winter adventure and an insight to long ago at home.

Thanks to the romance in our son's life, the Mrs. and I had the opportunity to experience life from the inside out with an ebullient French Jewish
extended family. We were guests in their beautiful home for four nights and then traveled with them for a skiing holiday at the base of Mount Blanc.
Europe's tallest mountain separates Italy, Switzerland and France while, at the same time, serving as a magnet to bring together athletes from all these
nations and more.

As anyone who regularly reads this column knows, my daughter is an athlete. My son is an athlete. My wife thinks she is one, too. Mais moi, non!
(Not me, kid!) The requisite athletic chromosome was entirely missed by this body, this mind and this soul. Never on Earth has there ever been
anyone less athletically inclined, less athletically gifted, less athletically interested than yours truly. A change of continent has little effect on this
condition.

My favorite sport has nothing to do with ice, snow, the cold or the dangerous. I regard a mountain as something to be admired from a distance—
a great distance, at that. Add unending winter rain and you haven't improved the chemistry.

Nothing daunted, my wife never gives up. She seems convinced that beneath this Clark Kent exterior there lurks a Jewish Olympic skier burning
to be set free. Of course, nothing — absolutely nothing— could be farther from the truth. Really, it's self evident. Still, it seems to be her fondest
wish to save me from myself, from my nice warm bed, from the luxury of my own hot shower, from the comfort of my own office and reliable
computer, from the joys of familiar things.

Have you ever experienced the thrill of 10 days of rain when there is nothing to do but pray for snow or a summary execution?

At home, you can cuddle by the fire. There was no fire. You can run to the synagogue to daven. There was no synagogue in Gex or Chamonix.
You can stretch out on the den couch. There was none.

In France, the hotel rooms are tres petite, loaded with charm but little comfort. The French believe in minimal use of space and they do it very
well. In our chalet (no bar, no restaurant, no e-mail, no reading light, no CNN), the WC had no room to shut the door. Quel adventure!
Having arrived in the village of Chamonix, where the sport of skiing was invented, I tried to forget about vertigo while ascending the Le Brevant
lift, a closed gondola affair that vertically left the valley, achieving dazzling heights. I was rewarded by a six-hour stint within the smoky
confines of a lodge cafeteria listening to Italian and Portuguese chatter while trying to read. Outside, the bitter wind howled. Inside, the noise
level was more than ambient.

On the third day, I wandered the wet streets of Chamonix alone looking for something to do while my wife, my son, his girlfriend, her parents and
assorted relatives, as well as my two French cousins, attempted to ski miles up on cold, fog-shrouded slopes of mountains adjoining Mont Blanc.
Eventually, I drove through the Mont Blanc tunnel for 11 minutes and wound up in Italy. There was momentary sun in Italy and an open bakery.

Megev was the closest thing to a Jewish experience in this area. It is the home of a ski lodge built by Baron de Rothschild. It's also the La Jolla of
the French Alps. Everyone walks around in full-length, hooded mink coats —even the waitresses. People are there to be seen in their mink-lined ski
finery. Prices are sky-high. The village is postcard-perfect and quaint. Horse-drawn sleighs take tourists around this winter wonderland.

We tried to eat lunch at La Ferme de Mon Pere, which we walked to in a light mixture of falling snow and rain. Walking is healthy and sportive.
They wouldn¹t seat us because, as we found out later, reservations are required months in advance for this four-star eatery. So much for the power
of the press. We walked back.

Don't worry, we didn¹t starve. We had gourmet meals at Albert 1st, Hotel Divone, La Cabana and family-style at La Cremerie. It's hard to find a bad
meal in France.

What we did find was a glimpse into our own pasts.

While in Chamonix, we celebrated with a French family who truly seemed to like one another. There was a steady flow of delightful banter and give and
take that hit a receptive chord within me. It reawakened vivid memories of when I was a kid involved with my mother's large family of seven siblings
and squadrons of cousins, aunts and uncles. That was a time when they were all young and liked each other. My wife's family was a bit smaller, but she
too experienced the same sense of deja vu.

Back then, as with this family, you could feel the love, the camaraderie, the chemistry, the joy of sharing time together. There is a lightness and a
rhythm to this experience. Talk is easy. Laughter flows. This is all too rare today. Perhaps it is because time and distance have driven families apart. Perhaps it is because Jewish families are smaller and life is more complex on all levels these days.

Imagine spending an evening listening to Jewish jokes, with heavy French Yiddish accents, in a tiny cabin high in the Alps of all places, the
champagne flowing, the participants of all ages, the humor international and yet strangely familiar ... a genuine warmth suffusing the room as, outside,
the rain steadily comes down, unnoticed by most.

If Judaism begins and flourishes in the home, then this interaction of extended family was a truly Jewish experience in a remote corner of the
French Alps.