There's an article in the New York Times today about a cultural renaissance for Franco-Americans in Maine. What a long-overdue development. My great grandfather, Horace, born in Terrebonne, Minnesota in the 1880s, was the last francophone generation of our family. I bear his unspellable (to Anglos) last name. Horace refused to speak French to the children and grandchildren, and several of his sons changed the spelling of their name to make it easier for Anglos (who still can't spell or pronounce it). Somehow, though, he managed to transmit his enduring pride in being French, always French, no matter how distant the bloodline that led back to Normandie.
Some fond recollection of Horace must have led me to study French and pursue the language of my ancestors until I could fool French Canadians into thinking I'm French, or French into thinking I'm French Canadian - although I can never seem to fool the natives into thinking I'm one of them. And I'm not. I'm Franco-American, and so is my son. I speak French to him at home, and as he goes out into the world and sees how wholly Anglo it is here, he answers my French in English more and more. It's a second loss. I search daily for ways to prevent it, to dig in for the long haul and make French a necessary part of my son's life. No one actively punishes him for speaking French outside our home, but there are so few francophones to respond to his elegant, childlike phrases, more francophone than anything I can do because they're the instinctive efforts of a native speaker. He never learned French, he is francophone. It is his mother tongue. I'm absurdly, fiercely proud of this recovered heritage we share.
