Giverney, France - Let's call it the Giverney Truce, partly because it's about time, partly because continued American-Franco hostilities are silly, but mostly because this peaceful Seine River valley was where I saw an American baseball game in play.
That's right, teams in blue and gray uniforms in the heart of France tossing the old ball back and forth, and young batters stepping up to the plate with Barry Bond confidence. It could have been a sandlot game played in a Georgia cow pasture.
But it wasn't. It was in the heart of the Normandy Region, and on a beautiful baseball Saturday, with the cliffs above the Seine as a backdrop.
I asked if such a scene were common. My driver for the excursion, Oliver, a Parisian with a Slavic surname, said it was the first time he had seen such a sight in his entire life of 34 years. He was amazed, though in a French nonplussed way.
If we can share America's national pastime -- that which results in the euphemistic World Series in the professional ranks (though only two nations are involved, the U.S. and Canada), then certainly we can share foie gras ala Duck Supreme, or whatever.
In other words, it is time to cool the rhetoric, turn the jingoism down a notch. For Americans, Brits and Spaniards and others of the "coalition of the willing" sounds almost like a religious sect), it is time to be magnanimous, even slightly humble. It's the American way.
Not that the French are not going to make this easy.
They are suggesting military alliances outside of NATO, when, in fact, they aren't even stepping up to the plate in current defense spending. They are eyeing various tax levies on American products. They are being, well, French. But that's okay.
I had come to France over the May Day holiday not on any diplomatic mission, but purely to recapture some of the magic I first felt when in Paris some 40 years ago. While I had business obligations, they were secondary.
Finally, I also wanted to visit Claude Monet's homestead at Giverney, which is a Mecca for we would-be-wannabe artists, even those of us who are challenged to stay within the lines but still try valiantly. We hang to the hope that our brush strokes will one day be period work, as in cubism, impressionism, and our own, messy-ism.
However, I was rather anxious. France was in America's Axis of Elba-ites, those nations that refused to join the "coalition of the willing", including Germany and Russia, which, given historic considerations, was a weird amalgam, pieced together with silly putty.
You remember, France invaded Russia, Germany invaded France, and Germany invaded Russia, two of the three events still remain fresh in proud veterans who wear stripes of colorful ribbons on their chests, as well as those shiny metals.
Anxious also because I had seen those emails zinging back and forth, those French jokes that were, indeed, rather funny, but if the shoe were on the other foot, my blood pressure would not only be elevated but also radioactive.
Given the banter which passed as comic dialogue, French reluctance in replying to the barrage of chuckles could either be read as imperial aloofness or patient wisdom. Given the purpose of this narrative, I suppose it is the latter.
Lastly, I was anxious because my younger brother, Alan, a businessman in Central Florida, questioned my patriotism, though in a comedic, family feud sort of way. It was as if I had gone over to the dark side.
"How could you go to France at this time," he said. "Haven't you heard of Freedom Fries. And Freedom Dressing. Freedom cuffs. We're boycotting those guys." You have to remember, Alan has a son in the U.S. Marines, and his patriotism is on steroids.
In retort, I indicated to him it was a one-man invasion. And, truth was, I expected to find haughty attitudes, snotty taxi drivers, and waiters who felt I had no right being in their restaurants, much less attempting to pronounce words on a French menu.
But I found nothing of the sort. Perhaps it was because my wife is Ukrainian. Perhaps it is because I was the only American tourist in Paris during that specific five-day period, and as such an oddity, was treated with respect and kindness.
Whatever the reason, it was a genuinely good experience, and caused me to ratchet my own post-war feelings toward France down considerably. All nation's act in their own interest in times of war and peace, and France is no exception, though perhaps it can be more obnoxious about it.
Within our own magazine, The Ukrainian Observer, we have printed various anti-French jokes, but have come back as well with pro-French rejoinders. This exchange of levity, in my view, is healthy, so long as it does not become pervasive and personal.
So I have called a truce with my brethren the French, no more to speak evil, or even better, not to utter silly banalities about Freedom this and that, as if the French had anything to do with French Fries in the first place. They are a Belgium delicacy.
This is my own personal Giverney Truce, made in the shadow of the greatest cathedral of them all, a sandlot baseball diamond, a fine equalizer if there ever were one.
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