Or: how buying one loaf of bread became an international communication exercise.
When I first moved to France, I had a very ambitious goal.
Buy a baguette.
That was it.
Not open a bank account.
Not understand French bureaucracy.
Not make friends.
Bread.
I had been in France for a few days, my French was mostly held together with optimism, and I had decided that going to the bakery alone would be a Very Independent Adult Thing To Do.
My boyfriend offered to come with me.
Obviously, I said no.
I am Danish-Ukrainian. Stubbornness is apparently multicultural.
So I walked into the little bakery near our apartment feeling extremely prepared.
I had rehearsed my sentence.
“Bonjour, une baguette, s’il vous plaît.”
Perfect.
Elegant.
Practically French.
There was one tiny problem.
I’m deaf.
And I had rehearsed what I was going to say.
I had somehow forgotten that the baker might say something back.
This was poor strategic planning.
I smiled, gave her my carefully prepared sentence, and she answered immediately.
Quite a lot, apparently.
I caught approximately none of it.
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
There was a pause long enough for both of us to reconsider our life choices.
So I did what I usually do when communication falls apart: I pointed to my ear, shook my head, and said in my best French:
“Je suis sourde.”
Her entire expression changed.
Not into panic.
Not pity.
Just:
Ah. Okay. New plan.
She pointed at two different baguettes behind her.
Apparently, she had been asking which one I wanted.
I pointed at the one on the left.
She pointed again.
I nodded with the confidence of a woman who had absolutely no idea whether she had just selected bread or entered into a legally binding agreement.
Then came the price.
She said it.
I understood nothing.
She held up the card machine.
Excellent.
Technology had joined our team.
I paid.
She handed me the baguette.
Mission accomplished.
And then she smiled and very clearly mouthed:
“Bonne journée.”
That one I understood.
I walked out of the bakery holding my baguette like I had personally negotiated a peace treaty.
And honestly?
I was ridiculously proud of myself.
Not because buying bread is difficult.
But because moving somewhere new is made of hundreds of tiny moments like that.
The first time you do something alone.
The first time someone understands what you need without making it weird.
The first time a place stops feeling completely unfamiliar.
Also, I ate roughly a third of the baguette on the walk home.
This is unrelated to deafness.
This is simply what happens when France gives me unsupervised access to warm bread.
When I got home, my boyfriend asked how it went.
I signed:
“Perfectly.”
Then, after a pause:
“I think.”
He looked at the baguette.
I looked at the baguette.
We decided that possession of bread was sufficient evidence of success.
One year later…
I can now buy a baguette without mentally rehearsing the conversation outside the door.
My French is better.
My lip-reading in French is better.
And I’ve learned that if I don’t understand something, saying so immediately generally makes everyone’s life easier.
I have also learned the important distinction between several types of baguette.
This may be the greatest linguistic progress I have made since moving here.
Priorities.
The lesson: communication does not have to be perfect to work.
Sometimes it is speech.
Sometimes it is lip-reading.
Sometimes it is pointing.
Sometimes it is a card machine.
And sometimes two strangers just decide together that yes, that bread there is the bread we’re talking about.
Whatever works.
xo,
Eva ❤️
P.S. I still eat part of the baguette before I get home.
I speak more French now.
I have not developed more self-control.