My sister and I were sharing a pre-movie dinner when she decided to call her boys (age 6 and 8) before bed time. I looked around the restaurant while she went through the usual motherly questions about their evening, their dinner, etc. My attention was brought back to her conversation when I head her say « je t’aime » to both of her boys before hanging up.
We rarely said « I love you » when I grew up. It was an expression that carried a lot of weight and when those words were pronounced, they were often accompanied by drama and tears. These were words for lovers to whisper while making love, words cried at airports or mumbled through clenched teeth after a fight. The words were often followed by an embrace during which you got a chance to hide your quivering lips over someone else’s shoulder. To say « je t’aime » you not only had to mean it, you had to feel it, you had to be in the moment. It left you exhausted and relieved, like an orgasm.
When I lived in California as a student, I was shocked by the ease with which members of my host family would say « I love you » to one another. They would leave the house and yell « luv ya, mom! », as they walked to their car. They would end every phone call with « okay bye, luv ya ». How loving of a family, I thought. How demonstrative! Like a stranger faced with a foreign custom, I didn’t dare to imitate them, knowing I would sound phony.
I soon realized that, like in the Woody Allen movie, everybody said I love you. They said it all the time. It was a type of farewell, like a strange superstition I didn’t understand. I thought it was an American thing until I moved to Montreal and got to meet a few anglophones. To my surprise, I soon realized that even though English Canadians were supposed to be reserved and mild-mannered, they also said « I love you » frequently, in the same way the French say « je t’embrasse ». (Note: I can’t help but think that if the famous Turkish Web hunk Mahir had said « I love you » instead of « I kiss you », no Americans would have paid attention to him.)
It took a while, but the francophone quebecois seem to have caught up with the big love thing. Blame it on the movies or on television, blame it on the waning influence of the prude catholic church: I hear the precious « je t’aime » words uttered in all sorts of banal circumstances. Are we just imitating Americans? Or did we start to believe, as they often do, that bigger is better? That to truly show your love you must supersize it? Are we getting fat on feelings?
In Quebec, it probably started with young parents who wanted to make sure that they would not repeat their own parents’ mistakes and decided to tell their kids that they loved them. Now it’s the Star Academie contestants (Quebec’s own brand of American Idol) who end all of their weekly timed phone calls with their families with a public « je t’aime » that sounds strangely artificial to my ears.
We might say it, but I think we’re still feeling uncomfortable with the words. In fact, we hear a lot of « je-t’ai-me », pronounced very properly, in the same tone we use to recite a lesson well-learned. In the quebecois accent, when these words are deeply felt, they sound more like a whisper, like a spit: « shh-t’mmm ».
Are we emptying these words of meaning by using them on a daily basis or are we just building a more loving society? I’m not sure. I just know I’m still not perfectly comfortable saying « je t’aime » out of context. I’m lucky though: my beau is an anglo, so when I’m not quite in the perfect mood to say it in French, I can always use the easy « luv ya ».