French Lessons. There they are again on my list of goals for 2015. I shudder to think how many years “French Lessons” have hovered near the top of my annual list of aspirations deemed important in moving toward personal-fulfillment or, from a practical standpoint in the case of French, to making travel in Provence a lot easier. Right up there with writing, reading novels, travel, wine, squash, and running, all areas of my life in which I hope to make progress. (I finally dropped piano playing.) At sixty, I no longer harbor illusions of speaking fluent French. My ambitions are greatly reduced. At this point in my life, if I could expand my comfort zone to include more tenses than le présent de l’indicatif and passé composé, I would feel I had accomplished something significant. The roller coaster ride on the way to fluent French has not been in vain, though. I’ve learned other lessons, many of which transcend learning any foreign language and have undoubtedly propelled me closer to who I’d like to be than conjugating 14 tenses of French would ever have done for me. I’ve mastered the fine art of laughing at myself, cultivated greater patience and [...]