A Maman, une Lettre Jamais Envoyée (To Mom, A Letter Never Sent) - Letters We Never Sent [04]

Maman, you were the 4'10" giant of my life.

Maman, you were the 4'10" giant of my life.

I was never very tall yet towered somewhat over you, but now, with the shrinking of old age, I can picture us at eye level to go down memory lane as peers. 

 I think those who did not live during that era fail to know that the end of WWII and the Liberation didn't mean a magic wand was waved, with victims instantly liberated and finding the ones they left behind. It took years for the partial mending, and this is probably why the adoption of children born to unknown parents took a long time.

 You knew the "Foster Woman," as I thought labeled her in my memory, yet I don't remember you visiting me there. The strangely alive memories of a child, perhaps around 2 years old, include running to the other side of a farmyard to see a doll while being pursued by a pig and the neighbor refusing to open her door just having fun watching the scene. 

Also, I remember being fed vermicelli and milk soup while sitting on a priest's lap visiting the "Nounou." I blame them for my PTSD--Post-Traumatic Soup Disorder, although your soups were not much better even though you were overall quite a good cook. 

Then, I was transferred to an orphanage that must have been a triage center of sorts for children whose adoption procedure was getting closer to being confirmed. I still remember to this day the name of the lady in charge I learned from you.

I liked the place. It had some tables and chairs our size, some pink and some blue. But most of all, I did spend a significant amount of time --measured in a child's memory-- in the infirmary or the children's hospital attached to that institution, with white beds and white uniforms. It explains why I named the fierce-looking big stuffed bear Dad bought for me for our first Christmas together Nounouche Docteur--Dr. Teddy Bear-- You remembered my giving shots to the 1930s "recycled" articulated doll, also put under our "gigantic tree" --understand, a very short and skinny Charlie Brown tree! 

It is also associated with my first love and heartbreak at three and a half years old. Robert was his name, and they would not let me say goodbye to him when you and Dad me up to take me home because he had the mumps. You also added that I called his name from room to room once we arrived at your house.

From the minute we were under the same roof, the umbilical cord that had never existed in real life joined us for many years. You had dedicated the remainder of your life to that child from the beginning. No sacrifice would be spared to take care of her, although as I grew older and a little bit more rebellious, you would let me know every step of the way! 

You took care of my health, even with limited means. Thanks to you, I do not suffer from "Mike Myers's syndrome," although the strabismus it cured was divergent, not convergent. Wearing special glasses with opposite opaque lenses to be switched during the day contributed to my "popularity" in school, but it did the job. The quirky side of my eyesight remained the same, a puzzle perhaps connected with the early "steps" in a child's growth. You also sent me to summer camps in areas "good for the lungs," as you put it, with the side-effect that my "separation anxiety," which existed with both you and Dad, led to "desperate calls" to be "repatriated."

While you consecrated your days to my well-being, your life was riddled with illnesses, including serious ones. At some point during my adolescence, I became thoroughly rebellious. I could not understand why we turned into adversaries and my being either against or afraid of all your decisions and the almost daily late evening hysteria as you joined me in the shared bedroom. A couple of days after you died, Dad told me several things I should have known much earlier about your illnesses and "the various prescription drugs you took:" Poor woman! At some point, with all the various health problems through which you lived and without any desire to slow down helping others, you developed an addiction. 

As a young woman, you fell in love with a very handsome man who did not return the feeling, although he cared for and respected you. The asymmetry of the marriage allowed you to make all the significant decisions that were in your personality and gave him the freedom to be more of the lone wolf with his love of nature and his photography. 

When I was about 5 ½ half years old, we moved to a beautiful town. While I associate the first homely one with post-adoption luminous memories, the latter—where Dad bought a bar and was the town taxi driver—was a different story. The various versions of this decision I made in later years will remain in the thick fog of a lack of facts. I do not see any value to dwell in the loss of financial level and basic amenities associated with these years: Your "between the two wars" comfort had been earned every step of the way, including the fact that you also managed to handle a China shop and selling perfumes as well. The "selective amnesia" I held for those years is healthy, as is the notion that things we experience in the Past are the building blocks to our decisions for the Future and, in my case, the fact that I shall never take for granted what this "country of choice" brought me.

Some of the events that came back to me illustrate that even though asking "why" questions with a healthy curiosity is a trademark of childhood, we are also prone to accept even odd situations without questioning them.

The first night I was at home with you, I just accepted the fact that you looked different from during the day--just like friends of mine today going through chemotherapy, with that scarf wrapped tightly around your head. "This is my little night hat," you said. And I thought you looked pretty. It's only later that I connected with you, having lost your mane of hair during the war, probably from malnutrition. When I was about 18, you went to Switzerland after hearing about a treatment. I am sure you were profoundly disheartened to learn you didn't have the means to go beyond the initial treatment to have proper results.

And I accepted just as simply the fact that you had to "fit" your gloves to a lacking thumb on your right hand. It was due to osteomyelitis potentially leading to gangrene, and you used to quip that the surgery happened on "the day the Americans mistakenly bombed the City." I remember you sewing a dress for me years later before a trip and fully realizing what a feat it was to do that!

Finally, the most prominent memory also resulting in acceptance was when this child of 10—ahead of her class yet still the baby attached to you with that virtual umbilical cord—was admonished on her way to the school lunch-room that she was "a bastard without a real mother." I did crumble. 

Upon returning home, you took me to your armoire: It was your territory, and it had those beautiful perfume crystal bottles you used in better days…the scent still lingered. You pulled out two documents from the thick wad of red tape copies and official records. The first one was my initial birth certificate with three first names and a straight line where the birth parents' names usually appear; the second one, superseding it, had the hyphenated first names typical of my native country and listed Papa and you. It was only much later that I read the entire contents and found the official mugshot of Ward of the State Baby #315. I would not be surprised if that number reflected the number of "us" that year. It is thanks to you and Dad that I was spared the fate of unadopted orphans, especially during wars and their aftermath, and I shall always love you for it. 

"I'm your Mom." "The other one was a bad woman." Later disclosures showed that you never knew anything about any of it. The secret search for my progenitors by Dad leading to the convent where my birth mother was taken during her pregnancy left him without the name of the family, and I only learned about his quest after his death. You never knew about it. 

And you "crowned" the brainless treatment of those two schoolmates whose parents had lived in the village where I first did by marching into the office of the school's director, who promptly chastised the culprits publicly in front of all the students. As of that day, I became the bête noire of many of my classmates for a long time!

Reviewing your character and accomplishments makes me think of some female heroines of 19th-century French novels desperately trying to raise their social status. Yet with a major difference: You never counted on anyone else to do that for you. You just worked hard and educated yourself to a level at least as good as formal education. The petrified social classes never really let you in to fulfill your dream, but I think their members paled beside you. 

Ideally, and once again without blaming the Past for the ills of the Present or the Future, I think that combining your views with Dad's on how to raise a child, especially since you could have been my grandparents with the age difference, would have been beneficial: Even though I was sickly throughout my growing years, and even with the best of intentions, you vastly overprotected me. He favored my taking more risks, and he was right. I might have faced the world as an adult with tougher skin. The famous quote from Cool Hand Luke comes to mind: "What we've got here is failure to communicate," but join the club! It has many members, and I genuinely don't hold it against you! 

I give you full credit because you never tried to stop me or objected to my wanting to leave France, while Dad, who also loved me in his own way, was totally opposed to it.

You were a straight arrow. Despite misinterpreting the official educational system about the best direction I should have taken, you catered to my intellect, eclectic reading, writing, piano playing, etc.  

You were fearless about looking for ways to help us, Dad and me, over yourself. You contacted the right people with the idea that you would move into a very good Senior residence. Although it is possible that you were already in the throes of your terminal illness, you wanted to make sure that he would be in good hands and keep the independence essential to him. He lived eighteen years longer than you and under the best conditions, including housing and health financial coverage. 

Had you survived him, I am sure that you would have eventually joined me in this country, whereas he had no desire to do so. It wouldn't always be easy, and we would have locked horns on and off, but it worked out. 

It's a long letter, but you are among those who could reciprocate easily in my life. So was my husband. And I miss this type of dialogue minimized as 

"Snail mail' these days with beautiful stamps and the beauty of anticipation! 

The difference that could have separated us forever had I seen it differently is one of the crucial lessons I still live by when I think of you. As an adult, it reinforced something I already believed, perhaps because it made me more humble about it:

People who pretend they would have done better than others during an era or a place where they never lived suffer from ignorance and arrogance. 

You and Dad were a generation connected with two wars but with heroes of the first one. To have been an admirer of Pétain, who was already no longer in his right mind during WWII, could easily fuel an allegiance to that god-awful Vichy Regime and being brainwashed with its anti-Semitism.

Neither of you talked much about politics, nor did schools after the war cover those years of shame as they should have. But my study of the Holocaust for many years and the life story of a friend helped me avoid seeing things in black and white. 

The day when you told me for the first time, using very disparaging terms, that the Jews had stolen businesses from the other French people, etc., etc., I didn't know what a Jew was, couldn't understand what you were saying. It partially saved me.

Things haven't changed one bit when it comes to prejudiced people. To give but one example, being a Jew is important, yet being seen as only a Jew rather than a multi-layered human being shows so much ignorance, and ignorance can be paired easily with arrogance.

I know you and Dad were on the same page when it came to some of these beliefs, although he didn't speak about them and played poker with the Jewish doctor of the town. And I think he did the right thing when, as the barber of the town right after the victory, he refused the duty to shave the heads of the women of the village who had slept with the enemy or were suspected of having done so.

You agreed with him, and so do I: Such behavior, besides lowering oneself to the level of the enemy, is actually disregarding entirely the umpteen reasons why individuals amid daily closeness with suffering and death behave as they do: Wars shrink the time span of decisions whether they are done for mere survival or because of emotions with the awareness that tomorrow is not a given. Despite some of their misguided ideas and, in your case, for voicing them as an uneducated narrative, I was relieved later to learn that you would not inflict harm on anyone.

 I hope that although I did not understand the meaning of the words you used a few times when referring to Jews, I did not "parrot them" anywhere, thereby causing undeserved pain. 

I wish you had met Jim's family! Despite the culture shock after my arrival to this country as a new bride, it did my heart good to see that my beloved in-laws didn't have any of those prejudices and stated things clearly to their children when they saw them exposed to different ideas. Most of all, their behavior was consistent with their beliefs, which influenced their children even though they were quite distinct in their personalities. Racism was not accepted in that family. However, if one were to travel back to those days, the definition of the word would not be the same as today, when it is "just like ketchup on anything and about everything." 

The bottom line is that had I been growing up during the war years per se in your household, your views, no matter how misguided, would have become mine since I wasn't exposed to other things and not old enough to make up my own mind.

Yet once I could think for myself, I would have carried full responsibility, whether I chose to keep the narrative or do the right thing. So I am lucky that I grew up with you only after the war years.

I don't see myself psychoanalyzing my attitude except that being a maverick in ways more likely to cater to individuals over groups has been a blessing. Even when I did march for a group's cause, it probably was for the individuals therein and against the groupthink of those who prompted me to march against them. 

Such a combination of ignorance and arrogance scares me so much about today's world. 

Maman, I do love you--I don't believe in switching from the Present to the Past tense for feelings that remain the same about those who have disappeared from the visible. I wish I could "see" you smiling the way I did Dad after his death, with the dream too vivid not to be real, so to speak. You did similarly appear to me, but you looked so sad. Perhaps these words next to the letter of yours 

I will keep your picture, and it will make you smile again. 

Before I "beam up," I think one essential way to make me hold on, even if it is only an earthly dream, is to see your spirit, Papa's, and others having soared above all the misguided, uneducated—nothing to do with higher education—judgmental attitudes of the Living. 

Much Love! 

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