Family Love and Support

We shared family love and support with Pappy, learning and testing the associated values and limits. Despite our fervent efforts, he was desperately lonely,1 as he told his Church superiors. Had we succeeded better in this primary purpose, we might have been permitted to stay longer. Whatever we tried to do, we couldn’t change the fact that at the end of each day’s work, Valerie and I would retire to our chamber together, whereas Pappy went alone to the bedroom he had shared for that wonderful year with Mammy.

Le Marché, Avenue des Belles-Feuilles; we think that’s Mammy, haggling.

I can’t now put this repeated episode in a reliable context, but Pappy and I would occasionally go out in the early morning to the open-air market on the nearby Avenue des Belles-Feuilles, mingling with random assortments of our neighbors from the fashionable Seizième, buying wonderful country cheeses, smoked trout, and enormous Comice pears (which taste the way roses smell). I think it was Sunday morning that we would regale ourselves with these delicacies, ’cause the Mission Home schedule left Sunday breakfast unconstrained. 1He told us that Mammy always said, “If anything happens to me, I want you to remarry right away. I wouldn’t want to feel I’d failed to make marriage a necessity to you.” This was, by the way, a very Seely thing for her to say. I need to remember to insert the story of Grandma Seely’s passing.

Back a Page (Carte de Séjour)

Such a Life Contents

Second Mission: section start

Second Mission: page index

(Next Topic)

Next Page (Valerie as “ Mission Mother”)

Welcome

Stories

Sections

Such a Life

People

Places

Site Search

Do You Know?

Updated Jan 2014

[8Miss11.htm]

Page 37-022