48 Avenue d'Admiral Grasset
Notre Dame de Gravenchon
Seine-Maritime
Normandy
France
Inside the back door was the kitchen. When I came home from school every day I would sit at the kitchen table with my sister, and sometimes my friends, and we would have '’gouter’'. It usually consisted of a piece of baguette with sweet butter and cocoa sprinkled on top. I remember very well taking my baguette outside and trying to swing while eating it and having the cocoa blow off! In the winter we would have a big bowl of hot chocolate with our baguette and butter, and dipping the bread and butter in the hot chocolate caused oil slicks all over the surface.
Off the kitchen on the other side of the swinging doors was the dining room. Sometimes we would play Monopoly, games that went on for days. Usually it was my sister and me and our friend Colette. She was actually more our babysitter, but since she was only a few years older than us, we didn't think of her that way. Those games went on for days and days. At dinner, we would just push it all aside until the next day.
What I remember best about the living room was the bookshelves.
I used to read my mother's books, mostly murder mysteries by Agatha Christie.
One book I remember very well, though, was a book called 'Mary Queen of Scots‘. I was fascinated by it, and read it more than once.
Years later as an adult I found a copy of it and realized it was not easy reading. I am amazed I struggled through it at the age of 10 or 11.
The other thing I remember very well was the record player.
My mother played South Pacific and Gilbert & Sullivan all the time ("Brigadoon", "HMS Pinafore", etc.). She had been involved in acting and musical comedy before she married my dad and she would sing along.
The refrain of my childhood was my mother dusting while singing "I’m going to wash that man right out of my hair". My favorite, though, was "Bali Ha’i" from South Pacific. It still brings tears to my eyes, that longing for a magical place. I felt it even then. (Little did I know that I was already there).
My mother often had bridge parties in the living room and I would sit under the table and read while they played. I loved to listen to the French ladies talk about what it was like living in Normandy during the war. After all, this was not so very long after the war, 12 years after D-Day. They said they had to eat cats and that for years afterwards when they heard an airplane they would want to run and hide. They talked about rationing and bomb raids. To me it was utterly fascinating.
I remember once my mother told them about going to the gas station and asking them to check “l’huile and la vinaigre” ("the oil and vinegar"). She had them rolling, I guess, but they forgave her because she was American.
We had a small w/c right inside the front door. Every night, my dad would wake me before he went to bed and walk me down to that little bathroom. Every night, I would pick it up off the shelf beside my bed and carry it down with me into the bathroom and set it on the floor. Sometimes I would open the front door and take it outside into the yard. More than once, my dad had to get his flashlight and look for me outside. When he would ask me what I had in my hand, I would unfold my hand and show him. The next morning, I would remember nothing when he questioned me, but I knew very well what it was. It was my miniature horse.
I don't remember my sister's room at all except that it was bigger than mine and had a big closet in it, which mine didn't.
My parents' room had a huge armoire in it. I remember when I opened it, I could smell my mother's perfume (either "Chanel No 5" or "Joy by Patou"). I remember in particular a pale blue Christian Dior suit she had bought on one of our trips to Paris, and a black and white St. Laurent dress that was my favorite dress of hers, ever. The skirt was vertical panels of black and white, the bodice was black, with a scoop neck and along the neck were black and white squares. It had short sleeves.
They had a big window that faced towards the refinery at Port Jerome. That window had a special meaning for me because of the Flying Red Horse. (See separate post). I remember being sick one day and spending the whole day in my parents' bed reading Agatha Christie. Then I got bored and started to whine, at which point my mother said "Well, instead of whining why don't you do what Agatha Christie herself did? She was bored and her mother told her instead of complaining, she should just write her own books. And she did!". But I didn't.
All I remember about the bathroom was that it had little hexagonal black and white tiles on the floor and a tub with feet. The window was patterned glass you couldn't see through. It was big and the radiator made that wonderful steamy heat when we were taking our baths.
My room was wonderful. It was small, but I knew it was mine as soon as I saw it. It was at the top of the stairs on the right. Lying in my bed, the door was across from me in the right corner and the window was on the left. There were shutters on the window and the big tree was right outside. In the summer we had to close the shutters to make it dark, because it stayed light past my bedtime, sometimes until 10 pm. I was terrified of the wind because I had read a Bobbsey Twins book about a tree falling on their house. In the winter and during storms, that big tree made a lot of noise. I remember both my mother and my dad having to come in and reassure me any time the wind blew. The shutters helped with that too.
My mother painted a mural on the wall on either side of where my headboard was. It was of Pookie the flying rabbit and his friends.
The whole wall behind my bed had low bookshelves and everything was painted white.
I had two lamps, one on either side of my bed, with burnt orange glass shades, like hurricane lamps. One night the wind blew in and somehow knocked one of the lamps over and broke it. That terrified me. After that, I only used one.
I realize now that when I lived in the King house in Vernon, TX, I chose the small bedroom at the top of the stairs on the right as our bedroom, and I painted it all pale pale yellow. Was I trying to recreate my perfect childhood bedroom that I loved so much?
I loved that entire house. I loved living there. When we left in 1959 when I was 12, I felt as though I was a tree being dragged by its branches with its roots trying to stay in that familiar ground. I still feel that way.
The town of Notre-Dame de Gravenchon no longer exists. On January 1, 2016, it was merged with Port Jerome into the town of Port-Jerome-sur-Seine.
