Paris, France,1979
The foyer where we lived was an old building with five floors and an old-fashioned elevator with a gate. I only used it twice, upon arriving with luggage, and leaving with some luggage, this time most of the luggage was in my mind still carried in my memories to this day.
The Foyer was divided into two sections, one for retired nurses who could no longer take care of themselves and one for those who could, along with students studying in France from all over the world. The laundry room was in a dark cellar with old-fashioned huge wash basins to wash your clothes in.
There were two nice middle aged couples who served as the concierges and, Madame, La Directrice who was responsible for everything. She was a single middle-aged woman who really wanted to get married and I hope she did. It was so easy back then for twenty year olds to make fun of the way she flirted every Wednesday with the members of the Board of Trustrees, in public, in the cantine.
There was a midnight curfew and a nightwatchman. One night another American and I missed the curfew by one minute. The door was locked. A streetwise student showed up and showed us how to trip the lock. She was a friend of the nightwatchman. Unfortunately, I did not learn this trick well, so I ended up on the swings in the park across the street a few nights.
Across from this Foyer was that children's park with the swings and in the back of the Foyer was a courtyard with flowers. The elderly were wheeled out there , while students studied there.The bakery was a hop and a skip away from the front door and then when one made a right hand turn, there were open air vegetable and fruit markets, seafood markets and whatever you could want if you had a kitchen.As students, we had rez-de- chausees, (hotplates).Thinking about it today, some of the things I concocted on that plate with my one lonely pot/pan of a comapanion were better than what I do today in a modern kitchen.
Student bedrooms were small with beautiful old fashioned French armoires for clothes, French windows without screens leading to what could have been a balcony , but at least there was a slab of concrete big enough to use to use as an open air refrigerator with a little bit of food which the pigeons partook of and shat upon. In every room there was a bidet. The bathroom was down the hall and the toilet paper was rougher than the cheap brown paper towels you might find in school bathrooms today. One had to get a key to use the bathtub on any given floor.One bathtub per floor. There was a cantine for lunch and dinner. That is where I met a 98 year old woman when I was 20.
Dearest Catherine and Gail,
Do you remember, Josefine, our lonely 98 year old lady in the Foyer for Retired Nurses, surrounded by 65 year olds, who of a different generation had their own cliques? She always ate alone. Was she always dressed in blue and white, or is that my memory only? Do you remember how we befriended her in a loud American way with our atrocious American accents? Do you remember how the 65 year olds smiled? Can you picture in your minds that early evening when she brought us up to her room and showed us the picture of her fiance who was killed in World War I and told us of their romance? And then the pigeons flew in through her open French windows. Some of them perched on her shoulders and she fed them.
In two months we learned history, love and endless faithfulness from Josefine. Underneath her whitish- blue crop of hair was a skull riddled with huge, hard waves of some type of painful arthritis.
We were all so sad that morning when she died, but we knew that she was no longer a Mademoiselle, but a Madame as she would have been if fate had not brought that First World War.
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The Foyer was divided into two sections, one for retired nurses who could no longer take care of themselves and one for those who could, along with students studying in France from all over the world. The laundry room was in a dark cellar with old-fashioned huge wash basins to wash your clothes in.
There were two nice middle aged couples who served as the concierges and, Madame, La Directrice who was responsible for everything. She was a single middle-aged woman who really wanted to get married and I hope she did. It was so easy back then for twenty year olds to make fun of the way she flirted every Wednesday with the members of the Board of Trustrees, in public, in the cantine.
There was a midnight curfew and a nightwatchman. One night another American and I missed the curfew by one minute. The door was locked. A streetwise student showed up and showed us how to trip the lock. She was a friend of the nightwatchman. Unfortunately, I did not learn this trick well, so I ended up on the swings in the park across the street a few nights.
Across from this Foyer was that children's park with the swings and in the back of the Foyer was a courtyard with flowers. The elderly were wheeled out there , while students studied there.The bakery was a hop and a skip away from the front door and then when one made a right hand turn, there were open air vegetable and fruit markets, seafood markets and whatever you could want if you had a kitchen.As students, we had rez-de- chausees, (hotplates).Thinking about it today, some of the things I concocted on that plate with my one lonely pot/pan of a comapanion were better than what I do today in a modern kitchen.
Student bedrooms were small with beautiful old fashioned French armoires for clothes, French windows without screens leading to what could have been a balcony , but at least there was a slab of concrete big enough to use to use as an open air refrigerator with a little bit of food which the pigeons partook of and shat upon. In every room there was a bidet. The bathroom was down the hall and the toilet paper was rougher than the cheap brown paper towels you might find in school bathrooms today. One had to get a key to use the bathtub on any given floor.One bathtub per floor. There was a cantine for lunch and dinner. That is where I met a 98 year old woman when I was 20.
Dearest Catherine and Gail,
Do you remember, Josefine, our lonely 98 year old lady in the Foyer for Retired Nurses, surrounded by 65 year olds, who of a different generation had their own cliques? She always ate alone. Was she always dressed in blue and white, or is that my memory only? Do you remember how we befriended her in a loud American way with our atrocious American accents? Do you remember how the 65 year olds smiled? Can you picture in your minds that early evening when she brought us up to her room and showed us the picture of her fiance who was killed in World War I and told us of their romance? And then the pigeons flew in through her open French windows. Some of them perched on her shoulders and she fed them.
In two months we learned history, love and endless faithfulness from Josefine. Underneath her whitish- blue crop of hair was a skull riddled with huge, hard waves of some type of painful arthritis.
We were all so sad that morning when she died, but we knew that she was no longer a Mademoiselle, but a Madame as she would have been if fate had not brought that First World War.
Page 4
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