La Vie De Simone

November 18, 1925 (Avignon, France)  April 5, 2015 - Chico California
 
So this is some of the story of Simone Marie Chabal.  Most of you know her as Simone Olmsted, including her 5 (now 3) children.  Through your direct experience, and through us, you have a very good sense of who she has been the last 50 years or so.  But the mother,  grandmother, wife, teacher and friend that you know was formed by a very interesting history.  This memorial blog focuses on the child and young woman who evolved into the person we knew and loved.

Unlike most blogs, where the latest blog is first, this goes in chronological order.
 

This is a piece (front and back) I commissioned from my friend, the author and artist Jerry W. Marshall, who always does the fronts and back of very unique collages. There are so many layers it would take an entire other blog to do it justice really.  It hangs in my apartment and I pass in 20 times a day. (My mother was a bit overwhelmed by it - like seeing her life flash before eyes -- even thought this was made 20 years ago.)

So to begin at the beginning:

She was born and raised in Avignon, France.

Her parents were Jeanne Hebrard and Marcel Chabal.

They owned and ran a shirt store "La Chemiserie Chabal,"on top of which the family lived.

In 1922,  they had Roger, and 1925, Simone, our mother.

Then came Francoise, in 1936,  A surprise perhaps, but one so joyfully received especially for my mother. Eleven years older, she was as much mother as sister. Certainly, they are two of the closest siblings there have ever been, really.

So now, let's back up a little bit.

MCO 2015

Photos collected by Sandra Moreano and Veronique Perdriolle.
Un grand merci to Francoise Chabal, whose Souvenirs provided much of this blog's source material.
 

Simone's Paternal Line

The dour-looking man to the left of center was my great-great-grandfather, Francois-Regis Chabal/ He had been a colporteur, basically a peddler (someone who carried his wares on his "col" [neck].) He went from village to village around Avignon in the mid-19th century and sold and cut material and patterns for shirts, mostly to farmers whose wives made them. He finally was able to open a store in Avignon, which he passed on to his son, also Regis. He is young above, (top right) and middle-aged below.  (I put in the name of his wife, my great-great grandmother, Maire Rieusset, for genealogy researchers who might be distant cousins)

 

My mother's father, Marcel Chabal (after whom I was named) is on the top right, a soldier in World War I at the time. His father, Regis stands next to him. Regis married Marie Mery sitting bottom left, and family rumor was that he had a mistress across town. In this group there was a son, also Regis, (top left) who died of tuberculosis at 19, and Germaine, bottom right who died of an intestinal ailment in 1929.  You can sort of tell she had a personality, can't you?  Roger and Jean are in the middle. Although Roger was extremely good-looking,  (and fathered super good looking cousins who were close to my mother) Jean turned into quite the skirt chaser.  You can tell from this picture of him on the eve of WWII why he might have caught the eye of many a lady.  

 

My grandfather was the only one old enough (just barely) for World War I.  When he returned from being a messenger in the trenches of Northern France, then fighting in the Balkans, then almost dying of typhus, he worked as a nurse on this hospital ship.

 

As per a ministerial decision of the 9^th of December, 1916, a silver medal in recognition of extraordinary medical service is awarded to the soldier Chabal (Jules), of the 15^th section, for his zeal and devotion in the care of infirm Serbian soldiers evacuated from Corfu onto the hospital ship France IV, in spite of his own contraction of a life-threatening illness.

I always forget how often my family went by their middle names. My grandfather was actually Jules, but went by Marcel.

Back at home, he courted Jeanne, who's closest sister was my Tante Marguerite.  They are pictured here. My mother's mother is on the right.  Marcel and Jeanne were married discreetly in 1921, as the family was still in morning over the death of Regis.They lived on top of the Chemisierie, below a workshop of seamstresses (and a place where my uncle Roger held resistance meetings during the war).  The store was run by Marcel and Jean, with my mother Jeanne coming down in between having children and shopping and cooking. It was on old building dating back centuries. When my grandfather moved to a modern apartment (right next to one of the "ramparts" encircling Avignon) my Tonton Jean lived above the store in later years, and I visited him many times, marveling at the slanted floor of the kitchen.  And also at how much warmer he was than my grandfather, who was as correct as his own father had been bon-vivant.

From my memoir:

    Though he unquestionably loved his family, he found it difficult to be demonstrative. He was also naturally prone to anxiety and depression. My mother recounts that in 1938, when war in Europe seemed imminent, he would pace silently around the table after dinner, deep in thought, oblivious to not having excused his children.

    It would be tempting to ascribe my grandfather’s seriousness to his years spent in the trenches of Northern France and Serbia in World War I, a messenger who bicycled between front lines and rear command, often “riding over bodies in the dark.” But he described those times as some of the happiest of his life, because it was the only time before or since that he had “camarades.”

    I don't know what was more startling; to hear my grandfather remember fondly living through four years of unspeakable gore and deprivation, or the personal nature of his confession. This was not a man who would later speak of the heartbreak of losing a treasured wife or adored son, who ever waxed rhapsodic about being a grandfather. But when he spoke of the First World War, you could hear the joy of being young in his voice; of having buddies he would take a bullet for. "It was the only time in my life I had friends, so I was happy."   What one has to remember above all about my Grandfather was that he was a man of his time. Duty and responsibility were sacred values. This made him an excellent business owner and head of household, but his politics were predictably right and bourgeois. My mother says she always felt he held back, that he wanted to express he love he felt for his children but always restrained himself.

  

I don't want to give too exhaustive a history of the aunts and uncles on both sides, just that clearly my mother had many strains of personality to inherit from both Chabal and Hebrard.  Great verve and passion for life, and also some depression and mental illness.  And a whole lot of smarts.

MCO 2015

Simone's Maternal Line

So this handsome dude was my mother's grandfather. The family story goes that when he was born, his father went down to city hall to declare his birth and couldn't remember what name his wife had chosen, so gave his own name ("Hippolyte") and his father's middle name ("Hyacinthe" - Go figure). Considering himself quite the problem solver, he went home, and his wife Victoire (née Roche) sent him right back to get it corrected. The hapless clerk could only add "dit Charles" ("known as Charles"), and so it was.
He was a watchmaker and fixer of clocks, and fell in love with the daughter, Marie Gandiol of the owner of this Hotel, which was called "Le Cheval Blanc" at the time.  This was in a little village in the Cevennes, Genolhac, where I actually spent 10 days on vacation when I was 12, along with my cousins Henri and Lucie.  Give yourself a treat and take a 3 minute vacation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWGpWMLd3Ws
Charles and Marie married in 1879 and moved to Avignon, where they opened a clock/watchmaker and repair store called "La Gerbe d'Or" ("The Golden Laurel") and proceeded to have 10 children in quick succession.

 

La Gerbe d'Or and La Chemiserie Chabal were around the corner from each other.  This proximity would lead to the meeting of my grandparents.

Certainly, when France has been described as "A Nation of Shopkeepers - in my mother's case, OH SO TRUE.

(Yes, there are only 9 kids in that picture...my grandmother, Jeanne, is the youngest picture, but 2 years later, she had a sister, Claire, on the way.)

MCO 2015

Before the War

On top, a copy of the marriage certificate between my grandparents, in 1921. Yes, that's how they still did it!  By hand, with a lot of seals!

So that's my sweet mother and her brother top left and the wedding of her Aunt Claire in 1929, top right. My mother has a few stories about the 20s and 30s that stand out.

Her father was not very demonstrative, affection-wise, so when he was, my mother remembers it vividly. Once she was playing with a doll as he listened to the radio on a relaxing Sunday, and he leaned over and playfully tugged at her ears: "Mon petit kikiyu avec les oreilles pointues!" ('My little kikiyu [a bird] with the pointy ears!') 

My mother remembers vividly her disappointment at discovering, around 7, that her parents had lied about Pere Noel.  She never told us there was a Santa Claus for this reason, and I am glad she didn't.  I know some people who'd be horrified by this, but it certainly didn't stop me or my brothers or sisters from enjoying the holiday.

She adored her mother, and her maternal aunts, above all. They all lived quite close to each other in Avignon, and though mostly shopkeeper or teachers, they clearly had strong personalities and (as evidenced above with that wedding dress) a certain "chic."

So did, it seems, my mother. Her friends in high school recounted to me how her trademark was a glove on one hand, clutching the other glove. It was her "thing." My mother scoffed at hearing these memories, suppressing a smile at the same time.

She had a best friend, Josette. If they played together it was on weekends at "Passe-Temps," the country house my grandfather had on the other side of the Rhone.

 In Avignon my mother would come home from school, do her homework, and help her mother cook, set the table and clean up.  Her "TV," she recalls, was the window from her bedroom overlooking rue Rappe, behind the store. She found that if you watched long enough, you would discover little dramas going on. (Years later, when I had my first closet-size apartment on W. 10th Street in New York, I discovered the same thing. Good training for a writer.)
The miracle of the internet coughs up this photo (credit: Joe Foster) of rue Rapp. One of these could actually be the window she stared out of.

In 1936, when my mother was 11, the first of three life-changing events occurred. Her sister Francoise was born -- pictured on the bottom left of those 6 photos above,  cradled by Jeanne.  I paired it with a later picture (taken during the war) of my mother, probably in the same park, with her little sister. That's because in 1938 (event number #2) my grandmother contracted tuberculosis.  For the next 8 years she was often resting or sent to a sanitarium outside of the city.  That meant that from around 13 on, my mother gradually took over most of her own mother's role in the household.  

She never complained.  My mother learned from her own mother that if you do things out of love, it is always a joyful effort. If there is any spiritual lesson she passed on to us, it was this.  (In fact, I would say she shared this philosophy with my father and it was the glue to their marriage.  They modeled it beautifully for us.)

In 1939, of course, came the war.  There were 9 months of la Drole de Guerre, aka "The Phony War." At the time my mother was still going to a private Catholic girl's school, "Le Pensionnat Sancta Maria" - where Avignon's petite and grande bourgeoisie children rubbed elbows.

The picture below, on the left, was clearly her first communion (and looks so much like my sister Sandra at that age it's scary) and on the right,  I think this might have been a costume in a school play she performed at the school just before the war. In any case the two certainly capture the innocence and beauty of a relatively privileged and in retrospect, blessedly idyllic childhood.

Certainly, no one who lived through the next 5 years in Europe would use adjectives like "innocent" or "idyllic" to describe them.

MCO 2015

The War. Part I: Roger

A lot of people don’t realize is that France was divided into two zones in the first half of World War II. That changed at the time of the American invasion of North Africa in November of 1942, when the Germans panicked and occupied the south of France as well, including Avignon. From 1940-42, the “free zone” was governed by the collaborationist regime of Vichy, the head of which was the World War I hero, Maréchal Petain. My mother for many years could recite the song French children had to sing in homeroom, “Maréchal, nous voila!” extolling him as the leader who “saved” France in the “Great War,” and whose rapid capitulation in 1940 was justified by at least Paris being spared the kind of bombing that leveled Warsaw.

By the time the occupation of the south was upon them, an interesting shift began to occur in my mother’s family.  Her older brother, Roger, a college student at the start of the war, gradually became the psychological and moral center of the household. He was blessed with extraordinary intellect, charisma, and a dry but equally sly sense of humor. Although he was already battling kidney disease, he was a young Catholic idealist, and energized by the battle for the soul of Europe so fundamentally threatened by Nazism. 

Everyone looked up to Roger, even my grandfather. Apart from worrying about the health of his tubercular wife (he had lost his brother Regis to the disease years before) it was all he and his brother Jean could do to keep the store going by finding material for shirts to make and sell, the finest of which were reserved for those with whom he could barter for enough food to feed his family in the face of the inadequate rations parceled out to occupied Europe. He might have toyed with resisting, but  many family heads were forced to walk a section of the tracks around Avignon at night to catch saboteurs. Had any trains been blown up on his route, their family would have been shot. (I could have sworn my mother told me that this happened to my grandfather, but no one else in my family can confirm it; still it was a constant fear one's family would bear the brunt of any action against the Germans.)  My grandfather knew that his son engaged in resistance activities, and certainly admired him for it. But the most he could do to help was look the other way when Roger used the top floor above to store for clandestine meetings. If my grandfather ever knew the Mottets across the street were hiding Jews (they were – the Hallensteins) he would never have denounced them, but neither would he have ever considered hiding Jews himself. That was a bridge too far. Roger was, by all accounts, singularly self-assured and deeply kind. My Aunt Francoise, whose self-published memoirs are indispensable to this account, tells of being taken by him up to the beautiful park (Le Rocher des Doms) above Avignon so he could study as she played.  On a bench, a Wehrmacht soldier sat next to him, and proceeded to engage in small talk. My uncle, who was always willing to practice his German, spoke to him at length, discovering that he was a former farmer who was reminded, seeing the little Francoise, of the young daughter he left back in Bavaria. He pulled out a picture and waxed rhapsodically about his child, as Roger listened attentively.

On the walk home, Francoise, all of 6 or 7, was truly livid. The men in the green uniforms were devils to be spit upon. How could her brother have spoken to him? “He was just homesick,” said Roger. “Homesick for his little girl.” He explained patiently that there were always good people amongst bad, and vice versa. (Years later I wondered if he hadn’t been trying to wrangle intelligence from the soldier, but I was assured that his refusal to dehumanize any individual—even the enemy—would have absolutely been his sole motivation.) I bring up this story because I saw the same trait so many times in later years from my mother. She ended up teaching in a fairly tough high school in the 70s. There were some angry kids with behavioral issues – mostly poor kids, usually African-American. All I ever heard her say about a difficult student was “that one has a bit of a chip on his shoulder.” Never once was did I hear even an obliquely reference to race, never once did she see the “attitude” with which she was confronted as anything more than a defense mechanism by someone who’d learned it as a survival tool. And when we kids – who went to the same high school – saw things in simpler terms, she always explained how essential empathy was as a human value, to always, always, try to imagine the experience of others.

These “problem kids” almost always came around. They may not have excelled in her class, but they invariably told her she was the nicest teacher they ever had.  She always saw the person, never the stereotype, and my siblings and I have always striven to emulate her.

Roger’s kidney disease did exempt him from “service” in la Force Ouvrière, the battalions of conscripted labor sent to work in Germany. This dispensation allowed him the freedom to secretly distribute copies of the underground newspaper, Témoignage Chrétien (Christian Witness), and on one unfortunate train trip  copies were found in his unmarked luggage. He denied the bag was his, but was still arrested, After several days in jail, he was only saved by the intervention of his future father-in-law, Pierre Ferran, a powerful judge in the mountain city of Rodez.  Roger conducted his work even more discreetly afterwards, often staying with the family of his fiancé, Annie, in the village of Arsac.

One such letter survived and has become part of the family canon. When my mother first showed it to me in the 70s, my jaw dropped, as I first took quite seriously the notion that she’d once had such an extraordinary suitor as the one invented by Roger. (The giveaway was the breathless and ornate style, one that I have tried to honor in the following translation.)

"La Chapelle Graillouse, 5 August 43 

My dearest sister,

First, I ask you to summon all the composure you can muster, for what follows must be considered with the coolest of heads and steadiest of nerves. I won’t minimize the gravity of the news: your entire future is at stake.

The Grand Duke Alexander has asked for your hand in marriage. The letter addressed to me with this proposal arrived last night at St. Nectaire--where the Duke has prolonged his stay despite his previously stated intention to return to South America on August 1st. I have not yet spoken of this to Mother, judging it best not to unnecessarily expose her frail constitution to such dramatic possibilities. There will be time enough to acclimate her if your answer is positive: otherwise it will be better if all this remains between us. 

I will first share some of the significant passages of his letter; though discretion dictates that I abjure recounting some parts of it. His Highness felt compelled to confess (I might add with a charming if slightly delirious lyricism) certain so-called “sins” of his youth, the details of which might prove indelicate for the ears of a well-brought-up young lady. I think we should, in any event, overlook these transgressions, some of which might even be exaggerated for effect. (It goes without saying that a man such as the Grand Duke should be granted every forbearance.)

What follows is a faithful transcription of the letter’s main passages, with a few parenthetical remarks in brackets I believe are the prerogative of an older brother to interject. I will leave it to you to “hear” it with the the peculiar cadences of a singular Hispano-Russian accent with which he would have expressed himself if his sentiments had been conveyed in person.

"Very dear friend, it is time I reveal to you the spark of the flames that have thawed my frozen heart with so such matter [‘so such matter’ is an slightly odd phrase of unclear meaning he uses often, perhaps literally translated from one of his many maternal tongues.] The source of my joy and anguish is none other than the little bird of the tundra [his pet name for you, my dear].  I lead now but an embalmed existence, awaiting her sun behind my shuttered solitude. [I suspect he may have spent too much time alone in one of his capacious haciendas de las pampas.] Life without Her [his capitalization!] is just a hellish dream from which I hope to soon awake, blinded by the brilliant glory of the morning dew on her quivering brow!

Give me to drink, dear friend! Quench my parched lips with the light of her beauty! As the new Grand Duchess, there will servants to attend to her every whim and caprice, stables of the finest Arabian horses, tables laden with every delicacy imaginable... For her will be the jewels that once belonged to Catherine Alexandrovich, whose untimely death I need not remind you granted to me considerable wealth in perpetuity. [Perhaps we shall have a solicitor carefully look over the will—just a thought.]

You know, my friend of the bosom, there is nothing, no so such matter [again, that peculiar expression] of villainy that I would not undertake to satisfy the flame of my passion! [One hopes he confused “effort” with “villainy.”] I'm a fearsome man when this heartsickness comes upon me like a demonic fog [I think a reference to the "aura" he claims to perceive before his epileptic crises] but I know your bewitching sister can tame the demons that possess me! You see, it's not a man I urge you to make “el más feliz de hombres,” it is a soul you must save from hell!” [Did I mention he a tad prone to hyberbole?] 

His Highness continues in this vein for sixteen and a half pages—in an unusually large cursive with slightly Cyrillic flourishes. I cannot to do his prose justice by summarizing it, but I probably should add something about his acknowledgement of the difference in your social classes. It’s nothing that should really surprise anyone familiar with the conditioning inherent in a certain kind of royal education, but it would be well to prepare you for a sensibility that is rather foreign to our egalitarian French ideals: "By marrying a proletarian girl I will not dishonor my blood because my blood makes pure everything it touches!” [He means “commoner” of course, his use of “proletarian” reflects a fascination with the scandalous radical leanings of his father, the late Grand Duke, rumored to be the patron of Trotsky himself during his exile in Mexico. His Highness considers himself above politics, of course, I call him “His Highmindedness” – which might be considered insolence in any but a future brother-in-law.]

And now, I must advise you on a course of action. After much consideration, I think it would be the height of folly to decline his proposal. You will not likely encounter another opportunity to escape from the petit-bourgeois world whose suffocating choke-hold you have so often lamented. His Highness is offering you a life of unimaginable luxury—transatlantic crossings in grand ocean liners, international casinos where great sums are lost and won in the bat of an eyelash, so many royal receptions that the wardrobe fittings alone will border on the tedious. Admittedly, he has perhaps what one might term a strong personality, but how much lighter will be the burden of his excesses to bear than if you found yourself tied for life to some coin-scraping shopkeeper? (I believe Montesquieu said: “What is vice in a tenant farmer is mere eccentricity from the owner of palatial estates.” And if he didn’t, he should have.)

That you will look back and wonder if you made the right decision is inevitable – such is the nature of marriage. Of one thing I am sure:  any regret you may feel if you choose the life of a Grand Duchess will pale in comparison to the regret you will feel if you do not. 

But of course, the decision is yours, lucky ‘little bird of the tundra.’ I look forward to conveying your answer as soon as possible.

Tenderly,

Your Brother”

Apart from its brilliant wit, this letter speaks to me of the great love Roger had for my mother, manifested in a desire to make her laugh, to remind her that someone close to her knew that she was just a teenager still, with hope and fantasies that no war could extinguish.

MCO 2015

The War: Part II

My Aunt’s Souvenirs reflect the strange trajectory of memories passed back and forth within families over time. Francoise was too young during the war to be writing in 2008 from direct personal memory; many of the details she recounts with such acuity had to have been the result of post-war conversations with my mother rather than her direct experience.  She could have been forgiven for reporting impressionistic and subjective memories of the war, but turned out to be a crackerjack researcher – plowing through old letters and photos, and plumbing the memories of myriad cousins and friends. And though I fancied myself to have inherited an encyclopedic understanding of family history from my mother, what stuck with me far more over the years were the emotional arcs to her stories, and the egotistical conviction of a writer that I had an idea what it felt like to be her then.

At the beginning of the war, my mother’s routine was little changed. After school came homework, playing with her little sister, helping with dinner and cleaning up, putting her sister to bed, then more homework. Perhaps she might read a popular novel before going to sleep, half-listening to the low voices of her parents in the other room, worrying about what would happen to France when the Germans invaded.  I’m sure she always listened for the opinion of Roger during these discussions, but she found it hard to be too worried. .“I was young, I was a teenager – you don’t think about death or even danger. You think you will live forever.”  

In May 1940, “la drole de guerre” was over. Germany invaded, and the exode from the north flooded  the south with refugees. Most returned, but those who could – particularly Jews – bribed their way into remaining in the south. There were a few new faces in the Sancta Maria Pensionnat, girls who had to concentrate when reciting prayers, as if they’d just learned them. Rationing came soon after, and as Germany plundered the French economy, the lack of food seemed to be all anyone talked about.

Years later, I heard the wry joke about the life of a worker under communism: “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.” Somehow it seemed familiar to me, I think because I’d heard of a similar sentiment echoed by my mother about meals during the war.  “They pretend to feed us and we pretend to eat.”  You had to be resourceful not to starve. My mother learned, when walking through Avignon, to keep her eyes peeled for a line that might be forming and get on it, regardless if she knew what was being sold . If she were lucky, she might bring home some powdered milk or some vegetables - sometimes even, farmers unloaded bagful of rabbits in an alley. Francoise remembers the miracles her mother managed in the kitchen with so little to work with – but the hunger, she doesn’t remember. She surmises that everyone made sure she had her fill, and I am quite certain Simone often lied about not being as hungry as she was to make sure of it.

  Because of the cuts to the power and water supply that occurred often, my grandmother came up with ingenious ways to cook with very little fuel, and of course every bit of water was recycled three times at least.  (These habits came in handy at our summer home in the Berkshire years later, when we had a limited water supply.) But most impressive was Jeanne’s improvisation during the bombings that began in 1943. As my grandfather’s store was over a thick basement of limestone bedrock, all the neighbors gathered there as well as the Chabals, and someone had to figure out little systems to make things go right – or in case things went wrong.  Jeanne rigged a cord attached to a bell at street level, that could be pulled to alert rescuers in case they were trapped under collapsed rubble.  In the shelter itself she was always knitting, a habit my mother picked

up which I always considered her personal meditation,  her form of self-soothing. (These five red sweaters define the winter of 62-63 for us.)

The bombings were forever imbedded into my mother’s future political DNA. There has been no military conflict in the world since when she hasn’t thought first and foremost of the toll on the civilian population. I know all of her children inherited a similar perspective.  I was so personally fascinated by her experience in the war that my first short story was about the French underground – although I took it a bit literally, probably because I conflated it with my mother being literally under the ground during the bombing.

In late 1942, Roger felt she was old enough to understand the reasons why girls who had been  suspected of masquerading as Catholics were disappearing from her school. He told her there were terrible rumors that trains going east that were coming back empty.  He probably knew more but held back from spelling things out. She was a 16-year old girl who could do very little, after all. After the war, the fate of her Jewish classmates weighed heavily on her . “I breathed the same air as these girls” she told me. (She read obsessively about the holocaust later in life, a habit that didn’t help with her insomnia, just as it doesn't help with mine.)

In 1944, my grandmother was forced to spend more time in a sanitarium as her tuberculosis got worse. Francoise, like many of the children of Avignon, was sent to a school in the country to be safe from the bombings.  Roger was lying low with the family of his fiancée in the Auvergne region, and my mother, alone in Avignon with her father, was stretched thin. She had to run the house, cook for Marcel, scramble to find food and do her best to see her sister and her mother as often as she could in the face of deteriorating train service. Her favorite aunts, Marguerite and Claire, stayed close. And though schools closed with the bombings, she remained in touch with two former teachers, Janine Lesbros and Cecile Godin. (Everyone thought of them as spinster-roommates, but it was clear as day to me when I met them as an adult they were life partners.) Janine was the niece of Alfred Lesbros, a painter who now has some renown in the south of France, (and three of whose pieces my mother owns), and Cecile was way more cool than anyone should have been teaching in a strict Catholic school. The pair was to play a very important role in my mother’s life, and these letters from Cecile after two of the heaviest allied bombing raids on Avignon (which she witnessed from outside the city at St. Pierre de Vassol) speak to their closeness.
 

Chère Simone:

I’m still overwhelmed by what I heard this morning, having witnessed the horrible spectacle from afar. We heard the sirens of Carpentras, saw the planes and the bombs falling from them, and felt the earth shake all the way to here. We were fairly sure it was indeed Avignon that had been bombed. You can imagine how worried we were. Ma Simone, how fearsome it must have been, even in your shelter! Janine decided to go to Carpentras [by bicycle no doubt], and there she was assured that the targets were the Vouland factory, the suspension bridge and the train station. Nothing too close to the rue des Marchands, but I am still worried. Please send word as soon you can....

Cecile

There is another from her dated almost a month later. Clearly my mother had not only been fine, but managed to send an impossibly luxurious gift.

Ma chère:

Oh Simone, the spiced roll was so delectable! You can’t imagine with what savagery we threw ourselves upon it, after just having finished a meal of 4 potatoes and a meager spoonful each of noodles! We are wild animals and dying of hunger! And here you are, sweet Simone, so adorable to deprive yourself of the tastiest bread ever consumed! But you are forbidden to do it again! You cannot. 
I did not write yesterday because the latest bombing rather upset me – it seemed to be one of the heaviest yet. We heard felt the ground moving. There is no news from Avignon yet. [Most radios had been confiscated by the Germans.] Oh mon pauvre chou, that you are living through such a thing.  I know perhaps you are getting used to it, but still.
Cécile.

One bomb did destroy the house of a great-aunt, though no one was killed. My mother helped clear the rubble for days.

As you can tell, my mother inspired a great deal of affection. In fact, meeting the first of many lifelong friends in 1943 was one of the bright spots in a time when just laughing entre amis must have almost felt like a small act of sabotage.

MCO 2015