Stories Collected While Living in France

French la Vie

Comfort and Joy

The Girl with a Pink Rose on her Hat

 

The Girl with a Pink Rose on her Hat-

A postcard found years ago at some little flea market in France.

I kept it.

It has followed me for years, sitting on my desk, wedged between the glass pane of the kitchen window, taped in my armoire, used as a book marker, and now adorning my blog.

It is something about her regard, the way her hat shadows her, the feeling of calm I take in when I see it… as if she is listening.

Funny how things can take on a life of their own, and seem to bring us something that we acknowledge useful, helpful or lucky.

Chelsea has a stuffed bunny that she has had since she was one or two.

French Husband has a navy sweatshirt that is nearly thirty years old.

Sacha has a cartouche .

What is something you have?

Comments

35 responses to “Comfort and Joy”

  1. Taste of France

    My husband had a tape measure from his father. One day, our kid broke it–accidentally. My husband broke down and cried because it was the only thing he had left from his father. I have rarely seen him cry.
    I’m one of those sentimental types who hates to get rid of beloved things. Luckily, I don’t acquie much, either. I have some quilts my grandma made me from floral-printed flour sacks–she first used them to make me summer dresses and then sewed the remnants into quilts. I can still remmeber the dresses when I look at the quilt.

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  2. Kathie B

    We still use quite a few possessions that had belonged to Farmboy Husband’s grandfather. In fact, Grandpa’s best shears are sitting here on my desk right next to my keyboard. Scarcely a day passes that we don’t use them.

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  3. RebeccaNYC

    I have a little wind up plastic crab toy that sat on my desk at one of the first real jobs I ever had. He has been on my desk ever since…from hospital administrator to opera singer. He’s sitting on my desk at the Met now, a little worse for the wear…he’s lost a claw or two. Sort of like me.

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  4. g

    my blankets(2) that wrapped me as an infant-and the replacement my mom bought when I was 25 (just in case)one of my most cherished possessions-

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  5. Jan D-M

    For me, it’s two little things: One is a plastic credit card-shaped prayer that my little mum gave me about thirty years ago. I’ve carried it with me ever since. It broke in half, so I had it laminated. The other is a little wooden lady bug that an innkeeper in Austria gave me the morning I learned that my father had died. It had double-stick tape on the back and she told me to put it on the dash of our car and it would bring us good luck on our travels. She had no way of knowing that this little lady bug would come to symbolize my dad to me. My tall, booming-voiced, commanding and DEmanding, retired Army Lt Colonel dad would get quite a kick out of the fact that he is represented by a lady bug. I keep it in a shadow box along with an “I love you, Dad” sticky note that I had stuck on his coffee pot on my last trip home. I found it stuck to his cupboard door when I went home for his funeral.

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  6. Kipper

    My Dad’s childhood stuffed animal, FoxyLoxy. It is a fox that has a pivoting tail. I’ve told friends that if the house is on fire treat Foxy is the main thing to rescue. Favorite Aunty kept a plastic barrette Grandpa gave her when she was 35. Guess he always thought of her as his little girl. She had it in a little box like it was a treasure.

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  7. Kay

    A one-foot square cracked ceramic tile from my grandmother’s southern California patio. It has lived next to every hearth in our many homes over these past 50 years.

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  8. g

    This is beautiful!

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  9. Patti

    A yellow rubber duck on a top shelf in my refrigerator for at least 30 years.

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  10. Rhonda

    I’ve been holding on to a vintage round paper label that says FRANCE, since 2011, my trip to France. It makes me smile, it comforts me and I treasure that little piece of paper. I found it at the Clignancourt Flea Market.

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  11. Momof5

    Wait! You’re an opera singer @ the Met?!

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  12. Momof5

    I agree!

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  13. Momof5

    I love this!

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  14. Momof5

    I can relate! My daughter’s little friend accidentally dropped my childhood tea set which broke into a million little pieces. I promptly burst into tears surprising myself and the girls. It was the last gift I had received from my father who died when I was 9. We ascribe value without always even knowing it until it is gone.
    Also, I too have treasured quilts made from my old dresses and even older ones of my mother’s dresses. I cherish them!

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  15. RebeccaNYC

    yep. I’m in the chorus since 1995. Are you on Instagram? I often post photos of backstage and costumes, etc during the season if you are interested! And my husband and I love to visit France during the off season, and that’s how I found Corey!

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  16. RebeccaNYC

    oh, I forgot to add that my IG is @mybackstageopera

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  17. JudyMac

    I remember very little about my early years, but I do remember the first book that I recall being read to me by my Mom …. a large, colorful, illustrated book of Uncle Remus Stories. I have a well-worn copy of the original edition, and in the years since have only seen one other like it. At bedtime, I always wanted the story read to me that covered the most pages, thus it took longer to savor. I was maybe 3 or 4 years old, but I think that was when I was first bitten by the reading bug and I’m still a voracious reader many moons later. My Mom did not read much herself, but she certainly got the ball rolling for my love of books and reading.

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  18. Ann of Avondale

    Too many things to list but a few of my favs. A tea set and sewing basket (childhood gifts from mom); also I have my grandmothers sewing basket; a crystal desk clock – gift from dad; music box from my sister’s European trip, my mom’s beautiful rosary and a house full of of gifts from friends and family which I cherish.
    Honestly, all my life, people have given me the sweetest, most thoughtful gifts. The last gift I received was from a friend who has cancer, she gave me a gift because she said she wanted me to have it. That’s why I keep it all. Everything is given from the heart and I cannot part with it.

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  19. Momof5

    I will follow you on Instagram! I love going to see live @ the met at our local theaters (we live in Boston). I enjoy it as much as being there in person because I love the backstage intermission tours and interviews almost as much as the operas.

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  20. Leslie in Oregon

    The piano played for many decades by my grandmother and mother, transported from Wisconsin to Washington by their family in 1927, then on to Oregon decades later when my mother had a place for it in her home. It is the piano on which both I and my children learned to play.

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  21. Jan D-M

    Fun! You now have a new follower!

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  22. Jan D-M

    Thank you. There is more to the story of that sticky note that involves family drama that still makes my heart hurt nine years later. I cried when I saw that it meant enough to my dad to keep it.

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  23. Jan D-M

    Thank you. There is more to the story of that sticky note that involves family drama that still makes my heart hurt nine years later. I cried when I saw that it meant enough to my dad to keep it.

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  24. KAMFreeman

    I have the cookie jar of my childhood from my grandmother’s home, sewing and embroidery scissors from her and her knitting needles. She was born in 1886 in Norway and everything thing is treated with love and memories. I eat off her china every day and my sterling came from my other grandmother. My maternal grandfather was first mate and chaplain on a square rigger- his small Lutheran worship book and hymnal, both in Norwegian, are treasures I will pass down to my daughter. Today my grandchildren ask me stories about my grandparents when they see things of family history in my home. Family memorabilia is a good place to connect them with the history of my family.

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  25. Ali

    I have kept a doll that I was given when I was five. It’s not soft and cuddly, but made of some sort of hard material. She is maybe twelve inches from toe to her little hard head. She lived in a plastic bag for many years….legs and arms not attached. One day I took her to a doll doctor and had her put back together. She got fancy new clothes and now sits on my night table.
    I guess she is considered vintage now like me. I have no idea why she was always special. You cannot predict what will be important to you.
    The postcard of the young women looks like Chelsea…..I think!
    Ali

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  26. Teddee Grace

    What a lovely, and apparently flawless, young woman and, most probably, without a bit of makeup! I still have a teddy bear that my mother’s youngest sister sent to my sister, who apparently was a little too old for it and expressed disinterest, and which I commandeered. So it is about 70 years old. Many a childhood tear shed into his old, probably sawdust filled, body!

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  27. REbecca from the pacific northwest

    Fun going back to the 2007 post about Chelsea’s doudou.

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  28. REbecca from the pacific northwest

    What a sweet and wonderful story. Thanks for sharing it, Jan.

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  29. REbecca from the pacific northwest

    This is how I am too. Everything is sentimental; everything reminds me of a person or a story.

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  30. REbecca from the pacific northwest

    As Mom and Dad were getting older, we sisters would speak up about items we’d like to inherit in the house, hoping they would tag things for us. (They did not; we spent long contentious days dividing up their Stuff, large and small, financially valuable and sentimentally valuable.)
    As we’d express interest in the heirloom cross-stitch sampler from 1840s, a pretty bowl that had been Grandmother’s, the dented mashed-potato serving spoon that we all loved, the cream-and-sugar set they got for a wedding present, my dad would plaintively whine, “But what of MINE does anybody want? Who wants my bolo ties?”
    I ended up taking his (quite ugly) bolo ties after he died. But he would be surprised to learn that the REAL Dad-souvenir I’ve loved, appreciated, and used for these past 21 years is the hugest ball of twine I had ever seen. A true-to-form Dad-bulk-purchase. I have tied up many season’s worth of flopping plants with that twine, and each time I’ve thought of him and how amazed he would be that this is the Dad-item that I love most. I only have a little bit left. And I’m saving it.

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  31. Debby H

    For me it’s two very worn $50. bills that my husband tucked away in his wallet as soon after we were married, 50 years ago this December, as he could afford. He always wanted “rat-hole money”. It was his security that he would always be able to provide food for his family if necessary. When he died in 1997 I put the bills in my wallet like he would have wanted me too. I guess my two sons will split it when I’m gone.

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  32. Sue J.

    I have a bookmark that my mother tucked into my suitcase as I headed back to college in 1974. It says, “Like a small and fragile flower …sheltered ‘neath a tree I would that from all illness … I could shelter thee.” She died unexpectedly two months later.

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  33. Dawn

    I also have way too many things to list. I have the first cat statue I bought from a garage sale when I was 10. It’s in our guest bathroom.

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  34. Parisbreakfast

    True confessions time. I still have a 1 1/4″ plastic dollhouse garbage pail i shoplifted from Woolworths 5 & 10 at age 12. My first and last (thank goodness) criminal act.
    http://parisbreakfasts.blogspot.fr/2006/04/bon-voyagepeut-etre.html
    Oh and a faux plastic ice cube with a bee inside my Dad used to play tricks on us, dropping it into our lemonade in summer.

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  35. Jan D-M

    Thank you, REbecca.

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