This November my blog will be 16 years old. To celebrate I have asked you my readers to submit a Guest Post for my blog as a way of celebrating our connectedness as a community through social media.
I hope you will send me your story or at least a glimpse into your life (please send your story and JPEG photos through email.) I feel I know so many of you through the comment section and emails I hope this will introduce you to one another. Thank you in advance for being part of French la Vie / Tongue in Cheek.
———
My name is Michelle (aka momof5) and I live in Boston MA. When I first began following Corey many years ago I had 5 kids still @ home hence the name. I “discovered” Corey when I accompanied my husband (a Boston University professor) to Paris for a conference. Before we left I googled ‘Paris Antique shops” to keep myself occupied during his conference hours. One of the first things that popped up was Corey’s blog and her post about her favorite Paris antique shops. At that time I knew nothing about her but I printed out her list and visited EVERY one of those shops and soon discovered exactly why she loved them. I was hooked. A few years later I was the lucky recipient of a random blog drawing for a FREE three-day stay in her newly renovated gorgeous apartment!! What a time my husband and I had exploring her little slice of Paris! And on my last visit, I had the good fortune to meet Corey and Yann for dinner in a lovely restaurant on the water in Aix in Provence. In many ways, we have lived parallel lives as our kids are of similar ages, as well as our love of antiques. And our strong mothers ..mine is 95 and alive and well!
(Photo Via Michelle's FB page in honor of nurses who have given their lives to help others during this time.)
I am a pediatric nurse, mostly retired but still work a few hours a week in Early Intervention with kids birth to three with disabilities or environmental risk. I’ve done this work for over 30 years and love the kids and families I work with. My visits are now “virtual” and I look forward to when I can see my kiddo’s in person again.
When I thought about what to share with Corey’s readers I thought about what is important to me. When I first began following Corey I discovered how open she was to let people into her life and home whom she had NEVER met before. It seemed like a leap of faith to me. So I followed her lead by volunteering for a nonprofit called Hospitality Homes. Patients/families traveling to the Boston area for medical treatment can stay free of cost in volunteer’s homes while they receive treatment. We’ve had families stay with us from all over the globe. Some return repeatedly. I now feel like I have friends in every corner of the world.
(Via Michelle's FB page)
My other loves are the city of Boston. Of all the large American cities I think Boston most resembles Europe. I volunteer with Boston By Foot giving tours of Boston to visitors to our beautiful city. I especially love the Back Bay which has the largest collection of Victorian architecture in the US. So please look up BBF if and when you visit! I’d love to give you a tour!
I also volunteer in finding homes for the New England Newfoundland Rescue. I’m a big dog lover (pun intended). If you’ve ever met a Newfoundland you know they are a giant breed. We have two dogs. Max a 1/2 Great Pyrenees/lab mix and Axel, a Newfoundland.
(Sidenote… Michelle is one of the most active persons I know! She is a nurse, an activist, an antique dealer, mother, artist, singer, baker, gardener, volunteer, mother… and so much more…)
I sing in a large community choir which during COVID I am missing greatly. Belonging to a choir meeting over Zoom is just NOT the same. Nothing renews my spirit like singing with like-minded members/friends.
I sell antiques in a shop with 20 vendors in Great Barrington western Massachusetts where we spend most of our summers and as many weekends as possible. It’s a beautiful part of the US and filled with early American Architecture and Antiques.
Before COVID I loved to travel as much as possible. Three years ago my family traveled to Kenya, Africa to revisit my Peace Corps days. It was the first time I’d been back in over 40 years. It was a memorable trip
and I loved sharing my past and present with my adult kids.
(Question: Please tell me more about your experience with the peace corps?)
The Peace Corps was started in 1961 by President John F Kennedy to provide development and economic assistance to developing countries. It was staffed by energetic and idealistic young people, many just out of college.
I joined in 1975 after two years of working in a pediatric burn unit and my job was to teach nursing to Kenyan students. At that time the syllabus was based on the Western guidelines of WHO. For me at that time, I didn’t understand teaching Western medicine when women and children were dying daily of measles, polio, rabies, and malnutrition. Access to immunizations would have improved their lives tremendously yet there I was teaching about heart disease when no one lived long enough to die of heart disease. I learned that maggots in a large burn wound was a good thing and would help to debride the wound. There is much I could say about this experience but what continues to stay with me and what I wanted to share with my family was the warmth of the Kenyan people and the animals living in their natural habitat. As a volunteer seeing a giraffe gracefully run across the road in front of me never ceased to take my breath away. Since then it’s been tough for me to see animals in zoos.
It was wonderful to return to the hospital where I worked and show it to my family. When we were walking around being given a tour by the current director, my daughter was holding up photos I had taken before and took a new photo of the same buildings. Someone stopped to ask what we were doing and my daughter said, “My Mom used to work here in the 1970s and we are taking a trip down memory lane for my mom”. They asked, “Is she still alive!” to which my daughter pointed to me and said “yes”. I became quite the celebrity given that I was still alive. Another sad fact that if you live to 65 you are very old and very lucky in Kenyan terms. I agree with the lucky part.
Last year at this time our daughter married at Tanglewood in the Berkshires.
(Question: Please tell me more about why your daughters are wrapped in quilts?)
My great grandmother was a mother of 6 and a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Missouri. For her, making quilts was a matter of keeping her family warm as well as socializing with other women at “quilting bees”. My great-grandmother and grandmother were exceptionally skilled @ hand quilting and I am fortunate to have inherited many of these beautiful quilts. The quilt that my daughters are wrapped in at the wedding was made for me by my grandmother when I was a child. It has graced both of my daughter's beds when they were young. Bringing a few of the quilts to the wedding was a way to have their memories with us even though they are no longer here.
I’ve always loved Byzantine and Medieval art and icons in particular. A number of years ago I thought it would be fun to take an egg tempera icon painting class. I have a tendency to do things like this without having thought of the fact I had NO painting experience. None. The teacher was an amazing man who had spent his life conserving museum icons in the Soviet Union before it collapsed and he immigrated to the US. He said he could spend 7 years repairing one ancient icon. One of his modern icons is in a chapel at Harvard. Anyway, this is my finished icon. I never got around to adding the varnish so it’s a bit chippy these days.
I had hoped to follow that wonderful event by doing Corey’s Brocante week in May 2020. Sadly that was postponed for now. But like many of Corey’s followers, her daily blog is the one constant in my life. Especially during this uncertain time. I’ve enjoyed reading the comments to her blog posts and feel like I “know” many of you as well
….for all of this I am thankful
Thanks for your interest, Corey. It has given me time to reflect on what I value.
—-Links—-
Leave a Reply