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As I continue to go through my junk, I paused yesterday to take a look—a good look—at one of the many collections of scribbles that my mother left behind, and it occurs to me that I, in my role as acorn, did not fall far from the tree, in a number of ways.
The notebook is small and spiral bound, just the thing to stash in one's pocket while on the go. It has orange covers, depicts an archer on the cover (over the name Héraclès), and is described as a "cahier scolaire, No. 452." No price is shown.
My best guess is that my mother used this notebook to scribble in during the summer of '65, after completing one of the many programs that consumed her attention during my early adolescence. I narrowed the year to 1965 on the basis of finding a couple of pages in the notebook where my stepfather had made notes in his very exacting, neat draftsman's hand.
It is hard to characterize what, exactly, the notebook was for. It contains notes about restaurants (presumably to be visited) and books (presumably to be acquired and read), but the vast majority of scribbles appear to be my mother reflecting as much French as she could from her surroundings onto the page.
And it's not just simple vocabulary words, but phrases—mostly idiomatic expressions (or what I call 'semi-idiomatic', meaning that you'd almost certainly never find them in a dictionary of idioms, yet they reflect the way people talk).
And it struck me, as I found these items, that I've done pretty much the same thing during my travels.
Restaurants to visit? Check.
Books to read? Check.
Texts of signs from various places—as in her notice of prière de laisser cet endroit aussi propre que vous désirer le trouver en entrant (please leave this place as clean as you would like to find it upon entering)? Double check.
My travel notebooks contain the same kinds of notes, particularly about various turns of the phrase. One important difference, for whatever it is worth, is that I include the occasional description of my surroundings and some of the people in them.
I do not recall any explicit resentment on my part to my mother's pursuit of her career goals—the years of taking graduate courses in Manhattan two or three days a week after work or summers spent away from home, but that pursuit did little to bring us closer together. And looking back, I sometimes find myself regretting the time I spent chasing the Almighty Dollar™ while the kids were growing up, but not too acutely, for although there were planes to catch, the bills also got paid. How much of any of it was downright necessary is anyone's guess.
In any event, things are what they are, and we can only hope to improve our response to them from here on out.
Cheers...
The notebook is small and spiral bound, just the thing to stash in one's pocket while on the go. It has orange covers, depicts an archer on the cover (over the name Héraclès), and is described as a "cahier scolaire, No. 452." No price is shown.
My best guess is that my mother used this notebook to scribble in during the summer of '65, after completing one of the many programs that consumed her attention during my early adolescence. I narrowed the year to 1965 on the basis of finding a couple of pages in the notebook where my stepfather had made notes in his very exacting, neat draftsman's hand.
It is hard to characterize what, exactly, the notebook was for. It contains notes about restaurants (presumably to be visited) and books (presumably to be acquired and read), but the vast majority of scribbles appear to be my mother reflecting as much French as she could from her surroundings onto the page.
And it's not just simple vocabulary words, but phrases—mostly idiomatic expressions (or what I call 'semi-idiomatic', meaning that you'd almost certainly never find them in a dictionary of idioms, yet they reflect the way people talk).
And it struck me, as I found these items, that I've done pretty much the same thing during my travels.
Restaurants to visit? Check.
Books to read? Check.
Texts of signs from various places—as in her notice of prière de laisser cet endroit aussi propre que vous désirer le trouver en entrant (please leave this place as clean as you would like to find it upon entering)? Double check.
My travel notebooks contain the same kinds of notes, particularly about various turns of the phrase. One important difference, for whatever it is worth, is that I include the occasional description of my surroundings and some of the people in them.
I do not recall any explicit resentment on my part to my mother's pursuit of her career goals—the years of taking graduate courses in Manhattan two or three days a week after work or summers spent away from home, but that pursuit did little to bring us closer together. And looking back, I sometimes find myself regretting the time I spent chasing the Almighty Dollar™ while the kids were growing up, but not too acutely, for although there were planes to catch, the bills also got paid. How much of any of it was downright necessary is anyone's guess.
In any event, things are what they are, and we can only hope to improve our response to them from here on out.
Cheers...
