This morning, my daughter caught the middle school bus for the last time. She’ll return barely four hours later (early release at 10:20, classes twelve minutes long.) I packed her last eighth grade lunch yesterday (no more washing of the thermos and tupperware salad containers for a couple of months). Actual school work, of course, ended a while ago. The final week is a mere formality, a period loosely filled with awards ceremonies, desk and locker cleanings, movie-watching, yearbook signings, and saying goodbye.
It’s hard to believe that all those highly anticipated school events requiring so much preparation are now in the past. Guys and Dolls, in which D played the faithful Mission girl, Agatha, is ancient history. The music department’s competition at Busch Gardens: barely visible in the rearview mirror. The same goes for Mayfest Playfest, a day of short plays written and performed by local middle schoolers throughout the county. Standards of Learning exams in reading, geometry, civics and science: duly completed and scored. (Eight years ago, when D began elementary school and we first heard of the SOLs, my husband found the acronym hilarious.) The eighth grade dance: over. Year-long projects: researched, written, presented, evaluated and returned. Exams: completed and graded. End-of-year orchestra concert (featuring a beautiful rendition of I Dreamed a Dream): it’s history. The final, quite comical performance by the drama class (30 Reasons Not to be in a Play): c’est finit.
When D returns home very shortly, she’ll be accompanied by a crowd of friends. I’ll drive them to the pool, and summer will begin.
When school resumes in the fall, our only child, our baby, will be a high schooler. H and I graduate to another, if not more mature, then at least more elderly parenting bracket.
Seventy-six days of summer stretch out before us. Once, ages ago, that sounded like an eternity to me. Now I know how quickly the season will pass. Every year, I vow to appreciate these precious days, to relish each one for what it brings. I don’t really like the expression, but I’ll use it anyway: I’ll try to be present for these fleeting days of summer. They will vanish in a flash, as always. We’ve been waiting in line 180 days for our turn on summer’s roller coaster. The cars are pulling up, and soon we’ll be inching up that first hill. This season, I will pay attention and enjoy the ride. I hope you do, as well!
My daughter and a fellow actor as Mission Girls in the school musical, Guys & Dolls.
D made these “Lazt Day” earrings (no more s’s in the abc beads) in 6th grade. She has worn them once a year ever since.
We arrived at our London destination around midnight. For the next few nights we would be bunking in a dormitory of King’s College Hall. Instead of five or six of us in a communal chamber, as before in France, each of us had our own tiny cell. The barren, ascetic rooms offered limited distraction, and you’d think this would have been our chance to get some rest. But no. Katie, Jackie and I stayed up that first night until around 3 AM, indulging in giddy doses of adolescent humor.
The next morning we were in a fog of drowsiness on a bus rolling through London. Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, and Big Ben, still black with the coal dust of a century and a half, were blurry, dream-like images dancing improbably before my eyes. Once we began our walking tour, I was sufficiently awake to be irked at not having more time to spend in the Abbey, and at seeing the Tower of London only from the outside.
That afternoon we went shopping at Selfridge’s and Marks & Spencer. According to my journal entry, I wasn’t especially impressed; I described them simply as large department stores similar to Atlanta’s now long-defunct Rich’s. I’ve never been an enthusiastic shopper. Postcards and guidebooks were my primary European purchases, but in Marks & Spencer, Rebecca and I bought identical fuzzy white wool sweaters. London meals and evenings are among the vaguest of my memories. I’m certain, though, that we prolonged our nightly festivities at the dorm until well into the morning hours.
On our second day in England, we were back on the bus, heading to Stratford-on-Avon. During the drive, we were all elated when snow began to fall. Snow! In April! This offered further, indisputable proof that we were very far from home. Has a snowflake ever fallen in Atlanta in April? Possibly, but if so, it was terribly lonely, and it melted immediately. The English countryside was as beautiful as that of France. Scenes worthy of Christmas cards were plentiful: medieval-style barns, peacefully grazing horses and sheep, neat, increasingly white fields criss-crossed with ancient rock walls. We stopped briefly in Oxford, where we got off the bus for a glance at Christ Church College. The visit was long enough for me to fall in love with this town of unbelievably gorgeous student housing, and to determine to get back there one day, when I could linger, and wander.
In Stratford, we hit the usual tourist attractions, including Shakespeare’s birthplace and the cottage of his wife, Anne Hathaway. That evening, many of us at last managed some sleep. Unfortunately it was during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry V. We were not at all prepared for the play; we had no idea of the plot, the actors’ Elizabethan English was indecipherably foreign, and we weren’t anywhere near the action.
Outside Anne Hathaway’s cottage in Stratford.
After our extended nap in Shakespeare’s theatre, we headed back to London. The last thing I remember about the trip was our group assembling the next morning on the sidewalk in front of King’s College, awaiting the bus that would take us to Gatwick Airport.
The long trip home has completely dropped from my memory, and in a way, I’m glad. In the years since, I’ve learned that going home requires far more time than getting wherever it is we’re going. It also demands vaster sums of patience and fortitude. But in my mind, I can skip right over all those tiresome hours of waiting and traveling. Suddenly, I’m my fourteen year old self, hugging my young parents in Atlanta’s as yet unremodeled Hartsfield Airport. Soon we’d be turning into our driveway, and I’d see that the azaleas were in full bloom. Daddy would be unlocking the door to the back hall, and my dog Popi would be waiting at the top of the stairs. I’d look into his eyes and know that he missed me. I’d drop my bag in my room and look around at the familiar surroundings of home. I would be completely happy. Happy to be home. And happy to know that one day, somehow or other, I’d get back to those far-away places that now seemed a little closer.
Most of us were not ready for this photo, taken outside King’s College, but we were ready to go home. Our remarkable teacher, Mrs. Correll, smiling at back left, is her usual cheerful self.
After our night at the lycée in Saint-Malo (See European Vacation ’75, Part III), our group was back on the bus early the next morning, heading to Le Havre and the Channel for our crossing to England. I was surprised at the size and relative luxury of the ferry; I guess I had been expecting something bare-bones and rudimentary. I hadn’t imagined that it might house several restaurants, shops and comfortable lounge areas. It was fortunate that it was roomy and fairly pleasant, as the crossing took over six hours. My friends and I wandered freely all over the boat, exploring every level.
When someone discovered a door that led outside, we stumbled upon a real thrill: the open decks. We had never felt such a fierce, strong wind. We were amazed that we could lean into the wind at a sharp angle and remain there, without falling. With the wind behind us, we could jump and be carried as though in flight. Luckily, no one sailed over the railings into the icy waters of the Channel.
After a while, when we began to feel the chill, we noticed two teenage boys hanging around farther down the deck. They were older than we were, probably around sixteen, and they weren’t involved in wind experiments. We could hear their English accents. Evidently this Channel crossing was old hat to them. They soon walked by, ostentatiously ignoring us, trying to appear caught up in their own conversation. When we returned inside, we saw that they remained near the door, still deeply immersed in their dialogue. We began once again to ramble throughout the ship, to see if the boys would follow us. They did. We conspicuously refused to acknowledge their presence, and they did the same to us, despite trailing us at a distance.
After a meandering circuit of the ship, the boys climbed the stairs to the observatory lounge. We remained on the level below. Not long afterwards, several younger English boys appeared. They looked to be about twelve or so. After much heated whispering among themselves, with frequent glances in our direction, they shyly approached. It didn’t take long for them to start firing off questions: How old were we? Where did we live? After each couple of inquiries they would dash upstairs to the observatory, only to return quickly with more questions.
The older boys, apparently, had opted to send in scouts on a reconnaissance mission. Once the younger boys had run through all the questions they could think of, they revealed their purpose. They had been sent to report that there were two “lads” on the upper level who would like to meet us. Due to their accents, we couldn’t at first decipher the word “lads.” Two whats? Lads? Oh, lads! How unbelievably quaint! None of us had ever before been pursued by a “lad!”
Nevertheless, we weren’t interested in the elder lads. They appeared overly serious and lacking in humor. Tall and gangly, they verged on being men. Although we were flattered by the attention, we knew we had no business flirting with men, or almost-men. Looking back, I wonder at their interest in us, several goofy, wind-blown fourteen year olds. Maybe our American-ness gave us some cachet.
Jackie, Rebecca, me and the mighty wind.
The younger lads, though, were an altogether different type: funny, cute, spunky, sweet, smaller than we were, and non-threatening. Their Englishness was simultaneously exotic and reassuring. They reminded me of members of Fagin’s gang of urchins in the Disney movie, Oliver! We never went upstairs to meet the older boys, but spent considerable time chatting with the twelve-year olds. They told us they lived in Staffordshire and were returning from a school “holiday” in Normandy.
I talked primarily with a golden-haired, blue-eyed boy named Graeme Bailey. He gave me his address, which he wrote on a page torn from a small notebook. On the other side was his drawing of a soldier. The address was other-worldly and old-fashioned. It included only one number, and that was a single digit. In looks, in name (and its spelling), and in accent, Graeme was perfectly, enchantingly English. But because he was so open and approachable, before we said goodbye I felt as though I had known him for a long while.
That night, I wrote in my journal that this had been one of the best days of the trip, even though all we did was travel. As I remember, I was feeling rather elated, wide open to life’s possibilities. Before setting foot in Britain, I had met a quintessential English lad, one who took a friendly, cheerful interest in me.
I think I was beginning to grasp the transcendent power of travel. It’s a truly wonderful thing to experience first-hand the vastness and variety of our world’s natural and cultural beauty. This is certainly an adequate reason to roam the globe. But to me, the real power of travel is this: it reveals the depth and strength of the bonds that unite us as a human family. Custom, language, differences in physical appearance–these are simply thin layers of veneer, the candy coating on an M&M. No matter where we were born or where we live, we are more alike than different. This awareness equips us with a powerful force for living with compassion and understanding.
It’s happened again. Another harrowing national tragedy. This time in Boston, during that city’s much-beloved marathon, on Massachusetts’ annual Patriot’s Day, a day of holiday and celebration.
More innocent lives were lost yesterday, April 15. More bodies were maimed, more souls damaged, more children left without a parent, more parents’ lives ravaged by the loss of a child. Another beautiful day in April, forever marked by catastrophe and sadness. Today is the six-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting. This Friday, 18 years will have passed since the Oklahoma City bombing. As in the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, a jubilant time in the life of a city has been twisted into ugliness, a blood-red-letter day of mourning. As in December’s horrific mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, children are among the victims. As on all these days and on September 11, those of us still standing are shakier, less steady.
Perhaps somewhat guiltily, we are relieved that it wasn’t our time. Not yet, at least. But we know it could easily have been us. It could happen to any of us. And increasingly often, it does. Our family was concerned, in particular, about friends from our church. The daughter was running the marathon, and her parents were there to cheer her on. Luckily, she is young, strong and very fast. We learned through Facebook that the family was unhurt physically.
Now, as a nation, we will pause. We will mourn. Many of us will pray. We may find ourselves at a loss for how to proceed. But then, as we always do after such calamities, we will rally. We will come together in love and support of those who died, of those runners now missing limbs, of those who have lost loved ones, of those who will assist friends and family as they face years of surgery and difficult recovery. We will stand up and say that we refuse to get used to this. We refuse to accept such violence as the natural order of things. And through our shared strength and determination, we will show that no matter what, the power of goodness will win out over evil. Immediate proof of this is demonstrated by the many people who stepped in, selflessly and heroically, to do everything they could to help injured strangers.
My prayers will continue to go out for all those impacted by this tragedy, and for all Bostonians, who, I would imagine, take personally this despicable strike against their hometown.
Our group was a few minutes late in returning to the bus after touring Mont Saint Michel. The Chickamaugans, hopping mad because of the delay, demanded an apology. I can’t remember if we apologized or not. If we did, I’m sure we managed to ooze contempt and condescension. Our traveling companions had clearly missed the magic of Mont Saint-Michel. That night we were to stay in nearby Saint-Malo in a French boarding school, empty over the Easter holidays. The trip to the Lycée Jacques Cartier didn’t take long. The school, in a pleasant wooded setting, consisted of long, low gray stone modernist buildings. It appeared to be very new at the time. We immediately went to dinner. In a big room adjacent to the dining hall were several huge round basins for washing hands. The water, controlled by foot levers, came out from the center in a smooth round sheet, as in some fountains. Bars of soap on metal rods extended out over the basin. Seven or eight people could wash their hands at once. It was the highest-tech lavatory we had ever seen. Dinner was unremarkable. After dinner we headed up to the dormitories. The girls all slept in one enormous room. Partitions that approached but did not reach the ceiling separated the space into smaller areas, each with six beds. My friend Jackie, her mother and I found ourselves rooming with three Chickamauga girls, much to our dismay. The bathrooms were of great interest. There were eight shower stalls and perhaps even more bidets (a word I misspelled biday throughout my journal), but only two toilets. Very strange, we thought, but consistent, as our hotel room in Paris had had a bidet but no toilet.
That night, of course, none of us was in the mood for sleep; the camp-like living quarters spoke to the fundamental need for teenagers to indulge in late-night antics. Our Chickamauga roommates seemed to have forgotten their animosity toward us after the bus incident, and we gained a new appreciation for them. They entertained the crowd with comically rendered country songs, liberally borrowing from episodes of the TV show Hee-Haw. My friends and I considered ourselves too cosmopolitan to admit to watching that show, but we had to say that the Chickamaugans could have starred in it. They had the requisite country twangs, the goofy, expansive personalities, and they really sang well together.
After the North Georgians had concluded their performance, Jackie and I joined Katie and Rebecca in the room they shared with other friends from our school. We were engaged in some sort of forgotten silliness when one of us happened to look out the window and notice several boys hanging around outside. We didn’t know them; they were evidently French locals. This was an unexpected and exciting development. My memory of what follows is hazy, and my journal, surprisingly, doesn’t record the details. My guess is that windows were opened, and intercultural flirting began. The boys felt sufficiently encouraged that they tried to scale the building and climb in the windows. Seems like I remember one of them standing on a portion of the lower roof. When it looked like they were really planning to storm the barricades, our group tried to backtrack. We didn’t really plan to invite them in. How do you say Never mind in French? I assume we locked the windows and hissed Arretez!Allez-vous!Va t’en! The commotion awakened one of our chaperones. She addressed the boys with severe words, the gist of which was unmistakable no matter the language. After they had retreated and disappeared, she treated us to similarly severe words and herded us back to our little beds.
Although Jackie and I returned to our room, we still had no intention of sleeping. We sneaked off quietly to the expansive bathrooms, hoping for further distraction. To our delight, we found a couple of forgotten bras hanging on hooks outside the shower stalls. They were for full-figured girls, unlike us, and made for ideal comic props. Whatever we did with those bras (and I can’t remember), it was the height of middle-school hilarity. It must have been near 3 AM when we returned to our cubicle. I had never been to sleep-away summer camp, and I never would go, but that night, I got an exhilarating taste of it.
It was Jackie’s birthday yesterday. After all these years, when we get together, we still tend to stay up late, talking and laughing. The difference is that today, we catch up on the current events of our lives while also reveling in so much shared history. It’s one of the nicer things about growing older. It makes the present moment all the sweeter.
On the bus to Normandy, once again my friends and I battled the urge to close our eyes in sleep. Mrs. Correll resumed her patrol duty, walking the aisle, tapping shoulders, urgently entreating us: Wake up! Dont’ miss the beautiful French countryside! As soon as I noticed the loveliness of the landscape we were passing through, I had no more trouble fighting drowsiness. This was the idyllic countryside of fairy tales: rolling hills, pastures and fields neatly enclosed by fences and hedgerows, small cottages, many with thatched roofs and ivy-covered stone walls, the occasional grand manor house. The chic Parisians had disappeared, replaced by timeless country folk engaged in timeless pastoral activities, like the farmer above, carrying a hay bale on his back. We saw French sheep, horses, cows and dogs. They looked somehow more charming and worldly-wise than their Georgia or Kentucky counterparts. It was cold outside, but the sun was bright and the land was poised for the greening of spring.
The drive took nearly four hours. We shared the bus with a larger group of high school students from the north Georgia town of Chickamauga. The French countryside evidently held little charm for them. Restless and bored, they whiled away the time by pining for the far-away, all-American life. They bemoaned the typically much-missed delights: juicy hamburgers, thick steaks, “real” toilet paper, cold Cokes, water with ice. Mrs. Correll had made it clear to us well before the trip that if we uttered such clichés we would risk her wrath. She would not hear us talking like ugly Americans. We were a sophisticated group, she stressed. We knew we weren’t especially sophisticated, but we didn’t want to disappoint the teacher we revered. Seeing the Chickamaugans behaving boorishly inspired us to try to act cultured and urbane. We considered them to be country bumpkins. I’m sure they thought of us as annoying little city twits.
Mont Saint-Michel, seen from our bus window.
My first glimpse of Mont St. Michel was magical. I was not alone; the vision was sufficient to switch the Chickamaugans’ attention away from the pleasures of home. I’ve returned to Normandy twice over the years, and each time, the initial sighting of that towering castle-church on the rock, rising out of an immensity of flat sand, retains its unique power.
According to medieval texts that recount the beginnings of Mont Saint-Michel, in the eighth century, the archangel Saint Michael appeared in a dream to Aubert, Bishop of nearby Avranches. He commanded Aubert to build him a church upon the rock. When difficulties arose, as one might expect with such a tricky architectural undertaking, the archangel was said to have worked miracles that allowed building to continue. Aubert’s church was consecrated in 708, and word spread of the majestically situated church divinely ordained by an angel.
By the twelfth century, Mont Saint-Michel had become one of Europe’s premiere pilgrimage destinations. In an age that valued visible, tangible relics of a saint’s earthly life, an angel might seem an unlikely candidate to become a popular pilgrimage saint. Saint Michael, a heavenly creature who never dwelt on earth, could offer no bones, blood, hair or instrument of torture to be venerated. But Aubert and those who succeeded him in tending the shrine were creative and enterprising; if the people wanted relics, they would have relics.
Some pilgrims may have come for the relics. Probably more came to soak up the romance of the place itself. Its exceptional location and the drama inherent in the site offers its own enchantment. Thrill-seekers made the pilgrimage because it entailed risk and adventure. Getting to the church on the rock meant navigating the bay’s capriciously shifting sands and the rushing tides that transformed the mount into an island twice daily. There was also the danger of losing one’s way when the thick fog settled in.
The church and the buildings of its surrounding village seem to grow from the rock.
A series of fires required sucessive rebuildings. With each disaster, reputed miracles were interpreted as proof of Saint Michael’s continuing support. He had not abandoned the site. On the contrary, he required a bigger, taller church. The Benedictine Abbey that stands today was begun in 1023. While portions of this Romanesque building remain, most of the church dates from the Gothic period. The archangel was traditionally worshipped in high and lonely spots, and the church that evolved over the centuries might be seen as a sort of architectural portrait of Saint Michael. The building’s massive heaviness and its apparent unity with the rock reflect the military saint’s enduring strength, while its soaring height stretches toward his heavenly domain. On stormy nights, as lightning struck, wind howled and thunder rumbled, the medieval faithful claimed to witness the archangel’s battle with Satan at the top of the mount.
That chilly April day in 1975, our group hadn’t had to brave the elements to reach Mont Saint-Michel. We weren’t exhausted from months of walking in all weathers and through difficult terrains. But we were tired of sitting, and delighted to get off the bus. As we hurried along the causeway, a few of us may have been nearly as excited as some pilgrims before us. The view of the mount retained its drama even at close range. Winding our way up the narrow, cobblestoned street, the adventure continued. The story-book town, with its tightly packed medieval buildings, the upper levels jutting out above those below, was quaint yet scruffily authentic, not a plastic Disneyesque quaint. Inside the church, the shadowy crypts, cut into the depths of the rock, were austere and fortress-like, making the soaring nave, with its pointed Norman arches and tall clerestory windows, appear all the more gloriously luminous.
Dusk was approaching as we climbed to the top of the ramparts to look out over the vast expanse of sand and sea below. The wind was picking up. There was no lightning, but the atmosphere felt charged. That night, we did not see Saint Michael engaged in a furious war with the devil, but the possibility didn’t seem at all far-fetched. What a spectacular sequel to our Super-8 movie Dark Secrets we could have shot at Mont Saint-Michel!
This all-encompassing view of Mont Saint Michel was taken by a neighbor in 1937.
Yesterday, our daughter went to New York City on a whirlwind, 24-hour trip with her drama class. The group left from the school by bus at 5 AM, and returned at 5 AM this morning. They saw two Broadway shows–Newsies and the eagerly awaited Matilda, still in previews. A Newsies cast member led the kids in a dance workshop. They had some free time, so I’m expecting a a full report on wandering Times Square characters. Are the Naked Cowboys in season yet? Were there plentiful sightings of Elmo, Shrek, Hello Kitty, Grandma Liberty and the Tin Man? How was the singing waitstaff at Ellen’s Stardust Diner? D is still asleep, so I haven’t heard the details of the trip yet. I’m very grateful to the drama teacher and to the parent chaperones accompanying the group. I’m especially thankful that I was not among them. While I enjoy New York in small, metered doses, I’m relieved that crowded, pre-dawn bus rides are predominantly in my past.
As D was preparing for the excursion that launched her spring break, I was recalling the days when I looked forward to my own eighth-grade adventure. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had the unlikely good fortune to participate in a school trip to France and England. (See A Small Reunion of the Rutherford Hall Gang, Nov. 2011.) As I said then, it was a rare event for a group from the Atlanta Public City Schools to venture anywhere for spring break in the 70s, much less to Europe. It was just about unheard of then for middle-schoolers in our area to take part in such study trips. But we were blessed with a dynamic and unusually dedicated French teacher, Martha Elizabeth Correll. She decided we must see France, and we must see it with her. We loved and admired the young, fun and charismatic Mrs. Correll. She seemed to be fond of us, too. She found a bargain-priced trip through the now extinct Foreign Study League. Nine of us, including several of my best friends, managed to persuade our parents that this was an opportunity not to be missed.
Mrs. Correll encouraged us to keep a journal during our trip, and naturally I saved mine. In my first entry, dated a few days before our departure, I mentioned my vague fear of flying. I had never been on a plane before: It couldn’t be especially frightening, could it? Katie, who wouldn’t ride the roller coasters at Six Flags, had flown before, and she wasn’t scared.
Above, most of our group at the Atlanta Airport, ready to board the plane to New York. Several of us hold our blue and white Foreign Study League carry-ons. Our teacher, Mrs. Correll, is at the far right, in her signature, whimsically decorated bell-bottom jeans.
My journal from the actual trip continues on the subject of airplane travel. The flights were unexpectedly smooth, I reported. Apparently I was expecting a roller coaster experience, despite Katie’s evidence to the contrary. But every aspect of flying was novel and amazing, if not particularly enjoyable. I wrote at length about the unbelievably cramped quarters on the overseas flight, the tiny bathrooms, and the unidentifiable food (my friend Jackie maintained that we had been served baked rat).
After a sleepless night on the plane, we arrived in Paris in the gray dawn and boarded our bus for an introductory tour of the city. I recall powerfully the miserable war I waged against my leaden eyelids during my first, much anticipated hour in a foreign country. We were surrounded by legendary sights, yet the yearning for sleep was overwhelming. After the discomfort of the airplane seats, the tour bus provided an ideal environment for snoozing. Most eyes were closing, most heads were bobbing. Mrs. Correll, ever vivacious, walked the aisle, rousing us. She hadn’t taken us with her to France so we could sleep on a bus. Once in the heart of Paris, I shook off some of the muddled fog of half-sleep. After stops at the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame, nearly everyone was awake enough to feel rejuvenated by our surroundings. Avoiding sleep became even easier once we noticed that our Parisian guide, Salvador, was charming and exotically handsome (so French!).
Rebecca, me, Jackie and Katie in our hotel room on Easter Sunday morning.
Because my expectations had been low, our hotel was a pleasant surprise. It had one of those old-fashioned elevators I had seen in movies, with a folding iron grille in place of a door. Our room was almost grand, if slightly faded. I liked its high ceilings, ornate wallpaper and elegant fireplace. Its large size was fortunate, considering there were five of us in it. Katie and Rebecca shared one double bed, Jackie and her mother shared the other, and I got the single. I remember being cold at night and sleeping huddled under my coat. We had been told not to expect a private bathroom, so we were surprised to find a spacious one with lavatory, bathtub and bidet. The toilettes, as we learned to say, were down the hall, in claustrophobic compartments. One of our friends went in one and couldn’t get out. He was finally extricated by a team of chamber maids speaking in baffling, rapid-fire French. After that, we were all careful about locking the door just so.
The 13th-Century Sainte-Chapelle, built by King Louis IX.
Our three-day visit to Paris was like a fast-paced tasting menu of the city’s highlights, most of which Mrs. Correll had discussed with us previously in vivid detail. She wanted us to understand and appreciate the history and culture of France, as well as its language. Paris came alive for us during that short time because our teacher had prepared us well. We heard some of the Easter mass in Notre-Dame. We saw the forbidding Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette spent her sad last days. We beheld the lovely Sainte-Chapelle, the Gothic jewelbox that Saint Louis built to house the Crown of Thorns. We wandered the Latin Quarter, alive with bohemian student activity. We explored the courtyards of the Sorbonne, where Mrs. Correll had studied.
We watched old soldiers playing boules outside Les Invalides, fishermen casting their nets from the Pont Neuf, and children sailing paper boats in the Luxembourg Gardens. Everywhere there were Frenchmen carrying baguettes and wearing actual berets. We spent some time (not nearly enough for me) in the Louvre. Of course we walked the Champs-Elysees. We cruised the Seine at night in a Bateau Mouche. I got to witness first-hand the view I had most anticipated–the tip of the Île de la Cité with the lacy spires and flying buttresses of Notre-Dame just behind.
I loved the wealth of intricately decorated Easter candies and pastries that beckoned from the windows of small shops on narrow streets. Never before had fruit and vegetables looked so beguiling as they did in the city’s outdoor markets. Even displays in butcher shop windows were strangely beautiful, recalling old-master still lifes. We ate in cafés and brasseries, and learned that a croque-monsier, an omelette, or anything with frîtes was a good choice. We learned that French ice cream is served in minuscule metal dishes. And we found that paying for our meals and managing francs and centîmes was as difficult as we had feared.
Real Frenchmen, real baguettes, and real berets.Some of our group (dressed in the height of 70s middle-school style), in the gardens at Versailles.
We were busy during our three days in Paris. But we weren’t so busy that we missed getting a sense of the city’s unique, ebullient, quirky atmosphere. Sooner than we would have liked, it was time to head to Normandy, to Mont-St-Michel, and on across the Channel to England.
Filming in Dr. Welby’s basement digs: Katie’s older sister acts as camerawoman, while Rebecca’s younger sister aims the lights.
As is the case with most worthwhile projects, making our Super-8 movie had its moments of exhilaration, unforgettable fun, boredom and frustration. Naturally, the initial planning stage was the most gratifying. As I remember it, writing the movie with Katie was nothing less than a blast. I dislike this overused hyperbolic term; I cast a skeptical eye on those who repeatedly claim to have had a blast doing this or that. Really? A blast? I doubt it. But in this case, it was accurate. There was a heady sense of possibility in the air as Katie and I bounced ideas off one another. We’re gonna make a movie! Our movie! We’re in control! In our own minds, we were incredibly funny. We were good! We should have been destined for Saturday Night Live, as yet in its infancy.
As soon as we began filming, we realized we had no control. It was terrific to get the cast together for filming; it was like getting school credit for regularly attending a party with our best friends. But we encountered many difficulties. Filming began in February, and because we often worked on weekday afternoons, the light was erratic, and it disappeared far too quickly. Some of our pivotal outdoor scenes were indecipherably dark. Because we were working with actual film, the complete absence of light was not apparent until after developing. In March, with the start of Daylight Savings Time, suddenly all was intense brightness.
The drastic changes in light made for continuity issues, to say the least. We also found it difficult to maintain a convincing sense of flow when cast members’ appearances changed unexpectedly from day to day. Was Amanda wearing that scarf yesterday? Can anyone remember? Didn’t you have a different sweater? And then Dr. Welby got his hair cut from shoulder to chin length about half-way through filming.
It doesn’t sound difficult to avoid routinely filming the movie lights. Evidently it was trickier than it seems. The lights, and often the gaffers who held them, appeared in the background, (or occasionally the foreground) time after time.
Our two gaffer-gophers on break, modeling costume accessories. They got nearly as much screen time as the actual cast.
The complications of filming were nothing compared to those of the editing process that followed. We thought we were being professional by shooting all the scenes involving the same set at the same time. We didn’t know how much amateur splicing left to be desired. Again, for any younger readers, if they exist, we were dealing with real film that must be sent away for processing. It then required cutting apart and taping back together so the scenes would flow in correct order. Personal computers, digital video and talking camera phones were still the stuff of James Bond movies and the fever dreams of a few elite techie geniuses.
For one part of the final project, Katie included a section entitled “How to Splice.” I sat at her side, some of the time, for moral support, as she followed the tedious steps she would outline in her paper. We would look at the film through an editor, a machine that I have completely blocked from memory, but one that I described in my report as resembling a tiny television screen. When we decided where the scenes should be cut, pushing something called the condensor on the editor resulted in a knick in the film. This knick indicated where the film should be cut. With scissors. Actual, not virtual scissors. Then Katie would painstakingly reattach the frames in the new order with splicing tape.
This was old-school cutting and pasting, and our movie required extreme amounts of it. The film was so thick with tape that it couldn’t pass smoothly through the projector. I can still hear the painful sputtering, ticking sound the film made as the scenes bounced up and down, roller-coaster style. How we dealt with this problem is my haziest recollection, probably because it was distinctly unpleasant. I vaguely remember discussing the additional, not insignificant cost to make a jump-free copy of the film. We must have managed this, because the film is, largely, viewable. It is no masterpiece, but it can be seen.
Every silent film needs music, of course. Using my portable tape player, I recorded the score. The cassette, long lost, consisted of selections by Scott Joplin and Edvard Grieg, pieces I happened to be working on during piano lessons. The music didn’t always fit exactly with the action, but if we timed the start of the tape and the film carefully, it didn’t miss by much.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s been a while since I’ve seen our movie. Its form continues to lapse further into obsolescence. I still have the actual film, and H’s father, a camera buff, owns a working movie projector from the 70s. During a future visit to Rochester, maybe we’ll arrange a family viewing. Years ago, Rebecca’s husband had the film converted to video and VHS copies made. We still have a VCR, somewhere in our basement, if we wanted to go looking. No one has yet been moved to make a digital version of the film.
My daughter saw the movie years ago, when she was still young enough to be impressed.
She’s been involved in her middle school’s news team for the past two years. With access to sophisticated video technology, the kids regularly turn out high-quality videos. Out of school, they can use their phones to produce similarly remarkable results. D would be amused at the intricate physicality of the old editing process. And she might be interested to see her mother at her age.
When I do see Dark Secrets again, I expect to know how I’ll feel. I’ll have a better understanding of my parents’ and other adults’ bafflement over some of our dramatic and comedic choices. Why does the Creation have a lightning bolt across her face? Why is the butler gleefully counting his money as he opens the door? I’m not sure why that’s supposed to be funny. I will see their point. But I will know why.
Because in some part of my soul, I’ll be fourteen again. I’ll be there with my two best friends Katie and Rebecca, reveling in our shared appreciation of idiosyncracy and non sequitur. Life’s possibilities will once again open wide. The future will be a distant, glowing horizon, the one evoked mistily in high school graduation speeches. SNL may see us yet! Who would have guessed that after all these years, it would still be around? And like us, it’s not just surviving, but going strong.
I find it a little alarming that my daughter is fourteen, and half-way througheighth grade. It’s alarming because my memory of being a fourteen-year-old eighth-grader is fairly clear. I remember many of my eighth-grade thoughts, and they weren’t so very different from my current middle-aged thoughts. This brings me face-to-face with the uncomfortable realization that my baby is no longer my baby. She’s my only child, so in a sense she’ll always be my baby. But from here on out she will be traversing the continuum from nearly grown-up to nearly completely grown-up. Can anyone ever claim to be truly grown-up? Maybe after the death of one or both of our parents? Or does this make us feel like old, lost children? More alarming thoughts, which I won’t dwell on now. Today I want to think about our movie.
I loved 8th grade. The snags of our newly-formed middle school were working themselves out. (See Middle-School Memorabilia, February 2012.) Once again, we were in classes with many of our old elementary school buddies, and we had the added bonus of meeting new friends. Some of these friendships took root thanks to an experimental, unstructured class that replaced language arts and social studies. As our independent project, my friend Katie and I made a movie.
She and I loved the movies. We dreamed of writing, directing, and perhaps starring in our own films one day. The logical starting point was our own Super 8 short film. Of course it was Katie’s family that had the camera, not mine. They had real cameras, ones with complicated knobs for focusing, as well as movie cameras, film projecters, even special movie lights. The were high-tech. I was wowed. I come from an anti-camera, anti-tech family. On Christmas morning, we would look around for the Kodak Instamatic. If it could be located, it often lacked film, flash bulbs, or both. One Christmas, our only pictures were taken by our next-door neighbor. Old photos from the 1940s on were tossed at random in the drawer of the coffee table, undated and unlabeled, a practice that inspired me to take the opposite approach, to document, organize and archive.
Katie and I favored the genres of comedy and horror. (See Movies with Friends: From Frogs to Rocky Horror to Toco Hill, and other posts from March 2012.) Our movie, we quickly decided, would be a campy, silly horror film, set in the 50s. As kids growing up in the 70s, we were fascinated by that Happy Days era, which seemed so distant. Because Katie’s mother and mine had saved most of their clothes from that time period, our costumes were immediately at hand. We also had lots of comical wigs and odd accessories that begged to be modeled.
We spent Saturdays and school-day afternoons writing the script. To us, it was side-splittingly hilarious. I have several copies of the final four-page script, typed by Katie and mimeographed at school. It was a silent film, so the narration and dialogue were hand-written in a flowery cursive and filmed, panel by panel. Our working title was The Underground Horror, later finalized as Dark Secrets. It began promisely enough:
The date is 1957. Leonora Fieldcrest had just moved into old Ravencroft Cottage on Shepherd Lane. Knowing that the apartment in the basement was rented to a certain Dr. Marc Welby (whom she had never met), did not hinder her. Perhaps
she should have thought more carefully.
Our set was the home of our friend Rebecca, who would play Leonora’s “old school chum” and spunky gal reporter, Amanda Duff. Not surprisingly, Dr. Welby (we considered this name choice an example of our use of sophisticated irony) was up to no good. He was building a creature. His laboratory was a squalid subterranean room, the door of which had been painted, years before, by previous homeowners, with the ominous warning: Operations Shack! Scram! Rebecca’s basement (really a cellar, rudimentarily finished and typical of the 1930s-era homes in our neighborhood) simply cried out for us to film a horror movie in it.
Katie took the role of the creature, and I played Leonora. We recruited two boys from our class for the male roles: Dr. Welby and Leonora’s butler. Everyone in old 50s movies had a butler, it seemed, and we needed another guy. Katie filmed the scenes she wasn’t in. Her older sister took care of the others. Rebecca’s younger sister and her friend served as gaffers and gophers. We relished tossing around such film jargon. Because the next-door neighbors had a cute little dog named Buster who was always underfoot, he was granted a role as Leonora’s puppy.
The entire cast, pictured above, from left to right: Amanda, Leonora, the Creation, standing menacingly, Dr. Welby, and the butler. It’s unfortunate that not a single still photo related to our film was in focus. I haven’t seen the movie in years, but I’m sure it’s not this blurry. I’m uncertain of the source of these pictures. Evidently they were taken before Katie got her very own good camera; at which point she became the primary photographer of our collective youth, known for her creative (and clear) photos. She has enjoyed a successful career as a photo-journalist for the Indianapolis Star newspaper.
Dr. Welby, at work in his Operations Shack. He laughs in a villainous manner as he puts the finishing touches on his Creation, whose red plaid skirt is visible.
Me, as Leonora, with Buster the dog.
Amanda, just arrived from Kansas (on her bicycle),
hands her little suitcase to the butler.
One of our funniest jokes (we thought), was the awfulness of Dr. Welby’s basement “apartment.” Here, Amanda and Leonora snoop around while the doc is out, observing personal mementos on the table beside his bare foam-rubber mattress on the floor.
At Amanda’s insistence, the two friends sneak into Welby’s inner sanctum. Leonora brandishes an Indian juggling club. Ace Reporter Amanda wields her trusty, if anachronistic camera, perhaps the source of some of these blurry photos.
On Ash Wednesday, we are urged to face a stark truth: we will not live forever. The certainty of our mortality should be evident as we daily confront our society’s latest egregious incidents of violent fatality. Where was today’s shooting? At a mall, an office, a restaurant, a church, or, most horrifically, at a school?Who were the heroes and innocents who died senselessly this week? Firefighters, doctors, nurses, teachers, small children, infants? Depending upon where you live, you may be mourning a different tragedy than the one that preys on my mind. There are so many tragedies in our world. Every day it becomes more difficult to say It can’t happen in my neighborhood.
Yet despite the ongoing exposure to such dire events, our culture is constantly blaring the message that if we spend enough on miraculous health and beauty products, if we make the right lifestyle choices, we can prolong our lives indefinitely. It promises us, repeatedly, that it’s in our best interests to extend the look of youth far beyond our youthful years. One of the worst things we can say about a celebrity is this: She’s looking her age. How shocking! How pitiful! Not enough botox, or botox gone bad. Excessive collagen, or inadequate collogen. A facelift that failed. A fanatical exercise regime that no longer does the trick. Her arms were once buff; now they’re stringy. The more beautiful one is in youth, the sadder seems the diminishing of that beauty with age.
Yesterday I caught a brief snippet of a TV soap opera that I admit I used to watch, on occasion. Well, not really watch. It happened to come on at a time when I needed a rest. It offered a distraction as I sat down to fold laundry, leaf through piles of papers and magazines for recycling, make get-well cards. Sometimes it lulled me to sleep, I have to say. This particular soap opera, even sillier than most, if possible, requires minimal attention, because it’s always the same. During my most recent viewing, it was immediately apparent that the same small group of characters was still soldiering on in scandalous banality, divorcing, remarrying, swapping spouses and children, re-betraying one another in bizarre ways. At a glance, the old gang looked very much the same. There was not a wrinkle, not a gray hair to be seen. Bodies were svelte, as always. But the faces were altered in odd ways: eyes slanted at more extreme angles, lips overly puffy, cheekbones higher, chins more pronounced, foreheads immovable as those of marble statues. The characters continue to behave in sophomoric, stupid ways, so it is fitting, perhaps, that they appear young. In real life, though, is maturity so terrible? If we learn from our mistakes, we are not cursed to repeat them endlessly, like soap opera characters. As we mature mentally and spiritually, we will age, and our age will show.
I’m not saying I’m immune to the horror of growing old. I’ve begun to avoid harsh lighting, I’ve noted, with acute dismay, what an awkward turn of my head can do for the skin on my neck. The magnifying mirror is my frenemy. I silently bewail the effects of gravity. Just as the classic birthday card line attests: Old age is not for sissies. It’s for the the wise, the well-adjusted, the truly mature. On Ash Wednesday, we are called to confront the fact that no magic potion or surgery will keep old age forever at bay. And while death claims the young, as we see all too often, most of us are granted the bittersweet privilege of aging in this lifetime. This is, indeed, a gift; it allows us the opportunity to grow toward wisdom, toward maturity. It means the chance to come to terms with the hollowness of our culture of vanity, and to learn to live accordingly. The visible effects of age are reminders that death awaits us, unavoidably. The physical body decays even as we live, earthly beauty is fleeting, and material possessions are transitory. Once we acknowledge these truths, we are free to recognize the real value of what will not pass away:
And now, these three abide: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. –1 Corinthians 13: 13
On Ash Wednesday, we thank God for not leaving us to eternal decay. Through the love of Jesus Christ we are rescued from the dust, from perpetual darkness. Our future, as God’s beloved children, is one of light and glory, of joyful wisdom that, in its zeal, perfection, and yes, its maturity, will remain forever young, forever beautiful.
I noticed today that some Lenten roses (Helleborus Orientalis) are already in bloom , although barely visible among winter’s dead leaves.
A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.
