thanksgiving on hallow eve day
I wanted to post a family picture. I can see it vividly in my head, and must have seen it recently, but in the chaos of boxes that passes for the family archives, I cannot find it. Obviously, my next project is to bring some kind of order to this, if only so I can post what I'm seeing.
This picture is a photo of my grandmother, her sister-in-law, and my mother preparing a holiday meal, all turned laughing, toward the camera. They are wearing full aprons to cover their holiday dresses. It is Thanksgiving or Christmas. I can smell the turkey, taste that French-Canadian stuffing, hear the clink of ice cubes in the rye and water.
When I was very young and my grandmother's family was still around, there was much patois bantered back and forth. The French language was lost with my mother and her brother, but both their parents had French-Canadian roots going back to the 1800's and earlier, in Essex County, and even further back in Quebec. In the 30's and 40's when my mother and her brother were growing up in Essex County, French was not an official language, nor a language of commerce.
But it was a gentle reminder of my grandmother's early life on a turn-of-the-century farm.
And of a story of my grandmother Evelyn, helping my uncle Floyd, an A-student, with his French homework. The patois had exchanged "potates" for the official "pommes de terre", and officially ended my grandmother's short life as a tutor of francaise.
This picture is a photo of my grandmother, her sister-in-law, and my mother preparing a holiday meal, all turned laughing, toward the camera. They are wearing full aprons to cover their holiday dresses. It is Thanksgiving or Christmas. I can smell the turkey, taste that French-Canadian stuffing, hear the clink of ice cubes in the rye and water.
When I was very young and my grandmother's family was still around, there was much patois bantered back and forth. The French language was lost with my mother and her brother, but both their parents had French-Canadian roots going back to the 1800's and earlier, in Essex County, and even further back in Quebec. In the 30's and 40's when my mother and her brother were growing up in Essex County, French was not an official language, nor a language of commerce.
But it was a gentle reminder of my grandmother's early life on a turn-of-the-century farm.
And of a story of my grandmother Evelyn, helping my uncle Floyd, an A-student, with his French homework. The patois had exchanged "potates" for the official "pommes de terre", and officially ended my grandmother's short life as a tutor of francaise.
posted by Kathy O'Brien at 11:10 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home